RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 87ideological system to include noncovenantal elements, some of them, like
belief in the power of demons, astrology, bits of Canaanite mythology, almost
certainly derived from popular Palestinian religion, was as much a corollary
of the success of Judaism as the incorporation of elements of, say, Mithraism
or neo-Platonism in Christianity indicated its success.
Yet the myth and the covenant remained separate, and the myth retained
itspotentialto generate separatesocial organization, or, in Scholem’s formula-
tion, to subvert the Torah, even if such activity was normally confined to the
social margins. It was not simply that the mediators themselves acknowledged,
and in some cases institutionalized, the separateness of the myth by classifying
it as esoteric, or, in the cases of Ben Sira, 1 Maccabees, and perhaps Josephus
and the Mishnah, rejecting it altogether. The fact is, the covenant and the
myth performed different social roles. The covenant told you whom to marry
and how, what to eat, how to worship; the myth not only told you why things
nevertheless went wrong but also could be used to improve them, to cure the
sick, protect you from your enemies, discover, at the very least, when things
are likely to change. If the correct adjudication of a property dispute, or proper
preparation of food, were the day-to-day manifestations of the power of the
covenant, the exorcism, cure, ororacle were the corresponding manifestations
of the power of the myth.
Sophists, Holy Men, and Brigands
Thus, though these skills were often possessed by the same person, though
both might involve consultation of holy books, and though people in fact
needed access to both, they were undeniably different types of expertise and
had the potential to empower different types of people. This potential was to
some extent realized in the first century.
In periods of weak central control, social breakdown, economic decline,
and the like, we should expect ideological systems to shatter, and their politi-
cal and social effects to dissolve into their components. The period from the
death of Herod, in 4B.C.E., to the outbreak of the Great Revolt in 66C.E.was
thus one in which the ideological underpinnings of Palestinian Jewish society
began to be especially conspicuous.
This is not to suggest that Palestine had already fallen apart at the seams.
In fact, the old institutions retained their power, the high priests had their
authority and prestige, the la wof the Torah was still enforced, the land still
yielded a reasonably dependable income for Herod’s descendants and the
Romans, there were long periods of calm, and many of the reported distur-
bances were minor. Josephus may report so many disturbances for the first
century simply because they had occurred in his lifetime or in living memory,
and/or because they seemed to him to provide an appropriate background to
his main theme, the revolt of 66.