‘jewish doctrine takes three forms’ 121
procedure in drawing up a bill of divorce and for allowing witnesses to
the new moon to leave the large courtyard where they assembled to go
for a stroll on the Sabbath: ‘Beforetime they might not stir thence the
whole day; but Rabban Gamaliel the Elder ordained that they might
walk within two thousand cubits in any direction.’ Gamaliel’s influence
and reputation within the rabbinic movement of the first century ce can
be gauged from the statement in the Mishnah that ‘when Rabban
Gamaliel the elder died, the glory of the law ceased and purity and
abstinence died.’ His son, Simon, who was sent in 67 ce by the revol-
utionary government in Jerusalem to remove Josephus from his
command in Galilee, and was described in Josephus’ autobiography as
‘a native of Jerusalem, of a very illustrious family, and of the hairesis of
the Pharisees’, is mentioned in the Mishnah as making a ruling which
dramatically altered the price of doves:
Once in Jerusalem a pair of doves cost a golden denar. Rabbi Simeon b.
Gamaliel said: by this Temple! I will not suffer the night to pass by before
they cost but a [silver] denar. He went into the court and taught: ‘If a
woman suffered five miscarriages that were not in doubt or five issues that
were not in doubt, she need bring but one offering, and she may then eat of
the animal- offerings; and she is not bound to offer the other offerings.’ And
the same day the price of a pair of doves stood at a quarter- denar each.^16
Compatibility was not the same as identity, and the early rabbis
treated the perushim as a group separate from themselves: ‘Rabban
Yohanan ben Zakkai said: “Have we nothing else against the perushim
beyond this? For they also say, ‘The bones of an ass are clean or the
bones of Yohanan the High Priest are unclean.’ ” They said to him, “As
is our love for them, so is their uncleanness – that no man make spoons
of the bones of his father or mother.” ’ The term used by rabbis for their
own group – talmidei hakhamim (‘sages’), on whom see Chapter 7 –
was quite different, and it is simply wrong to think of the Pharisees as
rabbis, or vice versa. All the more striking is the apparent rabbinization
of Pharisaic history by the time of the compilation of the Babylonian
Talmud in the sixth century ce. During the reign of the Hasmonaean
Alexander Jannaeus, from 103 to 76 bce, the Pharisees led a popular
rebellion to protest at his unworthiness to offer sacrifices as High
Priest. The revolt, which broke out in the Temple at the festival of Suk-
kot with a mass demonstration through pelting him with etrogs, led to
six years of civil war and huge losses, including mass executions. Jos-
ephus claimed that 800 prisoners were crucified in Jerusalem while