Weber, Max The Sociology Of Religion

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.Ben Sira's stressupon the wisdom of the fathers in opposition to Hellenization already demonstrates thatthere was a trend in this direction.[86] Moreover, the "scribe" or "scriptural scholar" ofthat time who was learned in the law was, according to the Book of Ben Sira, [87] awidely traveled and cultivated gentleman.[88] There is throughout this book a clearlyexpressed anti-plebeian line, [89] quite comparable to that found among the Greeks: Howcan the peasant, the smith, or the potter have wisdom, which only leisure for reflectionand dedication to study can produce? [90]Ezra was named the "scribe," yet he was the influential priest [91] who, however, wasovershadowed by the prophets, and without whom the imposition of the Book ofDeuteronomy would never have taken place.On the other hand, the dominant position ofthe scribes, that means, those who know Hebrew and can interpret the divine commands,and whose position is almost equivalent to the Islamic caregiver (mufti), arises much laterthan that of Ezra, the official creator of the theocracy, who had received his powers fromthe Persian emperor.The social position of the scribes nevertheless underwent changes.At the time of the Maccabean dynasty, Jewish piety --in essence a rather sober wisdom oflife, as illustrated by the teaching of the charity of strangers-- was regarded as identicalwith "education" (musar); the education was the way of virtue, which was regarded asteachable in the same sense as among the Greeks.Yet the pious intellectuals of even thatperiod, like the majority of the Psalmists, felt themselves to be in sharp opposition to thewealthy and proud, among whom fidelity to the law was uncommon, even though theseintellectuals were of the same social class as the wealthy and proud.On the other hand, the schools of scriptural scholars of the Herodian period (55 BC - AD93), whose frustration and inner tension grew in the face of the obvious religiouscompromise to a foreign power, created the first emergence of non-privileged intellectualPDF Creator - PDF4Free v2.0 http://www.pdf4free.comstrata who studied the law.They served as pastoral counselors, preachers and teachers inthe synagogues, and their representatives also sat in the Sanhedrin.They influenceddecisively the popular piety of those who were rigidly faithful to the law, the Pharisees(perushim), in the Jewish community.In the Talmudic period, this kind of enterprisedeveloped into the rabbinate, a synagogue leader.Through this stratum there now ensued,in contrast to what had gone before, a tremendous expansion of petty-citizen and pariahintellectualism, such as we do not find among any other people.Philo already regarded"general public schools" for the diffusion of literacy and of systematic education incasuistic thinking as the hallmark of the Jews.It was the influence of this stratum thatfirst displaced, among citizen Jews, the activity of the prophets by the devotion to the cultof the law and to the study of the sacred scriptures of the law.This Jewish stratum of popular intellectuals, entirely remote from any connection withmysticism, unquestionably occupied a lower social status than the strata of philosophersand mystery cultists in Hellenistic societies of the Near East.But intellectualism wasundoubtedly already diffused throughout the various social strata of the Hellenistic Orientin pre-Christian times, and in fact produced in the various mysteries and cults ofsalvation, by allegory and speculation, dogmas similar to those generated by the Orphics,who generally seem to have belonged to the middle classes.These mysteries andsalvational speculations were certainly well known to a scriptural scholar of the Diasporalike Paul, who rejected them vigorously; it will be recalled that the cult of Mithra waswidely diffused in Cilicia during the time of Pompey (60 BC) as a religion of pirates,although the epigraphic evidence for its existence specifically at Tarsus stems from theChristian era.It is quite likely that salvation hopes of different kinds and origins existedside by side in Judaism for a long period, especially in the provinces.Otherwise, it wouldhave been impossible for Judaism to produce even in the period of the prophets, inaddition to the idea of a future monarch of the Jewish people restored to power, the ideathat another king of the poor folk would enter Jerusalem upon a donkey; [92] and indeedit would have been difficult for the Jews to evolve their idea of the "son of man," anobvious linguistic product of Semitic grammar.[93]All in all, lay intellectualism, whether of the noble or the pariah kind, is involved in everycomplex doctrine of salvation which develops abstractions and opens up cosmicperspectives, going far beyond mythologies oriented to the mere processes of nature or tothe simple prediction of the appearance at some future time of a good king who is alreadywaiting somewhere in concealment.(F.4) Intellectualism And Christianity(F.4.a) Paul's Petty-citizen IntellectualismThis scriptural scholarship of Judaism, which is an instance of petty-citizenintellectualism, entered into early Christianity.Paul, apparently an crafts-person likemany of the late Jewish scriptural scholars (in sharp contrast to the intellectuals of theperiod of Ben Sira, who produced anti-plebeian wisdom teachings), is an outstandingrepresentative of this petty-citizen intellectualism in early Christianity, though of coursePDF Creator - PDF4Free v2.0 http://www.pdf4free.comother traits are also to be found in Paul [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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