The Early Church lost touch with its Jewish roots in or before 70 C.E. Various passages in the New Testament suggest that Christians were excommunicated from the synagogue before the New Testament canon was completed, and certainly before 70 C.E. This marked the beginning of the loss of Jewish culture within the Church. A few Christian groups such as the Nazarenes and Ebionites continued to follow Jewish customs, but these soon died out. The Church very quickly forgot its Jewish roots, and thereby lost contact with much of the Jewish background of the New Testament writings.
The date of 70 C.E. was also very significant for Jews because the destruction of Jerusalem at this time marked a complete break with many aspects of Jewish culture. Post-70 Judaism contained almost no Sadducees or Shammaites, and their teachings became a historic curiosity. The academy of rabbis that was set up at Yamnia became the authoritative voice in Judaism for all matters of law and custom. This academy and the Babylonian academy both followed Hillelite teaching [which taught “no-fault divorces”] and developed it into the Armoraic teaching represented today by the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, respectively. Although the Talmuds contain many traditions about the Sadducees and Shammaites, they are seen almost completely from the point of view of the Hillelite Pharisees. Virtually all that we know about these groups is represented as debates that they had with Hillelites, in which they almost always lost, according to these Hillite sources.
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Author: David Instone-Brewer
Keywords: Marriage, Divorce, Bill of divorcement, Certificate of divorce, Certificate of divorcement, Bill of divorce, School of Hillel, School of Shammai, Any cause, Every cause, Divorce for any cause, Divorce of every cause, Rabbinic debate, Commits adultery, Remarriage, Divorcement, Exception clause, Put away, Put assunder, Putteth away, Divorcee, matter of indecency, no fault divorce, any matter, divorce and remarriage, divorce and marriage
Bible reference(s): Deuteronomy 24:1-3, Malachi 2:16, Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:2-9, Mark 10:4, Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18, 1 Corinthians 7:15, 1 Corinthians 7:39, 1 Corinthians 7:28
Source: Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), pp. 238-9, 266.
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