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→III. Ethics
===III. Ethics===
The ethical program of the Second Temple Jewish community was tied into their Israelite heritage but shaped by the Hellenistic environment as well. While much of the Christian ethical approach was certainly "Jewish," there is much that is not.
'''Jewish Ethics of the Individual'''
The personal, subjective response was alive and well in this period. Granted, as Jesus' and the Mishnaic criticisms show, there were those who followed a rote way of religious life. In religious practices as elsewhere, that which is supposed to be uncommon soon become common--at least in the experience of the worldly or of the faint-hearted. Nonetheless, there was serious religious devotion taking place through the synagogue and in the administerting of the Temple cult. Further, one need remember that the religious enthusiasm as a renewal of what was thought to be the "true" ''Torah''-abiding community found manifestation in the sects which took to the Qumran wilderness.
'''Jewish Ethics of the Community'''
Both through the synagogue and in the Temple rites, as well as in sectarian devotion, the Jewish people in Judea and throughout the Mediterranean cities were able to continue as both an ethnic and a religious society. Thanks to their antiquity, which many pagans admired, the Jewish people often enjoyed privileges which later groups as Christians could not. The ability to adapt to the Gentile customs and language stood the Jewish people in good stead, their loyalty to their ancient language (at least in worship) and religous ways grounded them in a distinctive religion.
'''Jewish Ethics of the State'''
The imitation since the Maccabean period of the Hellenistic ''polis'', an institution soon on its way out due to the oncoming superiority and domination of regional superpowers, was all that the Judeans had left to them. At the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the attempt of the hellenizing faction to impose the ways of the Gentiles upon the Jewish people met with revolt. The result, however, was not a Hellenistic Judea with a ruler whose patron was Antiochus but a Hellenistic Judea whose rulers were of the Hasmonean dynasty. While it is certainly true that the Maccabees restored the old Israelite cult it is also true that they installed themselves as a Hellenistic dynasty.
===IV. Liturgy===