How rabbinic Judaism rebuilt Jewish life after the Temple fell in 70 CE
When Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, sacrifice ended and Jews faced hard questions: how to atone, how to explain defeat, how to live under Roman rule. Of the rival movements, only the Pharisees had an answer that lasted, turning law and study into a sacred path open to ordinary people in daily life.
Late Second Temple Judaism was split into competing camps, chiefly Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots, alongside smaller sects. The Sadducees dominated while the Temple stood, but their teaching was bound up with its sacrificial worship and they vanished with it. The Zealots were crushed, the last of them dying at Masada in 73, and the Essenes also disappeared. Afterwards prayer replaced sacrifice, and communities reorganised around rabbis who served as teachers and local leaders.
The movement rested on a claim that Moses at Sinai received two revelations: the written Torah and an oral one explaining it, which the rabbis said they preserved by memory. At first writing the oral teaching down was forbidden. As persecution grew and details risked being lost, Judah ha-Nasi recorded it in the Mishnah around 200 CE. Commentary on the Mishnah, the Gemara, developed in two centres, producing a Jerusalem Talmud compiled in the 4th century and a Babylonian one whose codification made rabbinic Judaism the orthodox form from the 6th century.
Scholars divide the classical period into three layers: the tannaitic era to 200 CE, the amoraic from 200 to 500, and the saboraic that followed into the 7th century. The last and most influential pair to lead the Sanhedrin before then, Hillel and Shammai, were both Pharisees, and later tradition ranked Hillel's rulings above his rival's.
The background includes centuries of tension over Greek culture. After Antiochus IV effectively banned Jewish observance, revolt produced the Hasmonean kingdom, which lasted until 37 BCE before Rome took control. Groups outside the rabbinic stream, among them Karaites and Samaritans, reject the Oral Torah's authority. Modern denominations differ on how binding religious law is, yet all trace themselves to the oral tradition and the rabbinic method.
Source: Rabbinic Judaism
