Max Beer

“ The bitter internecine struggles during the Jewish wars against the Romans, which are mentioned in Josephus as well as in the Talmud, and which undoubtedly bear all indications of a relentless class war of the lower classes against the rich, reveal the existence of a large revolutionary proletariat as a natural corollary of the existence of a small class of monopolists. ”

“ The Jews elaborated the conception of being a chosen people, a nation of priests, holy in their relation to Yahve, righteous in their relations to their brethren. Their foreign rulers, the Persians, the Ptolemaeans, the Seleucid, left them alone in the exercise of their religious ceremonies. The first change occurred in the third century, when Hellenism and economic intercourse with the Hellenic world encroached upon Jewish exclusiveness. Economic and religious disintegration set in, which, in the second century, led to the formation of antagonistic parties within Jewish society. ”

“ The disintegration of primitive communism gave rise to a long struggle between the possessors and the dispossessed, which expressed itself mentally in the opposition between polytheistic modes of worship and moral action, or between priesthood and prophecy. ”

“ In the first three centuries after the return from the exile the economic development was slow, the divisions and inequalities in society were less marked, and, therefore, the difference between priestly law and prophetic ideals was less noticeable. The law became the centre of Jewish life. ”

“ To this mental antagonism was added the economic one, as the middle-classes were by their economic position compelled to exploit and sweat the working people. The latter never accepted legalism as the rule of life. ”