Groups and titles
The religious parties, peoples, and offices that keep coming up, especially in the Gospels.
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Card 1 of 11
What is the difference between the words Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew?
Hebrew is the oldest name for Abraham's people and their language; Israelite means a descendant of Jacob, also called Israel; Jew comes from Judah and became the common name after the exile.
After the northern tribes were lost, the survivors were mostly from the kingdom of Judah, so the people came to be called Judeans, which becomes "Jews". By the New Testament it is the normal term. In the Gospel of John "the Jews" often means the religious leaders in Jerusalem, not the Jewish people as a whole, since Jesus and all his disciples were Jews.
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Card 2 of 11
Who were the Pharisees?
A popular Jewish movement devoted to keeping the law of Moses in everyday life, including the oral traditions built up around it.
They were respected by ordinary people and believed in the resurrection and angels. Jesus clashed with them often, accusing some of hypocrisy and of burdening people with rules, which is why "pharisee" now means a self-righteous hypocrite. But they were also the group closest to Jesus in many beliefs, Paul was one before his conversion, and later rabbinic Judaism grew largely out of their movement.
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Who were the Sadducees?
The priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem, who controlled the temple, cooperated with Rome, and did not believe in the resurrection.
They accepted only the five books of Moses as fully authoritative and rejected the Pharisees' oral traditions. They tried to trap Jesus with a question about a woman married to seven brothers in turn. The high priests came from their circle. They disappeared after the temple was destroyed in AD 70.
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Who were the scribes in the Gospels?
Experts in the law of Moses who copied, taught, and interpreted it. Some translations call them teachers of the law.
In a mostly illiterate society, the ability to read and explain Scripture gave them great authority. Many were Pharisees. The crowds noticed that Jesus taught "as one who had authority, and not as their scribes", who usually built their teaching on the rulings of earlier teachers.
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Card 5 of 11
What was the Sanhedrin?
The Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem, made up of about seventy elders, priests, and scribes, presided over by the high priest.
Under Roman rule it managed Jewish religious and local affairs. It tried Jesus, and later the apostles and Stephen, but it could not carry out an execution without the governor's approval, which is why Jesus was handed to Pilate. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were both members.
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Who were the Samaritans, and why did Jews and Samaritans dislike each other?
A people living between Judea and Galilee who worshipped Israel's God but worshipped on their own holy mountain, Mount Gerizim, rather than in Jerusalem, and accepted only the five books of Moses.
Jews regarded them as a mixed race descended from the northern Israelites and the foreigners Assyria settled among them, and the hostility had centuries of history. Many Jews travelling between Galilee and Jerusalem went around Samaria. That is what gives the parable of the Good Samaritan its force, and why a Samaritan woman was astonished that Jesus spoke to her.
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What does "Gentile" mean in the Bible?
Anyone who is not Jewish.
It translates words meaning "the nations". One of the biggest questions in the early church was whether Gentiles had to become Jews, by circumcision and keeping the law, in order to follow Jesus. The church's answer, argued in Acts 15 and Galatians, was no, and that decision turned a Jewish movement into a worldwide one.
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Card 8 of 11
Why were tax collectors so hated in Jesus's day?
Because they collected taxes for the Roman occupiers or their client kings and were free to charge more than was due and keep the difference.
That made them both collaborators and cheats in the eyes of their neighbours, and the Gospels list them alongside "sinners" and prostitutes. Jesus ate with them and called one, Matthew, to be a disciple, which scandalised the religious leaders. He answered that it is the sick who need a doctor.
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Who were the Philistines?
A seafaring people who settled on the coast of Canaan around the time of the judges and were Israel's main enemy until David defeated them.
They had five main cities, including Gaza, and an early advantage in iron weapons. Samson and Saul fought them, and Goliath was their champion. The name "Palestine" comes from them through the Greeks and Romans. In English, "philistine" came to mean someone hostile to art and culture, which is unfair to them: their pottery was some of the finest in the region.
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Card 10 of 11
What is the difference between a disciple and an apostle?
A disciple is a student or follower; an apostle is "one who is sent" with authority as a messenger.
Jesus had many disciples, including women and a group of seventy-two he sent out, but he chose twelve of them to be apostles. Paul insisted he was also an apostle, because the risen Jesus had appeared to him and sent him. After the first generation, the word "disciple" continued for all believers; "apostle" in the full sense did not.
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Who were the Levites?
The members of the tribe of Levi, set apart to serve at the tabernacle and temple. Only descendants of Aaron within the tribe could be priests; the other Levites assisted them.
The tribe received no territory of its own when the land was divided; instead it lived in towns spread among the other tribes and was supported by their tithes. That is why the Levites appear in the Law as people to be provided for along with the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a priest and a Levite pass the injured man by.