Editing Pharisees (section)

===Post-Temple developments===
According to historian Shaye Cohen, by the time three generations had passed after the destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews concluded that the Temple would not be rebuilt during their lives nor in the foreseeable future. Jews were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions:
* How to achieve atonement without the Temple?
* How to explain the disastrous outcome of the rebellion?
* How to live in the post-Temple, Romanized world?
* How to connect present and past traditions?
Regardless of the importance they gave to the Temple, and despite their support of Bar Koseba's revolt, the Pharisees' vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews. Their responses would constitute Rabbinic Judaism.<ref name="Shaye" />

After the destruction of the Second Temple, the sectarian divisions ended. The rabbis avoided the term "Pharisee," perhaps because it was a term more often used by non-Pharisees, but also because the term was explicitly sectarian.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}} The rabbis claimed leadership over all Jews, and added to the [[Amidah]] the {{transliteration|he|[[birkat haMinim]]}}, a prayer which in part exclaims, "Praised are You O Lord, who breaks enemies and defeats the wicked," and which is understood as a rejection of sectarians and sectarianism. This shift by no means resolved conflicts over the interpretation of the Torah; rather, it relocated debates between sects to debates within Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisaic commitment to scholarly debate as a value in and of itself, rather than merely a byproduct of sectarianism, emerged as a defining feature of Rabbinic Judaism.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Thus, as the Pharisees argued that all Israel should act as priests, the rabbis argued that all Israel should act as rabbis: "The rabbis furthermore want to transform the entire Jewish community into an academy where the whole Torah is studied and kept .... redemption depends on the "rabbinization" of all Israel, that is, upon the attainment of all Jewry of a full and complete embodiment of revelation or Torah, thus achieving a perfect replica of heaven."<ref name="inv" />{{rp|9}} Rabbinic Judaism, at this time and afterwards, contained the idea of the Heavenly Academy, a heavenly institute where God taught scripture.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Zaleski |first=Carol |author-link=Carol Zaleski |date=2023-03-04 |title=heaven |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/heaven |access-date=2023-05-11 |publisher=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]] |language=en}}</ref>

The rabbinic era is divided into two periods. The first period was that of the [[Tannaim]] (from the Aramaic word for "repeat;" the Aramaic root TNY is equivalent to the Hebrew root SNY, which is the basis for "Mishnah." Thus, Tannaim are "Mishnah teachers"), the sages who repeated and thus passed down the Oral Torah. During this period, rabbis finalized the [[Biblical canon|canonization]] of the Tanakh, and in 200 AD, Judah haNasi edited together Tannaitic judgements and traditions into the [[Mishnah]], considered by the rabbis to be the definitive expression of the Oral Torah (although some of the sages mentioned in the Mishnah are Pharisees who lived prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, or prior to the Bar Kozeba revolt, most of the sages mentioned lived after the revolt).

The second period is that of the ''Amoraim'' (from the Aramaic word for "speaker") rabbis and their students, who continued to debate legal matters and discuss the meaning of the books of the Bible. In Judea, these discussions occurred at academies at Tiberias, Caesarea, and Sepphoris. In Babylonia, these discussions largely occurred at academies that had been established at Nehardea, Pumpeditha, and Sura. This tradition of study and debate reached its fullest expression in the development of the [[Talmud]]im, elaborations of the Mishnah and records of Rabbinic debates, stories, and judgements, compiled around 400 AD in Judea and around 500 AD in Babylon.

Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged as normative Judaism, and in fact, many today refer to Rabbinic Judaism simply as "Judaism." Rabbinic scholar [[Jacob Neusner]], however, stated that the Amoraim had no ultimate power in their communities. They lived at a time when Jews were subjects of either the Roman or Iranian ([[Parthian Empire|Parthian]] and Persian) empires. These empires left the day-to-day governance in the hands of the Jewish authorities: in Roman Palestine, through the hereditary office of patriarch (also simultaneously the head of the Sanhedrin); in Babylonia, through the hereditary office of the ''[[Reish Galuta]]'', the "Head of the Exile" or "Exilarch" (who ratified the appointment of the heads of Rabbinical academies.) According to [[Jacob Neusner]]:

{{blockquote|The "Judaism" of the rabbis at this time is in no degree either normal or normative, and speaking descriptively, the schools cannot be called "elite." Whatever their aspirations for the future and pretensions in the present, the rabbis, though powerful and influential, constitute a minority group seeking to exercise authority without much governmental support, to dominate without substantial means of coercion.<ref name=inv/>{{rp|4–5}}}}

In Neusner's view, the rabbinic project, as acted out in the Talmud, reflected not the world as it was, but the world as rabbis dreamed it should be.

According to historian [[Salo Baron]], however, there existed "a general willingness of the people to follow its self-imposed Rabbinic rulership." Although the rabbis lacked authority to impose capital punishment, "[[Flagellation]] and heavy fines, combined with an extensive system of excommunication, were more than enough to uphold the authority of the courts." In fact, the rabbis took over more and more power from the Reish Galuta, until eventually, [[Rav Ashi|R' Ashi]] assumed the title rabbana, heretofore assumed by the exilarch, and appeared together with two other rabbis as an official delegation "at the gate of King [[Yazdegerd III|Yazdegard]]'s court." The Amorah (and Tanna) Rav was a personal friend of Parthian King [[Artabanus IV of Parthia|Artabenus IV]], and Shmuel was close to King [[Shapur I]] of Persia. Thus, the rabbis had significant means of "coercion," and the people seemed to have followed the rabbinic rulership.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}