ABSTRACT
Pirkei Avot makes it appear as if rabbinic Judaism flowed directly out of the Judaism of the Second Temple period, but in fact, it differed from earlier forms of Jewish culture in many ways. In the Jewish culture of the Second Temple period, the central religious authority was the priest whose primary role was not to interpret the Bible or preach to the people, though they might do such things, but to perform the rituals that allowed Israel to interact with God in the Temple. In rabbinic Judaism, formed in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, the priest was eclipsed by the rabbi, the scholar and teacher whose place in Jewish society was based on intellectual merit rather than on coming from a particular family line and whose authority was based not on his role in the rituals of the Temple but on his study and interpretation of the Torah. This shift in the nature of religious authority had momentous consequences for the development of Judaism as a religion and culture, allowing for very different understandings of the Jewish past and of how to continue its traditions into the present.
