“…although much of Second Temple and Rabbinic literature can be read in light of the Greek and later Roman-Christian context in which they were composed…”

…although much of Second Temple and Rabbinic literature can be read in light of the Greek and later Roman-Christian context in which they were composed, we should be wary of attributing all differences to a binary in which Second Temple Jews were the “opposite” of Greeks, and the Rabbis were the “opposite” of Rome. It is just as likely that the Rabbis’ understanding of how to observe the Sabbath could be traced to their Pharisaic Second Temple predecessors, who were already formulating a religious prototype that embraced the physical world in response to sectarian Jews who practiced asceticism on the Sabbath.

Malka Z. Simkovich, “Intimacy on Shabbat: Was It Always a Mitzvah?”, TheTorah.com (21 January 2014) [http://thetorah.com/intimacy-on-shabbat/]