Sol invictus in the severus synagogue at Hammath Tiberias, the Rabbis, and Jewish society: A different approach

One of the intriguing questions in the study of Jewish history in Roman Palestine after the War of Destruction concerns the standing of the rabbis in the Jewish society. To what extent was the community subject to the authority of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud? This question occupied numerous scholars and continues to do so, as is attested by the plethora of diverse views in the historiography of the period, which at times are as distant from one another as East from West.1 Jewish society was never uniform, and although we do not possess orderly documents relating to those sectors that did not consider themselves subservient to the rabbis, these were undoubtedly significant, as we learn from the trenchant theological and halakhic debates about them conducted by the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud. These were groups such as the Sadducees and Boethusians (in the late Second Temple period and the beginning of the Yavneh generation),2 and afterwards additional groups