As far as I am aware there is a whole Jewish tradition of going over religious text as one would over a legal document, looking for any little mistake they can find, or any loophole they can discover to circumvent what one might consider the spirit of the law.
So is there any sect of Jadaism that has declared that the general jewish population is rules lawyering too hard with important scripture and that they need to stop doing that?
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christianity
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My r-slurred take: Rabbinical Judaism like we know today is basically descended from the thinking of the Pharisees, who are depicted in New Testament as notorious for that behavior. Among these the best example of trying to obey the spirit of the law might be conservative Jews, who try to interpret and apply the law in a modern context, though opinions differ on how genuinely they try. Reform Jews don't believe the law is strictly binding at all (so you find women rabbis, atheists and "cultural Jews" here or in close proximity), while Orthodox Jews are most associated with this behavior of strictly obeying the law and therefore needing loopholes to avoid its strictures.
Besides Christians and Pharisees, other Jewish movements mostly died out with the destruction of the Temple.
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So Pahresees were the main ones and they are all dead now. I see.
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Jews trying to outmaneuver God with Jewish lawyer tricks is the most Jewish thing imaginable.
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Let us study the Talmud on this matter:
Like all Talmudic problems it might seem trivial, but there's an important principle at stake here about whether it is the form or function of the law that should be applied. Is Rabbi Eliezer correct, or the other rabbis?
That's right. God came down from Heaven and said that Rabbi Eliezer was correct, but the other rabbis destroyed him with facts and logic. This story is called the oven of the snake, because the snake-like arguments of the Rabbis surrounded and crushed the oven. And that's a good thing!
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