You can waste a lot of time with definitions. Scholarship is littered with the impotent offspring of sterile debates over definitions, and yet definitions can be important for clarity and common argument. They can also do great harm by canalizing all subsequent interpetation and debate in a wrong or unhelpful way. There is the old conundrum of whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if there is no one there to hear it. I remember as a schoolboy listening to a science teacher explain that of course it would not make a sound because a sound was “a noise that causes the sensation of hearing.” He did not seem to notice that the outcome of the question had already been determined by his initial definition. However, one clever lad brought the whole discussion to an abrupt halt by noting that God would always be able to hear it.

The present paper is concerned with asking the question, What do we call the various groups in Second Temple Judaism? There are several ramifications to this: first, although the discussion will have implications for a wider debate about definitions, it will not go further than considering appropriate terminology for Second Temple Judaism; secondly, the ultimate aim is pragmatic – finding usable term(s) – not a lengthy theoretical discussion from first principles; thirdly, the decadeslong discussion among sociologists will provide the background and context.