sententia

Feeling a bit under the weather today, so the Weekly Reads post will be delayed. In the mean time, enjoy this republished article from the original Sententia (initial publishing date: October 2006).

Pharisees and Sadducees. They’re most familiar to a lot of people because of the disparaging remarks made against them in the Christian Gospels. But who were they, really, and what did they believe?

The 1st century (CE) historian, Josephus, described several sects of Judaism present in his time period, and three in particular. Modern scholars usually refer to this time as “Second Temple Judaism”. It begins with the reconstruction of the Temple after the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile, until its destruction by Roman troups in 70 CE. Josephus lists the Pharisees and Sadducees as two of these three main sects.

Sadducees

The Sadducees were a small group, comprised of members of the social elite — mostly aristocrats and priests. The name “Sadducee” may derive from the name “Zadok,” as they claimed to be the descendants of King David’s High Priest, Zadok.

They believed that authority lay with the High Priest, and that only Zadokites should be allowed into the priesthood. Given their ties to the priestly tradition, together with the presence of many priests as members, it is no surprise that the Sadducees focus was on the Temple.

The rituals and practices which took place in the Temple was considered by the Sadducees to be the central element of Jewish life. This link is why the Sadduccees basically died out when the Temple was destroyed in 70.

They were very much literalists when it came to scripture, and rejected any interpretation or expansion of the written law / scripture. For example, they did not have a theology pertaining to the afterlife, since the scriptures were silent on the issue.

Similarly, they did not believe in angels, but did believe in free will. The Sadducees, in general, did not object to the Hellenization of Jerusalem, since they believed that by being allied with the Romans, they would be able to guarantee the preservation of the Temple.

Pharisees

The Pharisees were largely comprised of common people, and there was much more variety within the Pharisaic community than within that of the Sadducees. The word “Pharisee” likely comes from the Hebrew word P’rushim, which means “separated ones.”

This reflects their strict standards of purity which limited their contact with other, impure people. They saw authority as resting with the “Disciples of the Wise” and selectively sythesized Hellenistic assimilation and cultural separation. Their responses to political groups was varied, as was their theologies.

For example, the Pharisees mostly believed in free will, did believe in angels, and believed in resurrection after death. One reason that their theology was able to include these — unlike that of the Sadducees — is that they believed that there was value in interpreting the Torah (law / scripture) and applying it to all aspects of life.

In fact, Pharisees accepted the Oral Torah (oral law) as being equal to the written one. Their interpretations of scripture were done with an eye toward making it more applicable to every day life, including some ideas of “modernization.”

They also believed that the priestly laws (such as tithes and purity laws) extended to non-priests, and as such, they were very concerned with figuring out what exactly the law required in the ‘modern’ context.

Since they were not primarily concerned with the priesthood or the Temple, the Pharisees were able to survive the destruction of the Temple in 70, morphing over time into Rabbi’s. They were the only sect of Judaism from the Second Temple Era to survive into the modern age.

Essenes

Finally, having dealt with two of the three groups mentioned by Josephus, in the interest of completeness, it makes sense to make some mention of the Essenes.

It is hard to know much about this group, since there is a lot of confusion about who exactly they were. Many scholars believe that they were responsible for the writings found at Qumran (known as the Dead Sea Scrolls), but this is a subject of much debate.

Some have also tried to tied the Essenes to the early Jesus-movements, but this is mostly just speculation. Even the name and origins of the name “Essene” is clouded. Their name may have derived from the word ‘healers’, and they may be an offshoot of extreme Sadducees.

We do know that the Essenes rejected town life and Hellenization, and instead, lived in the desert in “semi-monastic” communities. (This is actually a very problematic term, since monasteries are a Christian concept, and so aren’t directly applicable to Judaism. It is, however, the most applicable term that comes to mind).

The Essenes followed a person (or being) known as the “Teacher of Righteousness,” believing themselves to be members of a new covenant. They interpreted scripture as a foretelling of recent history (Pesher), and their writings can be regarded as a type of “inspired exegesis”.

Another major part to Essene religion was a whole body of interpretation and extra-biblical traditions. These interpretations included distinctive interpretations of Torah laws: for example, they had special rules for their own community (found in the “Manual of Discipline”), shared property, celibacy, and they also strongly emphasized purity. Like the Sadducees, they did not survive the destruction of the Temple, but the reasons for their disappearance are not clear.