The Pharisees (Perushim) can only be called a party figuratively and by way of distinction from the other two, for the mass of the nation was inclined to Phariseeism, and it was only in the national leaders that its peculiarities became marked. The Pharisees received their name from the fact of their explaining the Scriptures in a peculiar manner, and of deriving new laws from this new interpretation. As expounders of the law the Pharisees formed the learned body of the nation. Their opinions were framed, their actions governed by one cardinal principle – the necessity of preserving Judaism. The individual and the State were to be ruled alike by the laws and customs of their fathers. Every deviation from this principle appeared to the Pharisees as treason to all that was most precious and holy. To their opponents, the Sadducees, who argued that, unless other measures were used for political purposes, weighty national interests would be often wrecked by religious scruples, the Pharisees replied that the fate of the State, like that of the individual, depended not upon man but upon God. It was not human strength, nor human wisdom, nor the warrior's prowess that could determine the weal or the woe of the Judæan people, but Divine Providence alone. Everything happened according to the eternal decrees of the Divine will. Man was responsible only for his moral conduct and the individual path he trod. The results of all human endeavors lay outside the range of human calculation. From this, the Pharisees' view of life, the rival opinion of the Sadducees diverged; whilst the Essenes, on the contrary, exaggerated it. Another view of the Pharisees was probably directed against the following objection urged by the Sadducees: If the fate of the individual or of the State did not depend upon the actions of the one or the policy of the other, there would be an end to Divine justice; misfortune might then assail the righteous man, whilst the sun of happiness smiled upon the sinner. This reproach the Pharisees set aside by the doctrine, borrowed from another source, which taught that Divine justice would manifest itself not during life but after death. God will rouse the dead out of the sleep of the grave; He will reward the righteous according to their works, and punish the wicked for their evil deeds. "Those will rise up to everlasting life, and these to everlasting shame."
These views, however, precisely because they concerned only the inner convictions of men, did not mark the opposition between the parties so clearly as did the third dogma of the Pharisees, establishing the importance and all-embracing influence of religious injunctions. In a nation whose breath of life was religion, many customs whose origin was lost in the dim twilight of the past had taken their place by the side of the written Law. If these customs were not found in the books of the Law they were ascribed to the great teachers (the Sopherim and the great assembly – Keneseth hagedolah), which, at the time of the return of the Captivity, had given form and new vigor to the religious sentiment, and at the head of which stands the illustrious expounder of Scripture, Ezra. Such religious customs were called the legacies of the teachers of the Law (Dibre Sopherim). All these unwritten customs, which lived in the heart of the nation and, as it were, grew with its growth, gained an extraordinary degree of importance from the dangers that Judaism had encountered and the victories that it had achieved. The people had risked, in behalf of these very customs, their property and their life; and the martyrdom that many of the faithful had undergone, and the antagonism they felt towards the renegade and frivolous Hellenists, had much increased the reverence and attachment with which these customs were regarded. The Temple, especially, which had been so ruthlessly defiled and afterwards been reconsecrated in so marvelous a manner, had become doubly precious to the whole people, who were determined to keep it free from the faintest breath of desecration. The Levitical rules of purity, so far as they related to the Temple, were therefore observed with peculiar care and rigorous strictness.
But this devotion to outward forms and ceremonies by no means excluded the religion of the heart. The Pharisees were acknowledged to be moral, chaste, temperate and benevolent. In their administration of justice they allowed mercy to prevail, and judged the accused not from the point of view of moral depravity but from that of human weakness. The following maxim was given by Joshua, the son of Perachia, one of the leaders of the sect, who, with his companion, Matthai of Arbela, lived in the time of Hyrcanus: "Take a teacher, win a friend, and judge every man from the presumption of innocence." His high moral temperament is indicated by this maxim. Their rigid adherence to the Law, and their lenient mildness and indulgence in other matters, gained for the Pharisees the deep veneration of the whole people. Of this sect were the pious priests, the teachers of the Law, and, above all, the magistrates, civil and religious, who at that time often combined both offices in one. The whole inner direction of the State and the Temple was in their hands. But the Pharisees owed their influence chiefly to their knowledge of the Law and to the application they made of it to the affairs of daily life, and they alone were called the interpreters and teachers of the Law. The degrading charge of hypocrisy, which was applied to them by their enemies in later times, they by no means merited, and, indeed, it is altogether preposterous to stigmatize a whole class of men as dissemblers. They were rather, in their origin, the noblest guardians and representatives of Judaism and strict morality. Even their rivals, the Sadducees, could not but bear witness to the fact that "they denied themselves in this world, but would hardly receive a reward in a future world."
This party of the Sadducees, so sharply opposed to the Pharisees, pursued a national-political policy. It was composed of the Judæan aristocracy, the brave soldiers, the generals and the statesmen who had acquired wealth and authority at home, or who had returned from foreign embassies, all having gained, from closer intercourse with the outer world and other lands, freer thought and more worldly views. They formed the kernel of the Hasmonæan following, which in peace or war faithfully served their leaders. This sect doubtless included also some Hellenists, who, shrinking from the desertion of their faith, had returned to Judaism. The Sadducees probably derived their name from one of their leaders, Zadok. The national interests of the Judæan community were placed by the Sadducees above the Law. Burning patriotism was their ruling sentiment, and piety occupied but the second place in their hearts. As experienced men of the world, they felt that the independence of the State could not be upheld by the strictest observance of the laws of religion alone, nor by mere reliance upon Divine protection. They proceeded from this fundamental principle: man must exert his bodily strength and his spiritual powers; he must not allow himself to be kept back by religious scruples from forming political alliances, or from taking part in wars, although by so doing he must inevitably infringe some of the injunctions of religion. According to the Sadducæan views, it was for that purpose that God bestowed free will upon man so that he himself should work out his own well-being; he is master of his fate, and human concerns are not at all swayed by Divine interposition. Reward and punishment are the natural consequences of our actions, and are therefore quite independent of resurrection. Without exactly denying the immortality of the soul, the Sadducees completely repudiated the idea of judgment after death. Oppressed by the abundance of religious ordinances, they would not admit their general applicability nor the obligation of keeping them. Pressed to give some standard by which the really important decrees might be recognized, they laid down the following rule: that only the ordinances which appeared clearly expressed in the Pentateuch were binding. Those which rested upon oral tradition, or had sprung up at various times, had a subordinate value and could not claim to be inviolable. Still they could not help occasionally recognizing the value of traditional interpretations.
From a number of individual instances in which the Sadducees separated themselves from their rivals, one can mark the extent of their opposition to the latter. This appeared in their judiciary and penal laws and in the ritual they adopted, their worship in the Temple being in particular a subject of angry controversy. The Sadducees thought that the punishment ordered by the Pentateuch for the infliction of any bodily injury – "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" – should be literally interpreted and followed out, and obtained in consequence the reputation of being cruel administrators of justice; whilst the Pharisees, appealing to traditional interpretations of the Scriptures, allowed mercy to preponderate, and only required a pecuniary compensation from the offender. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were more lenient in their judgment of those false witnesses whose evidence might have occasioned a judicial murder, as they only inflicted punishment if the execution of the defendant had actually taken place. There were many points relating to the ritual which were warmly disputed by the two parties; for instance, the date of the Feast of Weeks, which, according to the Sadducees, should always fall upon a Sunday, fifty days from the Sabbath after the Passover; so also the pouring of water on the altar and the processions round it with willow branches during the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles, which the Pharisees advocated and the Sadducees rejected. The latter objected to the providing of the national offerings out of the treasury of the Temple, and insisted that the required sacrifices should be left to the care and zeal of individuals. The manner in which the frankincense should be kindled on the Day of Atonement, whether before or after the entrance of the high priest into the Holy of Holies, was also the cause of bitter strife. On these and other points of dispute the Sadducees invariably followed the exact letter of the Law, which resulted in their occasionally enforcing stricter rules than the Pharisees, who have been so much abused for their rigid austerity. To one Levitical injunction, however, they paid but little attention – that of carefully avoiding the touch of any person or thing considered unclean – and when their rivals purified the vessels of the Temple after they had been subject to any contact of the sort, they ridiculed them, saying, "It wants but little, and the Pharisees will try and cleanse the sun."
In spite of the relief which these less stringent views gave the people, the Sadducees were not popular; the feeling of the time was against laxity and in favor of strict religious observance. Besides, the Sadducees repelled their countrymen by their proud, haughty demeanor and their severe judicial sentences. They never gained the heart of the public, and it was only by force and authority that they were able to make their principles prevail. At that period the religious sentiment was so active that it gave birth to a religious order which far surpassed even the Pharisees in strictness and painful scrupulousness, and which became the basis of a movement that, mixing with new elements, produced a revolution in the history of the world. This order, which, from a small and apparently insignificant origin, grew into a mighty power, destined to exert an irresistible influence, was that of the Essenes.
The origin of this remarkable Essene order, which called forth the admiration even of the Greeks and the Romans, can be dated from the period of great religious enthusiasm excited by the tyranny and persecutions of the Syrians. The Essenes had never formed a political party, but, on the contrary, avoided the glare and tumult of public life. They did not place themselves in harsh antagonism to the Pharisees, but rather assumed the position of a higher grade of Pharisaism, to which party they originally belonged. They sprang without doubt from the Assidæans, whom they resembled in their strict observance of the Sabbath. In their eyes the mere act of moving a vessel from one place to another would count as a desecration of that holy day. Even the calls of nature were not attended to on that day. They lived in all respects like the Nazarites, whose ideal it was to attain the highest sanctity of priestly consecration. It was their constant endeavor, not only to observe all the outward Levitical laws, but to attain through them to inward sanctity and consecration, to deaden their passions and to lead a holy life. The Levitical laws of cleanliness had, through custom and tradition, developed to such a pitch that their austere observers must have been in constant danger of being defiled by contact with persons and objects; and bathing and sacrifices were prescribed, through which they might recover a state of purity. A life-long Nazarite, or, what is the same thing, an Essene, was consequently obliged to avoid any intercourse with those who were less strict than himself, lest he should be contaminated by their proximity. Such considerations compelled him to frequent the society of, and to unite himself with, those only who shared his views. To keep their purity unspotted, the Essenes were thus induced to form themselves into a separate order, the first rule of which commanded implicit obedience to the laws of scrupulous cleanliness. It was only those whose views coincided with their own who could be allowed to cook food for them, and from such likewise had to be procured their clothes, tools, implements of trade and other things, in order to ensure that, in their manufacture, the laws of cleanliness had been duly carried out. They were thus completely set apart by themselves; and, in order to keep clear of any less strictly rigid observers, they thought it advisable to have their meals in common. Thus the Passover supper, which could be partaken of only in a circle of fellow-worshipers, must have been their ideal repast. It was almost impossible for Essenes to mix with women, as by the slightest contact with them they risked coming under the Levitical condemnation of uncleanliness, and, led on from one deduction to another, they began to avoid, if not to despise, the married state. How was it possible for the Essenes to maintain their excessive rigidity, especially in those warlike times? Not only the pagan enemy, but even the Judæan warriors returning from the battle-field, defiled by the touch of a corpse, might bring all their precautions to naught. These fears may have induced the Essenes to seek seclusion in some retired place, where they could remain unvexed by the sounds of war and undisturbed in their mode of life by any of its necessary incidents. They chose for their residence the desert to the west of the Dead Sea, and settled in the oasis of Engadi. The fruit of palm trees, which abound in this district, partly furnished their simple fare. All the Assidæans did not join in the asceticism of the Essenes, nor did all the Essenes betake themselves to the desert. Some continued to live in their own family circles and did not renounce marriage; but, in consequence of their rigid scruples, they were met by many difficulties.
Thus it was that celibacy and repasts held in common came to be considered as the general and most important characteristics of the Essenes. This mode of living led the Essenes to divest themselves of all their private possessions. To a member of their sect private property could be of no use; each one placed his fortune in the common treasury, out of which the wants of the various members of the order were supplied. Hence the proverb, "A Chassid says, 'Mine and thine belong to thee'" (not to me). There were consequently neither rich nor poor among them, and this lack of all concern about material matters naturally led them to abstract their attention from everything mundane and to concentrate it upon religious matters. They thus avoided more and more all that pertained merely to the world, and followed with the enthusiasm of recluses a visionary, ideal tendency. The Essenes were distinguished also by other peculiarities. They were always clothed in white linen. Each of them carried a small shovel, with which, like the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert, they would cover their excrements with earth and thus hide impurity from sight. They also wore a sort of apron or handkerchief (knaphaim), with which to dry themselves after their frequent ablutions. In order to remove even unperceived impurities, they, like the priests before officiating in the Temple, bathed every morning in fresh spring water; and from these daily baths they were called "Morning Baptists" (Toble Shacharith). The name Essene appears likewise to have been derived from this peculiarity, as in the Chaldaic language it means a bather (Aschai, pronounced Assai).
These outward forms were, however, only the steps that were to lead to inward purity and righteousness – the symbols of their close communion with God; to which, according to the opinion of antiquity, man could only attain by fleeing from the world, and devoting himself to an ascetic mode of life. The utmost simplicity in food and dress, abstinence, and the practice of morality and self-sacrifice were certainly virtues which adorned the Essenes, but were not peculiar to their sect, as they belonged equally to the Pharisees. The distinguishing traits of the Essenes, however, were their frequent prayers, their aversion to taking an oath, and their devoted pursuit of a kind of mystic doctrine. Before saying their prayers no profane word was permitted, and at the first dawn of day, after the Shema had been read, they assembled for quiet meditation, preparatory to what was considered their real prayer, which was always to be a spontaneous effusion of the heart. To the Essenes their repasts were a kind of divine service, the table on which their food was spread, an altar, and the fare which they partook of, a holy sacrifice, which they ate in deep and pious meditation. No language of a worldly nature passed their lips during their meals, and these were generally partaken of in complete silence. This strange silence doubtless produced a great impression upon those who did not belong to the order; the more so, because the real nature of this exclusive sect was not known to its contemporaries, and everything concerning it assumed a mysterious and awful aspect.
It was not, perhaps, at first the object of the Essenes to become absorbed in mystic lore; but their asceticism, their intensely quiet life, which gave them so much opportunity for meditation, their freedom from family cares, and, lastly, their religious visionariness, made them seek for other truths in Judaism than appear to less subtle minds. The name of God was to them a subject of deep contemplation, justified in some degree by the dread which existed among the Judæans of pronouncing the name of the Almighty, formed of the four letters J h w h. If the name of God be thus holy, surely something mysterious must belong to the letters themselves. Thus reasoned the Essenes, whose seclusion from the world gave them abundant leisure to ponder over this sacred enigma. So holy was the name of God in their estimation that they refused to take any oath which called for its use, and their statements were attested by a simple "yes" or "no." In close connection with the mystery attaching to the name of God was that which they applied to the names of angels. The Essenes faithfully handed down in their theosophic system the names, as well as the importance and position of the various angels. When they endeavored to explain the meaning of Holy Writ by their fantastic and newly discovered ideas, what fresh phases must have presented themselves to their distorted vision! Every word, every expression must have revealed a hitherto unsuspected meaning; the most difficult questions as to the being of God, and His relations to the heavenly powers and the lower creatures, were explained. Through their indifference to all that concerned the State, as well as the affairs of daily life, they gradually led Judaism (dependent as it was on the establishment of national prosperity) into the darkness and exaggerations of Mysticism. Their deep and mystic reverence for the Prophet and Lawgiver Moses carried them to the greatest excesses. His memory and name were endeared to all the Judæans within and beyond Palestine. They took oaths in the name of Moses, and bestowed that name on no other man. But the Essenes carried their devotion to such an extreme that he who spoke against the name of Moses was treated as one who blasphemed God.
The final aim of the Essenes was, without doubt, the attainment to prophetic ecstasy so that they might become worthy of the Divine Spirit (Ruach Kodesh). The Essenes believed that through an ascetic life they might re-awaken the long-silent echo of the Heavenly voice, and this end gained, prophecy would be renewed, men and youths would again behold Divine visions, once more see the uplifting of the veil which hides the future, and the great Messianic kingdom would be revealed. The kingdom of Heaven (Malchuth Shamaim) would commence, and all the pain and trouble of the times would, at one stroke, be at an end.
The Essenes were considered not only holy men (on account of their peculiar mode of life and visionary views), but they were also admired as workers of miracles. People hung upon their words and hoped for the removal of impending evils through their means. Some of the Essenes bore the reputation of being able to reveal the future and interpret dreams; they were reverenced yet more by the ignorant, on account of their miraculous cures of so-called "possessed" persons. The intercourse of the Judæans with the Persians had brought with it, together with a belief in the existence of angels, a superstitious belief in malicious demons (Shedim, Mazikin). Imbeciles were thought to be possessed by evil demons, who could only be exorcised by a magic formula; and all extraordinary illnesses were attributed to such demons, for which the advice of the wonder-worker, and not that of the doctor, was sought. The Essenes occupied themselves with cures, exorcisms, etc., and sought their remedies in a book (Sefer Refuoth) which was attributed to King Solomon, whom the nation considered as the master of evil spirits. Their curative remedies consisted partly in softly-spoken incantations and verses (Lechis'ha), and partly in the use of certain roots and stones supposed to possess magic power. Thus the Essenes united the highest and the lowest aims, – the endeavor to lead a pious life and the most vulgar superstitions. Their exaggerated asceticism and fear of contact with others of a different mode of life caused a morbidly unhealthy development among them.
The more rationally-minded Pharisees paid them but little attention; they made sport of the "foolish Chassid." Although sprung from a common root, the more the Pharisees and Essenes developed, the more widely they diverged. The one party saw in marriage a holy institution appointed for the good of mankind, and the other an obstacle to a thoroughly religious life. The Pharisees recognized man's free will in thought and action, and consequently deemed him responsible for his moral conduct. The Essenes, on the contrary, confined to the narrow circle of their self-same, daily-repeated duties, came to believe in a sort of divine fatalism, which not only governed the destiny of mankind but also ruled the acts of each individual. The Essenes avoided the Temple, the worship practised there being framed according to the doctrines of the Pharisees and unable to satisfy their ideals. They sent their offerings to the Temple, and thus fulfilled the duty of sacrificing without being themselves present at the ceremony. With them, patriotism became more and more subordinate to the devotion they felt towards their own order, and thus by degrees they loosed themselves from the strong bands of nationality. There lay concealed in Essenism an element antagonistic to existing Judaism, unsuspected by friends or foes.
The Essenes had no influence whatever upon political events. Their number was small, and even at the time of their greatest prosperity the order consisted only of about four thousand members. Consequent upon the life of celibacy which they adopted, the losses made by death in their ranks could not naturally be replaced. To avoid dwindling away entirely, they had recourse to the expedient of enrolling novices and making proselytes. The new member was admitted with great solemnity, and presented with the white garment, the apron, and the shovel, the symbols of Essenism. The novice was not allowed, however, to enter immediately into the community, but was subjected by degrees to an ever stricter observance of the laws of abstinence and purity. There were three probationary degrees to be passed through before a new member was received into complete brotherhood. At his admission the novice swore to follow the mode of life of the Essenes, to keep conscientiously and to deliver faithfully the secret teachings of their order. He who was found to be unworthy was expelled.
The unfriendly relationship between the Pharisees and Sadducees did not exist in the time of Hyrcanus. He made use of both parties according to their capabilities – the Sadducees as soldiers or diplomatists, and the Pharisees as teachers of the Law, judges, and functionaries in civil affairs. The one honored Hyrcanus as the head of the State, the other as the pious high priest. In fact, Hyrcanus personally favored the Pharisees, but as prince he could not quarrel with the Sadducees, among whom he found his soldiers, his generals and his counselors. Their leader Jonathan was his devoted friend. Until old age crept on him, Hyrcanus managed to solve the difficult problem of keeping in a state of amity two parties that were always on the verge of quarreling. He understood how to prevent either party from gaining the upper hand and persecuting its rival. But (as too often happens in such difficult situations) a word, a breath can upset the best-arranged plans, bringing to naught the most skilful calculations, and the slowly, carefully built edifice falls and crumbles in a day. A heedless word of this kind turned the zealous follower of Pharisaism into its bitter opponent. In the last years of his life Hyrcanus went quite over to the Sadducees.
The cause of this change, which brought such unspeakable misery to the Judæan nation, was trivial in comparison with its results; but the antagonism of the two parties, which could only with the utmost difficulty be kept from breaking out into open discord, gave it a terrible and far-reaching importance. Hyrcanus had just returned from a glorious victory over one of the many nations in the northeast of Peræa (Kochalit?). Rejoicing in the happy result of his arms and in the flourishing state of his country, he ordered a feast to be held, to which he invited without distinction the leaders of the Sadducees and Pharisees. Around golden dishes laden with food were placed various plants that grew in the desert, to remind the guests of the hardships they had endured under the Syrian yoke, when the nobles of the land were obliged to hide themselves in the wilderness. Whilst the guests were feasting, Hyrcanus asked if the Pharisees could reproach him for any transgression of the Law? If so, he desired to be told in what he had failed. Was this apparent humility only a cunningly-devised plan to discover the real disposition of the Pharisees towards him? Had the Sadducees inspired him with suspicion against the Pharisees, and advised him to find some way of proving the sincerity of their attachment? In reply to the challenge thus thrown out, a certain Eleazer ben Poira arose and bluntly answered, "Hyrcanus should content himself with the crown of royalty, and should place on a worthier head the high priest's diadem. During an attack on Modin by the Syrians his mother, before his birth, was taken prisoner, and it is not fitting for the son of a prisoner to be a priest – much less the High Priest!" Although inwardly wounded by so outspoken an insult to his pride, Hyrcanus had sufficient self-possession to appear to agree with the bold speaker and ordered the matter to be examined. It was, however, proved to be an empty report; in fact, without the slightest foundation.
Hyrcanus's anger was doubly roused against the Pharisees through the care taken by the Sadducees and his devoted friend Jonathan to persuade him that the former had invented the story purposely to lower him in the eyes of the people. Anxious to find out if the aspersion cast on his fitness for the high-priesthood was the act of the whole party or only the slander of an individual, he demanded that their leading men should punish the calumniator, and expected that the chastisement inflicted would be in proportion to his own exalted rank. But the Pharisees knew of no special penalty for the slanderer of royalty, and their judges only awarded him the lawful punishment of thirty-nine lashes. Jonathan, the leader of the Sadducees, failed not to use this circumstance as a means to rake up the fire in Hyrcanus's breast. He led him to see in this mild judgment of the court a deep-rooted aversion entertained by the Pharisees against him, thus estranging him completely from his former friends, and binding him heart and soul to the Sadducees. There is probably some exaggeration in the account of Hyrcanus's persecution of the adherents of the Pharisees, and of his setting aside all the decrees of the latter. There is, however, more truth in another report, from which we learn that Hyrcanus had deposed the Pharisees from the various high posts they had filled. The offices belonging to the Temple, to the courts of law and to the high council were given to the followers of the Sadducees. But this stroke of policy produced the saddest results. Naturally enough it awakened in the hearts of the Pharisees, and of the people who sided with them, a deep hatred against the house of the Hasmonæans, which bore civil war in its train and hastened the nation's decline. One act had been sufficient to cast a cloud over the brilliant days of the Hasmonæans.
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