Picture this. You’ve just finished the Book of Malakai. Perhaps it’s taken you the better part of a year to get this far, reading start to finish through the Old Testament, but you’ve done it at last. Some of it was easy—the story of Abraham and Isaac (that near child sacrifice aside), the tale of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers (nothing like sibling love, right?), the rise of David from a ruddy shepherd boy to warrior king. And some of it was like reading an overly technical and hyper detailed manual of priestly purity regulations and ritual procedures —which, if you think about it, is literally what the book of Leviticus is.

You also read through book after book of monarchial history (if you have to hear “….as for the rest of the acts of _______, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?” one more time…), the surprisingly amorous Song of Songs, and some highly poetic if not confusingly allegorical prophetic judgements predicting Israel and Judah’s respective imminent demises. And now you’re here, at the end. The New Testament awaits.

So you flip to the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, where everything is clear, straightforward, predictable. Finally! You begin to read. Then—wait a minute… Your eyes narrow. You squint at the page. Your eyebrows furrow together.

“Huh, that’s weird,” you think. “Pharisees. We haven’t heard about these guys before, right? I’m sorry, but who are they, and where exactly did they come from? And what about those other guys, the ones with that strangely similar sounding name… the Sadducees? Right, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. What’s their deal, how did they get here, and why do they hate each other?”

I’m so glad you asked.

The fullest descriptions we have of these groups—or sects, as they are more commonly called (but not because they’re Bacchanalian or drink blood or anything like that)—are found in Josephus’ Jewish Wars, Jewish Antiquities, and Vita. Appealing to a Graeco-Roman audience (being in Rome under the aegis of the Flavian Dynasty at this time), he describes them as being “philosophical” in nature. In Wars, Josephus lists not merely two, but three distinct Jewish sects: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, spending the bulk of his time on the last of these. In Antiquities he adds to these a fourth, appropriately and ominously named the Fourth Philosophy. Because the Fourth Philosophy is its own special category of confusing, we’re going to put that group on hold and focus only on the three primary sects in this post.

Part of the difficulty describing these sects lies in their complex and somewhat sudden emergence on the pages of history. They were already well-established societal sub-groups by the time of Josephus’ writing in the first century AD and first appear in his narratives during the reigns of John Hyracanus (the Pharisees and the Sadducees) and Aristobolus (the Essenes). This seems to place their emergence to sometime between the immediate post-exilic period and the close of the Maccabean Revolt. However, the question must then be begged, what particular events led their emergence? The answer is neither simple nor straightforward. To explore it, let’s back up with a super quick history lesson.

History

In 587 BC, Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The Temple was destroyed, and a bunch of Judaeans were taken as captives to Israel. After a brief period of glory, the Babylonians themselves were crushed by the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great, in 539 BC. Cyrus saw the Jews in Babylon (called the Diaspora) and was like, “Oh, you guys want to go home to Jerusalem, which I also happen to own? Bon voyage!” So whoever was in the mood to live in a burnt city without walls which was now overrun by bandits, they returned to Jerusalem. After a lot of hard work, these Jews rebuilt the Temple—although they did it so poorly that a bunch of old people literally wept (and not happily) once it was finished.

Some people were happy though, especially the Zadokites. These were the descendants of a famous high priest, Zadok, who served under King David and who, after David’s death, supported Solomon’s claim to the throne. Tradition had established this idea that the High Priest in Jerusalem had to be a Zadokite, so, naturally, after the Temple was rebuilt, they took their rightful place as the religious leaders of Judaea. At this point, Cyrus and his descendants weren’t super concerned about what the Jews did—they had those miserable Greeks in Ionia to worry about, after all—so the Jews were able to establish a semi-autonomous theocracy under the leadership of Zadokite high priests.

After a while, there was a new kid on the block, Alexander the Great (b. 356-323 BC), who managed to conquer everything from Greece to India through an impressive blend of charisma and military genius. But spoiler alert: Alexander died of a fever before he could appoint an heir for his gigantic empire. Honestly, Alex? But okay. So his generals, after facepalming, decide it would be best if they violently fought over who should inherit his land, and subsequently tore Alexander’s empire apart into various kingdoms.

Because Judaea formed a natural strategic land path between Egypt (the imperial grain supplier) and the rest of the Empire, it became the object of a tug of war between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, two kingdoms established by Alexander’s generals. Eventually, the Seleucids gained the upper hand and managed to hold on to it for a while. Kings lived and died. Wars raged on. Eventually, this king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175-164 BC), through a super complicated series of events, decided that the Jews would be better if they were… well, if they were Greeks, essentially. So he banned Judaism, persecuted anyone who practiced it, and dedicated the Temple to Zeus, desecrating it with pagan worship, unclean animals, and temple prostitutes.

As one might expect, not everyone was super enthusiastic about this reform. A group of priestly brothers, led by Judas Maccabeus, decided to launch a revolt against their Seleucid overlords, and they were amazingly successful. Weirdly successful, really. This is what we call the Maccabean Revolt (167 BC–160 BC). After driving the Seleucids out (with the help of some righteous Jews called the Hasideans), these brothers purified the Temple and impressed everybody so much with their military exploits, religious zeal, and political prowess, that the people were like, “Would you guys like to be our high priests and our kings forever?” The Maccabees shrugged and said, “Yeah, totally. Why not?” So they became priestly-kings and established autonomous Jewish rule under what is known as the Hasmonean Dynasty (141-37 BC).

But guess who was not particularly pleased with these up-and-comer high priests? Yep, you guessed it: the Zadokites. They were really wealthy, but they weren’t exactly national heroes, so it seemed like everyone had forgotten about their existence. Some of them found this change in fortune intolerable and went so far as to argue that the Hasmoneans were illegitimate high priests who profaned the Temple, defiled its holy precincts with their sacrifices, and, equally as horrifying, were pagans who embraced of certain elements of Greek culture. These were the Essenes. To them, the only legitimate high priest was a Zadokite high priest. Since that didn’t look like it was happening any time soon, they decided the best idea would be to abandon Jerusalem, create their own cult, and form super cliquey communities obsessed with ritual purity.

Other Zadokites were like, “Meh, this isn’t ideal, but what can you do?” Their loss of priestly supremacy wasn’t ideal, but neither was living in the life of a communal peasant—or worse, like a desert dweller, as the extreme Qumran group of Essenes did. Instead, these Zadokites threw their support and wealth behind the Hasmonean high priesthood and essentially became a group of priestly aristocrats who indirectly ruled Jerusalem through sheer force of influence, eventually forming a large portion of Jerusalem’s religious council, the Sanhedrin. These were the Sadducees.

That leaves us with the Pharisees. Their emergence is a little different, as they weren’t Zadokites. In fact, the Pharisees weren’t even particularly wealthy or powerful. But they were smart and ridiculously dedicated to the obeying the Law of Moses. Unlike the Essenes, they didn’t believe the Hasmoneans were a total purity dealbreaker, although they disagreed with the adoption of Greek culture. Instead of abandoning Jerusalem and living in cultic communes, they compromised, forming a sect of highly respected scholars who specialized in interpreting (and keeping) the “traditions of their fathers.” They would try to hold all of Judaea to a higher moral standard through their own adherence to the Law of Moses. This is why the Pharisees are often referred to as “scribes and teachers of the law.” They were revered and respected by kings and citizens alike. (As an aside, some scholars have tried to connect the Pharisees with the Hasideans, those righteous guys who helped the Maccabees wage war against Antiochus IV. While it’s possible that there is some overlap between the two groups, the evidence is too scarce to draw any firm conclusion.)

It’s important to remember, however, that most Judaeans were not a part of any of these three sects, or any sect at all. Most people would have gone about their daily lives without much care for such issues, all too accustomed to and apathetic towards the constant political and religious disagreements which marked Jerusalem’s upper echelons of power. They simply lived, worked, worshipped, and died.

Summary

This historical narrative, although simplified, depicts a dominant view of Jewish sectarian emergence, which was spurred through divisions centred around the Temple, the high priesthood, and ritual purity laws. Given their heated disagreement over these fundamental religious and cultural issues, it’s easy to understand why these sects didn’t get along. To see this even more clearly, it may be helpful to look at the major divisions between these sects through the lens of three primary questions and the answers they gave to them:

1. Hellenization: How much Greek culture is okay? How much is too much?
   • Sadducees: Pretty lenient on this one. They thought it was probably alright to be “kind-of” Greek. It was acceptable to adopt certain hellenic cultural behaviours and pleasures, as long as you still practiced basic purity laws and didn’t worship any pagan gods.
   • Pharisees: Absolutely not. The Law is the Law is the Law. To them, the Law of Moses was immovable and immutable, and to be Jewish was to be separate from the surrounding nations physically, spiritually, and culturally.
   • Essenes: Seconded the Pharisees. Greek culture was a major no-go. The culture they eventually developed was centred around rigorous ritual purity rites and esoteric forms of worship.
2. Mosaic Law: How strictly should the Law of Moses be interpreted and observed?
   • Sadducees: Again, pretty blasé. The Law should more or less be observed, within the limits of a proper social life and political career, but additional interpretations were not needed.
   • Pharisees: Rigorously strict. The Pharisees were not to be swayed by cultural or political pressures. They even added laws on top of the laws given in the Pentateuch, just in case those ones weren’t strict or clear enough before.
   • Essenes: Very strict, particularly towards ritual purity laws. They had their own independent interpretations of the Mosaic Law, as revealed to them by the Teacher of Righteousness, and they observed it fiercely, even leaving Jerusalem when they thought the Hasmoneans had become too laxidasical.
3. High Priesthood: Who should hold the High Priesthood?
   • Sadducees: The pragmatists of the sects, they were basically willing to support whomever held the office of the high priest, within reasonable limitations, of course.
   • Pharisees: As long as the high priest observed the Law, they could support him. But if he didn’t, they would (and did) publicly condemn him for it.
   • Essenes: To their eyes, the descendants of Zadok alone deserved the office of the high priest. All others were wicked usurpers who deserved to be cast out into darkness.

Et voila! You now understand the basics of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes. There is, however, much still to be learned. Here I’ve given you the basic and most widely accepted interpretation of the emergence Jewish sectarianism during the Second Temple Period. Within this broad brushstroke outline, there are plenty of nuanced views and differences of interpretation. Eventually, significant theological differences would also develop between these sects. Those theological views, along side more in depth historical analyses and alternative interpretations, I shall discuss more fully in later posts.

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Suggested Reading:

• Babota, Vasile. The Institution of the Hasmonean High Priesthood. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
• Baumgarten, Albert I. The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
• Himmelfarb, Martha. A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
• Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.119-166; Jewish Antiquities 18.18-22; Vita 10-1
• Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE. 2nd Impr. with Corr. ed. London : Philadelphia, Pa.: SCM ; Trinity Press International, 1994.
• Schürer, Emil. A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, vol. II, trans. Sophia Taylor and Rev. Peter Christie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891.
• Rooke, Deborah W. Zadok’s Heirs: The Role and Development of the High Priesthood in Ancient Israel. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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Feature image by BYU Virtual Scripture Group.