(2) ijuiettioiu oj liituaL The Pharisees laid the greatest stress on the cleanness of the vessels ust-d, and on the various actions being perfonue<l in due succession and with strict legal corrc<-t- ness. According to them, all the vessels of the temple had to t)e purified at the close of each feast ; the scriptures were so precious that they could be written only on the skins of clean animals, and any one who touched the sacred rolls was thereby rendered imclean ; in accordance with Lv 16*3 they insisted, in opposition to the Sadducees, that on the Day of Atonement the high jiriest should not kindle the incense till after he had entered the Holy of Holies ; at a Feast of Tabernacles, Alexander Jannieus was attacked by the people, the majority of whom by that time favoured the Pharisees, because, as high priest, he poured the water of libation upon the ground beside the altar, mstead of upon the altar. The Sadducees scoffed at the Pharisaic laws relating to purity : according to Pharisaic
frinciples, the sacred wTitinps were less pure than the books of loiuer, contact with which did not defile ; the Pharisees, it was said, would even sjirinkle the sun in the heavens with lustral water. So far as they laid stress on Levitical purity, it was apparently in the interest of the priesthood. They insisted that the re<l heifer, from whose ashes the lustral water was pre(>ared (Nu 19'1'>). should he burned only by priests who had been thoroughly cleansed from all possible defilement, whereas the Pharisees laid more stress on the act performed by the priest than on the priest himself, whom they even tried to defile by contact with themselves. The Pharisees demanded that the cost of the daily sacrifice, which was offered on behalf of the whole people, should be defrayed out of the temple lreaaur>' : while the Sadducees maintained that, the treasure in the temple being in a manner their property, the sacrificial victims should be provided from the free-will offeringv of the Individuals who took pirt in the sacrifice.
(:t) Agio the Feaftn, the two parties differed in the manner of fixing the date of Pentecost. According to Lv 2.'?11- ** seven hill weeks ha<l to be counted from ' Ine morrow after the labbath ' upon which the priest waved the sheaf of first-fruits before the Lord. The Pharisees followed the traditional inter- pretation {e.g. in the LXX, ad loc. ; cf. Ant. ill. x. 6), that tlie 'sabbath' meant the first day of the feast, and that conse- quently Pentecost might fall on any dav of the week. The Sadducees (or rather, according to Schiircr, I.e. 413, the Boethusians, a variety of the .Sadcfucees) held that the 'sabltath' meant the weekly sabbath, and that therefore Pentecost always fell on the first day of the week. They naturally also refused to acknowledge as binding the tradition of the fathers as to the way of observing the sabbath.*
(A) Doctrinal diffcretices. —(1) According to the NT (Mt 22-=', Mk 12'", Lk 20", Ac 4'-» 23') and Joseiilins, the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the hii(hi, to whicli .losophus adds tliat they denied also future rcivirrh and punishment.'!, and even maintained that the soul perishes with the body {Ant. XVIII. i. 3f. ; BJ II. viii. 14). The doctrines of a hoilily resurrection and of future retribution in the later Jewish .sense are not found, till late, in the OT ; but it teaches a shadowy existence of Houls ill Sheol. In opixisition to the I'hariseea, therefore, the Sadducees held substantially the old Hebrew view, save (if Jo.sephus is to be trusted) as regards continued existence after death. (2) Ac- cording to Ac 2:!' they also denied the exi.itence of anr/cls and spirit.-!, i.e. of a world of supcrinnndane sjiii^its. SeeinR that they accepted the OT, it is dilhcult tounibTstand their position on this subject. It was jirobably due to their general indillerence to religion and to the rationalistic tenii)er which led to the extreme limit in opposition to the angelology of their adversaries. (3) According to Josephus [BJ n. viii. 14 ; Ant. XIII. v. 9) the Sad- ducees denied ' fate ' altogether ; it was impossible
• For a full account of these controversies see Slontet, I.e. M6II., where the authorities arc given ; also Schiirer. I.e. i\Z B.
for God to commit or to foresee anj'thing evil ; the doing of good or evil was left entirely to man's free choice ; man was the fna.ster of his own destiny and the sole author of his own happiness or misery. The Pharisees, on the other hand, made everything dependent on ' late ' and God ; still they did not teach an absolute fatalism ; it had pleased God that there should be 'a mixture' of the Divine and human elements ; there was a co-operation of God in all human actions, good and evil, but the doing of good or evil was to a large extent iti man's power {BJ 11. viii. 14 ; Ant. XVIII. i. 3, XIII. v. 9). ' Projierly understood, the real ditieience between the Pharisees and Sadducees seems to have amounted to this : that the former accentuated God's preordination, the latter man's free-will ; and that, while the Pharisees admitted only a partial influence of the human element on what happened, or the co-operation of the human with the Divine, the Sadducees denied all absolute pre- ordination, and made man's choice of evil or good, with its consequences of misery or happiness, to depend entirely on the exercise of free-will and self-detemiinatiofi ' (Edersheira, The Life and Times of Jesus the Me-s-sirth, i. 316 f.). Though Josephus is our only authority for the denial of Divine providence on the part of the Sadducees, there is no good reason to question his substantial accu- racy. Thej' felt no need of a Divine providence, but relied entirely on their own resources. ' They claimed nothing from God, nor lie from them ' (Wellhausen, I.e. 29.''>).