NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
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NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 53
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the old Davidic kingdom had been raised up once more. The condemnation of this desecration of the Davidie throne and the sacred hopes meets us in the Psalms of Solomon (174*:) and in a passage in the Book of Enoch (chs. 94ff.); cf. also Assump. Mos. 6". The overthrow of the Maccabean house cleared the air. The Sadducees were completely subjected under Herod, and had lost all influence. Under the Roman domination, the high priest, and with him the Sadducees, regained greater political importance (see above, p. 48), but they no longer played the principal part. When the war for free- dom broke out, they sought at first to stifle the movement, and then, when they failed in this, -to guide it. But the waves now ran so high that they quickly swept away this time-worn and en- feebled party. See, further, art. SADDUCEES in vol. iv.
The development of Pharisaism was very materi- ally shaped by the Maccabeean period. Opposition to the Hasmonzans brought out its one-sided tendencies to the full, especially when, under Alexander Jannzeus, things went so far as a civil war, in which the Pharisees were at first victori- ous, but afterwards beaten and cruelly punished. But it was a momentous circumstance that im- mediately thereafter, under queen Alexandra, they gained political power. They forced their way into the Sanhedrin, carried a number of their laws, and thus tasted the sweets of rule. Thereby their less estimable qualities were developed, and there arose among them those Pharisees with whom we make acquaintance in the Gospels. With them the external flourished at the expense of the in- ternal; beneath their numerous religious exercises, such as fasting, ablutions, prayer, almsgiving, there was often concealed an impure, ambitious, , haughty disposition, whose end and aim was to lord it over the crowd. ‘Their renunciation of all interest in foreign politics was abundantly com- pensated by the inente they exercised over the people—an influence to which even the Sadducees had to bend (Jos. Ant. xvul. i. 4). It may be added that it is not only the New Testament that describes the Pharisees in this way. The Assump- tion of Moses contains a passage (7°) of precisely similar import, which also refers without doubt to the Pharisees.* Of course there were exceptions among them, as we learn even from the New Testament; and the Psalms of Solomon, which emanated from Pharisaic circles, still contain much of the pure and noble piety which we encounter in the canonical Psalms. See, further, art. PHARISEES in vol. iii.
While the sharp opposition between the Saddu- cees and the Pharisees receded somewhat after the overthrow of the Hasmonzeans, there grew up within Pharisaism itself opposing influences, which were destined to be still more dangerous to the life of the people. Although the Pharisees otherwise were identified with the quiet and passive waiting for the time of the Messiah, the enrolment of the Jewish people by Quirinius (see above, p. 49°) gave birth to a new party, which in other respects agreed with the Pharisees, but regarded the struggle for freedom and the casting-off of the Roman yoke as a sacred duty. The founders of this party of Zealots (j's3p) were a man of Galilee, named Judas, and a Pharisee, Sadduk (cf. Jos. Ant. XVUl. i. 4). From the ranks of these patriots there came, during the last decades before the war for freedom, the utterly ruthless Sicari, who, armed with a short dagger (sica), mingled with the crowd, especially on the great feast days, and selected their victims alike from among foreigners
*The authority followed by Josephus in Ant, XVI. di. 4 knows of the Pharisees as «is 7d roAguéiy xa PAaarey exnd- peevol,
and from their fellow-countrymen (Jos. Ant. xx. viii. 10; BJ I. xvii. 6, ete. ; Ac 21%), Against wild offshoots like these the more sober-minded of the Pharisees came forward, and were thus at times led to go hand in hand with the Sadducees.
The theological points of difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, upon which Josephus lays so much stress, are merely particular illustra- tions of the above-described deeper contrasts. The hues development which had taken place in the stricter circles since ,the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and the new conceptions which had been thus reached, were not shared by the Saddu- cees, who held conservatively to ancient tradition. Hence they rejected and ridiculed the doctrine of a resurrection —a circumstance from which we may infer that they did not accept the Book of Daniel.* In general, the present possessed more significance for them than the hope of Israel, which was the life-principle of the stricter party. Similar was the state of things with their rejection of the belief in spirits and angels. In the circles of the ‘pious’ there had also been a very pro- nounced development of the notions regarding these, which had its roots, indeed, in the earlier OT writings, but yet was so peculiarly influenced, partly by foreign conceptions, that strict conser- vatives were bound to reject it, especially if, like the Sadducees, they had positivist tendencies. When the Sadducees, again, laid stress upon the freedom of the will, this was connected with their political leanings as above described: in_ their~ polemic they would have in view not only the passivity of the ‘pious,’ but also the growing disposition to transfer the real sphere of history to the angel-world, and to convert history into a conflict between good and evil spirits, of which human history was only a reflexion. As to legal enactments, the Sadducees held strictly to the Law, and rejected the oral Torah of the Pharisees. It is, no doubt, also in this connexion that the controverted points mentioned in the Jewish litera- ture come in, but these give no clear picture of the root-principle of the opposition.