c. Jochanan, the high-priest and governor of Jerusa- lem, ben-Simon, ben-jNIattathias, commonly called John Hyrcanus (B.C. 135-106), was a distinguished Pharisaic scribe, or doctor of the law. The enactments which he passed, as recorded in the Mishna, show his endeavors to render the Temple service uniform, his humane feel- ings, and his desire to alleviate the uimecessary burdens of the law. Though Ezra, to punish the Levites for their backwardness in returning from Babylon, deprived them of their tithes or transferred them to the priests (Ezra ii, 36-42; viii, 15; Neh.vii, 43-45; comp. with ]\Iishna, Maaser Sheni, v, 15 ; Sotah, ix, 10 ; Babylon Talmud, Ythamoth, 80 b; Kethuhoth, 26 a), yet the formula con- sisting of Deut. xxvi, 13-15, and called confession C^ITl), in which the Israelite had to declare in the Temple be- fore God that he had paid the tithes to the Levile, con- tinued to be recited at the time of the evening sacrifice on the last day of Passover. There was also a custom of singing ever}' morning in the Temple Psa. xliv, 23- 26 as part of the hymnal service, and of wounding the sacrifices on their head for the blood to run into their eyes, so as momentarily to blind them in order that they might be bound easily. Moreover, up to the time of Jochanan the high-priest=John Hyrcanus, the peo- ple worked during the middle days of the festivals. See Passoveu; Tabernacles, Feast of. "Now Jochan- an the high-priest did away with the confession about the Levitical tithes (because it was now inapplicable) ; he also ordered the discontinuance of chanting 'Awake!' (Psa. xliv, 23, etc., because the singing of it every morning made it appear as if (lod were asleep) and the ■wounding of the sacrifices (because it was cruel) ; in- terdicted working on the middle days of the festivals, since up to his days the hammer was busily at work in •lerusalem, and ordered buyers of questionable produce, whether it had been tithed or not, to tithe it" (Mishna, Muascr tSheni,v, 10; Sotali, ix, 10).
d. Jehoshuah ben-Perachja and his colleague, Katai of Arabela, who were the second of the four pairs (ni51T) that headed the Sanhedrim and the doctors of the law as president and vice-president (B.C. 140-1 10). Though their surviving maxims are very few, yet they are in- dicative of the irreparable breach which was then made between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In harmony
with the wisdom, humanity, consistency, and leniency of John Hyrcanus, under whose pontificate and rule these two distinguished doctors of the law taught, Je- hoshuah ben-Perachja propounded the maxim, " Procure for thyself a teacher, gain to thyself a friend, and judge every man by the rule of innocence" {A both, i, 0). If, however, we render this saying thus: " Take to thyself a teacher (Rab), get to thyself an associate (C/iaber), judge every man on his better side," we shall see that, while its last clause attracts us by its candor, it never- theless shows how easily even a fair-minded man might come to recognise no bonds of fellowship outside the limits of his sect or order (Jost, i, 227-233). His col- league, Natai of Arabela, at all events, who regarded the foreign policy of the Sadducees as desecration of God's holy heritage [see Sadducee], and as working into the hands of those very enemies whom they had only just driven from the holy city (1 Mace, xiii, etc.), taught : " Keep aloof from wicked neighbors, have no fellowship with sinners, and reject not the belief in ret- ribution" (Abofh, i, 7). It was this maxim which brought about the final separation between the Phari- sees and the Sadducees in the time of Hyrcanus. The gulf thus created was deepened by an unhappy circum- stance which made John Hyrcanus desert the ranks of the Pharisees and go over to the Sadducees, and which gave the first impulse to the bloody sufferings and the ultimate destruction of his country and people, for whose independence and religion he and his family fought so bravely. The circumstance is as follows: Having returned from a glorious victory, and being pleased with the condition of the people at home, Hj-r- canus gave a banquet, to which he invited both Phari- sees and Sadducees. As he was enjoying himself in the midst of his guests, he, instigated by the Sadducees, asked the Pharisees to tell him whether there was any command which he had transgressed, that he might make amends, since it was his great desire to make the law of God his rule of life. To this one of the Phari- sees replied: "Let HjTcanus be satisfied with the regal crown and give the priestly diadem to some one more worthy of it; because before his birth his mother was taken captive from the Maccaba^an home, in a raid of the Syrians upon Modin, and it is illegal for the son of a captive to ofticiate as a priest, much more as high- priest." The Sadducees, who had thus far succeeded, tried to persuade Hyrcanus that the Pharisees did this designedly in order to lower him in the eyes of the peo- ple. To ascertain it, Hyrcanus demanded of the San- hedrim to sentence the offender to capital punishment. But the Pharisaic doctors of the law, who had no spe- cial enactment against indignities heaped upon a sover- eign, who believed and taught that all men are alike in the sight of (iod, and whose very president at this time propounded the maxim of leniencj', said that according to the law they could only give him forty stripes save one, which was the regular punishment for slanderers. It was this which made Hyrcanus go over to the Sad- ducees, massacre manj' of the Scribes, and fill the San- hedrim with Sadducees (comp. Josephus, Ant. xiii, 10, 5, 0, with Kiddushin, CO a ; Griltz, Geschichte der Juden (2d ed.), iii, 453,