But there is another aspect of this question also. While the Pharisees thus held the doctrine of absolute preordination, side by side with it they were anxious to insist on man's freedom of choice, his personal responsibility, and moral obligation. [1545] Although every event depended upon God, whether a man served God or not was entirely in his own choice. As a logical sequence of this, fate had no influence as regarded Israel, since all depended on prayer, repentance, and good works. Indeed, otherwise that repentance, on which Rabbinism so largely insists, would have had no meaning. Moreover, it seems as if it had been intended to convey that, while our evil actions were entirely our own choice, if a man sought to amend his ways, he would be helped of God. [1546] It was, indeed, true that God had created the evil impulse in us; but He had also given the remedy in the Law. [1547] This is parabolically represented under the figure of a man seated at the parting of two ways, who warned all passers that if they chose one road it would lead them among the thorns, while on the other brief difficulties would end in a plain path (joy). [1548] Or, to put it in the language of the great Akiba: [1549] Everything is foreseen; free determination is accorded to man; and the world is judged in goodness.' With this simple juxtaphysition of two propositions equally true, but incapable of metaphysical combination, as are most things in which the empirically cognisable and uncognisable are joined together, we are content to leave the matter.
The other differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees can be easily and briefly summed up. They concern ceremonial, ritual, and juridical questions. In regard to the first, the opposition of the Sadducees to the excessive scruples of the Pharisees on the subject of Levitical defilements led to frequent controversy. Four points in dispute are mentioned, of which, however, three read more like ironical comments than serious divergences. Thus, the Sadducees taunted their opponents with their many lustrations, including that of the Golden Candlestick in the Temple. [1550] Two other similar instances are mentioned. [1551] By way of guarding against the possibility of profanation, the Pharisees enacted, that the touch of any thing sacred defiled' the hands. The Sadducees, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea that the Holy Scriptures defiled' the hands, but not such a book as Homer. [1552] In the same spirit, the Sadducees would ask the Pharisees how it came, that water pouring from a clean into an unclean vessel did not lose its purity and purifying power. [1553] If these represent no serious controversies, on another ceremonial question there was real difference, though its existence shows how far party-spirit could lead the Pharisees. No ceremony was surrounded with greater care to prevent defilement than that of preparing the ashes of the Red Heifer. [1554] What seem the original ordinances, [1555] directed that, for seven days previous to the burning of the Red Heifer, the priest was to be kept in separation in the Temple, sprinkled with the ashes of all sin-offerings, and kept from the touch of his brother-priests, with even greater rigour than the High-Priest in his preparation for the Day of Atonement. The Sadducees insisted that, as till sundown' was the rule in all purification, the priest must be in cleanliness till then, before burning the Red Heifer. But, apparently for the sake of opposition, and in contravention to their own principles, the Pharisees would actually defile' the priest on his way to the place of burning, and then immediately make him take a bath of purification which had been prepared, so as to show that the Sadducees were in error. [1556] [1557] In the same spirit, the Sadducees seem to have prohibited the use of anything made from animals which were either interdicted as food, or by reason of their not having been properly slaughtered; while the Pharisees allowed it, and, in the case of Levitically clean animals which had died or been torn, even made their skin into parchment, which might be used for sacred purposes. [1558]