Pharisees and Sadducees

[Augustine3]

How did the Pharisees and Sadducees begin?

Are they from the tribe of Levi?

 

[Crumpy]

First, let me say that there’s a book that’s still in print and may be at your local public library called Everyman’s Talmud by Abraham Cohen. It starts off with a history of Judaism and it goes into this subject, the history of Judaism after the completion of the Jewish biblical canon.

Judaism never has a central authority, comparable to the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.

Judaism focuses to a tremendous degree on the “law” of Moses. So, there are various groups such as Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, and Essenes who have their own interpretation of the law.

today, in the U.S. there are the Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox branches of Judaism, which significant differences in understanding of the Torah and its interpretation.

There have been big challenges in Judaism, such has what do the Jews in babylonian exile live their faith, when they have no temple? how does Judaism work after prophecy has ended? How does Judaism function after the destruction of the second temple in 70 A.D.?

and, that’s not to mention the more mundane problems about interpreting and applying the Torah.

The Sadduccees accepted the first five books of the Old Testament as inspired, but no other writings. the pharisees were (laymen, as a rule) who took a more liberal interpretation of the Torah. The Sad. basically disappeared after the destruction of the Temple which destroyed their whole reason for living== they couldn’t function without a temple, so their following dried up.

The Pharisees are more or less associated with the develpment of rabbinic Judaism. They took a more practical approach toward interpreting the Torah. for example, so many visitors flooded into Jerusalem for the Passover, that they came up with the idea of a second observance of the Passover a month after the regulation Passover, to accommodate the overflow crowd and especially those who could not attend the first observance due to work in the fields at the time of the harvest.

Another big issue that had to be resolved in Judaism was the development of the synagogue (assembly) to take the place of the Temple. Oh, and along with that there was the important development that prayer took the place of the animal sacrifices that had been previously performed in the Temple. So, prayer, repentence, and atonement for sin go together very closely in hand.

 

[patrick457]

How did the Pharisees and Sadducees begin?

Their origins are rather obscure, but it is commonly thought that the Pharisees and the Sadducees first existed during the Hasmonean period (140 BC-37 BC), when they primarily functioned as political parties.

It would seem that the Pharisees are one of the successor groups to the so-called Hasideans (Ḥasidim) or the ‘pious’, a Jewish religious party which commenced to play an important role in political life during the time of the Maccabean wars (though they had apparently already existed for quite some time) because of their resistance to the influx of Hellenism during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV.

They apparently supported the Maccabean revolt (1 Maccabees 2:42), at least at first; their alliance increasingly grew weaker as the Maccabees continued to fight for political autonomy and the advancement of their own family. Jonathan’s (aka Apphus, Judah Maccabee’s brother) acceptance of the high priesthood as a gift from Alexander Balas in 152 BC proved to be very controversial, since while the Maccabees were priests, they were not of the legitimate Zadokite line and thus had no claim to the office. Furthermore, the office was bequeathed to Jonathan by a pagan ruler whose questionable authority rested in claiming to be the son of the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes. Most of the ḥasidim however seem to have acquiesced to this settlement when “the yoke of the gentiles was removed from Israel” (1 Maccabees 13:14) in 141 BC, and in the following year a national assembly confirmed the high priesthood and kingship of Simon (aka Thassi, Judah Maccabee’s other brother) and his family “till there should arise a faithful prophet” (1 Maccabees 14:41). For one, the main line of the former high-priestly family of Zadok had already gone to Egypt and installed themselves in a new temple in Leontopolis.

It was during the time of Simon’s son John Hyrcanus that relations between the ḥasidim and the ruling Hasmoneans became completely disrupted. Curiously, it is also the time when the Pharisees begin to appear in the historical record: one theory about the origin of the name Pharisee is that meant ‘separated’ in the sense of one who broke alliance with the Hasmoneans. The Talmud relates a legend about how John Hyrcanus, who once supported the Pharisees, was told off by a Pharisee named Eleazar that he cannot be king and high priest at once and demanded him to give up the office of high priesthood. Hyrcanus naturally took offence at this remark, and, goaded by a Sadducee named Jonathan, began to withdraw his favor away from the Pharisees.

The legend is most likely an over-simplification of the historical fact, but in any case, it is probably certain that until the death of Alexander Jannaeus (who was very anti-Pharisee, even hanging/crucifying 800 Pharisean rebels at one point) in 76 BC, the Sadducees, who first appear in the records as the party supporting and advising the Hasmoneans, were the party in power and the Pharisees were in opposition. They seem to have enjoyed a miniature golden age during the reign of Jannaeus’ widow, Salome Alexandra, who favored their party. From her time onwards the Pharisees came to have a secure position within the national council, the Sanhedrin.

When Herod became ‘King of the Judaeans’, both high priest and Sanhedrin lost most of their authority, though the Pharisees’ popular prestige increased, because they did not shrink from opposing Herod publicly when the situation called for it. When Herod’s kingdom was broken up among his sons and the tetrarchy of Judaea became a Roman province in AD 6 (after Archelaus, whose share the area formerly was, was deposed for being incompetent), high priest and council resumed control of internal affairs - since Rome preferred an indirect way of rule - though they were directly responsible to the prefect. During the next sixty years the high priests were regularly selected from the wealthy Sadducean families, and these families dominated the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees were officially back in the minority, though this time they enjoyed huge popularity among the masses.

Are they from the tribe of Levi?

Most of the Pharisees were lay teachers (though some were priests); a good number of the Sadducees were priests (though there would have been some lay members). So I guess it depends on a particular person’s lineage. We do know that some ordinary priests were Pharisees and some aristocratic priests were Sadducees, but for the most part priests and Levites, like much of the population, did not have a specific party affiliation and simply belonged to common Judaism.

 

[patrick457]

The Sadduccees accepted the first five books of the Old Testament as inspired, but no other writings. the pharisees were (laymen, as a rule) who took a more liberal interpretation of the Torah. The Sad. basically disappeared after the destruction of the Temple which destroyed their whole reason for living== they couldn’t function without a temple, so their following dried up.

The Pharisees are more or less associated with the develpment of rabbinic Judaism. They took a more practical approach toward interpreting the Torah. for example, so many visitors flooded into Jerusalem for the Passover, that they came up with the idea of a second observance of the Passover a month after the regulation Passover, to accommodate the overflow crowd and especially those who could not attend the first observance due to work in the fields at the time of the harvest.

Mostly correct. The politically liberal Sadducees are thought to be doctrinally hyper-conservative ‘Old Believers’, which held to a more primitive form of religion centered on the Temple and the priesthood without perceived ‘innovations’ like clearly defined angelic and demonic hierarchies, the doctrine of bodily resurrection and the allocation of rewards and punishments in a judgment after death. The politically conservative Pharisees (which held all of the above), meanwhile, had a more liberal, practical and grassroots approach towards Judaism which focuses more on laypeople.

As for which books the Sadducees held, it is commonly thought that they accepted only the Torah, though this view itself is far from certain. Some Church Fathers like Hippolytus, (Refutation of all Heresies 9.24), Origen (Contra Celsum 1.49), and St. Jerome, (Commentary on Matthew 22:31f.) claimed that the Sadducees accepted only the Torah as scriptural, though they are too late to be reliable in this regard: their statements might just as well indicate a later confusion of the Sadducees with the Samaritans. A passage in Josephus’ Antiquities (13.297 [10.6]) is sometimes read as evidence for this, but what he was actually talking about was the Sadducean rejection of Pharisaic traditions, without any indication of Scriptural canons.

What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.

 

[gregrege]

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