Read Online The Age of the Maccabees (Illustrated) by Annesley Streane - Free Book Online Page B

the Assideans, they
gave a much more unqualified support to the policy of exclusiveness and
national self-assertion which arose naturally out of the success of the
Maccabean movement, and they had a real interest in their country’s welfare and
prestige. Although closely connected with the scribes, the two were not, at
least in later times, coincident. The relation between the scribes and
Pharisees “was practically the same as that which exists between teachers and
taught. The Pharisees were the men who endeavored to reduce the teachings and
theories of the scribes to practice, and all those scribes, who in addition to
the written Law also believed in the binding authority of tradition, were
Pharisees as well as scribes”.
    The Sadducees, on the
other hand, may be considered as akin to, or even a branch of the Hellenistic
party. They were distinguished, however, by accepting with the utmost loyalty
the Pentateuch, although declining to be bound by the traditions which had grown
up around it. It may well be, as Ewald says, that the disappearance of the
early literature of this school is to be attributed to the disrepute into which
it fell politically in Maccabean times. For as the Pharisees were primarily a
religious, so the Sadducees were rather a political, party. They included the
aristocratic families, the generals and others who were disposed to take a
laxer view on the subject of exclusiveness, as having mixed more with the outer
world, and acquired a knowledge of, and respect for, customs outside those
proper to the Jewish race. “The main principle of the Sadducees was that ...
good and evil, human weal or woe, depended solely on man’s own choice, and on
his knowledge or ignorance. This almost Stoic-sounding principle, which they
could easily set themselves to prove by detached passages of the Pentateuch,
involved the sharpest contrast with the rigid system which had prevailed from
the time of Ezra; but not less so with all true religion. At the same time, it
quickens the impulse of human freedom and activity, places the whole world of
sense within its reach, and, while it flatters able minds, seems free from
danger so long as the conception of God derived from ancient faith remains
unimpaired, and the hereditary morality of the mass of the people is but little
shaken. From this point it was but one step further to the denial of the
immortality of the soul and eternal retribution, and therefore of the actual
existence of angels and spirits; so that in this the Sadducees consciously
repudiated what was by no means disclaimed in the Book of the Law, even if it
was not sufficiently clearly asserted; and fell into the very doubts from which
Koheleth had with difficulty escaped. Moreover, though they accepted the
authority of the Law, yet they would only maintain a very independent position
with respect to it, and they rejected all the further extensions and statutes
of which the dominant school was so fond. This was the natural result of
placing their fundamental principle in the merely human resolve to allow no
power to determine or hinder their conduct save the civil laws”.
    Their repudiation of
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body may be closely connected with the
Hellenic influence, to which they so readily lent themselves. We are reminded
of the Greek view of the matter by St. Paul’s experience at Athens.
“Associating continually with those who thus regarded the very notion of the
resurrection as incredible, it was but natural that the Sadducees should not
believe in it themselves”.
    It would be an error to
suppose that in all matters where religion or administration was concerned the
Sadducees leaned to milder measures than their rivals. “The Sadducees thought
that the punishment ordered by the Pentateuch for the infliction of any bodily
injury—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—should be literally interpreted
and followed out, and obtained in consequence the reputation of being