The Essenes
The characteristic of the Essene creed is that all things are left in God’s hands. They hold that souls are immortal, and that the rewards[[366]] of righteousness are a prize worth a battle. Although they send dedicatory offerings to the Temple, their rites of purification when sacrificing are peculiar; they are consequently excluded from the precincts of the national shrine[[367]] and offer their sacrifices apart. In other ways they are most estimable men, whose whole energy is devoted to agriculture. In this particular they deserve more admiration than all professedly virtuous persons, because a habit which has never prevailed, even for a while, in any nation, whether Greek or barbarian, has been with them a long-established and uninterrupted custom. Their goods are in common, and the rich man enjoys no more of his possessions than he who owns nothing at all; this rule is followed by a body of men numbering over four thousand. Marriage and slavery they abjure, the latter as tending to promote injustice, the former as giving occasion for discord; they live by themselves and minister to each other’s needs. They elect good men to act as receivers of their revenues and of the produce of the soil, and priests as bakers and cooks. Their manner of life bears the closest resemblance in all points to that of the Dacian tribe known as the Polistæ.[[368]]
The Zealots
A fourth school was founded by Judas the Galilæan.[[369]] While they agree in all other respects with the Pharisees, its disciples have an ineradicable[[370]] passion for liberty, and take God for their only leader and lord. In their determination to call no man lord, they make light of enduring death in all manner of forms, and of penalties inflicted on their kinsmen and friends. Since, however, most of my readers have witnessed their unflinching endurance under such tortures, I need not dwell further upon it. My fear is not that anything which I might say of them will be thought incredible, but, on the contrary, that the narrative may fail to do justice to the fortitude with which they meet the agony of pain. It was the madness of this party which was the beginning of the afflictions of our nation, when |A.D. 64-66.| Gessius Florus, the governor, by wanton abuse of his authority, drove them in desperation into revolt from Rome.[[371]]
Such are the various schools of Jewish philosophy.—Ant. XVIII. 1. 2-6 (11-25).
(56) Why John Hyrcanus went over from the Pharisees to the Sadducees
135-105 B.C.
John Hyrcanus I was the son and successor, in the offices of high priest and prince, of Simon the Maccabee.
These successes of Hyrcanus, however, aroused the envy of the Jews. His bitterest enemies were the Pharisees, one of the Jewish sects, as we have already stated, whose influence with the populace is such that a word from them against king or high priest meets with instant belief.
Hyrcanus had been their disciple and was greatly beloved by them. Having on one occasion invited them to a banquet and hospitably entertained them, and seeing them in high good humour, he began to say to them that they knew how anxious he was to live righteously, and how in all his actions he strove to please God and them (for the Pharisees are a school of philosophers); but he besought them, if ever they saw him erring and deviating from the right way, to bring him back into it and correct him. His guests declaring that there was no virtue which he lacked, he was pleased with their commendation.