The Pharisees, it will be seen, were the more pious, the Sadducees the more worldly, though the Pharisees as a whole were not as pious as the Chassidim had been, nor the Sadducees as worldly as the Hellenists had been. The Sadducees further denied belief in bodily resurrection or in judgment after death (though not necessarily renouncing immortality), on the strength of the famous teaching of Antigonus of Socho, "Be not as servants who serve the Master for the sake of reward, but rather as those who serve the Master without thought of reward." As distinct from the Pharisees they were strong believers in free-will, that the destiny of men is in their own hands. We might call the Sadducees the rationalists and the Pharisees traditionalists.
Some Pharisees again did carry the fulfilment of rites and ceremonies too far; a few, perhaps, were even ostentatious in their piety. By strange mischance these few have transferred their dubious reputation to all Pharisees as such. Most unjustly however, for the Pharisees earned the confidence of the great bulk of the people and were on the whole identified with them. So strangely has that sinister repute persisted that "Pharisee" is to-day defined in some dictionaries as self-righteous or hypocritical (see note). How undeserved as describing those whose trust in God was absolute, without reservation or misgiving. This is but one of many instances where the world's verdict has been unjust to the Jew.
Essenes.
We meet also a third party nearer in sympathy to the Pharisees. The old Chassidim, the extremists, had developed into an ascetic party under the name of Essenes, with a similar meaning—pious. They lived the life of a celibate brotherhood, holding the little they allowed themselves, in common. They hardly affected the national life of Israel, because they were too few and because they slighted patriotic obligations. They practiced all the self-denial of the Nazirites of old and sought to reach from cleanliness to godliness. Another derivation of the name Essene is "bather," baptist, from their frequent ablutions. Yet another is "healer."
The Hasmonean royalty—to what party did they belong? Well, we might say that they began their career with all the religious enthusiasm of the Pharisees, they closed it with the political outlook of the Sadducees. This was something like an anti-climax.
John Hyrcanus perhaps represents the dividing line. He started on a career of conquest simply to satisfy national ambition; though he had forced Judaism on the Idumeans. In his later years, he rejected many traditional observances of the Oral Law that completed his estrangement from the Pharisees. Taking a material and external survey, Hyrcanus left the Jews at the end of his life with an independent State, that in power and extent was as great as Northern Israel in its palmy days, as great perhaps as the realm of Solomon. He could mint his own coins, on some of which, still in existence, we find inscribed, "Jochanan, High Priest of the Commonwealth of the Judeans." Yes, it was all very splendid! But surely the Jews had learned by now the insufficiency of national glory that was material and external, that that kind of splendor was apart from the Jewish ideal, "not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." The age needed a Jeremiah again. Alas, the era of the Prophets was over!
Notes and References.
Hasmonean:
This was the family name of Mattathias, afterwards assumed by his descendants.