The sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, whose disputes fill later Jewish history, joined issue on a number of points. No doubt there was an economic and social cleavage between them as well. But perhaps the most nearly fundamental difference of doctrine related to the Olam ha-bo. The Pharisees asserted, and the Sadducees denied, the doctrine of resurrection. It is stated by Josephus,[[151]] that the Sadducees called in question the Olam ha-bo itself. When and where these sects took form is uncertain. The Pharisees at least are fully developed, and form a powerful political party under John Hyrcanus.[[152]] It is very unlikely that they are related to the Hasidim or are a continuation of them. The latter were a national, anti-Hellenic organization, and contained men of all shades of beliefs and interests. But the Pharisees, like the Hasidim, began as a brotherhood or a group of brotherhoods, however political their aims and actions were in later times. The fact is indicated by the name Haber, “comrade,” which they gave themselves, and the contemptuous Am ha-aretz, “clod,” οἱ πολλοί, with which they designated those who were not members of their congregations.
Now the Haberim, who preached the World-to-Come, were not in a primitive stage of culture, but in a very advanced one. Their God was not master of a city, but Lord of the whole earth. And they had long maintained the principle that merit in the eyes of God was determined by conduct, both formal and moral, a distinction less profoundly separating than seems at first to be the case. If that were so, anyone, Jew or Gentile, might conceivably acquire that merit. How was the Olam ha-bo to be refused to anyone who had taken upon himself the yoke of the Law, who did all that the Lord required at his hands? Jewish tradition knew of several eminently righteous gentiles, such as Job, in whom God was well pleased. It was an untenable proposition to men whose cardinal religious doctrine had for centuries been ethical and universal that all but a few men were permanently excluded from the beatitude of life after death.[[153]]
Since, however, the promises of the sacred literature were addressed primarily to Israel, those who were not of Abraham’s seed could become “comrades” only by first becoming Jews. That conception involved no difficulty whatever. The people of the ancient world had empirically learned some of the more elementary facts of biological heredity; but membership in a community, though determined by heredity in the first instance, was not essentially so determined. In earlier times, when the communities were first instituted, not even the pretense of kinship was maintained. The essential fact was the assumption of common sacra.
That a man might by appropriate ceremonies—or without ceremonies—enter into another community, was held everywhere. If, as has been suggested (above, p. 147), the Hasidim found some of their members among the non-Jewish population of Syria,[[154]] it is not likely that the process of becoming Jews was rendered either difficult or long. Abraham, a late tradition stated, brought many gentiles under the wings of the Shekinah, the Effulgence. If this tradition is an old one, it indicates that proselytizing was in early times held to be distinctly meritorious.[[155]]
The first conquests of the Hasmonean rulers brought non-Jewish tribes under immediate political control of the Jews. Most of them, notably the Idumeans, were forcibly Judaized, and so successfully that we hear of only one attempted revolt.[[156]] There can of course have been no question here of elaborate ceremonies or lengthy novitiates. The Idumeans were dealt with as shortly as Charlemagne’s Saxons, and gave the most convincing demonstration of their loyalty in the time of the insurrections.[[157]]
This drastic way of increasing the seed of Abraham must have been viewed differently by different classes of Jews. To the Haberim the difference between a heathen and a Jewish aspirant to their communion lay in the fact that the heathen had undergone the fearful defilement of worshiping the Abomination, while the Jew had not. For the former there was accordingly necessary an elaborate series of purgations, of ceremonial cleansing; and until this was done there was no hope that he could be admitted into the congregation of the Lord. But it might be done, and it began to be done in increasing numbers. It would have been strange if, among the many gentile seekers for salvation, Greek, Syrian, Cappadocian, and others, some would not be found to take the path that led to the conventicles of the Jewish Haberim. This was especially the case when, instead of an obscure Syrian tribe, the Hasmoneans had made of Judea a powerful nation, one of the most considerable of its part of the world.
All the mysteries welcomed neophytes, but none made the entrance into their ranks an easy matter. In some of them there were degrees, as in those of Cybele, and the highest degree was attained at so frightful a cost as practically to be reserved for the very few.[[158]] In the case of the Jews, one of the initiatory rites was peculiarly repellent to Greeks and Romans, in that it involved a bodily mutilation, which was performed not in the frenzy of an orgiastic revel, but in the course of a solemn ritual of prayer. That fact might make many hesitate, but could not permanently deter those who earnestly sought for the way of life.
The Jewish propaganda was not confined to receiving and imposing conditions on those who came. Some at least sought converts, although it is very doubtful that the Pharisaic societies as a class planned a real mission among the heathen. The methods that were used were those already in vogue—methods which had achieved success in many fields. Books and pamphlets were published to further the purpose of the missionaries; personal solicitation of those deemed receptive was undertaken. Actual preaching, such as the diatribe commenced by the Cynics, and before them by Socrates, was probably confined to the synagogue, or meeting within the proseucha, and reached only those who were there assembled.[[159]]
The literary form of the propaganda was especially active in those communities in which Jews and Greeks spoke a common language and partly shared a common culture. Even books intended primarily for Jewish circulation contain polemics against polytheism and attacks upon heathen custom, which the avowed purpose of the book would not justify.
It is not to be supposed that the literary propaganda was the most effective. It was limited by the very field for which it was intended. Such a book as the Wisdom of Solomon was both too subtle and too finished a product to appeal to other than highly cultivated tastes, and men of this stamp are not readily reached by propagandizing religions. The chief object of attack was the Greek polytheism. “Wisdom” ventures even on an historical explanation of polytheism, which is strangely like that of Herbert Spencer.[[160]] Now, just for the Greeks, who might read and understand such a book, to refute polytheism was destroying a man of straw. No one of them seriously believed in it. Those who were not agnostics or atheists believed in the unity of the Divine essence, and at most maintained the existence of certain subordinate ministerial beings, who might or might not be identical with the names of the actors in the myths. But many Jews would be ready to admit so much. Indeed that there were subordinate daemonia, helpful and harmful, was a widespread belief in Judea, even if without authoritative sanction. Very often the heathen gods were conceived to be not absolute nullities, but demons really existing and evil—a belief which the early Christian church firmly held and preached.[[161]]