Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, November 23, 1998

Jewish Sects

The gospels show Jesus as an independent healer and preacher fervently opposed by the Pharisees, a sect of pious Jews. It seems immediately unfair that a well-organised group should pick on a solitary teacher and a few of his innocent followers. But the Pharisees were not the only sect of the Jewish religion. Jesus himself belonged to another sect.

Encouraged by the occupying forces Jews had split into several sects each believing its approach was the right one—the four philosophies of the Jews described by Josephus. Although they doubtless were the main sects, Josephus’s listing of the four philosophies—the Pharisees (Paroshim), the Sadducees (Zadokim), the Essenes and the Zealots—is far from the whole story. The Christian gospels introduce us only to some of them. The four philosophies were religious, but equally important to understanding them was their political dimension—their attitude to the Roman invaders and their Greek culture. Jews did not distinguish religion from politics because their state was a theocracy—it was to be ruled by God through His priesthood—but the Romans had usurped God’s position. Educated Jews associated with one or other of these sects just as today people usually identify themselves with a political party, for in many ways that is what they were, and a proper understanding of Jesus and the gospel stories requires an awareness of the Jewish sects and Jesus’s relationship to them.

Though Josephus, in describing the four philosophies of the Jews, gives the impression that the divisions of society were quite simple, the truth is otherwise. There was a diversity of social divisions. The Clementine Recognitions says the people divided into many sects from the days of John the Baptist and the Talmud says, poetically rather than historically, there were 24 varieties of sectarianism at the end of the Jewish War. Not only was Judaism sectarian, there was no such concept as mainstream Judaism during New Testament period. Views were so diverse as to be different forms of Judaism, albeit with accepted points in common, not just sects of Judaism. The old idea of a monolithic Judaism during the “Second” Temple (516 BC-70 AD) is no longer believed even by Jews. The religion and its temple were imposed and so began in conflict and never united. As God’s chosen people pious Jews were set on obeying His commandments to the letter, but the commandments were not always clear or applicable to changed circumstances. They had to be interpreted and with it came further disagreement and sectarianism.

By New Testament times Jews had divided themselves into many parties, sects and brotherhoods. Jewish society was divided into four castes, Priests, Levites, Israelites and Proselytes. Proselytes were of course converts to Judaism and were generally the lowest class. Israel was the class of ordinary people. The Levites and the Priests were the upper classes associated with temple service.

Besides these castes, though, there were the brotherhoods described by Josephus, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes and the Galilaeans or Zealots, there were also rich Herodians and poor Am ha-Eretz, the Men of the Land, Samaritans and Dositheans. And apocalyptic dreams had become popular under the yoke of foreign oppression and many cults preached of the End Time. The Church Fathers describe Hemerobaptists, Masbutheans, Samaritans, Grecians or Hellenised Jews and Hebrews or traditional Jews. Like the Galilaeans, the Samaritans were not necessarily from Samaria because the Samaritans were a sect of Judaism rather than a national type, although the centre of Samaritanism was Samaria because that is where the Samaritian temple was, on Mount Gerizim. Hemerobaptists, Masbutheans and Galilaeans were probably later sub-sects of the Essenes, as, we suspect and shall develop shortly, were the Nazarenes and therefore the Christians. There were probably more. Even those not voluntarily in groups could not avoid being characterised as in some social or economic group.

Particularly prominent in the gospels are the Pharisees who are depicted as the arch enemies of the Son of God. They were the popular party, according to Josephus and even they were split into two wings, a conservative wing and a liberal wing. Pharisees even admitted they were classifiable into seven types, though they are psychological types rather than social groups. Sadducees, the Herodians, and the Zealots are mentioned with decreasing levels of interest. Indeed the Zealots are effectively not mentioned because they are introduced only as an appellation of disciples, notably Simon the Zealot but also Judas the Zealot in some old MSS, meaning Judas Iscariot. Indirectly, what the rabbis called the Am ha-Eretz also appear. These, the common folk, often untrained in the “schools” and unobservant in ceremonial details, were the “the multitude”, followers of Jesus—Christians believe. The Nazarenes, the sect considered to have been founded by Jesus, the hero of the gospel stories, are mentioned once only in Acts.

But we do not meet the Essenes or, in effect, the Zealots, a curious omission because these last two were as important as the others, and they must have been a major influence on the lives of people living in small towns and villages, the Am ha-Eretz, apparently preferred by Jesus and his disciples. Nor do the writers of epistles in the New Testament mention the Essenes. They might as well have not existed, but we know they did from Josephus, Pliny and Philo. Now that we can add to these classic authors the evidence of the excavations at Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, a clear understanding of the Essenes and their connexion with Christianity is beginning to emerge.

Under the eye of the Romans, Josephus and the gospel writers had to be cagey and were less than truthful. The sectarian scrolls are also not open, being couched in arcane codes and interpretations to hide their true objectives lest the invader should ever get hold of them. Even the early Christians sought to defend their religion by censorship to hide its original anti-Roman nature and so alter or omit vital facts.

We can deduce from the sources:

• The Sadducees were wealthy families, mainly of priests, who were blatant collaborators, fearful of their position if there should be any unrest. The Boethusians of the Rabbinical literature were the family and descendants of one Boethus, the Egyptian, who had assumed the role of High Priest under Herod the Great. They might have been the Herodians of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Herod having rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple, the source of their influence.
• The Pharisees were not active collaborators, in general, but on several previous occasions they had invited foreign powers into Israel to quell civil war and they were unwilling to risk reprisals against Israel by organising against Rome. However, the Pharisees were not monolithic and the pragmatists were opposed by more nationalistic factions.
• The Dead Sea Essenes were opposed to the invader and spent time preparing themselves for an apocalyptic bust-up but believed god would only support them if they were absolutely ritually pure, hence this became their main interest. Village Essenes had a similar apocalyptic outlook but lived more practical lives in the community at large. It is inconceivable that these latter communities did not have some impact on the events of the gospels. Here is another mystery—why are they not mentioned by the gospel writers?

Curiously, Josephus in Antiquities goes on to tell, having described the Essenes, of a fourth sect, the Galilaeans, though he does not name it as such, merely saying it was founded by Judas the Galilaean. The versions of Antiquities we now have say these Galilaeans accepted Pharisaic notions but differed in that they accepted only God as their Lord. They were founded by Judas of Galilee and the implication of describing them after the third of the supposedly three orders of Jewish religion, the Essenes, is surely that they were actually a branch of the latter. The omission of the name “Galilaeans” and the attributing to them of Pharisaic notions will have been the work of Christian editors who wanted to divorce these Galilaeans from the Galilaean followers of Jesus and instead associate them with Jesus’s enemies.

Scholars generally regard these men as Zealots, firebrands incensed by the Greek and Roman invaders, who had usurped God’s rule, and ready to join in armed struggle against them. The Sicarii were a branch of the Zealots whose aim was political assassination.

For there are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essens.

Josephus, Jewish War (Whiston) 2:8:2

The Jews had for a great while had three sects of philosophy peculiar to themselves. The sect of the Essens, and the sect of the Sadducees, and the third sort of opinions was that of those called Pharisees. Of which sects, although I have already spoken in the second book of the Jewish War, yet will I a little touch upon them now.

Josephus, Antiquities (Whiston) 18:1:2

The Aramaic Language

Semitic languages are known almost from the beginning of human history. Among them are Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopic, and Akkadian or ancient Babylonian and Assyrian. Aramaic is closest to Hebrew, and was written in various scripts including “Hebrew” script, which is really an Aramaic script. The original “Hebrew” script was Phœnician script.

Aramaic first appears in a small number of ancient royal inscriptions from 900-700 BC. Dedications to the gods, international treaties, and memorial stelae reveal to us the history of the first small Aramean kingdoms, in the territories of modern Syria and Southeast Turkey, living under the shadow of the rising Assyrian empire.

From about 700-320 BC, the conquering Assyrians, and following them the Babylonian and Persian empires, used Aramaic as their lingua franca, so it became known from India to Ethiopia. The Persian officials sent to set up the temple of Jerusalem spoke Aramaic as we know from the Jewish scriptures where parts of Ezra and Daniel are in Aramaic. Some of the best known stories in the Old Testament, including that of Belshazzar’s feast with the famous “handwriting on the wall” are in Aramaic. For the Jews, under Persian influence, Aramaic displaced Hebrew.

Aramaic remained a dominant language for Jewish worship, scholarship, and everyday life for centuries in both the land of Israel and in the diaspora, especially in Babylon. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the remains of the library of a Jewish sect from around the turn of the era, are many compositions in Aramaic. These new texts also provide the best evidence for Palestinian Aramaic of the sort used by Jesus and his disciples.

Since the Jews spoke Aramaic, and knowledge of Hebrew was no longer widespread, the practice arose in the synagogue of providing the reading of the sacred Hebrew scriptures with an Aramaic translation or paraphrase, a “Targum” In the course of time a whole array of targums for the Law and other parts of the bible were composed. More than translations, they incorporated much of traditional Jewish scriptural interpretation.

In their academies, the rabbis and their disciples transmitted, commented, and debated Jewish law. The records of their deliberations constitute the two Talmuds—the Palestinian and the much larger Babylonian Talmuds. Although the Talmuds contain much material in Hebrew, the basic language of these vast compilations is Aramaic, in Western and Eastern dialects.

Although Jesus spoke Aramaic, the gospels are in Greek, and only rarely quote actual Aramaic words. Reconstruction of the Aramaic background of the gospels remains a fascinating, but inordinately difficult area of modern scholarly research. Christians in Palestine eventually rendered parts of the New Testament into their dialect of Aramaic. These translations and related writings are “Christian Palestinian Aramaic”.

A much larger body of Christian Aramaic is known as Syriac. Syriac writings surpass in quantity all other Aramaic combined. It began as the literary language of the city of Edessa, now Urfa in Turkey. It became the language of the eastern church, from about the third century AD until into the Moslem conquest. Syriac writings include numerous bible translations, the most important being the so-called Peshitta (simple) translation, and countless devotional, dogmatic, exegetical, liturgical, and historical works. Almost all of the Greek philosophical and scientific tradition was eventually translated into Syriac, and it was through this channel that most found their way into the Islamic World and thence, into post-Dark Ages Europe.

There are many other branches of Aramaic literature, including the substantial literature of the Mandaeans, a Gnostic religious group, and the bible translation, liturgy, and doctrinal works of the Samaritans. Aramaic survives as a spoken language in small communities in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.

The Pharisees

The word “Pharisee” is said to be from the Aramaic word “pharosh”, which implies separation. Ultimately, the Pharisees were to become the Jewish mainstream, but even in the New Testament times they were not separate from Judaism as a whole—not in the sense that the Essenes were. Possibly, the separating happened at an earlier period. Some say that both the Pharisees and the Essenes were branches of the earlier Hasidim, and both separated in their different ways. The Essenes might have been the Hasidic mainstream, the direct line of the earlier Hasidim, but the Pharisees were dissenters who had separated from them. Some suggest that the word Pharisee has nothing to do with separating out but is related to the word “Parsee” meaning Persian. They are then the Jews who have Persian beliefs, like the belief in angels and the belief in a messiah. However the Essenes also had Persian beliefs, and held them probably more strongly.

Rabbinical literature depicts Jesus’s apparent main enemies, the Pharisees, as just, humane and adaptable. “Well it would, wouldn’t it?” you might say. After all, the Jewish religion that survived the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD was the religion of the Pharisees. It metamorphosed into Rabbinical Judaism. But the tradition of the rabbis is confirmed by Flavius Josephus.

Josephus, who spent time among the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes before joining a Pharisaic havura or brotherhood, gives as the distinguishing features of the Pharisees:

1. they were meticulous about observing the law, both in its written and oral forms
2. they affirmed the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body
3. they had a greater influence on the common people than did the other sects.

Pharisees were far from being the jealous hypocrites of the gospels. Pharisee sages came from all levels of society including the poorest, unlike the hereditary priesthood. They were not paid but, like Jesus the carpenter, had to develop a practical skill with which to earn a living. Shammai was a surveyor who, as like as not, worked on Herod’s temple. They were admired for their fairness as judges of the law, their legal knowledge and the originality of their religious interpretation. Though they practised temple worship, the centre of their lives was the synagogue.

The sages and later, the rabbis, thought of themselves as heirs to the prophets, who also came from the people rather than from dynasties, and especially Moses, though they claimed no prophetic abilities themselves unlike the Essenes. For them prophecy had ceased with the biblical prophets and would start again only with the age of the messiah. Theirs was an interpretive and analytical role not a sacerdotal one—that was the priests’ role. The Pharisees regarded the priests only as functionaries with no authority to speak on the Law or religion—that was their own role. The sages were progressive whilst the Sadducees were conservative.

The Pharisees arose in the period of about 160 BC when the Jews were rebelling against the Seleucid Greeks. They opposed the imposed priesthood for political as well as religious reasons. They wanted to get rid of foreign oppressors and their agents and to return the priesthood to its simple function of being ritual officials in the temple rather than political quislings. When the Jews did succeed in throwing off the foreigners it was to set up the Hasmonaean dynasty which combined the roles of High Priests and monarchs. Naturally the Pharisees’ opposition continued. Thus, the Pharisees opposed the oppressors, the sacrilegious and collaborationist Sadducees. But they were pragmatic. If they believed hostility was futile they would not advocate it.

Pharisees were often associated with the scribes, apparently professional scholars in the Torah, but sometimes were distinguished from them. The Pharisees accepted the Torah as inspired by God but, unlike the Sadducees, were not fundamentalists. They believed that the body of oral interpretation, carefully recorded by the scribes, was more immediate, pertinent and alive than the ancient law. They point out that the Torah itself says:

The Torah is not in Heaven.

It is therefore not perfect and needs interpretation by men. This oral tradition was immensely flexible. The age of the Prophets had long gone so no one could claim to know God’s will—it could be expressed through anyone. No one could be certain that their own interpretation was what God intended and so everyone’s views and interpretations were respected.

Humanity and understanding were built into their system. Perhaps this was just as well because the Pharisees were far from a homogeneous body. They certainly divided into a Left Wing and a Right Wing, and perhaps there were finer subdivisions. The famous disputes between the Rabbis Hillel and Shammai in the century before the crucifixion testify to this.

These two famous Pharisees led famous schools in Jerusalem called the Beth Hillel and the Beth Shammai by the Rabbis. They were respectively the liberal and the conservative wings of Pharisaism. Shammai advocated a more stringent and literal interpretation of the law, while Hillel expounded its more flexible application.

The Talmud illustrates their personality differences. A gentile asked Shammai to teach him the entire Torah in the time he could stand on one foot! Shammai, a surveyor, chased away the impudent man with a measuring rod. The gentile asked Hillel the same question. Hillel answered:

What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowman. This is the entire Torah. All the rest is commentary—now go and study.

The parallels with Hillel’s statement are readily recognized in Jesus’s version:

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets,

Matthew 7:12

and Paul’s:

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Galatians 5:14

It was the Hillel form of Pharisaism that was adopted in the academies at Javneh and in Galilee during the second and third centuries, to become the Judaism of today.

Pharisees were democratic. In matters of law where a clear cut decision was needed, they took a vote and dissenting rabbis were obliged to hold to the view of the majority until the matter was raised again. A change of vote did not perturb the assembly because changes of circumstances were recognised as part of life—decisions would change as the circumstances did. Dissenting views as well as majority decisions were recorded for future reference, thus becoming akin to precedent so that when changes occurred a new generation of scholars could refer back to the dissenting views of their predecessors. Decisions were not divine but human and were therefore fallible—rejected views might turn out to be more correct. This was how God wanted it. The work required in considering, reasoning and interpreting was necessary to the seeking of truth:

According to the effort is the reward.

This effort of reasoning was good for the soul and necessary to the finding of truth.

So, Pharisees had no need to quarrel when they disagreed, nor to persecute dissenters. Disciplinary action only came when someone refused to abide by the majority decision, and even then on matters of the Law not on matters of theology. Punishment was simply a period of ostracism. Different views on the messiah could be and were voiced perfectly acceptably including the one that there could be no messiah because he had already been manifest as the virtuous king, Hezekiah. The Pharisees did regard as heretical refusal to accept oral law.

So Pharisees themselves were remarkably tolerant. They were so tolerant that they were actually a widely diverse group of people. This is confirmed by what the Pharisees thought of themselves. Descriptions of the Pharisees exist in both the the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and they substantially agree. There were seven different types of Pharisees, described in paraphrase thus:

1. Counting Pharisees were always adding up their good deeds
2. Procrastinating Pharisees kicked their heels while finding excuses for delaying a good deed
3. Bloodied Pharisees shut their eyes so as not to look on a woman and so walked into walls, bloodying themselves
4. Pestle Pharisees walked bent forward at an angle, in false humility, like a pestle leaning in a mortar
5. Duty Pharisees constantly asked what more they could do to be dutiful, they were already so good
6. The Pharisee from fear quaked in fear of the wrath of God
7. The Pharisee from love of God—like Abraham—loved God and lived in faith and charity.

So even the Pharisees themselves saw that in the diversity of their own ranks that many fell short of the ideal behaviour which is that of the seventh Pharisee, love of God. Jesus was no more critical of Pharisees than they were of themselves. Conspicuous piety could be foolish and hypocritical.

What then was the reason for Jesus’s bitterness toward the Pharisees? Despite this generally favourable picture of the Pharisees, in the New Testament, the most barbed rebukes Jesus issued were for the Pharisees. The most severe attack on them is in Matthew where Jesus condemned them seven times in these words:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

Matthew 23:13

But did Jesus and the early Church unjustly caricature the Pharisees in his denunciations? Jews say the gospels unfairly maligned the Pharisees, accusing them of rigid formalism, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and externalism. They say the Pharisees stressed devotion of the heart, worship of God for its own sake, and the obligation to go beyond the letter of the law. Yet, Christianity has made Pharisee a pejorative word.

One of the reasons is that Judaism after the first century was Pharisaic Judaism. Scholars agree that Jewish life today—the synagogue, the rabbi, forms of prayer, Torah study, and belief in the oral law—stems from the Pharisaic tradition and derives its religious character from it. The first Christian bishops knew they were indebted to Judaism. After all they had laid claim to its scriptures! But Jews were unpopular and so they had to distance themselves from them. The most clear evidence of Jews in the empire was its religion which was established before Christianity and had won over many gentile proselytes, especially women. It was, therefore, in the bishops’ own interest to denigrate their rival religion. After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish religion was a Pharisaic religion. So much of the polemic against the Pharisees in the New Testament is really a reflexion of this first century religious battle.

Nevertheless, if Jesus belonged to the sect of the Essenes, he would not have respected the Pharisees, so the gospels had a genuine anti-Pharisaic tradition to build on. There were two. One was the Pharisaic emphasis on the oral law, called the “traditions of the Jews” in the gospels, with which Jesus had the greatest conflict (Mt 15:1-9). The ordinances of the scribes were more important than the Torah itself. They and not the written Torah, were the final authority. Such liberality in treating the Torah would have been quite alien to Essenes, although, in fact, they no less than the Pharisees interpreted the law.

Surely, the main reason was that most Pharisees were pragmatists who believed hostility to the invader was futile, though there were more nationalistic factions. Most would not advocate dissension, being unwilling to risk reprisals against Israel by organizing against Rome. And though Pharisees rarely actively collaborated like the Sadducees, in earlier times they had invited foreign powers into Israel to quell civil war which they considered the greater evil. Indeed, they distrusted Jewish princes having suffered at their hands in the previous century. For Jesus this was hypocrisy. They had betrayed God by inviting gentiles into God’s land and condoned their continued presence as rulers. That was why he opposed them, and they him, and why he called them hypocrities.

The Pharisees were not monolithic, as even the Talmud admits, and Jesus knew that some Pharisees were like himself Jewish nationalists, despite their history of compromise. Even in the New Testament there were Pharisees who lived up to their own ideals as loving God. In Luke 13:31, we read:

The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get out and depart from here, for Herod will kill you.

And elsewhere Jesus had friendly contacts with Pharisees (Luke 7:36ff; 11:37; 13:31-33; 14:1; Mark 12:28-34; Matthew 23:1-2).

14. …the Pharisees are those who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws, and introduce the first sect. These ascribe all to fate [or providence], and to God, and yet allow, that to act what is right, or the contrary, is principally in the power of men, although fate does co-operate in every action. They say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies—but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment… Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord, and regard for the public.

Josephus, Jewish War (Whiston) 2:8:14

3. Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason; What that prescribes to them as good for them, they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason’s dictates for practice. They also pay a respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in any thing which they have introduced; and, when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction; insomuch that the cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also.

Josephus, Antiquities (Whiston) 18:1:3

The Sadducees

Sadducee is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew Zadok, the Arabic, Siddiq, meaning righteous or just or, as the Arabs also put it true, words ideally suited to the Essenes and, indeed used frequently by them. Plainly, there must have been a link.

Sadducees are first reported in Josephus’s history of John Hyrcanus (Ant 13:10:6) as a political group subordinate to the Pharisees, until the Sadducee Jonathan persuades the ruler to support their cause—an unpopular move. Otherwise, they feature little in Josephus except in his descriptions of the three philosophies.

Sadducees were families of vast wealth and power and their hangers on. They were a caste similar to the Brahmins of India who provided the priesthood and allied with the ruling power to retain their wealth. They collaborated openly, fearful of losing their riches and social position if there were any sedition. The Romans appointed the High Priest, as did Herod before them, making his selection from the priestly families. Failing to understand the diffuse nature of Judaism, Romans thought that control of the temple would control the people, but the separation of the sacerdotal and the teaching functions in the Jewish religion is one reason why it has survived. Destruction of the ceremonial centre never affected the religion as a whole.

The priesthood supposedly comprised a caste notionally descended from Aaron, Moses’s brother, according to the Jewish legends that the Persian functionaries accompanying the “returning” Babylonian exiles had rewritten. Yet, the Sadducees stemmed only from the time of the successors of Alexander the Great. Under Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, the priestly line was broken and the Chief Priests established as agents of foreign rule. And so they remained under the Romans. An Egyptian had assumed the role of High Priest under Herod the Great, and his descendants constituted the priestly family of the Boethusians in the rabbinical literature. They might have been the Herodians of Mark and Matthew, Herod having rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, the source of their influence.

Josephus contrasts the Sadducees with the Pharisees and Essenes and depicts them as rather sensibly denying divine action in the world, affirming human freedom, and believing that the soul perishes along with the body. All our sources agree that the Sadducees rejected beliefs in afterlife, resurrection and a judgement of the dead. They rejected the oral law. They needed no interpretation of the Torah and therefore no scholars. Atonement through temple ritual was sufficient. Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed over the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees—influenced by the Greeks for whom it was a disgusting thought—denied it and the Pharisees—loyal to the Persian tradition—accepted it. In the Christian New Testament the Son of God takes the view of the Pharisees but the Essenes too believed in resurrection. More surprising is their rejection of the immortal soul, but Josephus suggests that they were inconsistent and argued with each other.

Many Jews were distressed because the administrators of the temple were corrupt, but tolerated it as God’s will. Not so the Essenes. To judge by the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were training a pure priesthood in waiting ready to replace the unclean upstarts in the temple. In the meantime, the Chief Priests and their Sadducaean supporters serviced the temple financed by supposedly voluntary tithes that were often extorted.

In the gospels, they appear only once in Mark (Mk 12:18) and Luke (Lk 20:27) with their question about the resurrection (paralleled in Mt 22:23). Matthew adds them into two other narratives (Mt 3:7; 16:1-12). In Acts, their concerns are again the question of resurrection (Acts 4:2; 23:6-8). They are the party of the high priest in Acts 5:17, and they were represented in the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:6.

Jesus and the Essenes hated the Sadducees because they openly collaborated with the Romans and because they had gained riches by extortion—riches were ill-gotten by wicked people who gathered where they had not sowed. Sadducees pretended to be God’s servants while robbing Him and His children of their birthright.

14. …but the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men’s own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades… But the behaviour of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild; and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them.

Josephus, Jewish War (Whiston) 2:8:14

4. The doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of any thing besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent; but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity; but they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.

Josephus, Antiquities (Whiston) 18:1:4

Hasidim

Biblical scholar, Geza Vermes believes Jesus was one of the Hasidim, The Pious or Devout Ones, whose prayers made miracles occur. He was a charismatic whose powers derived not from magical formulae but from contact with God. Vermes sounds as though he really believes this!

An earlier example was Honi the Circle Drawer, or Onias, the Righteous, in Josephus. In a period of drought about 63 BC, just before Jerusalem fell to Pompey, Honi effected a rain miracle by drawing a circle. When he refused to favour either side in a dispute between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus he was stoned to death by Hyrcanus’s followers. Another Hasid contemporaneous with Jesus was Hanina ben Dosa, a Galilaean who was similar to Jesus. His devotion at prayer was so intense he did not notice a snake bite him, and as a healer he could even cure at a distance.

Vermes tells us the main characteristic of the Hasidim besides their working miracles was that they were poor. They lived according to the principle:

What is mine is yours and what is yours is your own.

They were not interested in legal matters and matters of ritual but were concerned with moral matters. They were respected for their love and kindness but they were renowned for their miracles. They were men of deeds respected as forming a link between heaven and earth by their closeness to God. The Hasidim were often Galilaeans perhaps because they began as fierce fighters against the Greeks and later joined equivalent freedom fighters like the band of Judas the Galilaean. Their individual teachings often offended the orthodox such as the Pharisees who respected these men for their devoutness but disliked their individuality, disapproving of the Hasidic disregard for the minutiae of the Law and fearing for the religious order which they had established. The Pharisees did not like the Hasidim’s apparent closeness to God and, at the time of Honi, the leader of the Pharisees wanted to have the Hasid excommunicated but dare not. However the organisation of the orthodox eventually prevailed over the individuality and popular appeal of the Hasidim and established Rabbinic Judaism.

Vermes concludes that Jesus was:

The just man, the zaddik, the helper and the healer, the teacher and leader, venerated by his intimates and less committed admirers alike as prophet, lord and son of God.

One has to say that these men sound just like Essenes. The Essenes were accorded "Just" or "Righteous" as an honorific title. Two hundred years before Barabbas, the Hasidim had been the movement from which sprang other Jewish parties including the Pharisees and the Essenes. Were the Galilaean Hasidim an offshoot of the Essenes? Did they have a militant wing? Were they the Galilaeans—the supporters of Judas—of Josephus? Were they the Nazarenes?

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History