96 CHAPTER TWOMainstream or Marginal?As scholars have long recognized and Baumgarten has recently confirmed,
the three main sects shared a set of concerns. All of them, apparently at all
periods of their existence, were mainly concerned with the interpretation of
the Torah, a concern that includes the proper conduct of the Temple cult.
Though the evidence is limited, Baumgarten has suggested that they shared
to some extent a specialist language and many details of legal interpretation.
This position probably requires some modification: they did share ways of
talking and thinking about the Law, as well as ways of observing it, but there is
also evidence that the sectarian groups all developed and carefully cultivated
differences among themselves. Certainly the peculiarities of the language of
the sectarian scrolls from Qumran are well-known. Given that the sects seem
to have competed with each other and probably tried to appeal to the same
segments of the Judaean population, it would be surprising if they did not
emphasize the “small differences” (as Freud put it) among them.
This last point requires emphasis: though the Sadducees were known for
the aristocratic character of their membership (one should not, however, sup-
pose that the sect and the aristocracy were coterminous),^123 most sectarians
were probably subelites, as Baumgarten compellingly argued, rather than
elites—the rank-and-file priesthood, scribes, well-to-do landowners, officials,
merchants, and Temple staff—groups that probably overlapped quite signifi-
cantly. As Josephus implies in the introduction to his autobiography, which
sect such people joined, if any, was mainly a matter of personal choice. The
fact that, at least in Jerusalem and vicinity, most men of the appropriate class
did choose to join a sect explains why Josephus could describe the sects as if
they constituted the entirety of Judaism.
The concentration of the sectarians in and around Jerusalem and their
connection with the temple demonstrates their essential cohesion but also
sharpened the tensions among the groups.^124 Modern scholars have supposed
that control of the ritual of the temple was vitally important. In this, they
follo wthe lead of their sources: forty years after the fact, Josephus could still
be outraged at Agrippa II’s decision to allo wthe Levitical temple choristers
to dress in white linen, like priests (Ant20.218). Many centuries later, the
Babylonian rabbis chose to imagine that the Sadducean high priests were
(^123) As Sanders,Judaism, pp. 317–40, astonishingly does. Certainly, not all the high priests were
Sadducees, and it would be very surprising if such other aristocrats as the descendants of Herod
were. At most, such figures may occasionally have patronized the sects, as Agrippa I may have
patronized the Pharisees.
(^124) Cohen exaggerated the role of the Temple in generating sectarian differentiation:From the
Maccabees to the Mishnah, pp. 131–32; “Significance of Yavneh.”