RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 97compelled to follo wPharisaic rules in the Temple, rules they themselves se-
cretly kne wto be correct (B. Yoma 19b)!
Inreality,though,apartfromtherareepisodesofroyalinterferencereported
by Josephus, we kno wnothing about ho wdecisions regarding temple ritual
were made. It is probably significant that Josephus never says that any sect
controlled the ritual in the first century.^125 The sectarian arguments reported
in the Mishnah and the Dead Sea Scrolls may have occurred in the Hasmo-
nean Temple, or they may have been theoretical or imaginary. The Herodian
high priests and high-ranking Temple staff may have had nonsectarian tradi-
tions of their own or may have patched together ad hoc compromises.^126 In
any case, it seems very unlikely that the mass of the Jews had any interest in
theissue.^127 Whyshouldtheyhave?TheyvisitedtheTempleonlyinfrequently,
would have been wholly ignorant about how its affairs were generally run,
and would have had little motivation to take sides even in any debates that
mighthaveexistedaboutthepilgrimagefestivalsacrifices,whichwereactually
witnessed by large groups of people.^128 Thoughthe pilgrimage festivals in post-
Herodian Jerusalem were often scenes of disorder and even violence, none of
it is said to have been related to tensions about correct ritual.^129 The rabbis, it
is true, imagined that “the people” rose against Alexander Yannai because he
failed to perform the water libation in accordance with Pharisaic rules, but in
what is presumably the original version of the story, inAnt13.372–73, their
objection to the king is the result not of his improper performance of the
ritual but of his problematic descent. And both Josephus and the rabbis forgot
that before Herod rebuilt the temple, the pilgrimage festivals were necessarily
small-scale affairs. There was simply no room in the temple precinct for the
sort of mass protest both described.
In sum, the sectarian divisions were important among priests, scribes, and
other relatively well-off (and so presumably well-educated) Jews in the first
century, especially in Judaea. Their importance demonstrates three things:
the strength of the core ideology of Judaism; powerful devotion, which united
(^125) Ant18.15–7 refers quite explicitly only to rituals outside the Temple.
(^126) Cf. Sanders,Judaism, pp. 458–90.
(^127) Cf. theimportant discussionof D.Schwartz, “MMT,Josephus, andthe Pharisees,” inRead-
ing 4QMMT, pp. 67–80.
(^128) The alternative is to suppose that the legal disputes among the sects were the equivalents
of the abstruse Christian theological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries, which produced
divisions among masses of people who probably had little real interest in the details. But there
is, once again, no evidence that Pharisees and Sadducees went through the countryside soliciting
mass support for their halakhic views. There is little reason to doubt that Pharisaic scribes some-
times attempted to regulate the legal practice of their villages in accordance with their peculiar
understanding of the laws of the Torah, but no evidence that sectarian divisions ever became
rallying points for the peasantry. They never functioned as such during the revolt of 66.
(^129) See Weitzman, “From Feasts into Mourning.”