128 A History of Judaism
reason to believe that their approach to the Bible could not continue
long past the Second Temple period, since nothing in the views ascribed
to them required the continued existence of the Temple (and Josephus,
writing in the 80s and 90s ce, gave every impression that Sadducaism
was still a philosophy which Jews could adopt in his day). Hence the
Karaite movement of the end of the first millennium ce was to be seen
by the rabbis as a revival of Sadducaism. Indeed, since to be a Sadducee
was an individual choice and required joining no community, in prin-
ciple it would be possible to become a Sadducee now.^31
Essenes and Therapeutae
In marked contrast to the individualist Sadducees were the Essenes,
whose communal life was the subject of a number of idealizing portraits
by writers of the first century ce who agreed in their enthusiasm for
these ‘athletes of virtue’ and the perfection of their communal regime,
despite some stark differences in their descriptions of what the Essene
life entailed. For the Platonizing philosopher Philo, the Essenes were
devoted to the study of philosophical ethics. For Josephus, intent on
telling his gentile readers about the best to be found in Judaism, the
Essenes were a pious group dedicated to a regime like that of the
Pythagoreans, a religious society founded by the Greek philosopher
Pythagoras in Italy in the fifth century bce and dedicated to purity, self-
examination, distinctive taboos and explicit ethical principles. Such
propaganda evidently had its success, for the Essenes were the only Jew-
ish group to come to the notice of non- Jewish writers. The elder Pliny, a
Roman polymath from Comum in north Italy who compiled an immense
amount of heterogeneous information in his Natural History in the
mid- first century ce, wrote with admiration about the Essenes:
They are a people unique of its kind and admirable beyond all others in
the whole world, without women and renouncing love entirely, without
money, and having for company only the palm trees. Owing to the throng
of newcomers, this people is daily re- born in equal number; indeed, those
whom, wearied by the fluctuations of fortune, life leads to adopt their cus-
toms, stream in in great numbers. Thus, unbelievable though this may
seem, for thousands of centuries a race has existed which is eternal yet into
which no one is born: so fruitful for them is the repentance which others
feel for their past lives!