92 CHAPTER TWOnevertheless, some of the patristic information may be reliable.^108 At the very
least, we know of an additional sect, the Christians, whom Josephus does not
count. And such groups as Ophites and Hemerobaptists are mentioned often
enough by later writers to make their existence a strong possibility. In any
case, we would have to posit the existence of Jewish groups probably of sectar-
ian character in order to explain the later emergence of, for example, the
Elkesaites and the circles responsible for those gnostic texts of more or less
definitely Jewish background.
But Josephus did not invent his list of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.^109
The polemicalpesharim(biblical commentaries) from Qumran are plausibly
supposed to refer to Pharisees and Sadducees, in addition to the sectarians
themselves, perhaps an Essene splinter group (though consensus on this point
has recently shown signs of dissipating).^110 The Gospels and Acts also refer
to Pharisees and Sadducees; the Essenes, politically inactive and themselves
sometimes mildly persecuted, were apparently not thought to have opposed
Jesus. The rabbis, too, often speak of three sects. The third on the rabbinic
list, the BYTSYN, apparently closely associated with the Sadducees (indeed,
in some sources synonymous with them), are very obscure indeed, but the
recently revealed similarities between Sadducean and Qumranian halakhah
suggest, though admittedly not very strongly, that BYTSYN may represent not
“Boethusians,” as the word is usually transcribed,^111 but “the house of (BYT)
the Essenes.”^112
The three sects, then, seem to have had almost an official status. Indeed,
in his account of the alleged foundation of a fourth sect by Judas the Galilean,
Josephus practically says as much, for his main accusation is that the very
foundationofanadditionalsectconstitutedadangerousandillegitimateinno-
(^108) For a discussion, see M. Simon, “Les sectes juives chez les Pe`res,”Studia Patristica I, ed. K.
Aland and F. L. Cross, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur
63 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1957), 526–39. Simon argues that Hemerobaptists and Meristae
really existed but were not sects (which, in Simon’s view, did not exist in pre-70 Judaism, in the
absence of an orthodoxy) but tendencies of thought or loose collections of conventicles character-
ized not by heretical but, on the contrary, ultraorthodox practices and beliefs (537). See also J.
Lieu, “Epiphanius on the Scribes and Pharisees (Pan. 15.1–16.4),”JTS39 (1988): 509–24.
(^109) Contra S. Cohen, “Significance of Yavneh,” 30–1, especially note 5. The oft cited claim of
the Palestinian Talmud (Sanhedrin 10:6, 29c) that there were twenty-four sects of heretics in
existence when the Temple was destroyed is of no independent value.
(^110) See A. Baumgarten, “Crisis in the Scrollery: A Dying Consensus,”Judaism44 (1995): 399–
413.
(^111) Apparently reflecting the supposition that they are someho wconnected to the Herodian
high priestly family of Boethus—Ant 15.320–22, passim.
(^112) See J. Sussmann, “The History of Halakhah and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Obser-
vations on Miqsat Ma’ase HaTorah (4Q MMT),”Tarbiz59 (1989): 40–58. The article (11–76) is
a fundamental contribution to the study of the relationship between the sects; the interpretation
of BYTSYN, however, is very uncertain.