RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 93vation(Ant18.6–9).^113 Wearethusconfrontedwithapeculiarphenomenon—
a set of organizations that were to some extent exclusivist and conceived of
themselves as someho wset apart not only from each other but also from the
nonsectarian norm, which seem by the first century to have lost,as groups, the
authority they had once enjoyed—at any rate, they play no role in Josephus’s
narrative after the Hasmonean period—^114 but which nevertheless enjoyed a
measure of recognition, respectability, and legitimacy.
NumbersA good place to begin consideration of the sects’ position in Palestinian Jewish
society in the first century is with the often neglected question of their size.
Josephus provides some numbers: 6,000 for the Pharisees toward the end of
Herod’s reign (Ant17.42) and 4,000 for the Essenes at an unspecified date,
presumably sometime in the early first century (Ant18.21, in agreement with
Philo,Quod Omnis Probus75). He provides no figures for the Sadducees but
indicates that they were a smaller group, though socially distinguished. The
general problems with figures provided by ancient historiographers are well-
known and need not be rehearsed. The questions raised by these particular
figures are no less serious. Josephus does not say where he found them, but
they are unlikely to come from anything as pretendedly accurate as a census
list. Their roundnesssuggests that they are guesses,and similarly round figures
provided by Josephus are sometimes dramatically wrong, for example, the
30,000followersoftheEgyptiangoesmentionedabove,or,stillmoreabsurdly,
the 100,000 troops Josephus claims he led in Lower Galilee—a figure that is
in all likelihood well over that of the adult male population of Galilee as a
whole. Sometimes, though, Josephus’s guesses are plausible, and the fact that
in this case he gives, in two very different contexts, figures for two of the main
sects in the mid-thousands may argue (admittedly not very strongly) for their
utility as indicators of orders of magnitude.
Let us, then, take a wild leap of faith and suppose for the sake of argument
thatthenumbersareroughlycorrect. Itisgenerallysupposedthatthesectarians
tended to live in Judaea. This can hardly be thought an absolute certainty: no
doubt sectarians sometimes emigrated. But it is true that Josephus, Mark, and
Matthe wal ways treat the Pharisees as a Judaean organization, the presence
of some of whose members in Galilee was a noteworthy occasion.^115 Let us
furthermore assume for Judaea a population of 100,000–150,000, a figure con-
sistent with Broshi’s estimate of a maximum population of 500,000 for the
(^113) See S. Schwartz,Josephus, p. 188.
(^114) For discussion, see above, chapter 1, note 68.
(^115) Cf. Baumgarten,Flourishing of Jewish Sects, pp. 45–46.