with the traditions of the elders so as to make the Scriptures "of none effect." They analyzed the
Mosaic law to death, and substituted a labyrinth of casuistry for a living code. "They laid heavy
burdens and grievous to be borne on men’s shoulders," and yet they themselves would "not move
them with their fingers." In the New Testament they bear particularly the reproach of hypocrisy;
with, of course, illustrious exceptions, like Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and his disciple, Paul.- The less numerous Sadducees^57 were skeptical, rationalistic, and worldly-minded, and
held about the same position in Judaism as the Epicureans and the followers of the New Academy
in Greek and Roman heathendom. They accepted the written Scriptures (especially the Pentateuch),
but rejected the oral traditions, denied the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul,
the existence of angels and spirits, and the doctrine of an all-ruling providence. They numbered
their followers among the rich, and had for some time possession of the office of the high-priest.
Caiaphas belonged to their party.
The difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees reappears among modern Jews, who
are divided into the orthodox and the liberal or rationalistic parties. - The Essenes (whom we know only from Philo and Josephus) were not a party, but a
mystic and ascetic order or brotherhood, and lived mostly in monkish seclusion in villages and in
the desert Engedi on the Dead Sea.^58 They numbered about 4,000 members. With an arbitrary,
allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, they combined some foreign theosophic elements,
which strongly resemble the tenets of the new Pythagorean and Platonic schools, but were probably
derived (like the Gnostic and Manichaean theories) from eastern religions, especially from Parsism.
They practised communion of goods, wore white garments, rejected animal food, bloody sacrifices,
oaths, slavery, and (with few exceptions) marriage, and lived in the utmost simplicity, hoping
thereby to attain a higher degree of holiness. They were the forerunners of Christian monasticism.
The sect of the Essenes came seldom or never into contact with Christianity under the
Apostles, except in the shape of a heresy at Colossae. But the Pharisees and Sadducees, particularly
the former, meet us everywhere in the Gospels as bitter enemies of Jesus, and hostile as they are
to each other, unite in condemning him to that death of the cross, which ended in the glorious
resurrection, and became the foundation of spiritual life to believing Gentiles as well as Jews.
§ 10. The Law, and the Prophecy.
Degenerate and corrupt though the mass of Judaism was, yet the Old Testament economy was
the divine institution preparatory to the Christian redemption, and as such received deepest reverence
from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by terrible rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives(^57) So called either from their supposed founder, Zadoc (so Ewald, IV. 358), or from ".just" ,קידִּצַ
(^58) The name is variously written (Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, Ὀσσαῖοι) and derived from proper names, or from the Greek, or from
the Hebrew and Aramaic The most plausible derivations are from דיסה, ὅσιος, holy; from ,איבא physician (comp. the
corresponding term of Philo, θεραπευτής, which, however, means worshipper, devotee); from ח, seer; from the rabbinical ח,
watchman, keeper (Ewald, formerly); from חשׁא, to be silent (Jost, Lightfoot); from the Syriac chasi or chasyo, pious, which is
of the same root with the Hebrew chasid, chasidim (De Sacy, Ewald, IV. 484, 3rd., and Hitzig). See Schürer, N. T. Zeitgesch.
pp. 599 sqq., and Lightfoot’s instructive Excursus on the Essenes and the Colossian heresy, in Com. on Coloss. (1875), pp. 73,
114-179. Lightfoot again refutes the exploded derivation of Christianity from Essenic sources.
A.D. 1-100.