When his brother and successor Alexander Jannai tried to make the authority
of king and high priest absolute, and not subject to the approval of the leg-
islative assembly, a crisis of legitimacy ensued. Traditional elements within
the population questioned the legitimacy of ruling without Davidic ancestry
and recognition of the authority of the Torah.
The growing ambivalence toward Hasmonean dynastic claims was aggra-
vated by the emergence of two political parties or sectarian movements
during the second century B.C.E.: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The
Pharisees (literally, separatists) first appeared around 150 B.C.E. during the
reign of Jonathan Maccabee. Some have conjectured that they were the intel-
lectual descendants of the scribes and gerousia, others that they were an
offshoot of the Sadducees.
Pharisees were generally farmers and artisans drawn from the middle and
lower classes, hailing from small towns and the countryside. Thus, they
tended to be less Hellenized. Pharisees were distinguishable above all by their
belief in an oral tradition of Jewish laws that existed alongside the written
laws of the Torah. From this oral tradition, the Pharisees had evolved a more
meticulous observance of Sabbath rest, ritual purity, dietary restrictions, and
a ritual of personal prayer. Politically, some Pharisees were willing to accom-
modate the illegitimate Hasmonean rule, and even foreign rule, as long as
religious toleration was guaranteed. Others, believing the Hasmoneans were
illegitimate, called for revolt.
In contrast, the Sadducees regarded themselves as the heirs of the Zadokite
priesthood. Most were priests; others were members of wealthy families that
had married into priestly families. Sadducees were generally upper-class,
Hellenized Jerusalemites. They rejected the oral tradition of the Pharisees.
Instead, they interpreted the Torah in their own way.
The power and influence of each sect depended on winning the favor of the
current monarch and controlling key institutions, notably older institutions
such as the Temple and the Sanhedrin and newer ones such as the synagogue.
The Temple remained firmly in the hands of the Sadducees. The Sanhedrin, a
legislative assembly that dated back to the time of the gerousia, was easier to
gain control over. The high priest presided over the Sanhedrin, giving the
Sadducees a constant voice; the Pharisees gained control through numerical
supremacy. Most confrontations between the sects took place in the Sanhedrin.
As an institution, the synagogue – an early epithet for a house of prayer –
emerged during the late second and early first centuries B.C.E. as an important
new focal point of Jewish communal life. Scholars have labored to pinpoint
key aspects of this nascent institution. Opinions as to when it first emerged
vary from the sixth through the first century B.C.E. In addition, some scholars
claim that the first synagogues were established in the Land of Israel; others
say in a diaspora Jewish community. Furthermore, some claim that the ori-
gins of the synagogue were external – that is, Hellenistic. Others root the
synagogue in biblical and post-biblical stories of personal prayer, such as
32 The challenge of Hellenism