Sukkah 043

In Sukkah 039 and 041 we had occasion to mention the rivalry between two religious factions in Eretz-Israel during the last few centuries before the common era and during the first century of the common era and possibly even later). Orin Rotman writes:

Over the last decade from time to time you have pointed out the divergence of the methods/philosophy of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. What I don't seem to be able to get a handle on is how this could possibly develop into a practice schism of the magnitude that is represented by the water libation ceremony. Did someone or group pop up over a period of a few hundred years with a 'discovered' tradition from Sinai? Was there always this fight from the time of perhaps Ezra? I am somewhat familiar with the politics and changes during the period of the Hashmoneans, favoring the Sadducee regimen, but it seems to boggle the mind that "the word of God" could be so disputed as to something as important and central to that society as the Temple service, particularly among just a relatively small, integrated, one family clan as the Cohanim.

I respond:

How the schism between the Pharisees and the Sadducees arose is not clear: the century in which it must have occurred (444 BCE – 333 BCE) is shrouded from the clear vision of history. It is as if in 444 BCE we traveled into an unlit tunnel and came out of the tunnel only in 333 BCE. We can only guess what was happening in that century by comparing the known situations before and after. What follows is my own interpretation of what happened.

The Greek appellation 'Sadducee' is derived from the name of the High Priest in the time of King Solomon, Zadok. They represented a Judaism which found its expression mainly in the sacrificial cult and the customs and traditions of the Temple in Jerusalem. They were, no doubt, 'mainstream Judaism' up to the destruction of the first Temple (587 BCE) at least. (We should bear in mind some kind of 'opposition' to the sacrificial cultus from many of the literary prophets who demanded an ethical righteousness in everyday life as well as – or in place of? – the rituals of the Bet Mikdash. Some of these religious demands certainly seem to agree with later teachings of the Pharisees.) With the restoration from Babylon to Eretz-Israel (538 BCE) the priests certainly revived that form of Judaism in the rebuilt Temple (515 BCE), and the High Priests in the restoration period do seem to have also formed the political leadership of the country.

However, during the period of which we have little knowledge it seems that a new group grew up in the Jewish people. They were called 'Pharisees' (Separatists), presumably because they 'opted out' of the Sadducean 'mainstream'. At the centre of the Pharisaic philosophy was the teaching that together with the Written Torah God had given to Moses at Sinai the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah was an instrument for expounding the biblical text in such a manner as the exposition served as a kind of constant 'updating' of the relevance of the Written Torah. We have very few examples of the actual halakhic disputes between the two sects but the few that we have seem to indicate that the Pharisees used the method of 'explaining' the text in order to lessen its severity; the Sadducees maintained the literal meaning of the biblical text.

Generally speaking, the Hasmonean rulers of Eretz-Israel (descendants of Matityahu and Judah the Maccabee) favoured the Sadducees. But the Sadducees were mainly an aristocracy; the Pharisees had the support and love of the bulk of the people. A turning point came during the reign of Queen Salome Alexandra (76 – 67 BCE) who gave the Pharisees their chance of power. (Her brother, Shim'on ben-Shataḥ, was the leader of the Pharisees.) During the long years of the Roman occupation of Eretz-Israel, which began in 67 BCE, there was constant friction between the two sects. However, with the destruction of the Bet Mikdash in 70 CE the Sadducees lost their raison d'être and slowly faded from history. (Sadducean vestiges may have contributed to the eventual rise of Karaism, but that is another story.) Thus the Pharisees gradually morphed into the 'mainstream' rabbinic Judaism that we know today.

From the historical point of view we cannot know whether the Pharisaic philosophy was a sudden innovation or had been present all the while within the fabric of Judaism and only gradually came to the fore. Obviously, rabbinic tradition claims that the oral tradition was unbroken ever since Sinai. (The Sadducees did not believe in angels or the immortality of the soul, and, of course, denied any such thing as an oral Torah.) One thing is clear: Pharisaism took Judaism from the hands of a priestly elite and gave it to the people.