The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

In contrast to the Sadducees were the Pharisees (i.e., “the particular”), who claimed to be distinguished from others by their greater piety. They originated in the ranks of the Chasidees (“the pious”), and held strictly to the law and the prophets. But they regarded with greatest care and solicitude the letter and the wording of the law, and thus through arbitrary and forced interpretation, they produced a great mass of directions, commandments, and petty definitions of external sanctimoniousness, upon the observation of which they set great value. In this way they fell into hypocrisy and mock holiness.

Acting on the principle: “Build a fence about the law,” they saw in the restriction and limitation of action a sign of orthodox piety. “Driven by ambition, and more or less consciously indulging their own selfishness, the Pharisees made piety a kind of trade, in order by it to gain permanent power.” They wore certain signs, e.g., little rolls on arm or neck inscribed with words from the sacred law; and they sought by the “appearance of piety” to draw the people to them. “Living poor in the sight of the world, many of them, nevertheless, did not despise the treasures and pleasures of the world.”

A third sect, called the Essenes or Essees, like the Pharisees descended from the Chasidees, believed God was best served and their own salvation promoted by separation from the world and its indulgences, by the curbing of all passions and lusts, by abstinence from wine, meat, and oil, and by pious penances and common devotion. They dwelt in groups on the west side of the Dead Sea, carried on agriculture, cattle raising, and innocent, peaceful occupations. As the individuals renounced private property, they brought both possessions and profits together into a common treasury for common use. All members of the order wore the same garb; only a few believed in marriage. As overseers of the poor and physicians, they earned the gratitude of mankind. “Their external forms, their division into three successive, strictly separated degrees, their admission and strict investigation of pupils, with the vow of secrecy, their solemn oath upon reception into the last degree with the requirement henceforth to refuse all oaths—many of these things may appear to be copied from the Pythagoræan societies; but after all that would only be something chance and unimportant beside the nature of their efforts themselves. At all events, they are the noblest and most remarkable product that ancient religion brought forth without attempting to go beyond itself.”

Related to the Essees, only a “refinement and improvement” of them, were the Egyptian Therapeutæ, of whom the Jewish-Alexandrian author Philo gives an enthusiastic description. As among the former, we find among the latter also “community of life and labour in deserts, close conformity to Holy Scriptures and allegorical interpretation of them. But the common labour becomes here merely a common spiritual exercise in the true fear of God and veneration of the great lawgiver Moses in contemplative rest.” The Therapeutæ lived in small companies about a house of prayer, but on Sabbaths and feast days they united for greater services. Their principal seat and place of assembly was in the desert by Lake Mareotis west of Alexandria. Women were also received in the order, “at the meetings modestly taking their places beside the ranks of men. Besides the expounding of the sacred books and edification out of them, prayers and fasting were their daily business, with bread, salt, and hyssop as the most suitable nourishment. Moreover the actual spiritual exercises readily rose to new and characteristic songs and poetic creations of various kinds.” The “Book of Wisdom” appears to be one of the finest fruits of this spiritual tendency.

[108-65 B.C.]

The Maccabæan family, which had showed itself so great in time of need and distress, degenerated in good fortune. Before his death John Hyrcanus bestowed the secular princely dignity upon his wife, while the high-priesthood went by right of inheritance to his eldest son Aristobulus. Hardly had the latter taken possession of his office, however, when he assumed the title of King, imprisoned his mother and let her starve to death. He also kept three of his brothers in durance; the fourth, Antigonus, fell a victim of a court cabal before his very eyes. These deeds, however, awakened the conscience of the royal high priest, who was not without feeling, and so tormented him that he died the very next year. (108 B.C.)