Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Pharisees and the Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus by James Tissot (Brooklyn Museum) The Jewish community of the Second Temple period is often defined by its sectarian and fragmented attributes. Josephus, in Antiquities , contextualizes the Sadducees as opposed to the Pharisees and the Essenes .
The Pharisees, like the Sadducees, were politically quiescent, and studied, taught, and worshiped in their own way. At this time, serious theological differences emerged between the Sadducees and Pharisees. The notion that the sacred could exist outside the Temple, a view central to the Essenes, was shared and elevated by the Pharisees.
During this period serious theological differences emerged between the Sadducees and Pharisees. Whereas Sadducees favored a limited interpretation of the Torah, Pharisees debated new applications of the law and devised ways for all Jews to incorporate purity practices (hitherto limited to the Jerusalem Temple, see also Ministry of Jesus#Ritual cleanliness) in their everyday lives.
Although the Pharisees had opposed the wars of expansion of the Hasmoneans and the forced conversions of the Idumeans, the political rift between them became wider when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus choose between being king and being High Priest. In response, the king openly sided with the Sadducees by adopting ...
The Pharisees wanted to maintain the authority and traditions of classical Torah teachings and began the early teachings of the Mishna, maintaining the authority of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court. According to Josephus, the Sadducees differed from the Pharisees on a number of doctrinal grounds, notably rejecting ideas of life after death.
4:3-22, 5:17-42: Peter and John are arrested by Sadducees, questioned by the Sanhedrin, and flogged (5:40 only). 6:8-8:1: Stephen is arrested by "the people…the elders and the scribes" (6:12 NRSV), questioned before the Sanhedrin, and stoned to death, sparking a "severe persecution against the church in Jerusalem" (8:1).
The origin and tenets of the Hasideans remain obscure. So too is their later influence, if any. The historian Josephus describes three groups active in Hasmonean politics by 100 BCE: the mainstream and Hasmonean-skeptical Pharisees, the Hasmonean-supporting and influential among the upper classes Sadducees, and the outright anti-Hasmonean Essenes.
Dominated by the moderate Pharisees, including Shimon ben Gamliel, president of the Sanhedrin, it appointed military commanders to oversee the defence of the city and its fortifications. Leadership of the revolt was thus taken from the Zealots and given to the more moderate and traditional leadership of the Pharisses and Sadducees.