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By Root 2553 0

as stated in the Bible. Indeed, they stayed closer to the text of the Bible than the rabbis. Their sin was that they were literalists. But Sadducean denial of life after death put them in an understandable and respectable Greek position as well. They were seen as closely related intellectually to the Epicureans of the early Hellenistic period. It takes no stretch of the imagination to see that Stoicism and Epicureanism, with their lack of a beatific afterlife, would have appealed to them. Indeed, Josephus compared them to the Epicureans. Because of this easy and natural connection with Epicureanism, the aristocrats of the land of Israel were able to assume that Greek and Hebrew thought were easily synthesized. Like the aristocratic Epicureans of Greek culture, the traditional “old money” aristocracy of Hellenistic Israel felt that life should be faced in the most steadfast and brave terms, without reference to any beatific afterlife. It was a heroic and noble tradition that came down directly from the Biblical Sheol and from the Greek Hades, which was so well described in the epics. There was no reason to believe that these two places were not synonymous.

The Paradox of the Pharisees and Josephus’s Hermeneutics

IT IS THE Pharisees who present us with a paradox. The Sadducees needed no notion of the afterlife. The millennialists need a strong notion of resurrection, which gives justice to those who suffer and heavenly transformation to some of those who fall as martyrs. The Pharisees had religious beliefs which are harder to understand if set parallel to their social position. Indeed, we will not entirely be able to understand Pharisaic beliefs until we study Paul the ex-Pharisee and then the rabbis. The rabbis are the heirs to the Pharisees and many of their ideas are to be found in their writings.

We know that the Sadducees had to share power with the Pharisees, who were apprently a skilled class of scribes and craftsmen who studied the laws in detail. Not only did Josephus describe them as the most accurate interpreters of the law, he did so in language that suggests that they already possessed the “oral law,” which is characteristic of the rabbis. Josephus described their product as nomima, “legal enactments” (Vita 191), and said in several places that they handed down (paredosan) regulations not recorded in the Torah of Moses (Ant. 13.297; 17.41). The Greek terminology suggests oral transmission, as does the sentence structure, which contrasts the Pharisaic enterprise with the written law. Josephus described the Pharisees as more abstemious in their personal habits than the patrician Sadducees: “They simplify their standard of living” (Ant. 18.12). He said that they were not impressed by luxury nor sought it in this world. Rather they were respectful and deferential to elders and kept their word (Ant. 18.12). “The Pharisees are affectionate to each other and cultivate harmonious relationships within the community” (J.W. 2.166).

This is a standard description of the solace of philosophical communities in the Greco-Roman world. True philosophers not only read and meditate on the truths of the universe, they also translate their beliefs into communal life, living with their fellows in an ideal community. Josephus styles the Sadducees as an arrogant and powerful class (they had indeed fomented the war with Rome before political leadership was usurped by the Zealots), while he styled the Pharisees (with whom he had his differenees) as a circumspect scribal client class of the Romans, sharing in the government and attempting to negotiate a peace with the Romans. The Pharisees seemed less impressed with Judaean military might, less interested in rebellion, and more willing to put up with the Romans, because they saw Roman power as overwhelming, though they can hardly be said to have liked them. In fact, Josephus was quite often annoyed with the Pharisees when he was military commander of the Galilee during the early days of the revolt because they constantly attempted to negotiate a cessation of hostilities and undermine