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(56) Why John Hyrcanus went over from the Pharisees to the Sadducees

135-105 B.C.

John Hyrcanus I was the son and successor, in the offices of high priest and prince, of Simon the Maccabee.

These successes of Hyrcanus, however, aroused the envy of the Jews. His bitterest enemies were the Pharisees, one of the Jewish sects, as we have already stated, whose influence with the populace is such that a word from them against king or high priest meets with instant belief.

Hyrcanus had been their disciple and was greatly beloved by them. Having on one occasion invited them to a banquet and hospitably entertained them, and seeing them in high good humour, he began to say to them that they knew how anxious he was to live righteously, and how in all his actions he strove to please God and them (for the Pharisees are a school of philosophers); but he besought them, if ever they saw him erring and deviating from the right way, to bring him back into it and correct him. His guests declaring that there was no virtue which he lacked, he was pleased with their commendation.

But one of them, named Eleazar, an ill-natured man who delighted in faction, remarked, “As you have asked us to tell you the truth and desire to be righteous, renounce the high priesthood and be content to be ruler of the people.” And when Hyrcanus enquired of him the reason why he should lay down the office of high priest, he replied, “Because we are informed by the elders that your mother was a captive in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.”^[372] The story was false, and Hyrcanus was exasperated with the man, and all the Pharisees were greatly indignant.

A certain Jonathan,^[373] however, an intimate friend of Hyrcanus and a follower of the sect of the Sadducees (whose doctrines are the reverse of those of the Pharisees), asserted that Eleazar’s slanderous words had the unanimous approval of the whole body of Pharisees, and that this would be manifest if he asked them what punishment he deserved for what he had said. Hyrcanus, accordingly, asked the Pharisees what penalty they thought appropriate, expecting to prove^[374] by the measure of the sentence which they pronounced that the libel had not received their approval. They replied, “Stripes and imprisonment.” The taunt did not seem to merit capital punishment; the more so as the Pharisees are naturally lenient in the matter of penalties. Hyrcanus was greatly incensed at this answer, supposing that the man’s abusive language had met with their approbation. His exasperation was increased in particular by Jonathan, who so worked upon him as to induce him to desert the Pharisees and join the Sadducean party; he also persuaded him to abolish the practices which the Pharisees had ordained for the people, and to punish any who observed them. To this cause he and his sons owed their unpopularity with the multitude.

Of this more hereafter. Here I would merely explain that the Pharisees had delivered to the people certain customary practices, handed down by their forefathers and not recorded in the laws of Moses, and for that reason rejected by the Sadducees, who maintain that only what is written (in Scripture) should be held binding, and that customs based on ancestral traditions should not be observed. On these matters the two parties had great debates and differences. The Sadducees are influential only with the wealthy and have no following among the populace; the Pharisees have the masses on their side. But of these two sects and of the Essenes I have given a precise account in the second book of my Jewish (War).^[375]—Ant. XIII. 10. 5 f. (288-298).