On taking a retrospective view of Pharisaism, as we have described it, there is a saying

of our Lord which at first sight seems almo st unaccountable. Yet it is clear and emphatic.

"All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do" (Matt 23:3). But if

the early disciples were not to break at once and for ever with the Jewish community,

such a direction was absolutely needful. For, though the Pharisees were only "an

order," Pharisaism, like modern Ultramontanism, had not only become the leading

direction of theological thought, but its principles were solemnly proclaimed, and

universally acted upon--and the latter, even by their opponents the Sadducees. A

Sadducee in the Temple or on the seat of judgment would be obliged to act and decide

precisely like a Pharisee. Not that the party had not attempted to give dominance to their

peculiar views. But they were fairly vanquished, and it is said that they themselves

destroyed the book of Sadducean ordinances, which they had at one time drawn up.

And the Pharisees celebrated each dogmatic victory by a feast! What is perhaps the

oldest post-Biblical Hebrew book--the "Megillath Taanith," or roll of fasts --is chiefly a

Pharisaic calendar of self-glorification, in which dogmatic victories are made days when

fasting, and sometimes even mourning, is prohibited. Whatever, therefore, the dogmatic

views of the Sadducees were, and however they might, where possible, indulge personal

bias, yet in office both parties acted as Pharisees. They were well matched indeed.

When a Sadducean high-priest, on the Feast of Tabernacles, poured out the water on

the ground instead of into the silver funnel of the altar, Maccabean king though he was,

he scarce escaped with his life, and ever afterwards the shout resounded from all parts

of the Temple, "Hold up thy hand," as the priest yearly performed this part of the

service. The Sadducees held, that on the Day of Atonement the high-priest should light

the incense before he actually entered the Most Holy Place. As this was contrary to the

views of the Pharisees, they took care to bind him by an oath to observe their ritual

customs before allowing him to officia te at all. It was in vain that the Sadducees argued,

that the daily sacrifices should not be defrayed from the public treasury, but from

special contributions. They had to submit, and besides to join in the kind of half-holiday

which the jubilant majority inscribed in their calendar to perpetuate the memory of the

decision. The Pharisees held, that the time between Easter and Pentecost should be

counted from the second day of the feast; the Sadducees insisted that it should

commence with the literal "Sabbath" after the festive day. But, despite argument, the

Sadducees had to join when the solemn procession went on the afternoon of the feast

to cut down the "first sheaf," and to reckon Pentecost as did their opponents.

We have here referred to only a few of the differences in ritual between the views of the

Sadducees and those of the Pharisees. The essential principle of them lay in this, that

the Sadducees would hold by the simple letter of the law--do neither more nor less,

whether the consequences were to make decisions more severe or more easy. The same

principle they applied in their juridical and also in their doctrinal views. It would take us

too much into detail to explain the former. But the reader will understand how this

literality would, as a rule, make their judicial decisions (or rather such as they had

proposed) far more strict than those of the Pharisees, by a rigidly literal application of

the principle, "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." The same holds true in regard to

the laws of purification, and to those which regulated inheritance. The doctrinal views of

the Sadducees are sufficiently known from the New Testament. It is quite true that, in

opposition to Sadducean views as to the non-existence of another world and the

resurrection, the Pharisees altered the former Temple -formula into "Blessed be God from

world to world" (from generation to generation; or, "world without end"), to show that

after the present there was another life of blessing and punishment, of joy and sorrow.