PHARISEES, Sylvester Hassell The rulers in Judea were much troubled, about 100 years B.C., with dissensions, of a religious character, in their midst. The controversy between Pharisees and Sadducees increased, and the more rapidly as peace prevailed between Judea and other nations. Their views were quite opposite. “The Pharisees were moderate predestinarians; the Sadducees asserted free will. The Pharisees believed in the immortality of the soul and the existence of angels, though their creed on both these subjects was strongly tinged with Orientalism. The Sadducees denied both. The Pharisees received not merely the prophets, but the traditional law, likewise, as of equal authority with the books of Moses. The Sadducees, if they did not reject, considered the prophets greatly inferior to the law. The Sadducees are said to have derived their doctrine from Sadoc, the successor of Antigonus Socho in the presidency of the great Sanhedrim. Antigonus taught the lofty doctrine of pure and disinterested love and obedience to God, without regard to punishment or reward. Sadoc is said to have denied the latter, without maintaining the higher doctrine on which it was founded. Still, the Sadducees are far from what they are sometimes represented, the teachers of a loose and indulgent Epicureanism; they inculcated the belief in Divine Providence, and the just and certain administration of temporal rewards and punishments.”
“The Pharisees had the multitude, ever led away by extravagant religious pretensions, entirely at their disposal: Sadduceeism spread chiefly among the higher order. It would be unjust to the Sadducees to confound them with that unpatriotic and Hellenized party, which, during the whole of the noble struggles of the Maccabees, sided with the Syrian oppressors, for these are denounced as avowed apostates from Judaism; yet probably, after the establishment of the independent government, the latter might make common cause and become gradually mingled up with the Sadduceean party, as exposed alike to the severities of Pharisaic administration. During the rest of the Jewish history we shall find these parties as violently opposed to each other, and sometimes causing as fierce and dangerous dissensions as those which rent the
commonwealths of Greece and Rome or the republican states of modern Europe” Milman, quoted by Hassell (Hassell’s History pg 165)