The Three Jewish Sects

Archelaus’s territory was now made a province, and Coponius, a Roman of the equestrian order, was sent out as procurator, with authority from Caesar that extended even to putting men to death. While he was governor, a Galilean named Judas stirred up the people of the country to revolt. He called them cowards if they would put up with paying tribute to the Romans and accept mortal men as their masters when they had God. This man was a teacher with a sect of his own, in no way like the others. [a]

For there are three schools of philosophy among the Jews. The adherents of the first are the Pharisees, of the second the Sadducees; the third, which has the reputation of cultivating a life of particular dignity, are called Essenes. They are Jews by birth, and they are more devoted to one another than the others are. The Essenes shun pleasures as a vice and regard self-control and not giving way to the passions as virtue. Marriage they disdain, but they take other men’s children while they are still young and teachable, treat them as their own kin, and mold them to their own ways. They do not abolish marriage, or the continuing of the race that comes from it, but they guard against the wantonness of women, convinced that no woman keeps faith with one man. [c]

They despise wealth, and their sharing of goods is remarkable. You will not find one among them who has more property than another, for it is their rule that those who join the sect hand over their property to the order. So among them all there is neither the humiliation of poverty nor the excess of wealth. Everyone’s possessions are pooled, and there is one estate for them all, as among brothers. They consider oil a defilement, and if anyone is anointed against his will, he wipes his body clean; for they think it good to keep the skin dry and unoiled, and to dress in white at all times. The managers of their common affairs are elected, and each of them, without distinction, serves the needs of all. [d]

They have no single city of their own, but many of them settle in every city. Members of the sect who arrive from elsewhere find everything the community has open to them as if it were their own, and they go in to men they have never seen before as if they were their closest friends. So they carry nothing at all with them when they travel, though they go armed because of the robbers. In every city one member of the order is appointed especially to look after strangers, and he keeps clothing and provisions for them. In dress and bearing they are like boys kept in fear by their tutors. They do not replace their clothes or their shoes until the old ones are torn to pieces or worn out with age. They neither buy nor sell anything among themselves. Each gives what he has to anyone who needs it and receives in return whatever is useful to himself; and even with no exchange at all, they are free to take a share from whomever they like. [e]

Their piety toward God takes a form of its own. Before the sun comes up they utter no word about ordinary matters, but offer certain prayers handed down from their forefathers, turned toward it, as though begging it to rise. After this their supervisors dismiss each man to the craft he knows, and they work hard until the fifth hour. Then they gather again in one place, gird themselves with linen cloths, and bathe their bodies in cold water. After this purification they assemble in a building of their own, which no one of another persuasion is allowed to enter, and now, being pure, they go into the dining room as into a holy precinct. [f]

When they have taken their seats in silence, the baker sets out the loaves in order, and the cook sets before each man a single dish of one kind of food. The priest says a prayer before the meal, and no one may taste anything before the prayer. When he has eaten, he prays again. At the beginning and at the end they honor God as the provider of life. Then they lay aside their garments as sacred and go back to work until evening. They dine in the same way when they return, and any guests who happen to be with them sit down with them. No shouting or disorder ever defiles the house; they let one another speak in turn. To those outside, the silence within seems like some awe-inspiring mystery. The cause of it is their constant sobriety, and the fact that their food and drink are measured out to them only so far as to satisfy them.

In all other matters they do nothing except on the orders of their supervisors. Two things only are left to each man’s own choice: giving help and showing mercy. Members may on their own initiative help the deserving when they are in need and give food to the destitute, but they may not make gifts to their own relatives without leave from those in charge. They are just stewards of their anger and keep their temper in check; they are champions of good faith and servants of peace. Every word they speak is stronger than an oath, yet they avoid swearing, regarding it as worse than perjury; for, they say, a man who cannot be believed without calling on God is condemned already. They study the writings of the ancients with extraordinary zeal, choosing above all what is useful for soul and body. From these they search out medicinal roots and the properties of stones for the healing of diseases. [i]

Those who are eager to join their sect are not admitted at once. For a year the candidate stays outside, and they prescribe for him their own way of life, giving him a small hatchet, the loincloth already mentioned, and a white garment. When he has given proof of his self-control during that time, he comes closer to their way of life and shares in the purer waters of purification, but he is not yet received into the common life. For after this display of his endurance, his character is tested for two more years, and if he proves worthy, he is enrolled in the community. [j]

But before he may touch the common food, he swears fearful oaths. First, he swears that he will practice piety toward the Deity; then, that he will keep justice toward men and harm no one, either of his own accord or under orders; that he will always hate the unjust and fight on the side of the just; that he will keep faith with all men, and above all with those in power, since no one comes to rule except by God; and that if he himself should rule, he will never abuse his authority or outshine those under him in dress or greater finery. He swears always to love the truth and to expose liars; to keep his hands clean of theft and his soul of unholy gain; to hide nothing from the members of the sect and to reveal nothing of theirs to others, even if he is forced to it on pain of death. He swears besides to pass on their doctrines to no one otherwise than as he himself received them, to keep away from robbery, and to preserve with equal care the books of their sect and the names of the angels. With oaths like these they bind those who come to them.

Those convicted of serious offenses they expel from the order, and the man cast out often comes to a most pitiable end. Bound by his oaths and by their customs, he cannot share the food of other people, so he eats grass, wastes away with hunger, and dies. For this reason they have taken many back out of pity when they were at their last breath, considering torment to the point of death punishment enough for their sins.

In their judgments they are most exact and just. They do not pass sentence with fewer than a hundred sitting together, and what they have decided cannot be changed. After God, they hold the name of their lawgiver in great reverence, and anyone who blasphemes him is punished with death. They count it right to obey their elders and the majority: if ten sit together, no one will speak against the wish of the other nine. They take care not to spit into the middle of the company or to their right. [k]

They are stricter than all other Jews in keeping from work on the seventh day. Not only do they prepare their food the day before, so as not to light a fire on that day; they do not dare to move any vessel, or even to relieve themselves. On other days they dig a pit a foot deep with a trowel, for that is what the little hatchet given to the new members is, and wrapping their cloak around them so as not to offend the rays of God, they squat over it. Then they draw the earth they dug out back into the pit. They do this choosing the more lonely places. And although the discharge of excrement is natural, it is their custom to wash afterward, as though they had been defiled.

They are divided into four grades according to how long they have practiced the discipline, and the juniors are so far beneath their seniors that if a senior is touched by a junior, he washes himself as though he had been in contact with a foreigner. They are long-lived, most of them living past a hundred years, owing, as it seems to me, to the simplicity of their diet and their orderly life. They despise danger. They conquer pain by strength of mind, and they consider death, if it comes with glory, better than immortality. [l]

The war with the Romans tested their souls in every way. They were racked and twisted, burned and broken, and put through every instrument of torture to make them blaspheme the lawgiver or eat some food they were not allowed, yet they would submit to neither. They never once flattered their tormentors or shed a tear. Smiling in their agonies and mocking those who applied the tortures, they gave up their souls cheerfully, as men who would receive them back again.

For it is a firm belief among them that bodies are perishable and the matter they are made of does not last, but that souls are immortal and endure forever. Coming from the finest ether, souls are entangled in bodies as in prisons, drawn down by a kind of natural spell; but when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they rejoice like men released from a long slavery and are borne aloft. Sharing the belief of the Greeks, they declare that for good souls a home is reserved beyond the ocean, a place not troubled by rain or snow or scorching heat, but refreshed by the gentle west wind that blows continually off the ocean. To wicked souls they assign a dark and wintry pit full of unending punishments. [n]

It seems to me that the Greeks had the same idea when they set apart the Islands of the Blessed for their brave men, whom they call heroes and demigods, and for the souls of the wicked the region of the ungodly in Hades, where their myths tell of men like Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion and Tityus being punished. They lay down, first, that souls are everlasting, and then use this to urge men toward virtue and turn them from vice. For the good are made better in their lives by the hope of honor even after death, and the impulses of the wicked are checked by the fear that, even if they escape notice while they live, they will suffer immortal punishment after their dissolution. Such is the Essenes’ teaching about the soul, an irresistible bait for anyone who has once tasted their wisdom.

There are some among them who profess to foretell the future. They are trained from youth in the sacred books, in various purifications, and in the sayings of the prophets, and they seldom if ever miss in their predictions. [p]

There is also another order of Essenes, which agrees with the rest in its way of life, customs and rules, but differs from them in its view of marriage. They think that those who do not marry cut off the most important part of life, the continuing of the race; or rather, that if everyone thought the same way, the race would very quickly die out. They test their brides, however, for three years, and when the women have been purified three times, as proof that they can bear children, they marry them. They do not have intercourse with them during pregnancy, to show that they marry not for pleasure but for the sake of children. The women bathe wrapped in clothing, as the men do in a loincloth. Such are the customs of this order.

Of the two first mentioned, the Pharisees are reputed to interpret the laws with exactness and hold the place of the leading sect. They attribute everything to fate and to God. To do right or not, they hold, lies mostly with men, but fate also lends a hand in each case. Every soul, they say, is imperishable, but only the souls of the good pass into another body, while those of the wicked are punished with everlasting punishment. The Sadducees, the second order, do away with fate altogether and place God beyond doing, or even looking upon, anything evil. They say that good and evil are set before men’s choice, and that each person takes up the one or the other as he wills. They do away with the soul’s survival and with punishments and rewards in Hades. [q]

The Pharisees are affectionate toward one another and cultivate harmony with the community. The Sadducees are rather rough in their manners even with each other, and in their dealings with their own kind they are as harsh as with strangers. This is what I had to say about the schools of philosophy among the Jews.