The Sects Among the Jews

Over time, however, the Essenes have split, and they no longer keep their training in the same way, for they have broken into four parties. Some of them discipline themselves beyond what the order requires, to the point of refusing even to handle a coin of the country, saying that a man ought not to carry an image, or look at one, or make one. So none of these men will go into a city, in case he should enter by a gate with statues set over it; to walk beneath an image they count a breach of the law. [a]

The men of a second party, if they happen to hear anyone arguing about God and his laws and take him to be uncircumcised, will watch him closely; and when they meet a man of that kind alone somewhere, they threaten to kill him unless he submits to circumcision. If he will not comply, the Essene does not spare him, but cuts him down. It is from this that they have been given their name: some call them Zealots, others Sicarii. The men of a third party call no one Lord except God alone, even if they are tortured for it, even if they are killed. And there are others, of a later time, who have fallen so far from the discipline of the order that those who keep to the original customs will not so much as touch them. If they do come into contact with them, they wash at once, as though they had touched a man of another race.

Here too a great many of them live so long that they pass a hundred years. The reason for this, they say, is their utter devotion to religion, their refusal of every excess in what is set before them, and their being temperate men, not given to anger. And so they think nothing of death, and are glad when they can finish their course with a clear conscience. If anyone were to torture men of this kind, to make one of them either speak evil of the law or eat what has been sacrificed to an idol, he would not get his way. A man of this party goes to his death and endures the torment rather than violate his conscience.

The teaching of the resurrection has found support among these men as well. They acknowledge both that the flesh will rise again and that it will be immortal, in the same way that the soul is already imperishable. They hold that the soul, once it is separated from the body, now rests in one place, airy and full of light, until the judgment. The Greeks learned of this place at second hand and called it the Isles of the Blessed. There are other teachings of theirs that many of the Greeks have taken over, and out of them have formed opinions of their own from time to time. For the training these Jewish schools give in the things of God is older than that of any nation. And so the proof is ready to hand: every one of those Greeks who ventured to make assertions about God, or about how the things that exist were made, drew his first principles from no other source than Jewish legislation. Pythagoras above all may be named here, and the Stoics, who took their systems while living in Egypt, having become pupils of these Jews. Now they say that there will be both a judgment and a burning up of the universe, and that the wicked will be punished forever. Among them the practice of prophecy is cultivated, and the foretelling of what is to come. [e]

There is then another order of Essenes who use the same customs and the same prescribed way of living as the groups already described, but who differ from them on one point: marriage. They hold that men who have done away with marriage commit a terrible offense, one that destroys life, and that they ought not to cut off the succession of children; for if everyone held that opinion, the whole human race would quickly be wiped out. They do, however, put the women betrothed to them to the test for three years; and when the women have been purified three times, as proof that they are able to bear children, they marry them. They do not have relations with a wife who is pregnant, showing that they marry not out of appetite but for the good of having children. The women wash in the same manner as their husbands, and they too are dressed in a linen robe, as the men are with their belts. This is what I have to say about the Essenes. [g]

But there are others as well who practice the Jewish customs, and these, both in their standing and in their laws, are called Pharisees. Most of them are to be found in every place; for though all alike are called Jews, the particular opinions each group puts forward have earned each of them a name of its own. These men hold firmly to the ancient tradition, and go on pressing, in an argumentative spirit, a close inquiry into what the law counts clean and unclean. They interpret the regulations of the law, and put forward teachers whom they qualify to give instruction in such matters. The Pharisees affirm that fate exists, and that some things are in our own power while others are under the control of destiny; some acts, that is, depend on us, and others on fate. But God, they say, is the cause of all things, and nothing is arranged or happens without his will. They also acknowledge that there is a resurrection of the flesh, that the soul is immortal, that there will be a judgment and a burning up of the universe, that the righteous will be imperishable, and that the wicked will suffer everlasting punishment in fire that is never put out.

These, then, are the opinions of the Pharisees. The Sadducees, for their part, do away with fate. They acknowledge that God neither does nor looks upon anything wicked; the choice between good and evil, they insist, lies within a man’s own power. They deny that there is a resurrection of the flesh, and they suppose besides that the soul does not continue after death. The soul, in their view, is nothing but the life in a body, and it is for the sake of this that man was made. The notion of the resurrection, they say, is fully satisfied by this one fact, that we end our days having left children behind us on earth. After death a man is to expect nothing at all, bad or good; soul and body alike will dissolve, and man passes into non-existence, exactly as the stuff of the animals does. As for whatever wickedness a man may have committed in his life, if he has settled with the party he injured, he has come out ahead by the offense, since he has escaped the punishment men would otherwise have inflicted. And whatever a man has acquired, and whatever distinction he has gained by becoming rich, is likewise so much gain. But God, they keep insisting, takes no trouble over any one man’s affairs here. And while the Pharisees are full of affection for one another, the Sadducees are driven by self-love. This party had its stronghold chiefly in the country around Samaria. They too keep to the customs of the law, saying that a man ought to live so as to conduct himself well and leave children behind him on earth. They pay no attention to the prophets, and none to any other wise men either, but only to the law of Moses — and even of that they frame no interpretations. These, then, are the opinions the Sadducees choose to teach. [i]

Since, then, we have explained even the differences among the Jews, it seems right not to pass over their religion in silence. The teaching that all Jews hold on the subject of religion falls into four parts: what concerns God, what concerns nature, what concerns conduct, and what concerns ritual. They affirm that there is one God, and that he is Maker and Lord of the universe; that he formed all these glorious works, which had no existence before, and this not out of some material lying ready to hand and as old as himself — his will was the cause that made them, and he made them. They hold that there are angels, and that these were brought into being to serve the creation; and also that there is a ruling Spirit that always remains beside God, for glory and praise. They hold that everything in the creation has sensation, and that nothing is without life. And they aim in earnest at serious habits and a temperate life, as anyone may learn from their laws. These matters were laid down long ago, and strictly, by the men who in ancient times received the law God established, so that a reader will find himself astonished at how much restraint and how much care were lavished on customs enacted by law for the good of men. The ceremonial service, fitted to the worship of God in a way that suits the dignity of religion, has been carried on among them with the greatest elaboration. How far their ritual surpasses others is easy for anyone who wishes to find out, provided he reads the book that gives the information on these points. He will see with what solemnity and holiness the Jewish priests offer God the firstfruits of the gifts he has given men to use and enjoy, and how steadily and constantly they carry out their ministrations in obedience to his commands. There are, however, some usages among these that the Sadducees refuse to recognize, since they are not willing to grant that angels or spirits exist. [j]

Still, all parties alike expect the Christ, since the law certainly, and the prophets, preached beforehand that he was going to be present on earth. But because the Jews did not recognize the time of his coming, the supposition remains among them that what Scripture declares about his coming has not been fulfilled. And so to this day they go on waiting for the Christ to come in the future, because they did not discern him when he was present in the world. Yet when they look at the signs of the times, that he has already been among us, the Jews are troubled; and they are ashamed to admit that he has come, since they put him to death with their own hands, stung with anger at being convicted by him of not having obeyed the laws. They say that the one whom God sent out in this way is not the Christ they are looking for, but they admit that another Christ will come, one who as yet does not exist. In him they acknowledge some of the signs the law and the prophets showed beforehand, but some things they believe in error. For they say that his descent will be from the stock of David, but not from a virgin and the Holy Spirit — rather from a woman and a man, according to the rule by which everyone is begotten from seed. And they claim that this Christ will be king over them, a warlike and powerful man, who will gather the whole Jewish people together, do battle with all the nations, and restore Jerusalem the royal city for them. Into this city he will collect the whole Hebrew race and bring it back once more into its ancient customs, so that it may perform its royal and priestly functions and live in confidence for a long stretch of time. After that rest, it is their opinion that war will next be waged against them once they have been gathered in this way; that in that fight the Christ will fall by the edge of the sword; and that after no long time the end will follow, and the burning up of the universe. In this way, they say, their teaching about the resurrection will be brought to completion, and each man will be repaid according to what he has done.

It now seems to us that the teachings of the Greeks and of the non-Greeks alike have been sufficiently explained by us, and that nothing has been left unrefuted, either of the questions philosophy has busied itself with or of the claims the heretics have advanced. And from these very explanations the condemnation of the heretics is plain: they either stole their doctrines outright, or drew contributions to them from some of the doctrines the Greeks had carefully worked out, and then put them forward as though they had come from God. So, having gone rapidly through all their systems, and having with much labor set out all their opinions in these nine books, and having left behind us for everyone a small store of provisions for the road of life, and having given those who live alongside us a great and glad desire to learn, we have judged it reasonable, as the finishing stroke to the whole work, to bring in the discourse about the truth that we have already mentioned, and to set out our account of it in one book, namely the tenth. Our aim is this: that the reader, having been made acquainted with the overthrow of those who dared to establish heresies, may not only regard their idle fancies with scorn, but also, coming to know the power of the truth, may be set on the way of salvation by placing in God the faith he so richly deserves. [o]