The Origins of Judean Sectarianism

The term sectarianism, in the ancient Jewish context, refers to the establishment of separate, small organizations based on some type of ideological difference from the Jewish mainstream, usually implying or articulating the conviction that the organization’s version of Judaism is holier, less compromised, than that promulgated in mainstream institutions. As we will see, not all ancient Jewish sects were sectarian in precisely this sense.

One of the most fortunate aspects for historians of the Second Temple period is that a great body of Jewish writing was preserved outside Jewish and Christian scriptural traditions. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls introduce us to a variety of Judaism at whose existence the standard literary texts barely hinted and of which the rabbis preserved no memory at all. Khirbet Qumran, where the sectarian authors of the scrolls may have lived, could never have been home to more than a few dozen devotees at any one time, although it may have been a communal center for sectarians scattered around the vicinity. And yet the discovery of the scrolls dramatically altered our understanding of ancient Judaism.

It was once common to think of the main Jewish sects—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes—who were mentioned repeatedly by Josephus and other ancient writers, as what we might now call “denominations.” Modern scholars applied their contemporary understandings of differences within the Jewish community to these ancient groups. According to this view, it was unusual for a male Jew, especially in Palestine, not to have a sectarian affiliation. It was supposed, first, that the Sadducees—usually described by ancient texts as aristocratic—played the role of early twentieth-century American Reform Judaism; they were acculturated (i.e., “Hellenized”), assimilationist, more dedicated to principles of good citizenship (and so tended to collaborate with Rome) than to the specifics of the Torah’s laws. Second, the Pharisees were like the more progressive branches of Orthodoxy, unswervingly devoted to tradition yet alive to the interests and needs of the common folk and respectful of their practices and traditions. They were not resolutely opposed to all forms of Hellenism but would go only so far. And third, the Essenes were thought to be akin to the ultra-Orthodox, shutting out the larger world from their enclaves and devoted to practices that were, to earlier twentieth-century scholarship, frankly incomprehensible. 

The discovery of the scrolls necessitated a thorough revision of this picture. The debate over whether the Dead Sea sect was a group of Essenes or not continues to rage; it was at the very least closely related. But however this issue may be resolved, the contents of the scrolls put an end to any simplifying characterization of the sects, complicating our view not only of the variety of Jewish sectarianism in the period but also of the variety of Jewish literary and even scriptural tradition.

The Dead Sea Sect

The Dead Sea sect was a sect in the strict sense, its members seeing themselves as a pious few chosen from the sinful house of Israel. They were dedicated to the study of Sefer he-hago (The Book of Contemplation), probably their name for the Torah, and developed a distinctive form of Hebrew for writing their sacred texts. They also had an idiosyncratic approach to Jewish law; they assumed that laws originally written in the Torah required supplementation in the form of renewed revelation to the authorized leadership of the sect. For example, the so-called Temple Scroll, a rewriting of Deuteronomy, was an important source of sectarian law; the sect preserved it side by side with the actual book of Deuteronomy.

The Dead Sea sect preserved and copied literature otherwise known to us only through Christian translations, like the books of Jubilees and Enoch, or that were completely unknown to us, like the Genesis Apocryphon and some astrological and magical texts. Only some of their texts were specifically sectarian. These included liturgies, psalms, hymns, visions of the imminent end of days, biblical commentaries (called pesharim) that interpreted prophetic texts as referring to the history of the sect, polemics against other sects and against the Jerusalem establishment, and instructional guides for life in a sectarian community, similar to Christian monastic rules, among many other items. The level of elaboration and sophistication is striking.

Even more striking is the sect’s reliance on a very high level of literacy. Almost all the truly sectarian writing is in the sect’s intentionally peculiar version of biblical Hebrew, reflecting the work of an intelligentsia thoroughly, intelligently, and creatively engaged with a wide range of Israelite and Jewish literary traditions. In addition to the Hebrew texts, the sect copied and preserved several texts in Aramaic.

Greek is strikingly absent from the sectarian texts, most likely reflecting a conscious decision by the sect. Still, hostility to Hellenism or to Rome is not a prominent theme, perhaps because it did not need to be spelled out or was irrelevant. It should, however, be noted that one of the seven scrolls first discovered, the Habbakuk pesher, depicts a period in which the Jews were threatened by a foreign force, the Kittim, a term that originally referred to Cyprus but that in the Dead Sea Scrolls became a code word for Rome. The sect’s lifestyle—immersion in the sect’s peculiar versions of Judaism and Jewish culture—was demanding, totalizing, and complete. It is hard to imagine that a particular attitude to Hellenism required articulation.

The members of the Dead Sea sect were men, though there is evidence that women and children were also present in the community. Scholars debate the role women played there and whether celibacy was required to belong. Although some subgroups seem to have permitted marriage, others frowned on it or forbade it altogether. This complicated the chances of reproducing by natural means; sectarians needed to draw on a constant flow of novices. Most of these novices, we assume, came from the ranks of well-to-do Jerusalemites and Judeans, especially priests. Josephus wrote that during his late adolescence he experimented with the various sects and at some point attached himself to a desert hermit named Bannus, who reminds us of John the Baptist.

Why Sects Formed and Their Membership

Most scholars believe that sects emerged in Judea as distinct groups sometime shortly after the Hasmonean (also known as the Maccabean) revolt (mid-second century BCE). This theory is partly based on Josephus’ placement of his first description of these groups in book 13 of Jewish Antiquities, which describes the Hasmonean revolt and its aftermath. Given this context, it is thought that these groups developed as negative responses to the shift in priestly leadership from the Oniad family to the Hasmonean family. It is also conceivable that Jews retreated into sects as a means of resisting the Hasmoneans’ increased Hellenization in the second century BCE. Yet another possibility is that these groups emerged as a result of theological differences regarding the arrival of the end time—a question that led sectarians to develop and lay claim to scriptural predictions concerning the redemption of Israel and God’s final salvation. The questions of why sects formed at all and what lay at the heart of the sectarian debate remain unresolved, in part because we have so little literary evidence about these groups outside the writings of Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Josephus fashioned his writing in the vein of Greek philosophy and historiography, and thus he may have had the agenda of paralleling famous Greek philosophies in focusing on these three primary Jewish philosophies.

What we do know with near certainty, however, is that most Jews in Judea were not members of a sect. According to Josephus, whose numbers are not reliable and may be inflated, only six thousand Jews were Pharisees, four thousand were Sadducees, and three thousand were Essenes. And while Josephus writes that the majority of Jews in Judea followed the Pharisees’ teachings, it would be a mistake to describe the late Second Temple period as “sectarian.” This is important to keep in mind because both rabbinic and early Christian texts make claims to the contrary, that this was a very sectarian moment.

The Pharisees and the Later Rabbis

There may be a relationship between the Pharisees of the Second Temple period and the later rabbis, although this is a point of contention among scholars. At least two individuals, Gamaliel and Simeon ben Gamaliel, who are identified as Pharisees by Josephus, appear in m. Avot 1 as participants in the chain of transmission of the Oral Torah. The rabbis also upheld key doctrines attributed to the Pharisees by Josephus and the New Testament, including belief in fate, resurrection, and the authority of ancestral tradition, which developed into the rabbinic concept of Oral Torah. Additionally, several rabbinic texts record halakhic disputes with Sadducees and Boethusians, who were opponents of the Pharisees. However, the rabbis never refer to themselves as Pharisees, and some tannaitic texts use the term perushim (Pharisees) to refer to members of a distinct group known for its meticulous observance of purity law. These points suggest some connection between the Pharisees and the rabbis but do not necessarily indicate that rabbinic Judaism was simply an outgrowth of the Pharisaic movement, as was often assumed by earlier scholars.