What were the differences between the Pharisees Sadducees and the Essenes?

Answer 1

Answer 1

The Pharisees were probably the most Conservative of those. They adhered to strict traditions.

The Sadducees rejected nearly everything but the words of Moses and didn't believe in resurrection.

The Essenes were the more mystical group. They believed in self-denial, a commitment to poverty, asceticism, abstinence from worldly pleasures, and they often practiced celibacy.

Answer 2

As to the Essenes, Answer 1 is correct, however, the definitions of the Sadducees and Pharisees are worth tweaking. The primary issue is that the Sadducees are much more conservative than the Pharisees.

The Sadducees were primarily a movement of the Temple-Elite and were seen as very conservative in that they promoted a strictly Biblical view of Judaism. In their view, the Oral Law, which is now very important in Judaism, was an addition (much in the same way that some Islamic sects see any cultural additions to Islam as bid'a). This led to them not accepting key doctrines and interpretations clarified in the Oral Law, such as the Resurrection of the Dead or any Afterlife at all. There are many smaller issues at law between the Sadducees and the Pharisees that generally show the Sadducees to be much more concerned with maintaining patriarchal wealth in this world and performing the specific Jewish rites than spirituality and charity.

The Pharisees were a populist movement, led by the Rabbis and who had a more inclusive view of traditions where they extensively used both The Bible and the Oral Law. While traditions were very important to them and the Christian Bible shows their insistence on following religious law, they believed in debating these issues to come to a consistent legal tradition as opposed to legal dogmatism. The Pharisees are the antecedents of modern Jews and, even before the Second Temple's destruction, were less concerned with the particularities of Temple sacrifice and more concerned with daily acts and spirituality. This spirituality manifested itself in the idea of an immortal soul, which meant that there was necessarily an Afterlife and they also believed in a World-to-Come. This meant that inequalities in this life would be ameliorated in the next, which was far more attractive to the poorer classes than the Sadducee belief that this was the only life.

Answer 3:

A) The above claim, that Sadducees were conservative, or Biblically-oriented, or interested in the Temple in any way, does not reflect Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition reveals the Sadducees as men of politics and secular life. They had abandoned various parts of Judaism; and they claimed no earlier source (tradition) for their attitudes. They harassed the Torah-sages; and, like the miniscule breakaway group called the Essenes, disappeared at the time of the Second Destruction, just as the earlier Jewish idolaters had disappeared at the time of the First Destruction.

Note that there is a common conception that the Sadducees, like the later (and now largely defunct) Karaites, made a deliberate decision to reject the Oral Law and reinterpret the Scriptures.

However, a careful perusal of the Talmud reveals that the Sadducees were actually opportunists who had nothing much at all to do with religion in any fashion. They were lax in Judaism; they were men of politics who weren't interested in Torah-matters.

The group that did (on rare occasions) argue with the Torah-Sages concerning subjects of religious observance, were a tiny sect called the Baitusim (Boethusians), who quickly died out.

B) The above portrayal of the Pharisees as "populists" is also foreign to the traditional Jewish viewpoint. The Pharisees were simply the Torah-sages, period. They were so popular because the majority of the Judean Jewish population consisted of their disciples and sympathizers, as stated in Josephus (Antiquities, book 18).

The Pharisees were the only movement to survive the destruction of the Second Temple and were the ancestors of modern Judaism.

Our traditional Jewish beliefs and observances today are traditions continuing from the Torah through the Prophets and the Sages of the Talmud ("Pharisees").

Answer 2

Pharisees and Sadducees were the two religious parties in Judaism at the time of Jesus. Pharisees were known for their strict observance of the Law and they also believed in an afterlife. Sadducees did not believe in afterlife. The Essenes were a monastic cult living near the Dead Sea and we know of them because of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in a cave near Qumran.

Answer 3

1) The Jewish group that concentrated on the study, teaching and application of the Torah in every century was and is the Torah-sages and their many disciples, from Abraham down to today.
The word "Pharisees," which is based on a Greek misspelling used by Josephus, actually refers to the Sages of the Talmud. (The Hebrew word "p'rushim," to which he referred, means people of temperance; the opposite of epicurean.)The Torah-sages such as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel, Chanina ben Dosa, Bava ben Buta, Shimon ben Hillel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva, and hundreds of others, were active at that time and their yeshivot (Torah-academies) were flourishing. Their tens of thousands of disciples and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers were active in the Jewish world in that generation; they were the leaders and the forefront of Judaism.

Josephus talks of three groups among the Jews in late Second-Temple times: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. This may convey the mistaken impression that the Pharisees were just one "sect" among others, when in fact Josephus himself admits that the Pharisees (Torah-sages) with their disciples and followers constituted the large majority of the Jewish people. As he himself writes (Antiquities book 18), "the cities give great attestations to them."
Although the Christian Testament portrays them poorly, in fact the Pharisees were very egalitarian. They taught that all men were created in God's image and that all had the same rights, and the same right to an education, etc. They were devoted to the practicing of kindness, charity, the fulfillment of mitzvot, the study and teaching of Torah and the education of all people, regardless of status in society. They detested hypocrisy and actively sought it out and criticized it whenever they encountered it.

The Pharisees were the only movement to survive the destruction of the Second Temple and were the ancestors of modern Judaism.
Our traditional Jewish beliefs today, including the afterlife and the resurrection, are traditions continuing from the Prophets and the Sages of the Talmud ("Pharisees").

2) The Sadducees. These were men of politics and secular life, similar to the Hellenising Jews. They had abandoned various parts of Judaism; and they claimed no earlier source or tradition for their attitudes. They harassed the Torah-sages; and, like the tiny breakaway group called the Essenes, dwindled away after the time of the Second Destruction, like the earlier Jewish idolaters after the First Destruction.

Note that there is a common misconception that the Sadducees, like the much later (and now largely defunct) Karaites, made a deliberate decision to reject the Oral Law and reinterpret the Scriptures.
However, a careful perusal of the Talmud reveals that the Sadducees were actually opportunists who had nothing much at all to do with religion in any fashion. They were lax in Judaism and had little interest in Torah-matters.

At that time the Jewish courts still had the ability to enforce the Torah laws, and almost all Jews were Torah-observant; so, in order to avoid total rejection by the surrounding community, the Sadducees outwardly maintained a facade of keeping the major Torah precepts (such as the Sabbath), while simply ignoring the Oral Torah and customs.
They went lost not long after.
The group that did (on rare occasions) debate against the Torah-Sages concerning subjects of religious observance, were a tiny sect called the Baitusim (Boethusians), who quickly died out.

3) The Essenes were a small sect in Judea who eventually disappeared from the Jewish community. They styled themselves "observant; pious ones." The normative, majority Jewish community viewed them as breakaways from the common stream of Jewish tradition, because of their non-traditional beliefs and practices.

Their beliefs included an excessive amount of dabbling with the names of angels, messianic fervor, gnosticism and eschatological speculation; and their practices were more like Christian monasticism than the generally accepted Jewish way of living.

The practices of the Essenes included vegetarianism, dwelling in isolated groups, communal ownership, monastic asceticism and avoidance of money, commerce and private property; and (among some of them) celibacy. Also, they had some forms of non-traditional observances (such as round phylacteries [tefillin]). Some researchers identify the Essenes as a form of early Christianity, taking also into account the fact that early Christianity was far from uniform and was, for a time, thought of by some as a kind of modified Judaism.

4) The Samaritans. After the Assyrians exiled the Israelite Ten Tribes (about 2600 years ago), the Assyrian king brought non-Jews from Cutha, Babylonia and Syria (Hamat), and settled them in the depopulated area where the Ten Tribes had lived (Samaria). They were taught Judaism by one of the Jewish kohens (2 Kings 17:27), and they were taught the Torah, which they wrote in the Old Hebrew script.

While both Jews and Samaritans believed in One God, and both accepted the Torah, there were also some differences. Jerusalem was and is the holiest site for Jews, while the Samaritans took Mount Gerizim as their religious center. Later in history, the Samaritans aligned with the Greeks and accepted foreign gods (Talmud, Hullin 6a).

The Talmud relates how the Samaritans adopted some of the mitzvot (Torah-commands) but not others (Talmud, Berakhot 47b), how they denounced the Jews to Alexander in an unsuccessful bid to get him to destroy the newly-built Second Temple (Talmud, Yoma 69a), and how they interfered with the declaring of Rosh Hodesh (the New Moon) (Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 22b). Our traditions relate how the Samaritans would sometimes waylay the Jews who tried to journey to the Holy Temple.

Today the Samaritans are a small group of about 800, who practice an ancient form of Jewish worship, with animal sacrifices. They don't accept the Talmud, nor holidays such as Hanukkah.

5) The Zealots. These were a group of dangerous hotheads who ignored the advice of the Rabbis and fomented war against the Romans, leaving the Romans no choice but to crush the people and destroy the city of Jerusalem (Talmud, Gittin 56).

See also:

Jewish history timeline