SECTION VII.

Of the Jewish affairs under the conduct of the posterity and successors of Simon the Maccabee; and of the several sects among the Jews, namely Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians, Karaites. 1 Q. Did John Hyrcanus enjoy his office in peace? A. Antiochus Sidetes, being informed of the death of Simon, and, being invited by Ptolemeus, invaded Judea again, besieged Jerusalem, and reduced Hyrcanus and the Jews to the last extremity by famine : but, when they sued for peace, he granted it upon condition of paying certain tributes to the king, and demolishing the fortifications of Jerusalem.

Note, About this time Jesus, the son of Sirach, a Jew of Jerusalem, coming into Egypt, translated the book of Ecclesiasticus, written by Jesus his grandfather, out of Hebrew into Greek, for the use of the Hellenistic Jews there. The ancients called it Panareton, or the treasury of all virtue.

2 Q. How did the affairs of the Jews succeed under Hyrcanus?

A. A few years afterwards he took advantage of the vast confusions that ensued among the nations, upon the death of Antiochus, to enlarge his borders, by seizing some neighbouring towns on several sides of Judea, and to renounce all his dependence upon the kings of Syria.

3 Q. Was he supported therein by any foreign power?

A. He renewed the league of friendship which his father Simon had made with the Romans, who were then growing to their grandeur; and they ordered that he should be freed from the late imposed tribute, and that the Syrians should make reparation for the damages they had done him.

4 Q. In what manner did Hyrcanus deal with the Edomites, or Idumeans, who were on the south of Judea?

A. He constrained them to embrace the Jewish religion, or to leave their country; whereupon they chose to forsake their idolatry, and became proselytes to Judaism, and were mingled and incorporated with the Jews; and, by this means, in less than two hundred years, their very name was lost.

Note, In defence of this practice of Hyrcanus, among the Idumeans, which seems to be so contrary to the laws of nature and Scripture, it may be said that, at this time, these Edomites had encroached on the land of Judea, and inhabited all the south part of it: so that Hyrcanus, in banishing those who would not become Jews, did but dispossess them of that country which was given to the Jews by God himself. Yet, it must be confessed, by this practice, he seems to have set an unhappy pattern to his successors, to impose the religion of the Jews on conquered countries by force.

5 Q. How did he treat the Samaritans on the north, when his power was thus increased?

A. He marched with his army and took Shechem, which was then the chief seat of the Samaritan sect; and he destroyed their temple on Mount Gerizim, which Sanballat had built; though they continued still to keep an altar there, and to offer sacrifices.

6 Q. How came Shechem to be their chief seat instead of Samaria?

A. They were expelled from Samaria by Alexander, for killing one of his deputy-governors in a tumult, and they, retiring to Shechem, made that their chief seat; while Alexander re-peopled Samaria with heathens of the Syrian and Macedonian race?

7 Q. Did Hyrcanus extend his power farther on that side of the country?

A. He besieged Samaria, and took it, and utterly demolished it he not only ruled in Judea, but in Galilee also, and the neighbouring towns; he became one of the most considerable princes of his age, and preserved the Jewish church and state in safety from their enemies throughout a long government.

8 Q. What other remarkable actions are ascribed to Hyrcanus?

4. He was esteemed a prophet for one or two notable predictions, or knowledge of things done at a distance. He built the castle Baris, on a steep rock, fifty cubits high, without the outer square of the temple, but on the same mountain; this was the palace of all the Asmonean princes in Jerusalem, and here the sacred robes of the high-priest were always laid up when they were not in use.

9 Q. What use was afterwards made of this castle? A. Herod new built it, and made it a very strong fortress, to command both the city and the temple, and called it Antonia, in honour of his great friend Mark Anthony of Rome: he raised it so high, that he might see what was done in the temple, and send his soldiers, in case of any tumult. Here the Romans kept a strong garrison, and the governor of it was called captain of the temple, Acts xxi. 31.

Note, It was from this place the sentinel, spying the Jews ready to kill Paul, gave notice to the governor, or chief captain, who went down immediately with some soldiers into the court of the Gentiles, whither they had dragged St. Paul to kill him, and rescued him, and brought him the stairs into this castle; and it was upon these stairs that Paul obtained leave to speak to the people, Acts xxi. 26, &c.

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10 Q. What troubles did Hyrcanus meet with toward the end of his life?

A. His title to the high-priesthood was unjustly called in question by a bold man among the Pharisees: and, being craftily imposed upon to think it the opinion of all that party, he hastily renounced that sect, for which he had before the greatest value; he abolished their constitutions, and, falling in with the sect of the Sadducees, lost his esteem and love among the common people.

11 Q. Since you mention the sect of the Pharisees

here, pray let us know what were the chief sects among the Jews?

A. About this time, the most considerable sects were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes; though in the next century arose also the Herodians; and some hundred years after was a sect called the Karaites.

12 Q. What peculiar opinions were held by the Pharisees?

A. The most distinguishing character of this sect was their zeal for the traditions of the elders; for, while they acknowledged the writings of Moses and the prophets to be divine, they pretended that these traditions also were delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, and conveyed down, without writing, through the several generations of the Jews, from father to son; and, by reason of their pretences to a more strict and rigorous observance of the law, according to their traditions, which they superadded to it, they looked on themselves as more holy than other men, and they were called Pharisees, that is, persons separated from others.

Note, These are the persons who had so much corrupted the law in our Saviour's time, and made it void by their traditions; yet their doctrine generally prevailed among the scribes and the lawyers, who were writers and explainers of the law; and the bulk of the common people had them in high esteem and veneration, so that they were the most numerous of any sect.

13 Q. Is the sect of the Pharisees still in being? A. The present religion of the Jews, in their several dispersions (except among the few Karaites), is wholly formed and practised according to the traditions of the Pharisees, rather than according to the law and prophets; so that they have corrupted the old Jewish religion, in the same manner as the Papists have the Christian.

14 Q. What were the opinions of the Sadducees? A. The Sadducees at first are supposed by Dr.

Prideaux to be no more than the Zadikim, who only stuck to the written word of God, and renounced all other traditions; and that probably they went no farther than this in the days of Hyrcanus; though the Talmudical writers derive their name, and their dangerous doctrines, more early, from one Zadock, as is before related. But it is certain that, afterwards, the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead, and the very being of angels, or spirits, or souls of men departed, and any existence in a future state they supposed God to be the only spirit, and that he rewarded and punished mankind in this world only, and that there was nothing to be hoped or feared after death; which principles render this sect an impious party of men.

15 Q. What did they profess as the rule of their religion?

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A. They not only rejected all unwritten traditions, but all the written word of God, except the five books of Moses; for the doctrine of a future state is not so evidently taught therein and therefore Christ argues not with them out of the Psalms and prophets, but only out of the law of Moses, when he proves a future state of resurrection, from God's being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Luke xx. 37.

16 Q. How long did this sect of the Sadducees continue ?

A. Though all the common people had the chief veneration for the Pharisees, yet most of the richest and the greatest among them fell into the opinions of the Sadducees for several generations, but they were all cut off in the destruction of Jerusalem; nor do we find any mention of them as a sect for many years after, till their name was revived and applied to the Karaites, by way of reproach.

17 Q. Who were these Karaites?

A. A much better sect among the Jews, who, in the sixth century, after Christ began to be so much offended with the incredible stories and fooleries of the Talmud, which was then published, and with the