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LECTURE XX.

Origin and nature of the different religious sects, which divided the Hebrew nation.

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N our last lecture we continued our survey of the religious orders or distinctions of men among the antient Jews. We attended to their wisemen, their scribes and rabbies, their nazarites, and lastly to a set of writers called the masorites, who gave and preserved the exact reading of the Hebrew scriptures. We will now inquire into the nature and origin of those religious sects, which divided the Jewish nation; especially those which are of ten mentioned in the sacred writings.

After the return of this people from Babylon, and the reestablishment of their church in Judea by Ezra and Nehemiah, there arose among them two distinguished parties; one of which adhered to the written word, as the only and complete rule of righteousness, and on this ground were called Zadikim, that is, the righteous; the other to the written law superadded many traditional institutions and practices, which they rigidly observed as implying and promoting an eminent degree of holiness, on which account they were styled Chasidim, that is, the pious. These in the septuagint version of the Maccabees are called aoidalar or saints, and in our translation Assideans. The former of these two divisions gave birth to the Samaritans, the Sadducees, and the Karraites; the latter to the Pharisees, and the Essenes. We will briefly explain each of these in their order.

I. The Samaritans were originally heathens, to whom the king of Assyria gave the cities and lands of the ten tribes, after he had carried the latter into captivity. They

were called Samaritans from the city of Samaria, the capital of that country. On their first settling in it, they observed the idolatrous rites of the several nations, from whom they emigrated. But being infested with lions, which they considered as a punishment for neglecting the former Deity and worship of the land, they sent to the Assyrian monarch for a Jewish priest to instruct them in the antient religion. Having received this instruction, they framed a very motely kind of religion, compounded of heathen and Jewish ceremonies.* On the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple after the Babylonish captivity, the religion of the Samaritans received a new modification. For many of the Jews having taken wives from heathen families, in opposition to the divine law, Nehemiah the governor compelled them immediately to dissolve the forbidden connexion, or to leave the community. Many, preferring the latter, fled to Samaria, and settled under the protection of its government. The Jews, thus mixing with the Samaritans, effected a change in their religious system. A temple was built in conformity to that at Jerusalem; the book of the law of Moses was introduced, and publicly read; and the people were brought to renounce their false gods, and to embrace the worship of Jehovah according to the rules prescribed in that book. The animosity however between the Jews and Samaritans was not diminished by this circumstance. The Jews viewed the Samaritans as apostates. They hated them first for opposing the rebuilding of their temple and city; secondly for encouraging and cooperating with the abovementioned deserters from their government and religion; thirdly for erecting an altar and temple in opposition to theirs; and fourthly * 2 Kings xvii. 24 &c. † Neh. xiii. 23, 30.

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for giving comfort and protection to every kind of Jewish offenders, who fled from the justice of their country. The hatred produced by these and similar causes, grew to such a height, that the Jews denounced the most bitter anathema against the Samaritans, and for many ages refused them every kind of intercourse. Hence the woman of Samaria was astonished that our Savior, being a Jew, should ask drink of her. Hence too the Jews, when they would express the utmost aversion to Christ, said to him, "thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil;" implying that to be a Samaritan, and to be possessed with a devil, were in their view equally vile.

The distinguishing tenets of the Samaritans, after their reformation from idolatry and conversion to the worship of the true God, consisted in the three following articles. First, they received as sacred the five books of Moses only. They still possess these books in the old Hebrew or Phenician language. They have also a version of them in their vulgar or Chaldee dialect. This version was early made for the benefit of the common people, who, as well as the vulgar Jews, lost their acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue soon after their captivity. The agreement of this copy with the original is truly wonderful, when we consider the vast space of time since it was taken, the usual errors of transcribers, and the total want of communication, and even rancorous animosity between their respective adherents. As the Samaritans thus differ from the Jews in adhering to the books of Moses, exclusive of the other Old Testament writings; so secondly, they differ from them in rejecting all traditions, and keeping strictly to the written word, without admitting those corrupt glosses, which would explain it away, or substitute human inventions in its room. In

this particular they are far more exact disciples of Moses than the most zealous Jews. Thirdly, they also differ from the Jews respecting their place of worship. The law of Moses required the Hebrews to perform their religious rites in the place, which God should choose; and this place was Jerusalem. But when the Samaritans and apostate Jews had erected a temple and altar on mount Gerizim, they denied that Jerusalem was the place, which God had chosen, and insisted that mount Gerizim was that selected spot, reasoning as the woman of Samaria did to our Savior, that their fathers worshipped in that mountain. They pretend that there Abraham and Jacob built altars and offered sacrifices to Jehovah, and hereby consecrated the place to his worship;* and accordingly that God himself appointed this to be the mount, on which his blessings were to be pronounced on his faithful worshippers, and on which Joshua, by divine command, after passing Jordan, built an altar of twelve stones taken out of that river; which altar they hold to be the same, on which they now sacrifice. But to establish this part of their argument, they have sacrilegiously corrupted the text in Deuteronomy, which enjoins the Hebrews to set up the altar on mount Ebal; instead of which they have substiuted mount Gerizim. We proceed

II. To the Sadducees. This sect probably derived its name from Sadoc, a scholar of Antigonus, who was president of the Sanhedrim about two hundred and sixty years before Christ; and who taught his pupils that they ought to serve God, not from a mean regard to future reward or punishment, but from pure filial love to Him. Sadoc hence inferred that there was no reward nor punishment after this life. He accordingly began a new sect, * Gen. xii. 6, 7. xiii. 4. xxxiii. 20. Deut. xxvii. 12. ii. 7

which from the name of the founder were called Sadducees; a sect, which nearly coincided with the followers of Epicurus; except that the latter denied the divine agency in creating and governing the world, while the former believed in both. At first perhaps the Sadducees contented themselves with exploding the authority of traditions; but by degrees their doctrine assumed a very libertine and impious form. The New Testament assures us that, in the first age of christianity, they denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of angels and departed spirits. According to Josephus they admitted but one spiritual being, viz. God; they looked upon death as the final extinction both of soul and body; they maintained that the providence and retributions of Deity were limited to this world; and on this ground only they worshipped and obeyed him. They also denied the doctrine of divine influences in assisting men to good, or restraining them from evil. In short, they agreed with the Samaritans in rejecting all the Old Testament writings except the five books of Moses. They probably rejected the former, because they could not reconcile them with their tenets. Hence our Savior confutes their error respecting a future life and the resurrection by an indirect argument drawn from the writings of Moses, which they received as divine; while he waves those direct and numerous proofs contained in the prophets, whose authority they denied *

If you ask, how could the Sadducees deny the existence of angels, when even the five books of Moses, which they esteemed sacred, frequently relate the appearances of these celestial spirits; we reply, this sect probably understood these angelic appearances to be only transient visions of

Matt. xxii. Mark xii. Luke xx.

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