The Four Religious Sects

Four religious sects or parties existed in Israel at that time: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Herodians. The most prominent were the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees were the most popular sect; their main focus was on the primacy of the Torah, and their leaders were the expert interpreters of the Torah. The most conservative Sadducees, who represented an older establishment of priests, aristocrats, and wealthier merchants, had less influence on the religious views of the larger community, but they dominated the Temple worship and the Sanhedrin, the central religious council based in the Temple. The other two sects were the Essenes, a pious brotherhood of separatists, who lived in isolated monastic communities in the desert, and the Herodians, a religious party allied to Herod the Great.

SOURCE: The Life and Teachings of Hillel by Yitzhak Buxbaum (Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, NJ; 1973); pp. 9-10.

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