The Pharisees were not, however, the powerful elite of first-century Judaism. Those were another Jewish sect: the Sadducees, the priestly class that controlled Temple worship and held the most ...

were the Sadducees, who were no less pious than the Pharisees, but the Sadducees did not believe in the authoritative nature of the ancestral laws. What did the Sadducees do then, exactly ...

The Essenes, Pharisees and the Sadducees bitterly fought about Hellenization, the globalist movement of the day. Essenes were against Hellenization, but withdrew from secular life to live in their ...