Karraites thought it was to be offered the day after the Sabbath next to the passover. 6thly, In the feast of tabernacles, the Rabbinists carry about branches and a citron, in a sort of procession; the Karraites allow of no such ceremony*. It may not be improper to observe, that the Mohammedans are distinguished into two sects, in some measure analogous to the Rabbinists and Karraites among the Jews; namely, the Sonnites and the Shiites. The Sonnites are so called because they acknowledge the authority of the Sonna, or collection of traditions concerning the sayings and actions of their prophet, which is a kind of supplement to the Koran, directing the observance of several things there omitted, and in name, as well as design, answering to the Mishna of the Jews. The Shiites, which name properly signifies sectaries, or adherents in general, but is peculiarly applied to the sect of Ali, reject the Sonna as apocryphal and fabulous. These acknowledge Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, for his true and lawful successor, and even prefer him to Mohammed himself. The Turks are Sonnites; the Persians Shiites. These two Mohammedan sects have as great an antipathy to one another as any two sects, either of Jews or Christians. So greatly is Spinoza mistaken, in preferring the order of the Mohammedan church to that of the Roman, because no schisms have arisen in the former since its birth+. * Vid. Relandi Antiquitat. Hebræor. part ii, cap. ix, sect. xii; see also, on the subject of the Karraites, Trigland. de Sectâ Karæorum; Father Simon's Histoire Critique Vieux Testament, liv. i, ch. xxix, or the Latin edition, p. 145; and also his Disquisitiones Criticæ, cap. xii; R. Mardochæus Karæus, apud Wolfii Notitiam Karæorum; Basnag. Hist. of the Jews, book ii, chap. viii, ix. + Vid. Spinoz. Opera Posthuma, p. 613; and Sale's Preliminary Discourse to his Translation of the Koran, sect. viii, p. 175, 178, London, 1734. CHAP. X. OF THE PHARISEES. THE Pharisees derived their name, not, as some have supposed, from pharash, exposuit, because they were in the highest reputation for expounding the law; for it appears by the rabbies there were women Pharisees, to whom that office did not appertain: but either, as Godwin apprehends, from pirresh, in the conjugation pihel; or from pharas, devisit, partitus est, which is sometimes written with a w sin; see Mic. iii, 3; Lam. iv, 4. pherushim, in the He brew dialect, or a pherishin, or a pherishe, according to the Chaldee, signifies persons who were separated from others; which name, therefore, was assumed by the Pharisees, not because they held separate assemblies for divine worship, but because they pretended to a more than ordinary sanctity and strictness in religion. Thus in the Acts of the Apostles the Pharisees are said to be " ακριβεςατη αιρεσις,” the most exact sect of the Jewish religion, chap. xxvi, 5; agreeable to the account Josephus gives, that this sect was thought Η ευσεβέςερον είναι των άλλων,” to be more pious and devout than others, and to interpret the law with greater accuracy*. In another place he saith, they valued themselves in their exactness on the law, and on their skill in the interpretation of it; and seemed to excel all others in the knowledge and observation of the customs of their fathers+. It is very uncertain when this sect first sprung up; but there is no doubt its date, as well as that of all other religious sects among the Jews, ought to be fixed later than the death of Malachi, when the spirit of prophecy ceased from Israel. *Joseph. de Bello Judaic. lib. i, cap. v, sect. ii, p. 63, Haverc.; see also lib. ii, cap. viii, sect. xiv, p. 166. + Antiq. lib. xvii, cap. ii, sect. iv, p. 830; et in Vitâ suâ, sect. xxxviii, We read, indeed, of persons much of the same spirit and temper with the Pharisees in Isaiah, who said, "Stand by thyself, come not near me; for I am holier than thou," Isa. lxv, 5. But this only shows there were proud hypocrites before the sect of the Pharisees arose. I know not upon what authority Godwin makes Antigonus Socheus to be the founder of this sect three hundred years before Christ. Dr. Lightfoot thinks, that Pharisaism rose up gradually, and was long before it came to the maturity of a sect; but when that was, he does not pretend to determine*. It appears by Josephus, that in the time of John Hyrcanus, the high priest, and prince of the Asmonean line, about an hundred and eight years before Christ, the sect was not only formed, but made a considerable figure: insomuch, that this prince thought it for his interest to endeavour to ingratiate himself with the Pharisees, and gain them to his party. For this end he invited the heads of them to an entertainment, and, having regaled them, paid them the compliment to desire, that if they saw any thing in his administration unacceptable to God, or unjust or injurious to men, they would admonish him of it, and give him their advice and instructions, how it might be reformed and amended. Whereupon one Eleazar, a sour Pharisee, told him, "that if he would approve himself a just man, he must quit the priesthood, and content himself with the civil government." Upon that he was highly provoked, and went over to the Sadduceest. To what a height of popularity and power this sect was grown about eighty years before Christ, appears from another passage in Josephus. When King Alexander Jannæus lay on his deathbed, and his wife Alexandra was exceedingly troubled at the ill state in which she found she and her children would be left on account of the hatred which she knew the Pharisees bore to her husband and his family, he advised her by all means to caress the Pharisees, since that would be the way to secure her the affection of the bulk of the nation; for there were no such friends where they loved, and no such enemies where they hated; and whether they spoke true or false, good or * Hora Hebr. in Matth. iii, 7. Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii, cap. x, sect. v, vi, p. 662, 663. Ubi supra, cap. xv, sect. v; et cap. xvi, sect. i, p. 675, 676. evil of any person, they would be alike believed by the common people. With this view he enjoined her, after his death, to commit his body to their disposal; and at the same time to assure them, that she would ever resign herself to their authority and direction. Do this, said he, and you will not only gain me an honourable funeral, but yourself and your children a secure settlement in the government. And so it accordingly happened; his funeral was more sumptuous than any of his predecessors, and his queen was firmly established in the supreme administration of the nation. According to Basnage, one Aristobulus, an Alexandrian Jew and a peripatetic philosopher, who flourished about one hundred and twenty-five years before Christ, and wrote some commentaries on the scripture in the allegorical way, was the author of those traditions, by an adherence to which chiefly the Pharisees were distinguished from other Jewish sects*. But it is by no means probable such an heap of traditions should spring up at once, but rather gradually; and so according to Lightfoot+ did the sect of the Pharisees itself, till at length it became the most considerable of all. Their distinguishing dogmata may be all, in a manner, referred to their holding the traditions of the elders; which they not only set upon an equal footing with the written law, but in many cases explained the former by the latter, quite contrary to its true intent and meaning. And thus "they made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions," Matth. xv, 6. They pretended to derive these from the same fountain with the written word itself; for they say, that when Moses waited upon God forty days in the mount, he received from him a double law; one in writing, the other traditionary, containing the sense and explication of the former: that Moses, being come to his tent, repeated it first to Aaron, then to Ithamar and Eleazar his sons, then to the seventy elders, and lastly to all the people. The rabbies further inform us, that Moses at his death repeated the oral law again to Joshua; that he delivered it to the elders, they to the prophets, and the prophets to the wise men of the great synagogue; and so * Basnage's History of the Jews, book ii, chap. ix, sect. ii, p. 110, London, 1708. + Lightfoot, Hora Hebr. Matth. iii, 7, sect. iii. it was handed through several generations, till at length R. Judah Haccodhesh, reflecting on the unsettled condition of his nation after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity, and how apt these traditionary precepts would be to be forgotten in their dispersion and oppression, committed them to writing about 150 years after Christ*, and called his book the Mishna, or the second law, of which we have formerly given an account. The dogmata of the Pharisees may be distinguished into doctrinal and practical. The distinguishing doctrines, maintained by this sect, were concerning predestination and free-will, angels and spirits, and the future state and resurrection. 1st, As to predestination and free-will, they went a middle way betwixt the Sadducees, who denied the pre-determination of human actions and events, and the Essenes, who ascribed all things to fate and to the stars. Whereas the Pharisees, according to Josephus, ascribed some things to fate, but held that other things were left in a man's own power, so that he might do them or not+: or rather, according to another account he gives, they held, that all things were decreed of God, yet not so as to take away the freedom of man's will in acting. 2dly, The Pharisees held the doctrine of angels and separate human spirits, which the Sadducees denied, Acts xxiii, 8. 3dly, As to the future state and resurrection, the Pharisees differed both from the Sadducees and Essenes. For, whereas the former held that both soul and body utterly perished at death, and had no existence after it; and the latter, that the soul would continue to exist after death, but without any future union with the body, the Pharisees maintained the resurrection of the bodies, at least of good men, and the future and eternal state of retribution to all men, Acts xxiii, 8. Josephus, who was himself a Pharisee, gives this account of their doctrine in these points, Ψυχην δε πασαν μεν αφθαρτον, μεταβαίνειν δε εις ετερον σωμα, την των αγαθων μόνην, την δε των * See p. 274, note *. + Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii, cap. v, sect. ix, p. 649. ↑ De Bello Judaic. lib. ii, cap. viii, sect. xiv, p. 166; Antiq. lib. xviii, cap. i, sect. iii, p. 871. |