XXXIV. THE PHARISEES AND THE SADDUCEES

There is a difference in the quarter from which opposition to the Gospel of Christ proceeded, as represented in the Gospels and in the Acts, most characteristic of truth, though most unobtrusive in itself. Indeed, these two portions of the New Testament might be read many times over without the feature I allude to happening to present itself.

Throughout the Gospels, the hostility to the Christian cause manifested itself almost exclusively from the Pharisees. Jesus evidently considers them as a sect systematically adverse to it—“Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!.… Ye are the children of them which killed the prophets … Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.” [Matt. 23:29. 32.] And before Jesus came up to the last passover, “the chief priests and Pharisees,” we read, “gave commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him:” [John 11:57.] and that when Judas proposed to betray him, “he received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees.” [John. 18:3.] On the other hand, throughout the Acts, the like hostility is discovered to proceed from the Sadducees. Thus, “And as they” (Peter and John) “spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them.” [Acts 4:1.] And again, on another occasion, “The high-priest rose up, and all that were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, and were filled with indignation; and laid their hands on the Apostles, and put them in the common prison.” [Acts 5:17.] And again, in a still more remarkable case: when Paul was maltreated before Ananias, and there was danger perhaps to his life, he “perceiving,” we read, “that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee;” [Acts 23:6.] evidently considering the Pharisees now to be the friendly faction, and soliciting their support against the Sadducees, whom he equally regarded as a hostile one; nor was he disappointed in his appeal.

Whence, then, this extraordinary change in the relations of these parties respectively to the Christians? No doubt, because the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which before Christ’s own resurrection, i. e. during the period comprised in the Gospels, had been so far from dispersed by the disciples, that they scarcely knew what it meant (Mark 9:10), had now become a leading doctrine with them; as any body may satisfy themselves was the case by reading the several speeches of St. Peter, which are given in the early chapters of the Acts; in each and all of which the resurrection is a prominent feature—in that which he delivers, on providing a successor for Judas (Acts 1:22); at the feast of Pentecost (2:32); at the Beautiful Gate (3:12); the next day, before the priests (4:10); again, before the council (5:31); once more, on the conversion of Cornelius (10:40). The coincidence here lies in the Pharisees and Sadducees acting on this occasion consistently with their respective tenets: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.” [Acts 23:6.] The undesignedness of the coincidence consists in its being left to the readers of the Gospels and Acts to discover for themselves that there was this change of the persecuting sect after the Lord’s resurrection, their attention not drawn to it by any direct notice in the documents themselves.