who were very warm lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, and which lived by the altar, while they saw the vanity of it.[3] The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which dragged the people along, that the name of “Sadducee” (sadoki), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with “Materialist” and with “Epicurean.”

[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant., XV. iii. 1, 3.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., XVIII. ii.]

[Footnote 3:  Acts iv. 1, and following, v. 17; Jos., Ant., XX. ix. 1; Pirke Aboth, i. 10.]

A still worse element had begun, since the reign of Herod the Great, to corrupt the high-priesthood.  Herod having fallen in love with Mariamne, daughter of a certain Simon, son of Boethus of Alexandria, and having wished to marry her (about the year 28 B.C.), saw no other means of ennobling his father-in-law and raising him to his own rank than by making him high-priest.  This intriguing family remained master, almost without interruption, of the sovereign pontificate for thirty-five years.[1] Closely allied to the reigning family, it did not lose the office until after the deposition of Archelaus, and recovered it (the year 42 of our era) after Herod Agrippa had for some time re-enacted the work of Herod the Great.  Under the name of Boethusim,[2] a new sacerdotal nobility was formed, very worldly, and little devotional, and closely allied to the Sadokites.  The Boethusim, in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, are depicted as a kind of unbelievers, and always reproached as Sadducees.[3] From all this there resulted a miniature court of Rome around the temple, living on politics, little inclined to excesses of zeal, even rather fearing them, not wishing to hear of holy personages or of innovators, for it profited from the established routine.  These epicurean priests had not the violence of the Pharisees; they only wished for quietness; it was their moral indifference, their cold irreligion, which revolted Jesus.  Although very different, the priests and the Pharisees were thus confounded in his antipathies.  But a stranger, and without influence, he was long compelled to restrain his discontent within himself, and only to communicate his sentiments to the intimate friends who accompanied him.

[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant. XV. ix. 3, XVII. vi. 4, xiii. 1, XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1, XIX. vi. 2, viii. 1.]

[Footnote 2:  This name is only found in the Jewish documents.  I think that the “Herodians” of the gospel are the Boethusim.]