the Pharisees, 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
friend