The Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Thursday, 5/17/18

Paul's life was saved by a fight springing up between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. To get a grasp on the animosity between this two groups we must go back nine hundred years,

In 1000 b.c. King David promised the crown after hum to Solomon, the son if Bathsheba. Now,  Solomon was a mild mannered man, and he let his half-brother Adonijah to begin acting as though he were king.

When Bathsheba complained to a dying David, he summoned the priest Zadoc, ordering him to immediately consecrate  Solomon as king. That Zadoc, fully aware of the strength of Adonijah, felt he was bringing death on himself by blocking Adonijah; but the whole nation rose up so strongly in  support  of him, that they rewarded his heroism by setting up the tradition that allowed only descendants of Zadoc to become high priests.  

That tradition ws humored for eight hundred years unto 160 b.c. when the only living descendent of Zadoc was an imbecile. To save the country, the strong family of the Maccabees promoted their Jonathan to serve as high priest. His supporters, seeing themselves as the legal descendants of Zadococ, called themselves the Sadocites. oe Sadducees.

The old-time loyal party called themselves the Pharisees, or Separitists.