whole, admired and imitated, rather than envied. They were not in the least self-ef facing. They could, when they chose, playa leading role in municipal politics, especially in Egypt, where they were perhaps over a million strong. Some had notable careers in the imperial service. Among these there were passio nate admirers of the Roman system, like the historian Josephus, or the philosopher Philo. While the Jews of Judea, and still more so of semi-Jewish areas like Galilee, tended to be poor, backward, obscur antist, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, uncultured and xenophobic, the Diaspora Jews were expansive, rich, cosmopolitan, well-adjusted to Roman norms and to Hellenic culture, Greek speaking, literate and open to ideas. All the sects were monotheistic, of course, and all accepted the law in some form. But agreement went no further. The Samaritans had broken the connection with the Temple and had their own sanctuary on Mount Gerizim; many would not allow them to be Jews at all. On the other hand, the Essenes did not recognize the Temple either and they were agreed to be one of the purest and strictest sects. There was no ruling orthodoxy: that is, hieratic power was not identified with the prevailing tendency. The high priesthood, under the procurators hip, was in the hands of Sadducee aristocrats, who supported and upheld the Roman occupation. They were rich, conservative, linked among themselves by complex family alliances, and had large estates. and saw Roman rule underpinning all these things more securely than a national kingship. We do not know much about their teaching, since Judaism achieved a high degree of Pharisaic unity after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and Sadducee traditions were not preserved. But they do not seem to have believed in life after death or the intervention of providence. Their religion was defective and in some respects quite impracticable, since they interpreted the law literally without any allowance for historical change, so they could have no popular following. They were, in fact, a class of collaborators, ruling the colony through the High Council of Jerusalem, which sat on the Temple Mount, and was referred to as the Sanhedrin. The Romans upheld the powers of the Council and when necessary enforced Jewish cult rules, such as the exclusion of Gentiles from the Temple. They addressed their official letters to the 'rulers, senate and people of the Jerusalemites’, thus giving the Sanhedrin the status of an elective municipality in a major city. In fact, throughout this period it was little more than the family circle of Annas, the high priest, who was appointed by the procurator and removable at will. True, its seventy members, priests, elders and scribes, included a good many Pharisees, who can be described as the middle-class popular party. They were there for convenience, and of necessity, for the overwhelming majority of lawyers were Pharisees. But the two factions disagreed on virtually every issue; in fact the prosecution of Christ is one of the few occasions on which Sadducees and Pharisees are recorded as having worked together. There were many schools among the Pharisees, but most held no brief for the Romans; they were, in varying degrees, nationalists, and some were Zealots, prepared to rise with violence when the scriptures seemed to command it. Josephus describes them as 'a party of Jews who seem to be more religious than the others, and explain the laws with more minute care’. He adds that they used tradition to interpret scripture and the laws in a sensible manner. There were sects in Jewish society who regarded the ruling priestly groups in Jerusalem as hopelessly corrupt and compromised, and who sought by direct action to restore 'the theocratic state in all its purity. One such had formed itself, from among descendants of the high-priest Zadoc, and from the priestly tribe of Aaron, around the middle of the second century Be. Their leader was an unidentified Temple official referred to as the Teacher of Righteousness, and their chief grievance was the appointment of a high priest from outside the priestly tribes. Having failed to win their point they left the Temple and set up an alternative and purified focus of worship in the desert near the Dead Sea. The Essene sect, as it was called, had existed for about ISO years by the time of Jesus’ birth and was an important and respected movement in Judaism. Josephus says that there were about 4,000 Essenes (as opposed to 6,000 Pharisees); there 8