s did believe in good and evil angels and they expected the coming of a Messiah. They also believed that the dead would return to life from the call of the Messiah, once they had endured a period of reward or penalty depending on the individual deeds they enacted while alive. However, the Pharisees were thought of as hypocritical from the perspective of Jesus because their rites and rituals of piety were surface oriented. Ceremonial washings, fastings, prayers, and the giving of alms were all part of their outward observance of piety, but they were basically lacking in genuine piety. They took a great deal of pride from the fact that they did good works that were apparent externally. However, they would play a major role in the death of Jesus, a man who would attack them for their superficial and hypocritical nature, “They were bitter enemies of Jesus, and his cause; and were in turn severely rebuked by him for their avarice, ambition, hollow reliance on outward works, and affection of piety in order to gain popularity. They were instrumental in his death” (The Pharisees 1). Even today those who are superficial in their observation of Christian practices are known as “Pharisees.”
The Sadducees are quite distinct in comparison to the Pharisees and the Essenes. Their ideology kept them from being close to the ideology of Jesus as well. They seemed more like a group of existentialists in a religious era than they did a pious Jewish sect. For the Sadducees “deny divine action in the world, affirm human freedom, and believe that the soul perishes along with the body…The Sadducees rejected beliefs in afterlife, resurrection and a post-mortem judgement” (de Lacey 1). The Sadducees looked only to what was written in the Torah as the basis for their beliefs and actions. They were considered aristocratic in nature because they were composed of high priests and conservative aristocracy. The Sadducees also rejected t...