The Sects. The People

THE existence of sects in Judaism at the beginning of the Christian era has long been suspected. ¹ Nevertheless, historians who have endeavoured to describe the life of the Jews in that epoch have almost invariably ignored them. Moreover, the serious study of the Apocrypha, or books excluded from the two canons, has had to wait so long for recognition that it is not yet sufficiently advanced to enable us to draw from those documents all the information which they may contain. As the result of impressions derived from the Epistles of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles and, more generally, the later history of Jewish-Christian contacts, there has been a tendency to exaggerate Jewish intolerance, and it has not been sufficiently observed that throughout their history the Jews have never shown themselves really bigoted except on one point: the observance of the Law. On the contrary, what we should call philosophic thought, that is, speculation about the Law, and as a supplement to it, has always been tolerated, among them. ² Today the existence of sects is recognized even by the most cautious historians who are not attracted by rash theories. ³ At the same time it will be understood that we are very poorly informed concerning these various religious organizations; we catch glimpses of them and we divine their existence, but we do not see them in a full light. ⁴