Comparing The Pharisees, Sadducees, And Essenes

The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes were the three major religious factions of this time. They all had different views of how things where to be handled, and how they should live. These three groups where broke into three different social classes, as well The Pharisees were the common people. The Sadducees were the Priests, and aristocrats. The Essenes were an unknown social class because the split of the two prior groups created them.

The Pharisees often referred to as the as the separate ones in they way of ceremonial, and disparaging sense. Was the largest group out of the three in the time of Herod the great their number of followers was around six thousand. The Pharisees were known for being politically correct. When they would pray they would be more concerned about the people who was seeing them, and hearing them then actually worshiping they had very strict, and stern beliefs. Some of these were in the form of dietary restrictions, observance of the Sabbath. Some of these customs are still observed to certain degree in today’s time. They’re many religions that still practice dietary restrictions an example is the Eastern Orthodox Christianity who have restrictions on Meat

The Essenes unlike the Sadducees main focus was actually not on wealth they made all of their members give up their land, wealth to a community treasury. They where know for living away from people in small private villages. An animal sacrifice was not how they purified their self instead they wore white robes, and had no bowel movements on the Sabbath. In my opinion they seemed like odd group out of the three they didn’t had there own set of ideas, and ways of doing things in the world to feel spiritual connected. I think these group could related to many of the tribes in third world countries who are disconnected from the world and have there own set of ideas and