Yochanan Hyrcanus and the Split between Pharisees and Sadducees

Yochanan Hyrcanus, son of Shimon the Hasmonean, ruled thirty-one years. He extended the borders, destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and annexed Idumea, and the Talmud says he heard a heavenly voice in the Holy of Holies. But the end of his reign marked a break.

The Talmud (Kiddushin 66a) relates that at a victory banquet the ruler asked the sages to tell him if he was doing anything wrong. A certain Elazar ben Po'irah prompted another to say: 'Be content with the royal crown and leave the priestly crown to the seed of Aaron'—insinuating that the ruler's mother had been a captive and he was unfit for the priesthood. An inquiry proved the claim false, but the poison worked: Elazar convinced the ruler that all the sages stood behind that one man, and he abolished the Oral Torah and joined the Sadducees.

So the split hardened. The Pharisees—the sages and most of the people—held to the Oral Torah received at Sinai and believed in resurrection. The Sadducees—the aristocracy and part of the priesthood—took only the written text literally and denied reward after death. The dispute was practical—the calendar, purity laws, the Yom Kippur service—and it tore at the nation until the Temple fell.

After Alexander the divergence of the chronologies nearly disappears: both rest on the same Greek and Roman documents. The remainder of a year or two is the difference between the traditional count and the date refined from external sources.