'Now Jochanan the high-priest did away with the confession about the Levitical tithes (because it was now inapplicable) ; he also ordered the discontinu ance of chanting Awake !' (Ps. xliv. 23, etc., be cause the singing of it every morning made it appear as if God were asleep), and the wounding of the sacrifices (because it was cruel), interdicted working on the middle days of the festivals, since up to his days the hammer was busily at work iu Jerusalem, and ordered buyers of questionable pro duce whether it had been tithed or not to tithe it' (Mirhna, Maser Sheni, v. 16 ; Sota, ix. 10).
Jehoshua ben Perachja, and his colleague Nitai of Arabela, who were the second of the four pairs ow% that headed the Sanhedrim and the doctors of the law as president and vice-president 03.c. 140-110). Though their surviving maxims are very few, yet they are indicative of the irrepar able breach which was then made between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In harmony with the wisdom, humanity, consistency, and leniency of John Hyrcanus, under whose pontificate and rule these two distinguished doctors of the law taught, Jehoshua b. Perachj a propounded the maxim: Procure for thyself a teacher, gain to thyself a friend, and judge every man by the rule of inno. cence ' (Aboth. i. 6). His colleague, Nitai of Arabela, however, who regarded the foreign policy of the Sadducees as desecration of God's holy heritage [SAnnucEEs], and as working into the hands of those very enemies whom they had only just driven from the holy city (1 Maccab. etc.), taught : Keep aloof from wicked neighbours, have no fellowship with sinners, and reject not the belief in retribution' (Aboth. i. 7). It was this maxim which brought about the final separation between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the time of Hyrcanus. The gulf thus created was deepened by an unhappy circumstance which made John Hyrcanus desert the ranks of the Pharisees and go over to the Sadducees, and which gave the first impulse to the bloody sufferings, and the ulti mate destruction of his country and people for whose independence and religion he and his family fought so bravely. The circumstance is as fol lows :—Having returned from a glorious victory, and being pleased with the condition of the people at home, Hyrcanus gave a banquet, to which he invited both Pharisees and Sadducees. As he was enjoying himself in the midst of his guests, he, in stigated by the Sadducees, asked the Pharisees to tell him whether there was any command which he had transgressed, that he might make amends, since it was his great desire to make the law of God his rule of life. To this one of the Pharisees replied : • Let Hyrcanus be satisfied with the regal crown and give the priestly diadem to some one more worthy of it ; because before his birth his mother was taken captive from the Maccabxan home, in a raid of the Syrians upon Modin, and it is illegal for the son of a captive to officiate as a priest, much more as high-priest.' The Sadducees, who had thus far succeeded, tried to persuade Hyrcanus that the Pharisees did this designedly in order to lower him in the eyes of the people. To ascertain it, Hyrcanus demanded of the Sanhedrim to sen tence the offender to capital punishment. But the Pharisaic doctors of the law, who had no special enactment against indignities heaped upon a sovereign, who believed and taught that all men are alike in the sight of God, and whose very president at this time propounded the maxim of leniency, said that according to the law they could only give him forty stripes save one, which was the regular punishment for slanderers. It was this which made Hyrcanus go over to the Sad ducees, massacre many .of the Scribes, and fill the Sanhedrim with Sadducees (comp. Josephus, Andy. Io. 5, 6, with Kiddushin, 66 a ; Graetz, Geschichte der 453, 2d ed.) e. This deplorable condition, however, soon pas sed by, and the Scribes were again in the ascend ency in the reign of Alexander Jannai, son of John Hyrcanus, when Simon ben Shetaah, brother of queen Salome (Berachoth, 48, a), was the president of the Sanhedrim, and jehudah ben Tabai vice president (u.c. to-65). Though Simon b. Shetaah had for a time to quit the court and hide himself, because he was accused of treason against the sovereign, yet Alexander Jannai reinstated him upon the solicitation of the Parthian ambassadors, who missed at the royal table the wisdom of this Scribe, which they had so much enjoyed on a former occasion. He allowed himself to be elected mem ' ber of the Sanhedrim, which was then filled with the Sadducees whom John Hyrcanus had put there, and by his wisdom repeatedly in the pre sence of the queen and king confounded these Sadducees by puzzling questions about the treat ment, without tradition, of such legal cases as are not mentioned in the Mosaic law, so much so that they gradually quitted the supreme court, and Simon filled the vacancies with the Scribes.
The calamitous event which happened at the Feast of Tabernades whilst Alexander Jannai was offi ciating in the temple [TABERNACLES, FEAST OF] checked for a time the progress of the Scribes, but it was more than made up by the fact that this sovereign on his death-bed committed his wife to the care of the Pharisees (Joseph. Ant4. xiii. 16. t, 2). Under Simon b. Shetaah and Jehudah b. Tabai the Sanhedrim was entirely cleared of the Sadducees, and a festival day was instituted (March 17, B.C. 78) to commemorate the, return of the residue of the Scribes (t..141D+D nutt) who went into exile in the days of John Hyrcanus. The reconstruction of the Sanhedrim, however, ryas not the only important work effected by these two doctors of the law. To render divorce difficult, Simon b. Shetaa.h decreed that the money of mar riage-settlement, which was at first deposited with the wife's father, and afterwards laid out in house hold funaiture—thus being no loss to the husband in case he divorced his wife—should amount at least to two minae silver (about .4.7 : to) if the bride is a rnaiden, and half that sum to a widow ; that the husband is to invest it in his business, so as to render it a matter of great inconvenience and difficulty to draw it out, and that the whole of his property is to be pledged for the payment of this settlement (rari, o-urypacp75), thus precluding the possibility of her being defrauded of it by unprin cipled heirs (Babylon Eel/tuba/1, 82 b ; Yerusalem Kethuboth, cap. viii. end ; Sabbath, xiv. 6 ; xvi. 6). The formula of this instrument is given in the article MARRIAGE in this Cyclopdia. Simon b. Shetaah, moreover, introduced superior schools into every provincial town, and ordained that all the youths from the age of sbcteen should visit them (yerusalem Kethuboth, viii. ii), which created a new epoch in the education of the nation [EnucAnoN]. Their zeal, however, to uphold the law in opposition to the Sadducees led them to commit rigorous acts towards their antagonists (Joseph. Antig. 16. 1) ; and on one occasion Jehudah b. Tabai, to eradicate the Sadducean notions from the people (SAnnucEEs], condemned to death a false witness in a capital trial (Maeeoth, v. b). But when Simon b. Shetaah reprimanded his colleague for this unlawful act, Jehudah b. Tabai, who was then president of the Sanhedrim, was so truly penitent, that he at once gave up the presidency, threw him self on the grave of the man he had condemned, crying most bitterly, and beseeching God to take his own life as an atonement for the one he had. judicially taken away (Afaccoth, ibid.) This rash act taught him greater leniency for the future, and accounts for bis precept to judges : Only as long as the accused stand before thee regard them as transgressors of the law ; but regard them as in nocent immediately after they are released, and have suffered the penalty of the law' (Aboth. S). The following may be mentioned as an in stance of Simon b. Shetaah's extraordinary eon scientiousness, which must have greatly impressed itself upon the minds of the people, and prepared the way for the reception of the truth as it is in Jesus. The Sadducees, out of revenge for his rigorous measures against them, suborned two witnesses who testified that his son committed a. capital crime. He was accordingly sentenced to death. As he was led to the place of execution, the witnesses, being filled with horror that they had condemned innocent blood, confessed that they had borne false witness. But as the law from time im memorial had enacted that the evidence once given and accepted cannot be revoked ' (Maimonides, lad Ha-Chezaka Hilchoth Eduth, iii. 5), and though Simon's fatherly feelings for a moment made him hesitate about the propriety of the execution, yet his son, to uphold the digmity of the law, exclaimed to him, Father, if thou wishest that salvation should come to Israel through thee, pay no regard to my life' (Nn9 nvp3 mt.; Nzt.4 nalpptu +ri);;, nvy y ;won), and accord ingly the son died a martyr to the honour of the law (rusalenz Chagiga,ii. 2 ; Sanhedrin, i. 5 ; vii. 3). This noble sacrifice on the part of Simon b. Shetaah evidently made him lay down the maxim : 'Test wit nesses most carefully, and be cautious in question ing thcm, lest they learn therefrom how to impart to their falsehood the garb of truth ' (Aboth. i. 9). No wonder that tradition celebrates Simon b. Shetaah as the restorer of the divine law to its pristine glory' (Op= Nnefr nnintyn 6)yri ;Dm n)v1+ nnInn -omm ritr) p, laddushin).