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.