(printed p. 6 — Book I)
The same Josephus relates that, in the time of King Herod - or rather the tyrant - and of his son Archelaus, who succeeded him, a fourth faction arose among the Jews. This faction denied that the Jews ought to have any lords besides the one God, just as those men boasted in Saint John 8:33: “We are Abraham’s seed, and we have never served anyone.” Consequently, it also denied that any tribute should be paid by the Jewish people to the Romans.
That this sect was different from the three which Josephus himself listed for us in the preceding chapter is indicated not obscurely by the matter itself, and also by Josephus himself, when in the same passage he says that Judas the Galilean was the author of this sect, and adds: “This sophist belonged to a particular sect, resembling none of the others.” And he says this both much more clearly and much more fully in Antiquities 18.1: “Judas and Saddok introduced among us a fourth philosophy,” and in 18.2: “Judas the Galilean became leader of the fourth philosophical school.”
Tertullian, in On Prescription against Heretics, chapter 45, likewise counts four heretics of Judaism, but different ones: Dositheus the Samaritan, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Herodians.
[margin: Fourth sect.]
(printed p. 7)
Saint Jerome, in his book against the Luciferians, followed this reckoning of Tertullian and almost his very words. Eusebius, in Greek, in Ecclesiastical History 4.22, drawing from Hegesippus, makes the number seven. In Honorius of Autun and in our Rabanus, On the Institution of Clerics 2.58, the number of these same sects grows to eight; they are named as follows: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes or Essenists, Marbonenses or Marbonei, Genists, Merists, Samaritans, and Hemerobaptists.
But Saint Epiphanius, in book 1, counts eleven sects, of which four are Samaritan and seven Jewish. For the Samaritans are divided by him into Essenes, Sebuaeans, Gorthenes, and Dositheans; the Jews into Sadducees, Grammateis or Scribes, Pharisees, Hemerobaptists, Nazareans, Essenes, and Herodians. Saint John Damascene follows Saint Epiphanius in his book On Heresies, except that in him they are wrongly written as Jebusaeans. For these, Pamelius, in the cited passage of Tertullian, wrongly substitutes Nebuaeans, since in Epiphanius they are called Sebuaeans.
Philastrius, however, in his own book On Heresies, compiled a much longer catalogue. In it, before the coming of Christ the Lord, twenty-eight sects are counted, namely:
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Ophites, or Serpentarians.
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Cainites.
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Sethians.
[margin: Sects: seven; eight; eleven; twenty-eight.]
(printed p. 8)
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Dositheans.
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Sadducees.
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Pharisees.
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Samaritans.
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Nazareans.
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Essenes.
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Heliognostics, worshippers of the sun.
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Frog-worshippers.
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Mouse-worshippers, or Musorites.
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Fly-worshippers.
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Troglodytes; see number 22.
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Worshippers of Fortune.
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Baalites.
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Astarites and Remphanites.
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Molochites.
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Tophetites.
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Well-worshippers.
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Bronze-serpent worshippers.
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Subterraneans.
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Thammuzites.
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Belites.
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Bahalites or Balaamites.
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Pythonists.
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Astarothites.
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Herodians.
Indeed, still more seem to have to be added. For John Leo, in book 2 of his Description of Africa, when speaking of Mount Demensara, says on folio 49: “Innumerable Jews are found here, who serve for pay under some prince and are continually under arms…”
[margin: More sects.]
(printed p. 9)
…under arms. These are regarded as heretics by the other African Jews, and in their language they are called Carraum, or rather Caraim, that is, Readers, Scripturists, or Textualists. For they admit only the text of Scripture, which they judge sacred, rejecting all interpretations of all men, as Elias in the Tishbi reports under the word Tzadok and under the word Kara.
So strongly do the other Jews shrink from them that they do not deign to have with them not only marriages, but even conversations. This may be seen at Pera, or Constantinople, among the several synagogues of the Jews, in one synagogue of those Caraim, which is the only one there.
What of the Rechabites in Jeremiah 35? What of the Nazareans celebrated everywhere? What of the Kenites in Judges 1? What of the Caelicolae, of whom Justinian speaks in book 1 of the Code, title 9, and Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 30? What of the Hasidaeans, mentioned in 1 Maccabees 2:42, 1 Maccabees 7:13, and 2 Maccabees 14:6? Finally, what of those Tubieni, mentioned in 2 Maccabees 12:17? For Scaliger says in book 6 On the Correction of Chronology that these are different from those others. Behold, then, almost more than thirty-five Jewish sects.