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It has already been said once and again that John Hyrcanus was a Sadducee. His sons Aristobulus and Alexander imitated him. Therefore some of the Jewish high priests were heretics. For these men were at the same time kings and high priests: the first was king in fact only, but the others were kings both
[margin: Chapter 16. Some high priests and kings of the Jews were Sadducees.]
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in fact and in title, if we believe Strabo, book 16.
But if he was a Sadducee, and therefore also a heretic, according to what has been established in another chapter, where is that praise of Hyrcanus by which Josephus, book 13, chapter 18, and book 1 of The Jewish War, chapter 3, praises him as a prophet? Where is the praise by which Albertus Magnus, in his litany of saints, calls him a saint and invokes him together with his brothers? And what is weightier, where is the constant, firm, and immovable truth, in dogmas of faith and in the general doctrine of morals, of those who sit upon Moses’ chair? Where are the pontifical Urim and Thummim of Exodus 28? Where is that word in Deuteronomy 17 about the high priests: “They will show you the truth of judgment”? See, the high priests themselves, before the coming of Christ the Lord, were open heretics and prescribed and inculcated heresy by laws and punishments, as was clearly seen in the preceding chapter.
First, I admit that the example of this fall of Hyrcanus is very sad, and almost like the fall of the wisest Solomon. He was the son of the most holy and most brave man Simon Maccabaeus. He had held power for many years with great glory and happiness. When he was alone in the temple burning incense, he had been taught by a divine voice, at the very moment when it happened, of the splendid victory of his sons over Antiochus Cyzicenus. The sacred deity was with him and had given him foreknowledge and prediction of future things,
[margin: Chapter 24. Objections. Response 1.]
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and yet this man, because of the fault of one Pharisee, and that not a grave fault but the fault of a frivolous man warmed by wine; because of one rather imprudent little word spoken at a banquet, among cups, amid the greatest cheer of all, and against everyone else’s will; grew hot and violently indignant, and threw himself headlong into the impious heresy of the Sadducees. What a transformation this was! What a deadly second Solomon!
This teaches all, therefore, that whoever thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall; and whoever stands and wishes to stand firm should flee the occasions of falling: banquets, drunkenness, bursts of anger, wrath, hatreds, and the like, through which great and lofty columns have more than once fallen.
Second, he seems not properly to have taught and inculcated the heresy of the Sadducees as something to be fostered by all and necessary for salvation. Rather, he taught only this: that no one should adhere to the peculiar institutions of the Pharisees, and that, conversely, all should conduct themselves according to the peculiar decrees of the Sadducees. I say “all,” not absolutely, but all who were so minded that, beyond the institutions common to all Jews, they wished to follow the peculiar sect of the Pharisees or to live according to their rule. Meanwhile it was permitted to anyone to embrace neither sect, to live content with the common institutions of the Jews alone, or to give himself to the discipline
[margin: 1 Corinthians 10:12. Response 2.]
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of the Essenes, whose assemblies were not forbidden by Hyrcanus.
Third, let Hyrcanus have been a heretic, and let him have attempted to teach and force heresy upon others: divine providence was immediately present. The Lord did not allow the Mosaic seat of doctrine, the pontifical breastplate Urim and Thummim, or the authority of pontifical judgment to be fouled and stained by the dissemination of depraved dogmas. For the Lord at once removed this Hyrcanus from the midst. In this way Flavius must be explained by Gorionides, when he seems, after that sedition, to indicate that Hyrcanus lived happily and administered his rule in the best way for thirty-one years. That statement about the years of his rule refers to his whole administration, not to the time after that sedition, which was very short, although Josephus seems to call it happy because it had no wars or other disturbances.
Gorionides says: “This is John the high priest, who ministered in the great priesthood for forty years, and at the end became a Sadducee.” This can be gathered both from the sequence of years from the death of Simon Maccabaeus to the most blessed birth of Christ the Lord, and from the fact that, among the deeds of this Hyrcanus, this is the very last history narrated even by Flavius.
Finally, fourth, even if Hyrcanus, as a heretic, had labored for a long time to derange all the Jews with heresy, he nevertheless never sanctioned or taught it as high priest
[margin: Response 3-4. Chapter 27.]
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from the chair. Among the other signs by which it is clearly understood that a pontiff, in a matter of faith or of the morals of the whole Church, is doing and deciding something not in the manner of a pontiff, these two are especially manifest.
One is if he suddenly decrees and establishes something at a feast or some game, heated with wine, drunk with anger, or raging with some desire.
The other is if, in the pontificate and the chair given by God, he has held, taught, and fixed some doctrine for many years together with the wisest men, and then afterward suddenly rejects that same doctrine as false and full of errors, unteaches it, and annuls it. Either he himself truly erred before, and then the whole privilege of the pontiff and of his chair concerning its constant truth and divine governance collapses; in that case he can be regarded in the later doctrine no less than in the earlier as suspect, false, deceived, and a deceiver. Or he did not err, and then his privilege indeed remains, but it appears that his later doctrine is false and proceeded from him not rightly and in order, but rashly and thoughtlessly, out of anger or some other disturbance of soul; and therefore no faith or obedience is to be given to it.
These same considerations can be applied to his two sons. Aristobulus reigned for only one year, as Josephus shows in the same book 13, chapter 19.
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For that reason Rabbi Abraham passes him over in his Kabbalah. Alexander held the scepter for twenty-six years, but it is clear from Josephus in the same book 13, chapter 21, that he raged rather savagely against the whole Israelite people and especially against the Pharisees, partly because he had inherited hostilities against the Pharisees from his father, and partly because of his own hatred. They had stirred up the arms of neighboring kings against him; and on the very feast day of Tabernacles, while he was sacrificing and standing at the altar, they pelted him with citrons in contempt.
Yet because Josephus never expressly says that this Alexander was a Sadducee, I would think that he was not one, though he burned with hatred of the Pharisees, as I have said. For it can happen that a Catholic, for certain reasons, whether just or not, hates some Catholic order, and yet for that reason does not cast off the Catholic faith. Moreover, as we have seen elsewhere, when this Alexander was dying he strongly commended the Pharisees to his wife Alexandra if she wished her own affairs to be well ordered, in the same book of Josephus, chapter 23.
After Christ the Lord, Ananus the Younger was a Sadducee, as Josephus testifies in book 20 and Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History 2, chapter 23. But concerning these later high priests there is no difficulty, since the chair had already been taken away from them, or at least a bridle had been placed upon them by the Pharisees, as Josephus indicates in book 18, chapter 2.
[margin: Chapter 16.]
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