Thus endless discussions and acrimonious disputes arose between the two parties, which became further embittered by doctrinal disagreements. The Pharisees won the day ultimately, for they were able to show by subtle exegesis that the oral tradition was based upon the written Law. But, and this is the great point, the Sadducæan principle was thus victorious; as a party they went under; but the Pharisees, by adopting the Sadducæan principle that nothing is binding that cannot be shown to be in accordance with the written Law, implicitly acknowledged that the Sadducees had been right all along. Leszynsky, in his masterly thesis on the subject, concludes the section on the evidence of Rabbinical sources with these words, which admirably sum up the matter: “The Pharisees conquered. True! And when with Rabbi Akiba the Pharisaic art of interpretation reached its zenith, and every letter of the Torah had been fitted into the Pharisaic system—then Sadducæanism came to an end. But they had only conquered by appropriating the principle of the enemy. From the party of tradition arose the party of the Torah as traditionally conceived. Rabbinical Judaism is in truth a synthesis of Pharisaism and Sadducæanism.”[180] See further below, § iv. (_b_) _The Doctrine of God._ On this subject Josephus (_Antiq._, XIII, v. 9) tells us that while the Pharisees hold that some things in the world happen by the will of Providence, and that in other cases things lie in the power of men, the Sadducees, on the other hand, altogether deny the existence of Providence as an active force in the world; if, indeed, there is such a thing at all, they say, it does not concern itself with the affairs of men. Everything lies in the hand of men themselves, they alone are the cause if prosperity be their lot, while adversity is simply the result of their own foolishness. Again, in another passage (_Bell. Jud._, II, viii. 14) he tells us that, in contradistinction to the Pharisees, the Sadducees do not believe in Providence; they deny that God takes any interest in human affairs; good or evil is the lot of men according to their own free choice. This evidence of Josephus cannot be accepted so far as the Sadducees are concerned; we have seen that the written Law, or Pentateuch, was the supreme authority according to Sadducæan teaching; but in the Pentateuch the doctrine of God is such as to make it impossible to believe that what Josephus says really reflects Sadducæan belief here. What is said over and over again in the Pentateuch regarding the divine guidance of men and God’s incessant interposition in the affairs of the world of His creation impels one to affirm that Josephus is wrong in his contention that the Sadducees denied the existence of Providence. It is probable that the partisanship of the Pharisee Josephus has somewhat carried him away, and that he has, perhaps unconsciously, here misrepresented the Sadducæan position. This is