In _Bell. Jud._, II, viii. 14, Josephus says that the Pharisees taught the incorruptibility of the soul, but that the Sadducees “did not believe in the immortal duration of the soul, and the rewards and punishments in Hades,” their belief being that “the souls die with the bodies.” In one respect here, as Leszynsky has pointed out, we are able to prove that Josephus has coloured his account; for Pharisaic Judaism taught not merely the incorruptibility of the soul, but also a doctrine of the resurrection of the body; but because this latter thought was strange to the Greeks he did not make mention of it. In his later work Josephus corrects himself in so far as to say that the Pharisees believed not only in the incorruptibility of the soul, but also in its continued life hereafter; his words are: “They (the Pharisees) also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and that the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.”[184] According to these words there was no difference in this respect between the Pharisees and the Essenes; but even here Josephus cannot bring himself to declare the whole truth concerning the real Pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection. “It is probable,” says Leszynsky, “that this error immediately resulted in the rise of another, for since the Essenes had their belief in immortality, and the Pharisees that of the incorruptibility of the soul—or, as in the other account, the continued life of the soul hereafter—there remained nothing for the Sadducees but a denial pure and simple of the future life. He who, like Josephus, puts resurrection and immortality on precisely the same plane, necessarily imputes to him who denies the resurrection the view that the soul is perishable.... But both from the Talmud (Sanhedrin 90_b_) and from the New Testament (Matt. xxii. 23 ff.; Acts xxiii. 8, cp. iv. 1), we know that the Sadducees denied only the doctrine of the resurrection, for they required proof of this from the Torah which was not forthcoming. But of this un-Greek dogma Josephus would have nothing to say.”[185] The possibility that the Sadducees held the ancient Israelite conception of the existence of the soul in Sheol must, at any rate, be allowed; for we cannot accept the evidence of Josephus here unreservedly. If we had only the New Testament and the Talmud to go upon we should certainly not deny that the Sadducees believed in accordance with the ancient dogma of their race; yet these two sources are assuredly more reliable than Josephus. There is, moreover, nothing in the Zadokite fragments to support the evidence of Josephus.[186] We may, therefore, conclude that the Sadducees believed in the immortality of the soul, but not in any doctrine of the resurrection.