Of the ordinary sources only the Rabbinical contain echoes, and these but slight, of the controversy which existed between the Sadducees and Pharisees on this subject[193]; but the Book of Jubilees, the Book of 1 Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs give indications of it; and in the _Zadokite Fragments_ there are also references to the subject; Schechter says in his introduction: “Another point of supreme importance separating them [i.e. the members of the Zadokite sect] both from Jew as well as Samaritan is the regulation of the calendar. The Sect looks upon itself as the remnant unto which God revealed ‘the hidden things in which all Israel erred: His Holy Sabbaths and His glorious festivals, the testimony of His righteousness and the ways of His truth and the desires of His will which a man shall do and live by them.’ It need hardly be pointed out that this passage is a mere paraphrase of the passage in the Book of Jubilees: ‘And all the children of Israel will forget, and will not find the path of the years, and will forget the new moons, and seasons, and Sabbaths, and they will go wrong as to all the order of the years’ (vi. 34 ff.). The ‘hidden things’ are, in the Book of Jubilees, disclosed to the Sect by a special revelation (vi. 3), but the calendar of this pseudepigraphic work differs in the most important essentials both from that of the Pharisees and from that of the Samaritans” (p. xvi.). In the Book of Jubilees the solar year is accepted. That this controversy must have been of an acute character is obvious, and at first one may wonder that the ordinary sources do not refer to it. But in the New Testament one would not expect any reference to it; and Josephus is mainly concerned with doctrinal points when speaking about the Sadducees. As to the slight mention of the subject in Rabbinical Literature Leszynsky explains it by saying that “it would almost seem as though the Rabbis wished by their silence to kill this the most dangerous of all questions which menaced Judaism; they did not wish to raise up again the spirit of doubt to quell which had cost them so much trouble.”[194] On the other hand, we have definite witness to the existence of the quarrel in some of the pseudepigraphic books, as hinted above, and the _Zadokite Fragments_, as we have just seen, offer strong evidence in regard to it. * * * * * There is, of course, a great deal more that might be said on the whole subject of the Pharisees and Sadducees, especially about the Pharisees; but our main purpose has been to set forth the chief differences of doctrine between the two; and we have laid more stress on the Sadducæan position because this has not, as a rule, received the same attention as the Pharisaic.[195] IV. SOME SUBSIDIARY CONSIDERATIONS