of thinking will impel honest men sometimes to modify their most cherished beliefs. The conditions brought about through the Maccabæan struggle, and the gradual triumph of some specifically Hellenistic _traits_, above all of religious syncretism, will account almost wholly for what appears to be the _volte face_ of both Sadducees and Pharisees. While one can well understand that the Sadducees, as represented by their spiritual forbears in pre-Maccabæan times, belonging as they did to the priestly aristocracy, and generally to the more cultured classes, should be friendly inclined towards the mental refinement and enlightenment such as Hellenism offered, there can be no doubt that before the outbreak of the Maccabæan struggle, their over-anxiety in this direction involved them in deplorable disloyalty both to their nation, and to their religious principles. We may grant that many belonging to this school of thought honestly believed that the more fully the people came under the sway of Hellenistic influence the more beneficial it would be for all concerned, yet there is no getting away from the fact that their behaviour as recorded in 1 Maccabees was unpatriotic, and by acquiescing in the abrogation of the Law, or rather in the attempt to abrogate it, they acted clean contrary to their fundamental principles. Indeed, it is so difficult to understand their action that we are perhaps justified in believing that the support accorded to Antiochus Epiphanes in his attempt to stamp out Judaism came only from an extreme section of the Hellenistically inclined party. For when all is said and done, they were Jews, and, as a body, venerated the Law, as such, like other Jews, and worshipped the same God as other Jews; so that with all their partiality for Greek culture they held firmly, as the sources prove, to what was specifically Jewish in spite of internal quarrels, bitter as these proverbially are.