The contentions of Charles and Leszynsky are thus diametrically opposed. To the present writer the great difficulty in accepting either as it stands lies in the fact that, broadly speaking, the Apocalyptic Literature, of which the Book of Enoch is the most striking example we possess, was acceptable to neither Pharisees nor Sadducees. No doubt Charles is right in assigning the earlier portions of the book (i.e. the pre-Maccabæan) to the _Chassidim_; but we have sought, in an earlier chapter,[285] to show that Friedländer is justified in maintaining that the _Chassidim_ were the forbears of both Apocalyptists and Pharisees, two branches of the parent stock which diverged widely in spite of some fundamental points of family likeness. The Book of Enoch, therefore, may, in its pre-Maccabæan portions, well be ascribed to the _Chassidim_; but it is not on that account necessary to ascribe all the later portions to the Pharisees; three points especially militating against this: the Messianic doctrine, the, generally speaking, universalistic spirit, and the attitude to the Law not being the Pharisaic one.[286] The Apocalyptists, on the other hand, were also the descendants of the _Chassidim_; and no sufficient reason exists for not ascribing the bulk of the later portions of our book to them. Regarding Leszynsky’s view, while we feel that that part of it is justified which ascribes to the Sadducees the “Book of Astronomy” (lxxii.-lxxxii.) and possibly certain other portions, there is a grave difficulty in regarding such parts as i.-xxxvi. and xciii., xci. 12-17, in which the apocalyptic element is prominent, as of Sadducæan origin, for nothing that we know of the Sadducees leads us to suppose that they cultivated apocalyptic studies. What we feel to be of extreme importance in assigning authorship to Jewish books belonging to the last two pre-Christian centuries is the fact well expressed by Friedländer: “... But who would maintain that these two parties, i.e. the Pharisees and Sadducees, constituted in reality the Jewish people at this period, however much they may have been pushed into the foreground of historical events? The Pharisees and Sadducees, no less than the Essenes, who were far removed from the sphere of politics, were only sects of the Jews. The Pharisees formed, even on Josephus’ showing (_Antiq._, XVII, ii. 4), only a fraction of the people, and did not number much more than six thousand all told; they were thus not much more numerous than the Essenes with their four thousand (Philo, _Quod omn. prob._, II, 457; Josephus, _Antiq._, XVIII, i. 5). And if it be willingly granted that the Pharisees had many adherents among the people, yet this was very far from being the People itself.... And where remain then the great masses of the ‘people of the land,’ the really deciding factor, who were neither Pharisæan nor Sadducæan, but among whom the Jewish spirit-of-the-people (_Volksgeist_), developed under favourable conditions during the