Professor Charles says in reference to the authorship of this book: “I have with some hesitation come to the conclusion that the groundwork is the work of a single writer of the Pharisaic school. He is an upholder of the Law and the Temple sacrifices; he believes in the Messianic Kingdom and the resurrection of the body to a new life therein. He is, however, a Pharisee of the early type—that is a Chasid.... The groundwork, which consists of about eleven-twelfths of the Testaments, after the removal of the Jewish and Christian additions, presents, it must be confessed, a want of coherence at times, and the parts dealing with the duty of submission to Levi, or to Levi and Judah jointly, come in occasionally very abruptly. Notwithstanding, the present editor adheres to the idea of the unity of the book; for the two phenomena referred to—the strictly Chasid element in the book, and its loyal acceptance of the Maccabæan dynasty—were exactly characteristic of the period to which our author belongs, and to none other before or after. Furthermore, both these parts of the book are alike universalistic in tone.”[291] We have seen above what the attitude of the Sadducees was towards the written Law; so that a book wherein loyalty to the Law and to the Temple sacrifices is upheld does not necessarily point to Pharisaic authorship unless it can be shown that by the Law is meant not merely the Pentateuch, but also the Pharisaic conception of the Law; and of this there are no indications in the book. The Sadducees believed, moreover, in a Messianic Kingdom; but the Messiah, according to them, was to be of priestly, not of Davidic, descent; so that belief in the Messianic Kingdom does not necessarily imply Pharisaic authorship of the book in which it occurs unless the specifically Pharisaic conception of the Messiah is put forth; but this also is not the case in the book before us. Charles says: “In the original work the Messiah is to be descended from Levi, and not from Judah—in other words, he is to be first of all a priest, and then a prophet and king. There are many passages expressing this view”; these are enumerated; he then continues: “We have here the attestation of a most remarkable revolution in the Jewish expectations of the Messiah. For some thirty or forty years the hopes of a Messiah from Judah was abandoned in favour of a Messiah from Levi. But with the breach of Hyrcanus with the Pharisees this hope was abandoned, and so we find that in the first century additions, the hope of a Messiah from Judah reappears (T. Jud., xxiv. 5, 6; T. Naph., iv. 5 (?)).”[292] An easier and more natural explanation, however, is forthcoming if, as we believe, the groundwork of this book is of Sadducæan authorship. The loyal acceptance of the reigning dynasty is by no means necessarily a proof of Pharisaic authorship, for the Pharisees broke entirely with John Hyrcanus before the end of his reign (B.C. 104), while the