The sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, whose disputes fill later Jewish history, joined issue on a number of points. No doubt there was an economic and social cleavage between them as well. But perhaps the most nearly fundamental difference of doctrine related to the _Olam ha-bo_. The Pharisees asserted, and the Sadducees denied, the doctrine of resurrection. It is stated by Josephus,[151] that the Sadducees called in question the _Olam ha-bo_ itself. When and where these sects took form is uncertain. The Pharisees at least are fully developed, and form a powerful political party under John Hyrcanus.[152] It is very unlikely that they are related to the Hasidim or are a continuation of them. The latter were a national, anti-Hellenic organization, and contained men of all shades of beliefs and interests. But the Pharisees, like the Hasidim, began as a brotherhood or a group of brotherhoods, however political their aims and actions were in later times. The fact is indicated by the name _Haber_, “comrade,” which they gave themselves, and the contemptuous _Am ha-aretz_, “clod,” οἱ πολλοί, with which they designated those who were not members of their congregations. Now the _Haberim_, who preached the World-to-Come, were not in a primitive stage of culture, but in a very advanced one. Their God was not master of a city, but Lord of the whole earth. And they had long maintained the principle that merit in the eyes of God was determined by conduct, both formal and moral, a distinction less profoundly separating than seems at first to be the case. If that were so, anyone, Jew or Gentile, might conceivably acquire that merit. How was the _Olam ha-bo_ to be refused to anyone who had taken upon himself the yoke of the Law, who did all that the Lord required at his hands? Jewish tradition knew of several eminently righteous gentiles, such as Job, in whom God was well pleased. It was an untenable proposition to men whose cardinal religious doctrine had for centuries been ethical and universal that all but a few men were permanently excluded from the beatitude of life after death.[153] Since, however, the promises of the sacred literature were addressed primarily to Israel, those who were not of Abraham’s seed could become “comrades” only by first becoming Jews. That conception involved no difficulty whatever. The people of the ancient world had empirically learned some of the more elementary facts of biological heredity; but membership in a community, though determined by heredity in the first instance, was not essentially so determined. In earlier times, when the communities were first instituted, not even the pretense of kinship was maintained. The essential fact was the assumption of common _sacra_.