[Footnote 5: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1.] [Footnote 6: Eutychius, _Ann._, II. 286, and following (Oxford 1659).] The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered his stay in Jerusalem painful. In the degree that the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the _sofer_ or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity had already been degraded by Herod,[1] became more and more a Roman functionary,[2] who was frequently removed in order to divide the profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were very warm lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, and which lived by the altar, while they saw the vanity of it.[3] The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which dragged the people along, that the name of "Sadducee" (_sadoki_), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with "Materialist" and with "Epicurean." [Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. iii. 1, 3.] [Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii.] [Footnote 3: _Acts_ iv. 1, and following, v. 17; Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1; _Pirke Aboth_, i. 10.]