Although Philo never names Pharisees or Sadducees, his brief post-Essenes contrast in Every Good Man Is Free 88–91 (brutal “beastlike” rulers vs. smooth-talking hypocritical advisors) may be an implicit pre-terminological allusion to Hasmonean-era sectarian alignments later described explicitly by Flavius Josephus. If so, Philo’s diaspora lens could provide an additional early witness to how these movements were already being stereotyped and contested before their names appear in his works.
By Stephen Goranson
Independent Researcher
February 2026
As is well known, in the many extant writings of Philo of Alexandria, Egypt, who died circa 50 CE, there are no mentions of the names Sadducees nor Pharisees, though, more than once, and at length, he described the Essenes by name. The New Testament does the reverse, naming Sadducees and Pharisees but not Essenes. (Why the New Testament did that would require a separate study.) Flavius Josephus is the first writer known to us to have explicitly named all three of these groups. Josephus (37 to c. 100 CE) knew some of Philo’s writings, and the two may have shared an earlier source, for example, in claiming that the Essenes numbered more than 4000, hypertetrakischilioi, respectively, in Every Good Man is Free 75 and Antiquities 18.20. Is it possible that Philo alluded to Sadducees and Pharisees avant la lettre, that is, without Philo yet knowing and using those names? Maybe; maybe not. If Philo did, then it may provide an additional window on the early status of opinions and biases about these movements. Let’s consider that possibility.
After his long and effusive praise of Essenes in Every Good Man is Free (75–87), Philo just briefly mentioned two contrasting sorts of rulers who he presents as having taken bad advice (88–91). Here is that section in F. H. Colson’s translation (pages 61 and 63):
XIII. Such are the athletes of virtue produced by a philosophy free from the pedantry of Greek wordiness, a philosophy which sets its pupils to practice themselves in laudable actions, by which the liberty which can never be enslaved is firmly established. Here we have a proof. Many are the potentates who at various occasions have raised themselves to power over the country. They differed both in nature and the line of conduct which they followed. Some of them carried their zest for outdoing wild beasts in ferocity to the point of savagery. They left no form of cruelty untried. They slaughtered their subjects wholesale, or like cooks carved them piecemeal and limb by limb whilst still alive, and did not stay their hands until justice who surveys human affairs visited them with the same calamities. Others transformed this wild frenzy into another kind of viciousness. Their conduct showed intense bitterness, but they talked with calmness, though the mask of their milder language failed to conceal their rancorous disposition. They fawned like venomous hounds yet wrought evils irremediable and left behind them throughout the cities the unforgettable sufferings of their victims as monuments of their impiety and inhumanity. Yet none of these, neither the extremely ferocious nor the deep-eyed treacherous dissemblers, were able to lay a charge against this congregation of Essenes or holy ones here described. Unable to resist the high excellence of these people, they all treated them as self-governing and freemen by nature and extolled their communal meals and that ineffable sense of fellowship, which is the clearest evidence of a perfect and supremely happy life.
Now, Philo was not primarily a historian, and he may have overdone the extreme differences here. For one thing, imagining that all potentates treated Essenes with kid gloves seems a naïvely rosy picture, wishful thinking.
Colson mildly mentioned (Appendices, pages 515–516) that Antiochus IV Epiphanes could be considered such a cruel potentate, but he is excluded as a possible historical referent for lacking any special regard towards Essenes, if he even knew of them. Colson also mentioned Alexander Jannaeus.
One group Philo described from his point of view as cruel, like wild beasts; the other group he claimed spoke as smooth-talking hypocrites. Recall that Philo was constant in his praise of Moses, but about Maccabees and Hannukah he was curiously silent; Philo did not praise the Hasmonean rulers. Strabo, whose writings, including his almost completely lost History, and who may have been a source for Philo, wrote something similar. Strabo spent time in Alexandria; Philo might even have met him, though Philo seldom names his sources, other than the Septuagint and Plato. According to Strabo, in his Geography (H. L. Jones’ translation, edited by Menahem Stern), Moses was a good and admirable teacher but that later “superstitious men were appointed to the priesthood, and then tyrannical people” (16.2.37). Strabo gave a specific example of his view: “when now Judaea was under the rule of tyrants, Alexander [Jannaeus] was the first to declare himself king instead of priest….” (16.2.40). Josephus claimed, correctly or not (War 1.70 and Antiquities 13.301), that Aristobulus I, who reigned in 104–103 BCE, just before Jannaeus, was the first to take both offices, but recall that Philo died before Josephus wrote.
Alexander Jannaeus, who was probably the Lion of Wrath mentioned in 4QpesherNahum (4Q169 3–4 I, 6–8), and also the Qumran-view Wicked Priest, reportedly crucified 800 opponents while he feasted with concubines (War 1.92–98; Antiquities 13.376–383). Beastly.
Queen Salome Alexandra, Shelamzion, switched from Sadducee advice to that of the Pharisees, identified in Qumran texts as “seekers after smooth things” (4Q169). That coheres with Philo’s view of flatterers; compare Daniel 11:32 (RSV): “With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.”
Josephus—famously changeable in his alliances—only later, in his Life (12) claimed to follow the Pharisees.
Josephus, earlier, though, strikingly similarly to Philo, after his long description praising Essenes in War 2.119–161, added much briefer notices of two other groups (162–167), described both more mildly and sometimes more harshly than Philo had done, but this time clearly naming the two others as Pharisees and Sadducees. Here is that passage, in Steve Mason’s translation (pages 131–135, with the footnotes omitted):
(8.14) 162 Now, of the former two [schools], Pharisees, who are reputed to interpret legal matters with precision, and who constitute the first school, attribute everything to Fate and indeed to God: although doing and not [doing] what is right rests mainly with the human beings, Fate also assists in each case. Although every soul is imperishable, only that of the good passes over to a different body, whereas those of the vile are punished by eternal retribution. 164 Sadducees, the second order, do away with fate altogether, and place God beyond both the committing and contemplating of evil. 165 They claim that both the honorable and the despicable reside in the choice of human beings, and that it is according to the judgement of each person to embrace either of these. The survival of the soul, the punishments and rewards in Hades—they do away with them. 166 And whereas Pharisees are mutually affectionate and cultivate concord in relation to the community, Sadducees have a rather harsh disposition even towards one another: encounters with their peers are as uncouth as those with outsiders.
Compared to Philo’s account, Josephus is radically more favorable towards Pharisees, seen as sociable, though he does not yet identify as being one of them. That Josephus is extremely negative towards Sadducees might occasion some surprise, given his own priestly ancestry. In any case, these two brief descriptions follow a much longer section on Essenes, just as Philo had done.
In conclusion, it is probable that in referring to two sets of advisors to rulers in Every Good Man is Free 88–91 Philo meant some Hasmonean rulers. In tracing the early history not only of the Essenes, but also of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the diaspora perspective of Philo—even if not fully informed—should be taken into account.
Annotated Bibliography
Baumgarten, Albert I. “The Name of the Pharisees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983), 63–71. Their name could be interpreted either as separatists or as specifiers.
Colson, F. H. Philo, Vol. 9, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1941; repr. 1985), including Every Good Man is Free (Quod Omnis), Hypothetica (Apologia pro Iudaeis), and On the Contemplative Life and others. Note that it is probable that a now-lost Philo work, intended as a companion to On the Contemplative Life (De vita contemplativa) also had a long description on Essenes, who were said to pursue the active life in contrast to the contemplative one.
Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Philosophy and the Sitz im Leben of Philo’s Quod omnis probus liber sit,” pp. 155–189 in Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourse, ed. Michael B. Cover and Lutz Doering (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024). This proposes that Philo possibly wrote this work during his stay in Rome, from 38 to 40 CE.
Flusser, David. “The Judaean Wilderness Sect and the Pharisees” (in Hebrew), Molad 19 (1961), 456–458. Flusser was one of the early Dead Sea Scroll scholars to realize that Pharisees (as Ephraim) and Sadducees (as Manasseh) were referred to in Qumran manuscripts with code names.
Goranson, Stephen. “Posidonius, Strabo, and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa as Sources on Essenes,” Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994), 295–298. Proposed indications that Posidonius and Strabo were sources for Philo, and perhaps partially secondarily for Josephus, and that M. V. Agrippa, a governor of Syria, was an acknowledged source for Pliny in the section of his Natural History, 5.17, 4 (73), that mentioned Essenes by the Dead Sea.
Goranson, Stephen. “Others and Intra-Jewish Polemic as Reflected in Qumran Texts,” pp. 535–551 in vol. 2 of The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. by Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Etymology of Essenes and Ossenes from Hebrew ‘osey hatorah, “observers of Torah.”
Goranson, Stephen. “Qumran-Related History: Contemporaries Jannaeus, Absalom, and Judah the Essene,” pp. 310–325 in Pushing Sacred Boundaries in Early Judaism and the Ancient Mediterranean: Essays in Honor of Jodi Magness, ed. Dennis Mizzi et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2023). Jannaeus was the Wicked Priest and Judah the Essene was the Teacher of Righteousness.
Main, Emanuelle. “Sadducees,” pp. 812–815 in vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). A good brief survey.
Mason, Steve. Judean War 2, Vol. 1B of Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Detailed analysis.
Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). Niehoff considers that Every Good Man is Free (Quod omnis) was written within the years 40–49 CE, that is, after Philo’s trip as a delegate to Rome, so taken as a mature, not a youthful, work. The chronology matters for the time of his perception of groups. This otherwise fine book does not mention Sadducees nor Pharisees.
Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria: Every Good Man is Free (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
Noam, Vered. Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans: Second Temple Legends and Their Reception in Josephus and in Rabbinic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). This book captures the differing reputations of the Hasmoneans. Chapter 3, “On the Rupture with the Pharisees,” about the royal dinner disturbed by sectarian strife in the reign of John Hyrcanus according to Josephus, Antiquities 13.288–298 or in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus according to the Babylonian Talmud Qiddushin 66a, and on other variously-reported sectarian legends, including Jannaeus’ advice to his wife and the civil war between their sons.
Nock, Arthur Darby. Review of Colson, Philo, Vol. 9 in The Classical Review 52.4 (1943), 77–81. Insightful comments on the Colson edition.
Petit, Madeleine. Quod omnis probus liber sit (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974), pp. 25–28. Petit considered Quod omnis to be a youthful work of Philo, as Colson had also suggested, but not agreeing with Niehoff’s more recent analysis.
Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984). An essential collection for comparing Philo and Josephus with other writers.
Taylor, Joan E. “Philo of Alexandria on the Essenes: A Case Study on the Use of Classical Sources in Discussions of the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis,” The Studia Philonica Annual 19 (2007), 1–28. For a different view than mine on the origin of the name Essene, from Aramaic rather than from Hebrew.