The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee, the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator.

But in religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which progresses, and which has influence.

Besides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of the people.

Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements.[1] In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other.

The total absence of dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the universe.
[Footnote 1: Theopompus, in _Diog.