The Pharisees, Sadducees & Essenes: Their Origin and Finale Few events in Near East antiquity have so shaped the course of human history as did those that occurred in Judea in the 1st century C.E.-specifically, the Jewish War against Rome that began in 66 C.E. By its conclusion seven years later, the war had claimed the lives of some 1 million Jews, with more than 130,000 thousand forced into slavery. Yet, while the outcome of this conflict is generally well known, how its seeds were initially sown is not. This book examines the extant writings that allude to the origins of the 1st century's three competing Jewish religious sects and how their separate ideologies ultimately resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 C.E.