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Free Will

Josephus made some interesting comments about the Pharisees regarding their beliefs concerning free will and sovereignty. He said they:

"make everything depend on fate and on God, and teach that the doing of good is indeed chiefly the affair of man, but that fate also cooperates in every transaction" –Josephus, Wars 2.8.14

"They assert that everything is accomplished by faith. They do not, however, deprive the human will of spontaneity, it having pleased God that there should be a mixture, and that to the will of fate should be added the human will with its virtue or baseness" –Josephus, Ant. 18.1.3

According to the Pharisees everything that happens takes place through God's providence, even human actions whether good or bad, God is in control of. This is widely taught throughout the entire Old Testament.

As far as sovereignty the Pharisees held to a certain view that made it impossible for either free will or the sovereignty of God to cancel out the other. As Josephus put it,

"Though they postulate that everything is brought about by fate, still they do not deprive the human will of the pursuit of what is in man's power" -Jos. Antiq. XVIII. i. 3; cf. Antiq. XIII. v. 9; War II. viii. 14

Josephus uses the word "fate," a term familiar in Stoicism, to communicate to his Hellenistic readers the Jewish idea of "providence."

So the Pharisees avoided the extreme views of both the Sadducees and the Essenes. The Sadducees argued that free will was ultimately determined by the course of history (Josephus, War II. viii. 14; Antiq. XIII. v. 9) , whereas the Essenes argued that everything was determined in advance and human will therefore was of no consequence (Josephus, Antiq. XIII. v. 9; cf. Antiq. XVIII. i. 5) .

Again the Pharisees seem to have prevailed and in later Judaism it is evident from the Mishnah as can be seen for example in Akiba's dictum:

"all is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given" (Aboth 2:16).