now we are able to understand the controversy between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the matter of the burning of the Red Heifer. The Sadducees, adhering as they did to the old Halakah, and basing their arguments on the plain meaning of Scripture, said: When is a man purged of his uncleanness? After sunset. Ṭebilah alone does not render him pure. As the priest who burns the Red Heifer must be pure,[1] and we are apprehensive lest by accident he come under the head of מקרה לא טהור, or lest his brother priests have touched him, in which case the ṭebilah (ablution) would not have the immediate effect of purging him and qualifying him to burn the Heifer—therefore the Sadducees considered it necessary to defer that burning until after sunset.
The Pharisees, however, who had adopted the principle that, if one took the prescribed bath, he is rendered pure without waiting for the sun to set, said the priest may burn the Heifer before sunset, immediately after ṭebilah.
As for the pomp wherewith the ceremony of the Red Heifer was surrounded, the purpose of the Pharisees was
- ↑ Num. 19. 5-9.
ruling that the priests should not eat of terumah until after sunset, apprehending that the priest might have been contaminated by some object and maintaining, as they did that for eating of terumah immersion did not suffice, but that setting of the sun was necessary consequently terumah could not be eaten in the day-time. This makes intelligible the first Mishnah of the Talmud as, after asking from what time we are allowed to read שמע it says when the priests begin to eat terumah: שהכהנים נכנסים לאבול בתרומתן מאימתי קורין את שמע בערבית משעה. The Talmud is astonished, asking why the Mishnah does not in so many words say 'from the appearance of the stars'. But if we say that the Sages decreed that the priests should not eat terumah until after sunset, that is until nightfall, the Mishnah very clearly indicates to us when we can read the שמע, when the priests gather to eat their terumah, which did actually serve the people as a criterion whereby, the sun having set, they might know that they could read the שמע.
