Concerning the political role of the Hasidæans in this war, Wellhausen has endeavored to prove that it was almost insignificant (Die Pharisäer und die Sadducäer, Greifswald, 1874).
Several modern scholars (Schürer, Kautzsch, and others) have agreed to this view, which had already been adopted in part by Georg Heinrich August von Ewald (Geschichte des Volkes Israel, iv.