HASIDEANS hăs’ ə de’ ənz (חֲסִידִֽים, ̔Ασιδαίοι, the pious).The Heb. word hasidim is frequently found in the OT, where it is usually tr. “saints,” and is never used in a technical sense (1 Sam 2:9 KJV; 2 Chron 6:41; Ps 30:4; 31:23; 37:28; etc.). In the OT Apoc., it is used three times to refer to a group of very orthodox Jews who took part with the Maccabeans in the revolt against the efforts of the Syrians to compel the Jews to give up their ancestral religion and worship pagan gods.

1 Maccabees 2:42 tells of a company of Hasideans, “mighty warriors of Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law,” who joined Mattathias and his followers in their defiance of Antiochus Epiphanes’ order. 2 Maccabees 14:6 says that they recognized Judas Maccabeus as their leader. They must have existed as a party before the days of the Maccabees, but nothing is said of their origin. They undoubtedly shared the beliefs and practice of other pious Jews of the time as shown in 1 Maccabees 1:63; 2:34; 2 Maccabees 6:18-20; Judith 12:2; Josephus Antiquities XIV, iv. 3. In 1 Maccabees 7:12, 13 they appeared before Bacchides and Alcimus, who had just been made high priest, to sue for peace, but Alcimus treacherously seized and killed sixty of them in one day. They were apparently not concerned for Jewish nationalism, but wanted only to be permitted to keep the Mosaic law, and seemed to be satisfied for Alcimus to be high priest.

There is reason to believe that after the war they broke with the Maccabeans over the legitimacy of the Maccabean claims to the high priesthood. It is thought that the later Pharisees and possibly the Essenes developed out of two branches of the Hasideans.

Bibliography E. Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, II (1893); W. Forster, Palestinian Judaism in New Testament Times (1964); D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (1964).