The nine years of Alexander's reign had been too prolific in dangerous and perplexing situations to allow of his disturbing the internal harmony of his country. He appears to have been strictly neutral in the strife that was raging between the Pharisees and Sadducees. His wife Salome may have exercised her influence in urging him to maintain this neutral position, as she was a warm partisan of the once-hated Pharisees.
Alexander appears to have made Simon ben Shetach the mediator between the two parties; the Pharisees being still somewhat in the background, and the Sadducees holding posts of trust. Ever since John Hyrcanus's secession from Pharisaism, the Great Council had been composed of Sadducæan members, and as long as one party was thus openly preferred to the other, peace and reconciliation seemed impossible. The king may, therefore, have been inspired by the wish to bring about some kind of equality between the two parties by dividing offices and dignities between them. But the Pharisees positively refused to act conjointly with their opponents and offered the most active resistance. Simon ben Shetach alone allowed himself to be chosen member of the Council, secretly determining to purge it by degrees of its Sadducæan element.
Alexander's impartial conduct continued only so long as the critical position drew his attention away from home affairs. It changed visibly when he returned from his campaign, the conqueror of cities and provinces deeming himself the despotic master of his people. Either the newly acquired influence of the Pharisees threatened to be an obstacle in his path, or he may have wished to reward and attract the Sadducees upon whom he might rely for carrying on his campaigns, or he may have been influenced by his favorite, the Sadducee Diogenes; at all events, Alexander appeared as the inveterate opponent of Pharisaic teaching, and made his views public in a most insulting manner. Whilst officiating as high priest, during the Feast of Tabernacles, it was his duty, in accordance with an ancient custom, to pour the contents of a ewer of water upon the altar as an emblem of fruitfulness. But in order to show his contempt for a ceremony considered by the Pharisees as a religious one, Alexander poured the water at his feet. Nothing more was required to ignite the wrath of the congregation assembled in the outer court of the Temple. With reckless indignation they threw the branches and the fruit, which they carried in their hands in honor of the festival, at the heretical king, denouncing him as an unworthy high priest. Alexander would certainly have paid for this disgraceful action with his life had he not called in the help of the Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries, who had been ordered to be in waiting, and who fell upon the congregation, slaughtering 6000 within the precincts of the Temple (95). In order to avoid a repetition of such scenes, Alexander thenceforth prevented the worshipers from entering the court of sacrifices, by building up a partition wall. But these events gave rise to an implacable hatred between the king and the Pharisees. Thus, after three generations, the descendants of the great Hasmonæans had so far weakened the edifice raised at the expense of their ancestors' lives, that it appears marvelous how it could have continued to resist such repeated attacks. The bitter rivalry of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the days of Rehoboam and Jeroboam was repeated in the history of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.