lethargic_man | Antiquities of the Jews, fit the twenty-fourth

XIII.171.3 gives a somewhat odd definition of the three sects of Judaism at the time:

At this time there were three sects among the Jews, who had different opinions concerning human actions; the one was called the sect of the Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and the other the sect of the Essenes. Now for the Pharisees, they say that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate, and some of them are in our own power, and that they are liable to fate, but are not caused by fate. But the sect of the Essenes affirm, that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determination. And for the Sadducees, they take away fate, and say there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its disposal; but they suppose that all our actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the causes of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly. However, I have given a more exact account of these opinions in the second book of the Jewish War.

Josephus later goes on to give other definitions of the differences between them. The view one traditionally hears is that the Sadducees rejected the Oral Law, and had support amongst the priestly aristocracy; the Pharisees by contrast not only supported the Oral Law, but introduced many radical innovations, ascribing them however to the ancientry to avoid seeming to change the Divine law. (This is the origin of the custom, in the Judaism of today, which is descended from Pharisaism, of referring to Moses as Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Rabbi (when there were no rabbis until the late first century CE); or of the view that the Patriarchs instituted the three daily prayer services.)

I've also heard that at this time (the second century BCE) the Pharisees and Sadducees were more like political parties than the religious ideologies they later became. Certainly we read about each of them coming to power at different times (e.g. during the reign of Shlomtzion (Salome Alexandra)), and the other retreating into political exile.

As I mentioned beforehand, the Hasmonean leadership only gradually, over many years, made Judaea into an independent kingdom. XIII.6.213 tells us, about Matatthias's fifth son Simon (after Judah, John, Eleazar and Jonathan had all been killed):

But Simon, who was made high priest by the multitude, on the very first year of his high priesthood set his people free from their slavery under the Macedonians, and permitted them to pay tribute to them no longer; which liberty and freedom from tribute they obtained after a hundred and seventy years of the kingdom of the Assyrians, which was after Seleucus, who was called Nicator, got the dominion over Syria.

What it doesn't, unfortunately, tell us, is how he managed to get the power to do that.

XIII.6.215:

[Simon] also took the citadel of Jerusalem by siege, and cast it down to the ground, that it might not be any more a place of refuge to their enemies when they took it, to do them a mischief, as it had been till now. And when he had done this, he thought it their best way, and most for their advantage, to level the very mountain itself upon which the citadel happened to stand, that so the temple might be higher than it. And indeed, when he had called the multitude to an assembly, he persuaded them to have it so demolished, and this by putting them in mind what miseries they had suffered by its garrison and the Jewish deserters, and what miseries they might hereafter suffer in case any foreigner should obtain the kingdom, and put a garrison into that citadel. This speech induced the multitude to a compliance, because he exhorted them to do nothing but what was for their own good: so they all set themselves to the work, and leveled the mountain, and in that work spent both day and night without any intermission, which cost them three whole years before it was removed, and brought to an entire level with the plain of the rest of the city. After which the temple was the highest of all the buildings, now the citadel, as well as the mountain whereon it stood, were demolished.

So where was this citadel? That's a good question.

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Josephus notes