II. The Sadducees

II. THE SADDUCEES
The nature of the Sadducees is not as evident as that of the Pharisees. The scanty statements furnished by documents can only with difficulty be brought under a single point of sight. And the reason of this seems to lie in the nature of the case. The Sadducees are no simple and consistent phenomenon like the Pharisees, but so to speak a compound one, which must be apprehended from different points.
The most salient characteristic is that they are aristocrats. Josephus repeatedly designates them as such. “They only gain the well-to-do, they have not the people on their side.”[1494] “This doctrine has reached few individuals, but these are of the first consideration.”[1495] When Josephus here says, that this doctrine has reached but few, this is quite consistent with his manner of always depicting Pharisaism and Sadduceeism as philosophical tendencies. Taking off this varnish, his actual statement is, that the Sadducees were the aristocrats, the wealthy (εὔποροι), the persons of rank (πρῶτοι τοῖς ἀξιώμασιν). And that is to say, that they chiefly belonged to the priesthood. For from the commencement of the Greek, nay from the Persian period, it was the priests who governed the Jewish State, as it was also the priesthood in general that constituted the nobility of the Jewish people.[1496] The New Testament testifies superabundantly and Josephus expressly, that the high-priestly families belonged to the Sadducean party.[1497] Rightly however as this view is for the first time expressly advocated by Geiger, it must not be so understood as to make the Sadducees nothing more than the party of the priests, The contrast of Sadducees and Pharisees is not a contrast of the priestly and the strictly legal party, but of aristocratic priests and strictly legal persons. The Pharisees were by no means in hostile opposition to the priests as such. On the contrary, they interpreted the legal enactments concerning the revenues of the priesthood abundantly in their favour, awarding to them in full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, their heave-offerings, tithes, first-born, etc.,[1498] and decidedly acknowledging the greater sanctity and higher rank of the priests in the Theocracy.[1499] On the other hand too, the priests were not all thoroughly hostile to Pharisaism. There were, at least in the last decades before, and the first decades after the destruction of the temple, a large number of priests who themselves belonged to the Rabbinical class.[1500] Hence the opponents of the Pharisees were not the priests as such, but only the aristocratic priests: those who by their possessions and offices also occupied influential civil positions.
[1494] Antt. xiii. 10. 6: τοὺς εὐπόρους μόνον πειθόντων, τὸ δὲ δημοτικὸν οὐκ ἑπόμενον αὐτοῖς ἐκόντων.
[1495] Antt. xviii. 1. 4: εἰς ὀλίγους ἄνδρας οὖτος ὁ λόγος ἀφίκετο, τοὺς μέντοι πρώτους τοῖς ἀξιώμασι.
[1496] Joseph. Vita, 1.
[1497] Acts 5:17; Antt. xx. 9. 1.
[1498] Comp. in the Mishna the treatises Demai, Terumoth, Maaseroth, Challa, Bikkurim, Bechoroth.
[1499] Chagiga ii. 7: The garments of the Perushim are held as Midras (unclean) for those who eat of the heave-offerings (i.e. the priests). Horajoth iii. 8: לוי לישראל, כהן קודם ללוי. Precedence was also given to the priests in the reading of the Scriptures in the synagogues.
[1500] It was already testified (Chagiga ii. 7) of Joses ben Joeser, that he was a חסיד in the priesthood. One Joeser, who was captain of the temple and therefore a priest, belonged to the school of Shammai (Orla ii. 12). In Josephus we meet with a Ἰόζαρος ἱερατικοῦ γένους, Φαρισαῖος καὶ αὐτός (Joseph. Vita, 39). Josephus was himself both priest and Pharisee (Vita, i. 2). There is mention moreover (Edujoth viii. 2) of a Rabbi Judah ha-Kohen and (Edujoth viii. 2; Aboth ii. 8) a Rabbi Joses ha-Kohen. Rabbi Chananiah סְגַן הַכֹהֲנִים (see vol. i. p. 368) and Rabbi Eleasar ben Asariah (see vol. i. p. 372 sq.) are renowned among priestly scribes. Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Tarphon are said to have been priests (see vol. i. pp. 373 and 376).
In view of these facts it is an interesting conjecture of Geiger’s—which he indeed expresses as a certainty—that the Sadducees derive their name צַדּוּקִים,[1501] Σαδδουκαῖοι,[1502] from that Zaddok the priest, whose family had exercised the priestly office at Jerusalem since the time of Solomon. At all events it may now be considered as settled, that the name must not, as was formerly often thought, be derived from the adjective צַדִּיק,[1503] but from the proper name צָדוֹק.[1504] For in the first derivation the change from i to u is inexplicable,[1505] while on the other hand the pronunciation Zadduk (Σαδδούκ, צַדּוּק) is undoubtedly guaranteed by the concurrent testimony of the Septuagint,[1506] of Josephus,[1507] and of a vowel-pointed MS. of the Mishna[1508] for the proper name Zadok. The party name צדוקים is thus related to צדוק as בויתסים to Boethos or אפיקורוסים to Epicuros. The further question, from what Zadok the Sadducees derive their name is of less certain decision. An apocryphal legend in the Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan traces it to a supposed disciple of Antigonus von Socho named Zadok.[1509] But the legend is useless notwithstanding the vigorous defence of it by Baneth,[1510] (1) because the Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan cannot, on account of their late origin, be at all regarded as historical authority for our period, (2) because especially what is said of the Boethosees is certainly erroneous (see note [1511] and (3) because the legend contains no tradition, but only a learned combination: the Sadducees, who denied the immortality of the soul, being said to have embraced this heresy through a misunderstanding of the saying of Antigonus of Socho, that we ought to do good without regard to future reward.[1512] Thus there is left us only the choice of deriving the name of the Sadducees from one Zadok, unknown to us, who in some time equally unknown founded the party of the aristocrats, or of referring it to the priestly race of the Zadokites. The former is possible, and is preferred e.g. by Kuenen and Montet,[1513] but the latter is certainly the more probable.[1514] The posterity of Zadok performed priestly service in the temple from the time of Solomon. After the Deuteronomic reformation, which interdicted all sacrifice out of Jerusalem, the rites there carried on were alone esteemed legitimate. Hence Ezekiel in his ideal picture of the theocracy awards to the “Zadokites” (בְּנֵי צָדוֹק) alone the right of officiating as priests in the temple at Jerusalem (Ezekiel 40:46; Ezekiel 43:19; Ezekiel 44:15; Ezekiel 48:11). Ezekiel’s demand did not indeed entirely prevail on the restoration of worship after the captivity, since some of the other priestly races were also able to maintain their rights.[1515] Still the Zadokites formed the pith and chief element of the priesthood in the post-exilian period. This is seen especially from the circumstance, that the Chronicler in his genealogy traces back the house of Zadok to Eleasar, the elder son of Aaron, thus giving us to understand, that the Zadokites had, if not the only, still the first and nearest claim to the priesthood (1 Chron. v. 30-41). This procedure of the Chronicler at the same time proves, that the name of the ancestor of this race was still vividly remembered in his times, and therefore in the Greek period also. Consequently a party which attached itself to the aristocratic priests might very well be named the Zadokitian or Sadducaean. For though the aristocratic priests were but a fraction of the בְּנֵי צָדוֹק, they were still its authoritative representatives and their tendency the Zadokian.[1516]
[1501] So are they called in the Mishna, Jadajim iv. 6-7; Erubin vi. 2; Makkoth i. 6; Para iii. 7; Nidda iv. 2. The singular is in Erubin vi. 2. צדוקי, which in the Cod. de Rossi is pointed צָדּוּקִי (Kametz and Pathach being often interchanged in this manuscript; in the other passages the name is not vowelized).
[1502] So in Josephus and the New Testament.
[1503] So already in many of the Fathers, e.g. Epiphanius, haer. 14: ἐπονομάζουσι δὲ οὗτοι ἑαυτοὺς Σαδδουκαίους, δῆθεν ἀπὸ δικαιοσύνης τῆς ἐπικλήσεως ὁρμωμένης. Σεδέκ γὰρ ἑρμηνεύεται δικαιοσύνη. Hieronymus, Comm. in Matthew 22:23 (Vallarsi, vii. 1. 177): Sadducaei autem, qui interpretantur justi. In recent times the derivation from צַדִּיק has been again advocated by Derenbourg (Histoire, p. 78) and Hamburger (Enc. p. 1041).
[1504] That this is the only possible derivation has been most carefully shown by Montet (Essai sur les origines des partis saducéen et pharisien, pp. 45-60). Comp. also besides Geiger, Hitzig, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, p. 469. Keim, i. 274 sq. Hanne, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol. 1867, p. 167. Hausrath, Zeitgesch. i. 118; Bibellex. iv. 520. Wellhausen, p. 45 sqq. Kuenen, De godsdienst van Israël, ii. 342 sq.; Theol. Tijdschr. 1875, p. 639. Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr. 1876, p. 136. Oort, De naam Sudducëen (Theol. Tijdschrift, 1876, pp. 605-617). Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schrift A. T.’s, § 396. Sieffert in Herzog’s Real-Enc., 2nd ed. xiii. 230.
[1505] Wieseler indeed feigns an adjective zadduk, for the existence of which however the proof is still due.
[1506] The name Zadok occurs in the O. T., according to the statement of Brecher’s Concordance (1876), in all 53 times. Among these in ten passages in Ezekiel, Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezekiel 40:46; Ezekiel 43:19; Ezekiel 44:15; Ezekiel 48:11; Ezra 7:2; Nehemiah 3:4; Nehemiah 3:29; Nehemiah 10:21; Nehemiah 11:11; Nehemiah 13:13), the LXX. has the form Σαδδούκ, i.e. according to the correct text, which certainly has in some passages to be restored by the revision according to the MSS. of the printed text.
[1507] A Pharisee Σάδδουκος is mentioned Antt. xviii. 1. 1. Comp. also Ανανίας Σαδδουκί, Bell. Jud. ii. 17. 10, 21. 7, where Σαδδουκί cannot mean “Sadducee,” the person in question being, according to Vita, 39, a Pharisee.
[1508] In the Cod. de Rossi 138 the name of Rabbi Zadok is indeed only vowelized in a minority of passages; still where this is the case it is almost always צַדּוּק (or צָדּוּק, Pathach and Kametz being often interchanged), viz. in the following passages, Pea ii. 4; Terumoth x. 9; Shahbath xxiv. 5; Pesachim iii. 6, vii. 2, x. 3.
[1509] Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan, c. 5: “Antigonus of Socho received the tradition from Simon the Just. He said: Be not like servants, who serve their Lord for the sake of reward, but be like those who do service without regard to recompense, and be always in the fear of God, that your reward may be double in the future. Antigonus of Socho had two disciples, who taught his saying. They delivered it to their pupils, who in their turn delivered it to theirs. Then they stood up and tampered with its meaning and said: What then did our fathers think, when they spoke thus? Is it possible that a workman should work all day and not receive his wages in the evening? If our fathers had known, that there is a future life and a resurrection of the dead, they would not so have spoken. Then they stood up and renounced the Thorah, and a twofold schism proceeding from them branched off: Sadducees and Boethosees, the Sadducees after the name of Zadok, the Boethosees after the name of Boethos.” See the passage also in Tailer, Tractatus de patribus (London 1654), p. 33. Geiger, Urschrift, p. 105. Herzfeld, iii. 382. Wellhausen, p. 46. Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (1877), p. 126. Baneth, Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, ninth year, 1882, p. 4 (here is found the translation given above). The Boethosees (בויתסים), who are also once mentioned in the Mishna (Menachoth x. 3), derived their name from the high-priestly family Boethos in the time of Herod (see vol. i. p. 204). Hence they are in any case related to the Sadducees.
[1510] Baneth, Magazin f. die Wissensch. des Judenth. ix. 1882, pp. 1-37, 61-95.
[1511] Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan, c. 5: “Antigonus of Socho received the tradition from Simon the Just. He said: Be not like servants, who serve their Lord for the sake of reward, but be like those who do service without regard to recompense, and be always in the fear of God, that your reward may be double in the future. Antigonus of Socho had two disciples, who taught his saying. They delivered it to their pupils, who in their turn delivered it to theirs. Then they stood up and tampered with its meaning and said: What then did our fathers think, when they spoke thus? Is it possible that a workman should work all day and not receive his wages in the evening? If our fathers had known, that there is a future life and a resurrection of the dead, they would not so have spoken. Then they stood up and renounced the Thorah, and a twofold schism proceeding from them branched off: Sadducees and Boethosees, the Sadducees after the name of Zadok, the Boethosees after the name of Boethos.” See the passage also in Tailer, Tractatus de patribus (London 1654), p. 33. Geiger, Urschrift, p. 105. Herzfeld, iii. 382. Wellhausen, p. 46. Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (1877), p. 126. Baneth, Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, ninth year, 1882, p. 4 (here is found the translation given above). The Boethosees (בויתסים), who are also once mentioned in the Mishna (Menachoth x. 3), derived their name from the high-priestly family Boethos in the time of Herod (see vol. i. p. 204). Hence they are in any case related to the Sadducees.
[1512] Comp. Wellhausen, p. 46. The saying of Antigonus of Socho, on which the combination depends, is found Aboth i. 3. See vol. i. p. 352.
[1513] Kuenen, De godsdienst van Israël, ii. 342 sq.; Theol. Tijdschrift, 1875, p. 639. Montet, Essai, p. 59.
[1514] So think all named in note 75, except Kuenen and Montet.
[1515] This is to be inferred from the fact, that in 1 Chronicles 10 besides the line of Eleasar (i.e. the Zadokitea), the line of Ithamar also appears as authorized to fill the priestly service.
[1516] Comp. especially, Wellhausen, Pharisäer und Sadducäer, pp. 47-50. Idem, Gesch. Israels, i. 127-130, 230 sq. Also Kuenen, Zadok en de Zadokieten (Theol. Tijdschr. 1869, pp. 463-509).
This distinctive mark of the Sadducees, viz. their aristocratic character, being now settled, the further mark must next be added, that they acknowledged only the written Thorah as binding, and on the other hand rejected the entire traditionary interpretation and further development of the law during the course of centuries by the scribes. “The Sadducees say, only what is written is to be esteemed as legal. On the contrary, what has come down from the tradition of the fathers need not be observed.”[1517] So far removed were they from the principle of absolute authority as held by the Pharisees, that they thought it, on the contrary, commendable to oppose their teachers.[1518] It is evident, that what was in question was simply a rejection of the παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, and therefore of the entire mass of legal decisions which had been made by the Pharisaic scribes for the completion and application of the written law. The opinion of many Fathers, that the Sadducees acknowledged only the Pentateuch, but rejected the prophets,[1519] is not confirmed by documentary authority, and has therefore been given up as erroneous by modern scholars.[1520] Beside these main principles, on which the Sadducees opposed the entire Pharisaic tradition, specific legal differences between Sadducees and Pharisees have but a minor interest. A number of differences of this kind are mentioned in Rabbinical literature.[1521] Some of these notices cannot however be esteemed as historical tradition, especially the statements of the very late commentary on Megilloth Taanith. So far as they are trustworthy, they are so isolated and unconnected that no unifying principle can be perceived in them, and certainly not that discovered by Geiger, viz. an advocacy of priestly interests by the Sadducees.[1522] In penal legislation the Sadducees were, according to Josephus, the more, and the Pharisees the less severe.[1523] This may be connected with the fact that the former strictly adhered to the letter of the law, while the latter sought to mitigate its severity by interpretation. In one point mentioned in the Mishna the Sadducees even went beyond the demands of the law. They required compensation, not only if an ox or an ass (Exodus 21:32; Exodus 21:35 sq.), but also if a man-servant or a maid-servant had injured any one.[1524] On the other hand, they insisted that false witnesses should be put to death, only when the accused had already been executed in consequence of their false witness (Deuteronomy 19:19-21), while the Pharisees required that this should take place so soon as sentence had been passed.[1525] Thus in this instance the latter were the more severe. These differences were evidently not differences of principle. The same is the case in questions of ritual. For here too a difference of principle can only so far be spoken of, that the Sadducees did not regard as binding Pharisaic decrees with respect e.g. to clean and unclean. They derided their Pharisaic opponents on account of the oddities and inconsistencies into which their laws of cleanness brought them.[1526] On the other hand, the Pharisees pronounced all Sadducees unclean, “if they walk in the ways of their fathers.”[1527] How far however the Sadducees were from renouncing the principle of Levitical uncleanness in itself, appears from the fact of their demanding even a higher degree of cleanness for the priests who burnt the red heifer, than the Pharisees did.[1528] This last is at the same time the only point in which a certain amount of priestly interest, i.e. of interest in priestly cleanness, is perceived. With respect to the festival laws it is mentioned that the “Boethosees” (who must be regarded as a variety of the Sadducees) maintained that the sheaf of first-fruits at the Passover was not to be offered on the second day of the feast, but on the day after the Sabbath in the week of the festival,[1529] and that consequently the feast of Pentecost, seven weeks later (Leviticus 23:15), was always to be kept on the day after the Sabbath.[1530] This difference is however so purely technical, that it merely gives expression to the exegetic view of the Sadducees, who did not acknowledge tradition. It certainly never had any practical importance.[1531] The only difference of importance in the law of festivals, and especially in the interpretation of the law of the Sabbath, is that the Sadducees did not acknowledge as binding the confused mass of Pharisaic enactments.[1532] The difference in principle then between the two parties is confined on the whole to this general rejection of Pharisaic tradition by the Sadducees. All other differences were such as would necessarily result, if the one did not acknowledge the obligation of the other’s exegetical tradition. Nor must it be thought, that the Sadducees rejected Pharisaic tradition according to its entire tenor. Quite apart from the fact, that since the time of Alexandra they had no longer carried out their views into practice, they also theoretically agreed with Pharisaic tradition in some, perhaps in many particulars. They only denied its obligation, and reserved the right of private opinion.
[1517] Antt. xiii. 10. 6. Comp. xviii. 1. 4.
[1518] Antt. xviii. 1. 4.
[1519] Origenes, Contra Celsum. i. 49 (Opp. ed. Lommatzsch, xviii. 93): οἱ μόνου δὲ Μωσέως παραδεχόμενοι τὰς βίβλους Σαμαρεῖς ἢ Σαδδουκαῖοι. Idem, Comment. in Matth. vol. xvii. c. 35 (on Matthew 22:29, in Lommatzsch, iv. 166): τοῖς Σαδδουκαίοις μὴ προσιεμένοις ἄλλην γραφὴν ἢ τὴν νομικήν … τοὺς Σαδδουκαίους, ὅτι μὴ προσιέμενοι τὰς ἑξῆς τῷ νόμῳ γραφὰς πλανῶνται. Ibid. vol. xvii. c. 36 (on Matthew 22:31-32, in Lommatzsch, iv. 169): καὶ εἰς τοῦτο δὲ φήσομεν, ὅτι μύρια δυνάμενος περὶ τοῦ ὑπάρχειν τὴν μέλλουσαν ζωὴν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις παραθέσθαι ἀπὸ προφητῶν ὁ Σωτὴρ, τοῦτο οὐ πεποίηκεν διὰ τὸ τοὺς Σαδδουκαίους μόνην προσίεσθαι τὴν Μωσέως γραφὴν, ἀφʼ ἧς ἐβουλήθη αὐτοὺς συλλογισμῷ δυσωπῆσαι. Hieronymus, Comment. in Matthew 22:31-32 (Vallarsi, vii. 1. 179): Hi quinque tantum libros Moysis recipiebant, prophetarum vaticinia respuentes. Stultum ergo eratinde proferre testimonia, cujus auctoritatem non sequebantur. Philosophumena, ix. 29: προφήταις δὲ οὐ προσέχουσιν, ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ ἑτέροις τισὶ σοφοῖς, πλὴν μόνῳ τῷ διὰ Μωσέως νόμῳ, μεδὲν ἑρμηνεύοντες. Pseudo-Tertullian, adv.haer. c. 1: Taceo enim Judaismi haereticos, Dositheum inquam Samaritanum, qui primus ausus est pro-phetas quasi non in spiritu sancto locutos repudiare, taceo Sadducaeos, qui ex hujus erroris radice surgentes ausi sunt ad hanc haeresim etiam resurrectionem carnis negare. With this corresponds almost verbally Hieronymus, contra Luciferanos, c. 23 (Vallarsi, ii. 197): Taceo de Judaismi haereticis, qui ante adventum Christi legem traditam dissiparunt: quod Dosithaeus Samaritanorum princeps prophetas repudiavit: quod Sadducaei ex illius radice nascentes etiam resurrectionem carnis negaverunt.
[1520] It is still defended e.g. by Serarius, Trihaeresium, lib. ii. c. 21. Against him, see Scaliger, Elenchus trihaeresii Serarii, c. 16; Drusius, De tribus sectis Judaeorum, lib. iii. c. 9. Further literature in Carpzov, Apparatus, p. 208 sq. Winer RWB. ii. 353 sq.
[1521] Comp. Herzfeld, iii. 385 sqq. Jost, i. 216-226. Grätz, 3rd ed. iii. 652 sqq., note 10. Geiger, Urschrift, p. 134 sqq. Sadducäer und Pharisäer, pp. 13-25. Derenbourg, p. 135 sqq. Kuenen, De godsdienst van Israël, ii. 456 sqq. Wellhausen, pp. 56-75. Hamburger, ii. 1047 sqq. Montet, p. 236 sqq.
[1522] Against Geiger, see especially Wellhausen, as above.
[1523] Antt. xx. 9.1: Σαδδουκαίων, οἵπερ εἰσὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ὠμοὶ παρὰ πάντας τοὺς Ἰουδαίους. Antt. xiii. 10. 6: Ἄλλως τε καὶ φύσει πρὸς τὰς κολάσεις ἐπιεικῶς ἔχουσιν οἱ Φαρισαῖοι.
[1524] Jadajim iv. 7‌b. For the wording of these and the following passages, see above, p. 384 sqq.
[1525] Makkoth i. 6.
[1526] The attacks of the Sadducees upon the Pharisees, mentioned Jadajim iv. 6 and 7‌a, can only be meant in derision. For the Sadducees would certainly not have gone in for “antagonistic books” defiling the hands (Jadajim iv. 6), or for declaring that the “stream” which flows in pouring from a clean vessel into an unclean is clean (Jadajim iv. 7‌a). They are only deriding the Pharisees for their peculiarities.
[1527] Nidda iv. 2.
[1528] Para iii. 7.
[1529] Menachoth x. 3. That is to say, that they understood by the שבת, Leviticus 23:11, not the first day of the feast, but the weekly Sabbath. The traditional interpretation, which understands by it the first day of the feast, and therefore by “the day after the Sabbath” the second day of the feast, is the correct one. See Wellhausen, pp. 59 sq., 67. Adler, Pharisäismus und Sadducäismus und ihre differirende Auslegung des ממחרת השבת (Monatsschr. für Gesch. und Wissensch. des Judenth. 1878, pp. 522 sqq., 568 sqq., 1879, p. 29 sqq.).
[1530] Chagiga ii. 4. Those who say עצרת אחר השבת (Pentecost falls on the day after the Sabbath) are indeed here spoken of only in general. But that the Sadducees (Boethosees) are intended must certainly be admitted, according to Menachoth x. 3.
[1531] Comp. Wellhausen, p. 59 sq.
[1532] It might indeed be thought, from Erubin vi. 2, that the Sadducees also observed Pharisaic subtleties with respect to the Sabbath. For the case is there assumed as possible, of a Sadducee depositing something, in a manner quite Pharisaic, in an artificially fenced off space for the purpose of securing to himself the right of freer movement therein on the Sabbath day. In truth, however, the connection shows that the Sadducees were among those who did not observe the “law of Erub.” The purpose of a Sadducee in such an action could only have been to annoy his Pharisaic neighbour, who was thus deprived of the space so occupied by the Sadducee.
In this rejection of the legal tradition of the Pharisees, the Sadducees represented the older standpoint. They stopped at the written law. For them the whole subsequent development was without binding power. They also represented a like, one might say archaic, standpoint by their religious views, the chief of which have already been spoken of (vol. ii. p. 12 sqq.)—(1) they refused to believe in a resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future life, nay in any personal continuity of the individual; (2) they denied angels and spirits; (3) lastly, they maintained, “that good and evil are at the choice of man, who can do the one or the other at his discretion,” and consequently, that God exercises no influence upon human actions, and that man is therefore himself the cause of his own prosperity and adversity.[1533] With regard to the two first points, the Sadducees undoubtedly represented the original standpoint of the Old Testament, in distinction from the later Jewish. For with the exception of the Book of Daniel the Old Testament also knows of no resurrection of the body, and no retribution in another world in the sense of later Judaism, that is to say, no personal salvation of the individual after this earthly life, nor any punishment in the world to come for the sins of this life, but only a shadowy continued existence in Sheol. So too is the belief in angels and demons, in the development which it subsequently attained, still foreign to the Old Testament. The Sadducees then in both these respects remained essentially at the more ancient standpoint. Only we must not indeed say, that their special motive was the conservative feature, the cleaving to the old as such. On the contrary, it is evident that a certain amount of worldliness was the result of the superior political position of the Sadducees. Their interests were entirely in this world, and they had no such intensively religious interest as the Pharisees. Hence it was their slighter amount of religious energy which made the older standpoint seem sufficient for them. Nay, it is probable that in their case, as men of rank and culture, illuministic motives also intervened. The more fantastically the imaginary religious sphere of Judaism was fashioned, the less were they able to follow the course of its development. It is from this point of view indeed that the stress laid by the Sadducees on human freedom is chiefly to be explained. If the statements of Josephus on this point are on the whole worthy of credence, we can only perceive in this stronger insistance upon liberty also, a recession of the religious motive. They insisted that man was placed at his own disposal, and rejected the thought that a divine co-operation takes place in human actions as such.
[1533] Halévy, Traces d’aggadot saducéennes dans le Talmud (Revue des études juives, vol. viii. 1884, pp. 38-56), tries to point out traces of these Sadducaean views even in the Talmud. They are, however, very indistinct.
The last-named particulars also show in part, how it was just the high aristocracy that acceded to the tendency designated as “Sadducean.” In order to understand the genesis of this tendency, we must start from the fact, that the whole conduct of political affairs was already in the Persian, but especially in the Greek period, in the hands of the priestly aristocracy. The high priest was chief of the State, eminent priests undoubtedly stood at the head of the Gerusia (the Sanhedrim of the day). The duties of the priestly aristocracy were therefore quite as much political as religious. This necesarily involved a very real regard to political interests and points of view in all their proceedings. But the more decidedly these came to the foreground, the more did those of religion recede. This seems to have been especially the case in the Greek period, and indeed for this reason, that political interests were now combined with Greek culture. They who then wanted to effect anything in the political world must of necessity stand on a more or less friendly footing with Hellenism. Thus Hellenism gained ground more and more in the higher ranks of the priesthood at Jerusalem, which was in the same proportion alienated from the Jewish religious interest. Hence it is comprehensible, that it was just in these circles that Antiochus Epiphanes most easily found an admission of his demands. A portion of the priests of rank were even ready without further ceremony to exchange Jewish for heathen rites. This triumph of heathenism was not indeed of long continuance, the Maccabaean rising putting a speedy end to it. Still the tendencies of the priestly aristocracy remained essentially the same. Though there was no longer any talk of heathen rites, though the special friends of the Greeks were either expelled or silenced, there was still among the priestly aristocracy the same worldly-mindedness and the same at least comparative laxity of interest in religion. On the other hand, however, a revival and strengthening of religious life was the result of the Maccabaean rising. The rigidly legal party of the “Chasidees” gained more and more influence. And therewith their pretensions also increased. Those only were to be acknowledged as true Israelites who observed the law according to the full strictness of the interpretation given to it by the scribes. But the more strenuously this demand was made, the more decided was the recusancy of the aristocrats. It seems as though it were just the religious revival of the Maccabaean period which led to a firmer consolidation of parties. The “Chasidees” were consistent with their principles, and became “Pharisees.” The high aristocracy rejected the results that had been reached during the last few centuries in both the interpretation of the law and the development of religious views. They saw in the παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων an excess of legal strictness which they refused to have imposed upon them, while the advanced religious views were, on the one hand, superfluous to their worldly-mindedness, and on the other, inadmissible by their higher culture and enlightenment. The heads of this party belonging to the ancient priestly race of the Zadokites, they and their followers were called Zadokites or Sadducees by their opponents.
Under the earlier Maccabees (Judas, Jonathan, and Simon) this “Zadokite” aristocracy was necessarily in the background. The ancient high-priestly family which, at least in some of its members, represented the extreme philo-Hellenistic standpoint, was supplanted. The high-priestly office remained for a time unoccupied. In the year 152, Jonathan was appointed high priest, and thus was founded the new high-priestly dynasty of the Asmonaeans, whose whole past compelled them at first to support the rigidly legal party. Nevertheless there was not in the times of the first Asmonaeans (Jonathan, Simon) an entire withdrawal of the Sadducees from the scene. The old aristocracy was indeed purged from its more extreme philo-Grecian elements, but did not therefore at once wholly disappear. The Asmonaean parvenus had to come to some kind of understanding with it, and to yield to it at least a portion of seats in the “Gerusia.” Things remained in this position till the time of John Hyrcanus, when the Sadducees again became the really ruling party, John Hyrcanus, Aristobulus I., and Alexander Jannaeus becoming their followers. The reaction under Alexandra brought the Pharisees back to power. Their political supremacy was however of no long duration. Greatly as the spiritual power of the Pharisees had increased, the Sadducean aristocracy were able to keep at the helm in politics, and that notwithstanding the overthrow of the Asmonaeans and Herod’s proscriptions of the ancient nobility who had leagued with them. The high-priestly families of the Herodian-Roman period belonged also to the Sadducean party. This is decidedly testified for at least the Roman period.[1534] The price at which the Sadducees had to secure themselves power at this later period was indeed a high one, for they were obliged in their official actions actually to accommodate themselves to Pharisaic views. “Nothing is, so to speak, done by them, for whenever they obtain office they adhere, though unwillingly and by constraint, to what the Pharisees say, as otherwise the multitude would not tolerate them.”[1535]
[1534] Acts 5:17. Joseph. Antt. xx. 9. 1.
[1535] Antt. xviii. 1. 4. It is a complete misunderstanding to read from these words that the Sadducees only took office unwillingly (so even Winer, RWB. p. 356). On the contrary, they eagerly strove for it. The words ἀκουσίως μὲν καὶ κατʼ ἀνάγκας are, as the μέν and δέ prove, to be combined with those which follow. Comp. Geiger, Urschrift, p. 108, note. The same, Sadducäer und Pharisäer, p. 18. Hanne, Zeitschr. für wissensch. Theol. Keim, i. 282, note. Wellhausen, p. 45.
With the fall of the Jewish State the Sadducees altogether disappear from history. Their strong point was politics. When deprived of this their last hour had struck. While the Pharisaic party only gained more strength, only obtained more absolute rule over the Jewish people in consequence of the collapse of political affairs, the very ground on which they stood was cut away from the Sadducees. Hence it is not to be wondered, that Jewish scholars soon no longer even knew who the Sadducees really were. In the Mishna we still find some trustworthy traditions concerning them; but the Talmudic period, properly so called, has but a very misty notion of them.