SAD'DUCEES (Zedukim), a Jewish school or party—not a "sect," as they have been generally denominated since Josephus—of the times subsequently to the Syrian wars, and often mentioned in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Midrash. Their origin, as well as their name, has given rise to many speculations and suggestions, but none can be considered satisfactory. Modern investigators have derived the name from Zadikk, righteous man, a denomination which the Sadducees are supposed to have assumed in contradistinction from the Pharisees, the Separatists, as designating their own rejection of all superfluous and exaggerated religious practices, and their stand upon the words of the law itself.
The tenets of the Sadducees are noticed as contrasted with those of the Pharisees (q. v.).
A misconceived notion of some church fathers, to the effect that the Sadducees rejected all the canonical books of the Old Testament, with the sole exception of the Pentateuch, hardly requires refutation. They held the whole of the Old Testament as sacred as the Pharisees, and they quote equally from all its portions in support of their views. They would, if this or any other of those exaggerated accounts of their " unbe lief" had any foundation, not have remained in the Sanhedrin, their members would not have been high-priests, and the Pharisees would not have fought against them about mere trifles and casuistically. But, on the other hand, their sober rationalism could not,
apart from their aristocratic tendencies, at a time in which the immense struggle for liberty was still fresh in the people's minds, gain for them that popular sympathy which the Pharisees—eager, jealous, patriotic, pious, learned men of the people, enthusiastic men of progress—so easily acquired and held. Thus Sadduceeism, of which we hear so much in the New Testament, and which was combated as "the leaven of Herod" by Christ, while he only inveighs, as does the Talmud, against the hypocrites among the Pharisees, died out soon after the 1st c. A.D. The term under which they are once men tioned in the Mishna, viz., Karaim, became, at a later period, the name of a Jewish sect, still in existence, who reject all tradition, simply holding by the written law as their sole guide. See article Jnwisu SECTS. The Talmud speaks of certain writings of the Sadducees, but nothing has survived. A criminal code of theirs, of a somewhat arbitrary nature, is mentioned in Hes. Than. iv.