B. DOCTRINAL VIEWS.
Foremost among the doctrines of the Sad ducees is the tenet that the Hebrew Scriptures, with the authoritative explanations and glosses which developed themselves in the course of time, are the sole rule of faith and practice, thus deny ing that there existed any orally transmitted law to supplement the written law, to which their oppo nents the Pharisees laid claim ; or, as Josephus states it, the Pharisees have given to the people many statutes from the traditions of the fathers which are not written in the law of Moses ; and it is for this reason that the Sadducees reject them, saying that it is only the written observances which are bind ing, but those which are transmitted by the fathers are not to be observed' (Antig. xiii. ro. 6). For the better understanding, of this important question, it must be remarked that the Pharisees and the ortho dox Jews to the present day have an oral law in addi tion to the written law. This oral law consists of sundry religious, ceremonial, and social practices which obtained in the course of time, and which were called forth either through the obscurity, con ciseness, and apparent contradiction of some of the written enactments, or through the inapplicability of some of the 1VIosaic statutes to the ever-chanp.-,ing circumstances of the commonwealth. Some of the enactments contained in this oral code are undoubt edly as old as the original laws which they sup plement and explain, so as to adapt them to excep tional cases not specified in the 14losaic law ; others again were introduced by the spiritual heads of the nation after the return from the Babylonish ca-p tivity, because the altered state of the nation ab solutely required these regulations, although there was no basis in the Mosaic law for them ; whilst others originated in party feeling, to shield the pious against even approaching the liinits of trans gression. Now the Sopherint = scribes and the lawyers, after the Babylonish captivity, whofound this accumulated traditional code, tried to classify and arrange it. Those practices which could be deduced from or introduced into the text of Holy Writ by analogy, combination, or otherwise, were regarded as the legitimate and authoritative traditional exposition of the law [MinuAsx]; whilst those practices which obtained in the course of time, which were venerated and esteemed by the people both for their antiquity and utility, but for which neither author nor apparent reason could be found in the written law, were denominated A traditional laza of Arose: from Sinai (nvn5 rIn5r, ,:nn), because from their antiquity and importance it was thought that they must have come down orally from the lawgiver himself. It is this oral law
which the Sadducees rejected, and in their con servatism adhered to the ancient Hebrew Scrip tures, as well as to those time-honoured explana tions and practices 0-11z5n) which were not at variance with the text of the Bible. It must dis tinctly be borne in mind that by their rejecting traditions is not meant that the Sadducees rejected all the traditional comments upon the law and the ancestral practices not found in the Bible. Even the Talmud itself only charges them with rejecting some things (Sanhedrin, 33 b ; Harajoth, 4 a), and there is but little doubt that those practices which they rejected were originated by the Phari sees, the liberal party whose innovations the con servative Sadducees disliked, and regarded as an encroachment upon their priestly and aristocratic rights. Indeed, it will be seen in the course of this article, from the enumeration of their distinct ive tenets, that the theological views of the two sects were not so much at variance as might have been supposed, and that the Sadducees in many cases actually adhered to ancient traditions, whilst the Pharisees abandoned these traditions and intro duced new statutes in order to raise the people, whose true representatives they were, to a nation of kings and priests. That the Sadducees also rejected the Prophets and Hagiographa, and only believed in the Pentateuch, as is asserted by Epi phanius (Adversus Hareses, xiv.), Origen (Cels.