i. 49), Jerome (Comment. on Math. xxii. 31-33), and followed by some modern writers, is utterly at variance with the Jewish records of this sect, and has evidently arisen from a confusion of the Saddu cees with the Samaritans. When it is borne in mind that even those fathers who understood He brew and knew most about the Jews committed the greatest blunders when they described the most common practices of this nation, as has been shown in the article PHYLACTERIES and elsewhere in this Cyclopmdia, we shall not be surprised at their having confused these two sects.
ii. Next in importance in point of doctrine is their eschatology. The Sadducees denied the re surrection of the dead to receive their reward and punishment. Josephos, who specifies the second cardinal difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, describes their respective doctrines of a future reward and punishment in such a manner as to infer that the former believing in-a future judg ment also believed in the immortality of the soul ; whilst the latter, by denying a future judgment, also denied the survival of the soul after the death of the body (*vxijs Te r0 &a/201,0 Kai TaS xca pov Tqateplas Kal 1-was dvapoi3al, De Bell. y'ud.
ii. 8. 14) In another place, again, where this historian mentions the distinctive eschatological views of the Sadducees, he plainly says, Their doctrine is that sends perish with the bodies (tailor icaloes Tar IbuxeLs Xo-yos ovva0araita rois auflcacc, Antiq. xviii. 4). But in the Talmud and in the N. T. we are told that they simply denied the resurrection (comp. Sanhedrin go b with Luke xx. 27, Mark xii. 18 ; see also Matt. xxii. 23), which by no means involves the immortality of the soul ; and it cannot be supposed that if the Sadducees had actually denied the immortality of the soul, so vital a point would be passed over in silence by the Talmudic doctors, when unimportant differences are minutely specified. There can there fore be no doubt that Josephus in his vanity to de pict to the Greeks the Jewish sects in such colon's as to make them correspond to the different philo sophical schools among the Greeks, did injustice to the Sadducees by assigning to them the doctrines of the Stoics. The misrepresentation of the Sad ducees will appear all the more evident when it is borne in mind how defectively Josephus describes the Pharisaic eschatology in the very same section. He there represents the Pharisees, who were his own party, as believing that the resurrection is to be confined to the righteous, whilst the wicked are to be detained in everlasting punishment in Hades under the earth (Antiq. xviii. a. 3) ; whereas it is well known that this opinion. was only entertained by same of the later doctors, that the Pharisees generally believed in the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked (Dan. xii. 2) ; and that
it was the common doctrine as late as the second book of Maccab. (comp. xii. 4o-45). The reason which the Sadducees assigned for not believing in the resurrection of the dead to receive their reward and punishment, is that it is not taught in the law of Moses oilnri wron rrrin rit.4 rinIN rpm Sanhedrin, go b), which simply promises temporal rewards and punishments for obedience and dis obedience (Exod. xx. 12 ; XXiii. 25, 26 ; Deut. vii. 12-15 ; xxviii. 1-68). That the Sadducees were right in their assertion may be seen from the very quotation made by our Saviour (Matt. xxii. 31, 32; Mark xii. 26, 27 ; Luke xx. 37) of Exod. iii. 6, 15, which it is only natural to suppose is the most cogent text in the law, and which, nevertheless, does no more than suggest an inference on this doctrine. The Sadducees, however, did not admit the inference, and they simply regarded this mode of proving the resurrection from the law as Phari saic, as they were in the habit of hearing similar inferences deduced by the Pharisees from other passages. Thus the Talmud relates : The Sad ducees asked Rabban Gamaliel, Whence do you know that the Holy One, blessed be he, will raise the dead ? To which he replied, From the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa ; from the Law, because it is written, And the Lord said to Moses, Behold thou shalt lie down Ninth thy fathers (np.o, and this people shall rise again' (Deut. xxxi. 16) ; from the Prophets, because it is written, Thy dead men shall live,' etc. (Is. xxvi. rg) ; and from the Hagiographa, because it is written, 'And the roof of thy mouth,' etc. (Song of Songs vii. g). The Sadducees, however, would not accept these passages till he quoted the passage, 'The land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give it to, them' (Deut. xi. 21). He promised it to them (bri})—i.e. to the living and not to the dead; but as they were now dead, hence it is evi dent that there will be a resurrection if the promise is to be fulfilled' (Sanhea'rin, go b). We are also told in the N. T. that the Sadducees say that there is 'neither angel nor spirit' (Acts xxiii. 8); but this can by no means imply that they altogether denied the existence of angelic and spiritual beings, since the Sadducees were firm believers in the divinity of the Mosaic law, where the appearance of angels is again and again recorded (Gen. xvi. 7 ; xix. ; xxii. ; xxviii. 12 ; Exod. xxiii. 20 ; Num. xxii. 23, al.), and as neither Josephus nor the Talmudic writings charge them with this unbelief. What they denied is the incarnation and manifestation of demoniac powers and angelic beings in later days, as believed and described in the Jewish writings and in the N. T.