They maintained that the incense which the high-priest was to carry into the Holy of Holies on the Great Day of Atonement ought to be kindled outside, and thus to be carried into the sanctuary ; because they deemed it impro per to do work in the presence of the Lord, and because it was rnore in accordance with the words moon 13121 4Z (Lev. xvi. 2), which they interpreted to mean only in the cloud (i.e. rising off the burning incense), will be seen on the cover ;' the cloud thus arising from the burning incense was to conceal the mani fested Deity, whereas, if the high-priest were to enter before this cloud begins to ascend, he would see God and die. The Pharisees considered this as violating the express command of the text, which plainly requires that the frankincense should be put on the burning coals in the Holy of Holies. So particular were they about it, that they exacted an oath from the high-priest, before the Day of Atonement, to perform everything in strict ac cordance with their enactments (Siphra, Pericope n)n +int,t, cap. iii. ; yernsalem 7oma, i. 5 ; Baby ion yonta, b, 53 a).
xiii. Though admitting that Exod. xiii. 6 en joins phylacteries, the Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic regulations about the making and weaving of them (Sanhedrin, SS b ; Maimonides, Iad Ha Chezaka, Hi/chez% Tephillin, iv. 3 [Pnvi.AcTERIEs]).
xiv. Based upon the law that a lying-in woman is not to touch holy things nor to go into the temple during the thirty-three days following the first seven days after the birth of a boy, and dur ing the sixty-six days following the first fourteen days after the birth of a girl (Lev. 2-8) ; the Sadducees maintained that this law excludes the woman from the enjoyment of her connubial rights all these days ; whilst the Pharisees, who always endeavoured to relieve the people as much as pos sible from the burden of the law, did not transfer the holiness of the things and of the temple to the persons thus granting to the wife and to the hus band the enjoyment of their rights. Hence, whilst they held every other appearance of blood in the woman as defiling, they regarded it in this in stance as the effects of the birth, and as pure blood (n-Int3 +trt). it is for this reason that the n in ifilitZ (Lev. xii. 4, 5) has not the ilfirpfiik, thus denoting pzire blood, as the present Massoretic text is the Pharisaic text, and tbat the rendering of it in the A. V. by 'the blood of her purifying,' though agreeing with the Sadducean text, which is un doubtedly the original one, is at variance with the lextus reeephis (comp. Geiger, He-Chaluz, v. 29 ; vi. 2S, ff. ; 'ad/se-he Zeitschrift,i. 51, ii. 27, etc.) It must not, however, be concluded that these are the only distinctive features of the Sadducees, although not many more are mentioned by their opponents the Pharisees.
3. Origin and development of the Saddneees.— The oldest record pretending to describe the origin of this sect (1113 ',311 nuto is the commentary of Rabbi Nathan on the tractate of the Mishna, en titled /Moth (nut,)=the moral Sayings of the An cient Fathers. In this commentary on the saying of Antigonus of Soho, B.C. 200-170 [EDUCATION], Be not like servants who serve their master for the sake of receiving wages, but be like servants who serve their master without expecting to receive wages, and let the fear of the Lord be upon you' (.1111Shna, Aboth, I. 3), Rabbi Nathan* remarks as follows : Antigonus of Soho had two disciples who propounded his maxim ; they taught it to their disciples, and their disciples again taught it to their disciples. \Vhereupon they began to examine it after them, and said, What did our fathers purport to teach by this maxim ? Is the labourer to work all day and not receive his wages in the evening ? Surely, if our fathers had known that there is another world, and believed in a resurrection of the dead, they would not have spoken thus. They then separated themselves from the law, and two sects arose from them, the Zadokites [.--Sadducees] and the Boethusians. The Zadokites are called after Zadok, and the Boethusians after Boethus. They used vessels of silver and vessels of gold all their days, not because they were proud, but be cause the Sadducees said that the Pharisees had a tradition that they are to afflict themselves in this world, and yet they have nothing in the world to come' (Aboth de Rabbi Nathan, cap. v.) That
Zadok and Boethus were contemporaries of Anti gonus of Soho, that they opposed the doctrines of the sages, and that the sages ordained laws to obviate the cavils of their opponents, is also declared by Saadia Gaon, 89z-942 A.D. [SAADIA GAON]. Thus Isaac Israeli tells us : Saadia says, the con temporaries and the tribunal of Antigonus of Soho ordained it as a law, that the beginning of the month is to be determined by the appearance of the new moon [Mum. IL], to do away with the cavils of Zadok and Boethus, who disputed against the sages about the fixing of the new moon' (.7esod Olam, iv. 6, p. g ed. Berlin 1848). Similar in im port to Rabbi Nathan's statement on Aka i. 3 is the remark of Maimonides (1135-1204, A.D.) on the same passage : Antigonus,' says this great authority, had two disciples, one named Zadok and the other Boethus, who when they heard this sage propound this maxim, left him, saying one to the other, the Rabbi distinctly declares that there is neither a future state of reward and punishment nor any hope for man, because they misunderstood his maxim. Whereupon they strengthened each other's hands, separated themselves from the con gregation, and left the observance of the law ; when one sect followed the one, and another sect fol lowed the other, whom the sages respectively called the Zadokites and the Boethusians' (Comment. on Aboth, i. 3). It must be added, that the greatest Jewish authorities since the gth century of the Christian era have regarded Zadok and Boethus as the heretical leaders who originated two sects. Modern critics, however, reject this current account of the origin of the Sadducees from Zadok and Boethus, the disciples of Antigonus of Soho, as unhistorical ; because— It is not mentioned either in Josephus, the Mishna, or the Talmud ; The original account of R. Nathan neither says that Zadok and Boethus themselves misunder stood Antigonns' maxim, nor that they were the chiefs of these sects, but that their disciples misin terpreted the import of the maxim, and separated themselves from the congregation ; and It is illogical to suppose that the disciples of Zadok, who according to R. Nathan's account did not misunderstand Antigonus, but simply continued to propound his master maxim, would call themselves or be called Zalokites=Sadducees, and not Anti gonites, seeing that the maxim belongs to Anti gonus and not to Zadok. The second and third reasons, however, are of little value, since the pre sent text of Rabbi Nathan's Aboth is obscure, and since Saadia Gaon, the Aruch, Maimonides, and all the ancient Jewish authorities who lived cen turies ago, and who bad better means of procuring correct codices, understood the passage to mean, and also derived it from independent sources, that Zadok and Boethus themselves misunderstood their master Antigonus, and that they were the ori,gina tors of the sects. It is the first reason which, coupled with the fact that the oldest records are perfectly silent about Zadok and Boethus* as dis ciples of Antigonus, goes far to show that the passage in the Aboth of Rabbi Nathan, like many other icces in the same work, is by a later hand, and that its author, who most probably flourished towards the end of the 7th century, though pos sessing the right information that the Zadokites and Boethusians were the followers of Zadok and Boethus, misstated the fact by making these two chiefs, who lived at different times, contemporaries, and by describing them as disciples of Antigonus. This mistake is all the more natural since the real and essential differences between the Sadducees and the Pharisees actually began to develop them selves in the time of Antigonus, and it is not at all improbable, that though the Sadducees, as we shall presently see, derived their early sentiments and distinctive name from a much older leader named Zadok, a distinguished descendant of that leader, bearing the same name, may have lived in the time of Antigonus, and may have contributed greatly to the final separation of the Sadducees from the Pharisees.