We have seen from their tenets and practices that the Sadducees were the ancient priestly aris tocracy, and that they persisted in maintaining their conservative notions, as well as in retaining their pristine prerogatives, against the voice of the people. It is therefore natural, in tracing their origin, to look for a leader among the priests themselves, as their strong conservative sentiments would, as a matter of course, make them centre around a representative and a name of their own caste celebrated in the records of the sacred Scrip tures. Such a chief, answering all the condi tions required, we find, as Geiger has elabo rately shown it, in the eminent priest Zadok, the tenth in descent from the high-priest Aaron, who declared for the succession of Solomon to the throne when Abiathar took the part of Adonijah (t Kings i. 32-43), and whose line of descendants, or house' as it is termed in the Bible, henceforth retained a. pre-eminence in the future history of the Jewish people. Thus when Hezekiah put a question to the priests and Levites generally, the answer was given by Azariah, the chief priest of the house of Zadok' (2 Chron. xxxi. to) ; and Ezekiel, in his prophetic vision of the future temple, pre-eminently distinguishes the sons of Zadok,' and the priests and the Levites of the seed of Zadok,' as the faithful guardians of the Lord's sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray (Ezek. xl. 46 ; to ; xliv. 13 ; xlviii. It). When the Jews returned from the Babylonish captivity, this sacerdotal aristocracy, and especially the 'priests of the seed of Zadok,' the sons of Zadok,' or which comes to the same thing the Zadokites' = Sadducees, naturally continued to form the centre of the newly-formed state, and to be the time-honoured guardians both of God's sacred heritage and their holy religion. The high-priests were also the chief functionaries of state. Their maxim, however, that statecraft and ingenuity are to be employed in political transactions with foreign nations, as well as the conduct of the chiefs among this sacerdotal aristocracy based upon tbis maxim, threatened to destroy both the nationality and the religion of the Jews. Hellenism—which gradually found its way into Judma after its occupation by Alex mder the Great—Grecian sports, and political elliances with the heathen, were advocated by the highest of the land, and openly espoused by mull titudes (1 Maccab. It-13). The very high-priest, who hitherto was the centre of religion, did an he could to denationalise the people of his charge (2 Maccab. iv. 1-19). The people, who saw their sanctuary ravished by the Syrians whilst their aristocracy were engaged in their ruinous state cmft, became embittered against both the foreigners abroad and the rulers at home. We cannot do better than continue the description of the Saddu cees in the powerful words of Geiger It was then that a pliable priestly family made itself the hand and the mouthpiece of this discontent ; it conquered and crushed the foreign sway, over threw the governing families at home, and assumed the pre-eminence. But the aristocracy soon sur rounded the new sun of the Maccabees, and the Za dokites, who themselves had hitherto been the 'sun, now becatne its satellites, as Sadducees. The party struggle increased with continued success to the Pharisees. The internal struggles, however, made the interference of the Romans easy, and paved the way of the keenly ambitious Herod to the throne. He was neither a priest nor a born Israelite ; but, like all upstarts, he was anxious to ally himself with the ancient aristocracy. His connection with 11Iariamne supported a Maccabman family in the court itself, which, in opposition there unto, had popular sympathies, because it had its root among the people, in consequence of its celebrated past. Hence the eternal court intrigues, and the consequent brutalities. It was for this reason that Herod sought for another alliance with the sacer dotal aristocracy, which should both legitimatise him and be his faithful followers, and which he, on his part, would raise, by being connected with the sovereign. For this purpose he selected the family of Boethus, a sacerdotal family to whom the functions of the high-priesthood did not belong. He married the daughter of Simon Boethus, whom he made high-priest. Thus was a new high aiistocmcy created, which, being of ancient aristo cratic blood, was blended with the high aristocracy, but which nevertheless owed its elevation to the sovereign, and was allied to his house. These were the Boethusians. Their double character, being both upstarts, and yet claiming to be ancient aristocracy, enhanced their arrogance ' Oildischt Zeitschrift, ii. 34, ff.) They are the Herodians, and for this reason are alternately called Herodians and Sadducees in the N. 'I'. (Matt. xvi. 6 with Mark viii. t3). Thus we are told that the Phari sees took counsel with the Herodians—Le. with the Boethusian branch of the Sadducees—how they might destroy Jesus (Mark iii. 6), as these Hero dians, from their alliance with the reigning dynasty, had the temporal power for their aid. Again, in Mark xi. 27, xii. 13, it is stated that the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, sent unto Jesus certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians to catch him in his words, and after they had con jointly put to him the question about the tribute money (14-17), each of the representatives of the two sects-4 t. of the Sadducees and the Pharisees—tried to entrap him with questions in harmony with their sectarian tenets. Accord ingly, the Sadducean portion of the deputation, which are called in ver. 13 Herodians, and in ver. to Sadducees, came forward first and asked him the question about the seven brothers, which bore upon the Sadducean doctrine of the resurrection and the Levirate law (19-27). When they were
silenced, one of the scribes—i.e. of the Pharisaic portion of the deputation who was pleased with the manner in which Jesus put down the cavils of the Herodians—came forward and tried to entangle our Saviour with a question from a Pharisaic point of view (28-37). The reason why our Saviour, , who so frequently rebuked the extravagances of some of the Pharisees, did not expose the doctrines of the Sadducees is, that at his advent their tenets had been thoroughly refuted by their opponents the Pharisees, and that although, through their alliance with the court, they wielded the temporal arm (Acts v. I 7), they exercised no religious influence whatever upon the mass of the Jewish people, with whom the Pharisees were all in all (Joseph. A Wig. xiii. 10. 5). But even their political influence soon ceased, for with the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans the Sadducees lost their temporal significance ; and though their doctrines continued to be held by a small fraction of the dispersed Jews, yet they were deemed of so little influence that Jehudah the Holy (163-193), in his redaction of the Mishna, only rarely and sparingly takes notice of the different opinions upon the various Jewish enactments held by the Sadducees and the Boethu sians. It is for this reason that the Sadducees are also mentioned so little in the Talmud and the Midrashim, and that their origin was forgotten in the 7th century, when the above-quoted passage relating to their rise was introduced into the Abotk of Rabbi Nathan.
4. Modern Saa'ducees or the Karaites.—Without religious influence upon the mass of the Jewish people, and without any political power to protect their spiritual weakness, the handful of Sadducees continued to struggle on from the destruction of the second temple to the rise of Islamism, when a new era of resuscitation began for their tenets. The youthful Islam, which allied itself to science, breathed a reviving spirit upon Judaism, of which dying Sadduceeism had more than a double share. In addition to the fact that an oppressed sect na turally seizes any new tendency whereby it can be resuscitated, Sadduceeism—being free from the trammels of the traditional ordinances, as well as from the mass of artificial explanations, having had no share in the hazardous decisions passed by the Pharisees in the gloomy centuries which intervened between the rise of Christianity and Mohammedan ism, and possessing only the Hebrew Scriptures as their religious code and classical literature—could more easily be penetrated by science than Phari saism with its prodigious accumulation of authorita tive works. And the learned and renowned Anan b. David, who rejected the traditions of the fathers, or in other words who was a Sadducee, duly availed himself of these auspicious circumstances about A.D. 760.
i. Rise of Karaism.—Though the exact time when Anan b. David, the renowned founder of Karaism, was born, cannot now be ascertained, yet we know that in A.D. 761 or 762 he was old enough to become the prince of the captivity or patriarch, to which he was the legitimate successor, as his uncle Solom, who held this dignity, died childless ; and that the brothers R. Jehudai the Blind, who was at that time Gaon of Sora, and R. Dudai, Gaon of Pumbadita, prevented him from obtaining the patriarchate, because he, like many other representatives of the ancient Sadducees, re jected the traditions of the fathers, and elected his brother in his stead. As Anan was not singulat in his theological views, those who sympathised with him, and could not see the truth of Pharisaic or Rabbinical Judaism, when they saw that he suf fered for conscience sake, gathered round him as the legitimate prince and as the powerful champion of their principles. Having been compelled by the Rabbinical party, who had great influence with the caliph Abugafar el-Almanzor, to quit Babylon, he repaired to Jerusalem, where he was followed by his children and his influential friends, some of whom were members of the Gaonim colleze, and where he founded a synagog,ue, which continued till the first invasion of the Holy City by the Cru saders. The Pharisaic Jews formally excommuni cated Anan and his party, whilst Anan, on the other hand, prohibited his followers from inter marrying with the Rabbinists, taking any meals with them, visiting their synagogues, or having any intercourse with them. Thus originated the separation between the Karaites, or the successors of the Sadducees, and the Rabbinical or Pharisaic Jews.
ii. Tenets and practices of the Karaites.—The doctrines of the Karaites are, with few exceptions, the same as those of the Sadducees.
a. Like his predecessors the Sadducees, Anan propounded the principle of worldly policy with the surrounding nations. Hence he regarded the founders of both Christianity and Mohammedanism as divinely commissioned. Christ, he said, was a tnie prophet for the Gentiles, and a wise teacher of the Jews ; he proclaimed the revealed law to the heathen, and endeavoured to remove from the Scriptures the obscuring mass of human ordinances and vain traditions which the scribes and the Phari sees palmed thereupon, but which the Jews in their blindness did not understand. Mohammed, again, had a divine mission to the Arabs to destroy their idols, and teach them the existence of one true God and to worship him only. The Koran, there fore, is the inspired book for the Islamites, but does not set aside the Jewish law for the Jews (De Sacy, Chrestomathie ,4rabe, 326; Wolf, theca Hebraw, iv. roS6). These doctrines Anan propounded in a small work entitled Faa'halkah— i. e. Summary of Doctrines—which is now lost , (comp. Munk, in Jost's Annalen, 1846, p. 76).