SADDUCEES. The Sadducees were so called after Zadok, who was high-priest in the reign of Solomon (I. Kings II. 35; Ezekiel xl. 46). The name has been wrongly connected with a Hebrew word meaning " just." The Sadducees were the Jewish aristocracy. " They were partly the courtiers, the soldiers, the diplomatists, and other superior officials who had risen into prominence in the Maccabaean war, and partly the old high-priestly families who had fallen into the background in the early stages of the revolt, but who came once more to the front under Simon Maccabaeus " (W. D. Morrison). They were the successors of the Hellenists. They were more a political party than a religious sect; but in so far as they were the latter, some of their views were remark able. We are told in the New Testament (Acts xxiii. 8) : " the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." Josephus says (Antiquities I. 4) their doctrine was that souls perish with the body. They differed widely from the Pharisees. And not only in these matters, but also in their estimation and interpretation of Holy Scripture. The Pharisees attached great importance to oral tradition. The Sadducees would acknowledge only the
letter of the written law, which they interpreted with great literalness. In the time of Jesus the party of the Saddueees was no longer the great patriotic party that it had been under the Hasmonaeans. For the most part they cherished and discussed their ideas of enlightening the people privately. They proclaimed them in public only on very rare occasions, especially when they seemed to have an opportunity of refuting the views of their opponents, the Pharisees. It is natural that they should have crossed swords with Jesus. As Neumann says, " the Pharisees and Sadducees were at one in their hatred of this Messiah who smote them with the sword of the Spirit and the scourge of His words." The idea that the Messiah would suddenly appear in the heavens, surrounded by angels, and would awaken the dead to judgment, must have been particularly obnoxious to the Sadducees. The party disappeared soon after the destruction of Jerusalem. See W. D. Morrison, The Jews under Roman Rule, 1890; Oscar Holtznann, The Life of Jesus, 1904; J. H. Blunt; Arno Neumann, Jesus, 1906.