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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

SADDUCEES

Jewish sect cited 14 times in the NT, not referred to in the OT.

Their History

A number of suggestions have been made as to the origin of the name. First, it has been connected with the Hebrew word for “righteous” (saddik). This is difficult from an etymological point of view, as there would have been a change from i to u in the word. Nor is there reason to think that they made such a claim to be the “righteous ones.” Second, the name has been connected with Zadok (sometimes written Saddouk in Greek), a priest in the days of David (2 Sm 8:17; 15:24-29) who anointed Solomon (1 Kgs 1:32-39) and in his reign became chief priest (2:35). He is said to have descended from Eleazar, the son of Aaron (1 Chr 6:3-8), and Zadokite priests seem to have been responsible for priestly duties in the temple until the exile. In the blueprints for the restoration of the worship of the temple (Ez 40–48), it is the Zadokite priesthood that is again given charge to minister as “Levitical priests” (44:15-16; 48:11-12). After the exile, we read of Joshua (Jeshua) the son of Jehozadak as high priest (Hg 1:1), and his lineage was traced back to Zadok (1 Chr 6:8-15). The significance of the Zadokite priesthood continues to be stressed in writings of the early second century BC, but it is by no means clear that the Sadducees made a stand for the Zadokite priesthood. It may be added that the double d in the word is not readily explained by this view of Sadducean origins.

Third, a late rabbinic tradition is that the Sadducees took their name from another Zadok who lived in the second century BC. There is little to commend this view.

Finally, the British NT scholar T. W. Manson suggested that their name is to be connected with the Greek word sundikoi, meaning “members of the council,” thus designating the Sadducees as councillors under the Hasmonean rulers.

The first historical knowledge of the Sadducees is in the time of Jonathan Maccabeus, who led the Jewish struggle against the Seleucids from 160 to 143 BC. Josephus (Antiquities 13.5.9) said that they were a party at this time, and that when John Hyrcanus was head of the Jewish state (135–104 BC) there was strife between the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Antiquities 13.10.6). It is possible that the Sadducees stood in some sense for the Zadokite priesthood or for the claim that the Jerusalem priesthood of their day was Zadokite in origin, but this is far from clear. Josephus says that the Sadducees had the rich on their side, while the Pharisees had a following among the common people. In the days of Salome Alexandra (76–67 BC), the Pharisees were in the ascendancy, but when Judea became a Roman province and Roman governors began to put one high priest down and raise another up, it appears that most of the high priests were from high-born Sadducean families. While they could temporize with the Romans, these Sadducean families had power and influence in the land. As hostilities developed between the Jews and their Roman overlords, the influence of the Sadducees declined. After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70, the Sadducees fade from history.

In the New Testament

In the Gospel narrative they first appeared, together with Pharisees, at John’s baptism. He addressed them as “sons of snakes” and challenged them to show repentance in their lives (Mt 3:7-10). Later, the Sadducees came along with some Pharisees to “test” Jesus, asking him to show them a sign from heaven (16:1). Jesus told his disciples to beware of the Sadducees (vv 6, 11-12).

A great difference begins to emerge between Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 22:23-33 (cf. Mk 12:18-27; Lk 20:27-38). The Sadducees, who, like others, wanted to embarrass Jesus with their questions, came with a trick question that showed their doubts concerning the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees were described in this context as those who say there is no resurrection after death. They cited the case of a woman who had seven brothers as her husbands in succession. “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” they asked, implying that because of such a problem, the resurrection could not be a reality. Jesus answered by speaking of the error of their view caused by their ignorance of the Scriptures and of God’s power.

In the early days of the church in Jerusalem, the priests and the captain of the temple police and the Sadducees became annoyed because the disciples were proclaiming the resurrection from the dead (Acts 4:1-2). The Sadducees seem to have led the opposition to the apostles and their preaching. Later the high priest and Sadducees determined to arrest the apostles and put them in the prison (5:17). The only other reference to them in the NT is in Acts 23:6-8, in the record of Paul’s trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin. On that occasion, Paul deliberately spoke about his belief in the resurrection so as to cause a division between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection.

Thus from these NT passages one realizes something of the basic tenets of the Sadducees, of their prominence among the high priestly families, and of the differences between Pharisees and Sadducees.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote in the closing years of the first century AD, adds to the information in the NT about this party. He said that the Sadducees, in contrast to the Pharisees and Essenes, gave no place to the overruling providence of God but emphasized that all that happens to us is the result of the good or evil that we do (Antiquities 13.5.9; War 2.8.14). Josephus, in a way comparable to the NT, spoke of the Sadducees’ rejection of “the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades” (War 2.8.14). “Souls die with the bodies” was what they said (Antiquities 18.1.4). Early Christian writers—Hippolytus, Origen, and Jerome—said that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch and not the other OT books. It would seem, however, that they were not opposed to other OT books as a whole (though it is doubtful whether they accepted books such as Daniel, with its clear statement of the resurrection of the dead), but rather that they opposed the legal regulations introduced by the Pharisees and were saying that only the OT law should be considered mandatory. In this, as in their stand against belief in angels and in life after death, they appear to have regarded the Pharisees as innovators and themselves as conservatives.

The other main source of knowledge about the Sadducees is the Mishnah, the collection of the teaching of the rabbis, put down in writing in the second century AD. The Sadducees opposed many of the detailed regulations that the Pharisees sought to impose on the people (Parah 3.3,7). It also indicates that they had a greater tendency to compromise with the ways of the Gentiles than other Jewish parties (Niddah 4.2).

See Essenes; Judaism; Pharisees.