What are our sources of information?
New Testament, Josephus, later also the Rabbinic literature
No sources that represent their viewpoint, so we only have the critiques of those who disagreed with them. No one tells us about their good points!
Who were the Sadducees?
The origin of their name is usually traced to Zadok, even though there are some difficulties with this explanation. It fits, however, with the fact that the key leaders of the Sadducees were the aristocratic priests. They combined conservativism with power politics and strongly supported the status quo. (So they were rather Republican in this respect!) They were willing to cooperate with the Roman authorities in order to maintain peace and stability for themselves and for the Jewish people. They were pragmatists to a large extent, as aristocrats tend to be.
What did the Sadducees believe?
I. The ultimate authority for doctrine is the Pentateuch
A. They rejected the oral traditions of the Pharisees. This doesn’t mean they didn’t have their own traditions of interpretation, but they did not consider them binding. The only thing that was binding was what was found in Scripture. In this respect they were much more ‘Protestant’ than the Pharisees!
B. They did not appeal on doctrinal matters to the prophetic books and other writings. This is why Jesus answers their question about the resurrection from the Pentateuch when he could have appealed much more easily to the book of Daniel or some other such book.
II. They did not believe in the resurrection. The literal resurrection of the body is only taught explicitly as a doctrine in one of the latest books in the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel, although there had been some preparation for it in language used by Isaiah and Ezekiel. So this is one more example of the Sadducees’ conservativism. They left no room for rewards and punishment in the afterlife, presumably basing their doctrine on the vague references found in the Pentateuch to the ‘place of the dead’ or Sheol, which may simply refer to the grave. Acts 23:8 asserts that they did not believe in angels or spirits either. However, this is not a view attributed to the Sadducees elsewhere, and there would seem to be enough evidence for angels in the Pentateuch. So perhaps they dimply rejected the very elaborate angelologies that some had developed, with names and ranks and hierarchies and other such details. It is difficult to be certain as to the details of what they believed in this respect. Perhaps some indication of what their belief about life after death was like is to be found in the book from the Apocrypha known as the Wisdom of Jesus grandson of Sirach. In this book, death is spoken of at several points, but one’s hope is primarily thought of in terms of the children one leaves behind, and rewards and punishments are regarded as occurring during this life, so perhaps this represents something of the type of viewpoint the Sadducees had. However, this book was almost certainly written before the crisis that occurred in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and thus is much earlier than the appearance of the Sadducean party, and so can not be taken as a representative of any one of the parties that appeared later.
III. According to Josephus, they emphasized human free-will (i.e. they didn’t believe that everything that happens is predestined or foreordained).
IV. Their key differences from the Pharisees that were of day-to-day importance and interest were still primarily differences of opinion on how to interpret and apply certain laws regarding the Temple, sacrifices, purity, punishment and execution, etc.
In conclusion, there is no reason to think of the Sadducees as basically uninterested in religion, which is the way they are sometimes portrayed. Their close link with the priesthood should raise immediate questions about that. Their belief in free will meant, however, that they presumed that it is up to them to make a difference in their world, and thus if Jewish society is going to survive under Roman occupation, it is up to them to try to find a way to keep the Romans happy while preserving the Jewish way of life and their right to live according to it.
How big was the Temple?
Roughly half a mile square, although it was slightly longer than it was wide.
The inner sanctuary was around 750’ long and 300’ wide.
In other words, we are talking about a building several times larger than a football stadium. It will have dominated the city of Jerusalem.
How important was the Temple?
For us, the idea of taking a cute little lamb, slitting its throat and scattering its blood around is unsettling. To imagine that God would somehow take pleasure in watching us do so seems hard to imagine! Yet we must try to imagine a very different world if we are to appreciate the importance of the Temple in this time period. For most ancient people, to worship God without sacrifice would be as hard to imagine as it would be for us to imagine worshipping God without singing or praying. This was simply the way one approached God. It was only later, in light of Jesus’ sacrifice and presumably of the destruction of the Temple as well, that Christians realized that the sacrifice of animals was unnecessary. And some preparation for this step had been provided through the situation of Diaspora Jews, who did not have any sort of regular, direct access to the Temple.
The Temple expresses the Jewish concept of purity and election: like concentric circles. There was a warning on the wall separating the court of the Gentiles from the court of (Jewish) women, in Greek and Latin, saying that no foreigner may pass beyond this point, and that anyone attempting to do so would be the only person guilty for his own death which would quickly follow. Paul got into trouble on this account (see Acts 21:28). He may also have had this wall in mind when he wrote in Ephesians that Christ is our peace, who has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles.
The High Priest
The high priest was, as I’ve already said on other occasions, more than a religious figure. In the periods when the Jewish people did not have a king, the high priest was essentially the leader of the Jewish people. He represented them on the stage of world affairs and mediated between them and their Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, and finally Roman overlords. The Romans, in order to limit the power of the high priest, frequently removed one from office and put another in his place. This is why Annas and Caiaphas both figure in the passion narrative – Caiaphas was ‘officially’ high priest, but Annas had been and thus retained respect and influence in the Jewish community in Jerusalem and beyond. The Romans also took away the high priestly garments, allowing the high priest to wear them only on Yom Kippur when he had to enter the Holy of Holies.
Next time we’ll look at that famous group who withdrew from the Temple = the Essenes.