SADDUCEES ( צרןקים , i.e., Zadokites), the party of the priestly aristocracy under the later Hasmonaeans. The Sadducees were essentially a political party opposed to the Pharisees or party of the Scribes, and their position and history have therefore already been discussed in Israel, vol. xiii. p. 424 sq. The common view that Sadducaeism was essentially a philosophico-religious school is due partly to Josephus but mainly to later Jewish tradition, which never could realize the difference between a nation and a sect, and fancied that the whole history of Israel was made up of such scholastic controversies as engrossed the attention of later times. The theological tenets of the Sadducees as they appear in the New Testament and in Josephus had a purely political basis. They detested the doctrine of the resurrection and the fatalism of the Pharisees because these opinions were used by their adversaries to thwart their political aims. The aristocracy suffered a great loss of position through the subjection of Judsea to a foreign power; but it was useless to urge political schemes of emancipation on those who believed with the Pharisees that Israel’s task was to endure in patience till Jehovah redeemed the nation, and the resurrection rewarded those who had lived and died in bondage. In matters of ritual the Sadducees were naturally conservative, and their opposition to the unwritten traditions, from which they appealed to Scripture, is simply one phase of their opposition to Pharisaic innovations; for the traditions were the invention of the Pharisees and the written law represented old practice. When the Sadducees had lost all political importance their opposition to Pharisaism necessarily became more and more an affair of the schools rather than of practical life, ...

a sect among the Jews. It is said that the principles of the Sadducees were derived from Antigonus Sochæus, president of the sanhedrim, about B. C. 250, who, rejecting the traditionary doctrines of the scribes, taught that man ought to serve God out of pure love, and not from hope of reward, or fear of punishment; and that they derived their name from Sadoc, one of his followers, who, mistaking or perverting this doctrine, maintained that there was no future state of rewards and punishments. Whatever foundation there may be for this account of the origin of the sect, it is certain, that in the time of our Saviour the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead, Acts xxiii, 8, and the existence of angels and spirits, or souls of departed men; though, as Mr. Hume observes, it is not easy to comprehend how they could at the same time admit the authority of the law of Moses. They carried their ideas of human freedom so far as to assert that men were absolutely masters of their own actions, and at full liberty to do either good or evil. Josephus even says that they denied the essential difference between good and evil; and, though they believed that God created and preserved the world, they seem to have denied his particular providence. These tenets, which resemble the Epicurean philosophy, led, as might be expected, to great profligacy of life; and we find the licentious wickedness of the Sadducees frequently condemned in the New Testament; yet they professed themselves obliged to observe the Mosaic law, because of the temporal rewards and punishments annexed to such observance; and hence they were always severe in their punishment of any crimes which tended to disturb the public tranquillity. The Sadducees rejected all tradition, and some authors have contended that ...