Matt. 3:7 (ESV) But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
We looked at the Pharisees a while back. Now let’s look at the Sadducees, another party of Jews at the time of Jesus. John the Baptist certainly didn’t think highly of them as we can see from Matt. 3:7, but just who were they?
The Sadducees may have derived their name from Zadok, the High Priest during King David’s reign. This has some merit since the High Priests were chosen from their ranks. However, our information is sketchy at best. The main sources of information we have on the Sadducees are the New Testament documents and the first century Jewish historian, Josephus. Josephus, himself, was a Pharisee, so his description of the Sadducees should be taken with a grain of salt. In the New Testament, we see the Sadducees as antagonists and very little of any benefit they provided. So neither source was directed at understanding them.
We often see the Pharisees and Sadducees mentioned together in the New Testament, yet there were several differences, some major. The Pharisees were strict in their adherence to the Law and other restrictions they has forced upon the people. The Sadducees were more the sort of “go along to get along” party leaning toward Hellenism and often cooperating with their Roman oppressors.
Josephus’s first mention of the Sadducees is in the fourth century b.c., but nothing much is known of them until the century before Jesus when they supported the Romans in the appointment of Hyrcanus as High Priest.
It seems the fact Jesus was preaching was of little interest to the Sadducees until He claimed to be the Messiah and a threat to Roman rule. It was at that time Jesus’s troubles with the Sadducees began and continued until His crucifixion.
After the resurrection of Christ, the Pharisees lost most of their interest in the followers of Jesus, but the Sadducees continued to see them as a threat to their Roman friends. It was the Sadducees who arrested many in the early church:
Acts 4:1-3 (ESV) And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, 2 greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. 3 And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.
When the Pharisees are mentioned in the book of Acts, we see them arguing with the Sadducees and Paul getting the best of them both:
Acts 23:6-10 (ESV) 6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” 7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” 10 And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
Notice we see here some differences in beliefs between the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees didn’t believe in angels, spirits, or their own bodily resurrection but the Pharisees did.
Even among the Jewish Christians at the Jerusalem Council, there were some Pharisees who continued to push for the Law to be observed:
Acts 15:5 (ESV) But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
People are people. It’s part of the human condition to resist change from what you know, and this was true of the converted Pharisees, Sadducees, and all within the new faith. So much changed for them including even the day they worshiped, no animal sacrifices, no circumcision, so many things. I feel sorry for those first century Jews having to feel their way through what is still kept from their old faith and what has changed.
By 200 a.d., the Sadducees had disappeared. For the most part, the Pharisees became the Jews we see today.
Why is this important?
We need to see those outside our faith often have no clue at all of what we believe. We had dinner this week with some neighbors who are Bahai, a Persian monotheistic religion. My wife and I have very little exposure or understanding of the Bahai faith, so we were curious. Our neighbors were just as curious about our faith as we were about theirs. As Christians we need to talk with folks outside our faith to gain a better understanding of how little many of them understand or misunderstand about Christianity and to familiarize ourselves with the faiths of others.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 