Sadducees

The Sadducees were a Jewish sect of the late Second Temple period drawn from the priestly and aristocratic classes. They controlled the temple priesthood, denied the resurrection of the dead and the existence of angels and spirits, and rejected the Pharisees’ oral traditions in favor of the written law alone (Matt. 22:23; Mark 12:18; Acts 23:8).

Historical Origin

The Sadducees appear alongside the Pharisees and Essenes among the Jewish sects active by the time of Christ’s coming, and Pictet notes that their “impious tenets are so often impugned by the Saviour.”¹ Drawn from the priestly and aristocratic families, they controlled the temple and its priesthood through the long rivalry with the Pharisees that lasted until Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70. Van Mastricht places the dispute over the Pharisees’ oral law at the center of the two parties’ disagreement: the Sadducees “did oppose them, rejecting those traditions, as did the Essenes and Samaritans, but by that opposition they rejected the entirety of Scripture, except perhaps for the law of Moses.”²

Beliefs and Practices

Hodge describes the Sadducees among the three sects of the Jews at Christ’s coming as “materialistic skeptics, believing neither in the resurrection, nor in angels, nor in spirits,” in contrast to the Essenes’ belief in the soul’s immortality and the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the body.³ Bavinck states the same denial plainly: “The Sadducees denied the resurrection (Matt. 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27; Acts 23:8) and, according to Josephus, retribution after death and immortality as well.”⁴ Much of what is known about the Sadducees beyond Scripture comes from Josephus, who described them as a quarrelsome party whose followers were wealthy and powerful, and whom he considered boorish in social interactions with one another.⁵

Doctrinal Significance

Christ himself refuted the Sadducees’ denial of the resurrection from the very Pentateuch whose authority they acknowledged (Matt. 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-38). Hodge summarizes the argument: Christ “appeals to the fact that in the Pentateuch, the authority of which the Sadducees admitted, God is familiarly called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but as He is the God not of the dead but of the living, the designation referred to proves that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now living, and living too in the fellowship and enjoyment of God.”⁶ On this reading Christ’s argument is not merely an assertion that a future life awaits the righteous but a demonstration that the Old Testament itself already taught it, so that the Sadducees’ error was a failure to read their own Scriptures rightly rather than a gap the Scriptures themselves left open.

The Sadducees continued to oppose the apostles on the same doctrinal ground after Christ’s ascension. Peter and John were arrested by the temple authorities, Luke reports, because the Sadducees “were greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:1-2), and Paul later turned the Sanhedrin’s own Pharisee-Sadducee division to his advantage by declaring himself on trial “with respect to the hope and resurrection of the dead,” dividing the council along the same resurrection question Christ had already settled (Acts 23:6-8).

Related Doctrines

References

Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 238. ↩
Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), chap. 2, “Holy Scripture,” 245-246. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter I. State of the Soul After Death,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 717. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩
Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, book 2, chap. 8, para. 14. ↩
Hodge, 716. ↩