Who were the Sadducees?

Historically, both these sects arose among the remnant of Israel who were restored to their own land after the Babylonian captivity. After the early enthusiasm of the restoration had died away, and the revivals in which the people confessed their sins and turned again to God seemed to have stopped, many of the more influential Jews lost faith in their separate calling and compromised, to a greater or lesser degree, with the heathen world around them. Others, condemning such unfaithfulness, looked for support in the general weakness by holding firmly to the law and rigidly shutting out every non-Jewish element. These two tendencies gave rise to the two sects of the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

Next to the Pharisees, the Sadducees were the most prominent sect of the Jews. The Pharisees made converts, but the Sadducees were much more exclusive, and so remained fewer in number. They did not believe in the resurrection, nor in angels, nor in spirits: they held that the soul died with the body… Though strict about the written law of Moses, they rejected the traditions of the elders, or what is called the oral law. They believed that God punished a man's sins during his life, and that man's will was free, and that he had power to restrain his passions. As a result they were severe judges.

The Sadducees were also a religious party, but they stood rather for the worldly side of religious profession; the high offices of the temple fell to them, along with a leading part in public affairs (Acts 4, 5). Their beliefs were less demanding and their practice less strict than those of the Pharisees. As to their beliefs, they "say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit" (Acts 23:8; Matt. 22:23)… As to their practice, unlike the more strictly organised Pharisees, they adapted easily to the secularising influence of the Greeks and Romans.

The comfortless doctrine of the Sadducees, which denied all future life for man, could never appeal to the masses, but remained the justification of those too rich and too satisfied with the present to trouble about the future. It was the unbelief of immortality; not a faith, but a blight on faith. Between Sadducee and Pharisee the friction was necessarily of the most extreme kind, although they might band together for a common purpose, which was then sure to be of the most evil character.

They present a case which — assuming their foolish imagination to be true — made the resurrection ridiculous and impossible: for they suppose that the relationships and conditions of this world continue in the other. This is what men do: they mix their own thoughts with God's word, and since these thoughts do not agree with it, they think it unintelligible and reject it. But in this case a vital and fundamental truth is at stake: and the Lord not only silences His enemies by the wisdom of His answer, exposing their hypocrisy, but clearly reveals the truth itself which is taught in a hidden way in the Old Testament.

This too was what made the Sadducees such bitter opponents of the apostles as recorded in Acts. The Pharisees were the great adversaries during the lifetime of the Lord Jesus, for being Himself the truth He exposed their hypocrisy at every step; but as soon as He had gone and the apostolic testimony to His resurrection became the prominent thing, we find the Sadducees springing into activity.

It is interesting and very important to notice that before bringing out the truth of the Church for the first time in His ministry to them, He warned them against these two leavens. The leaven of the Pharisees is ritualism, and the leaven of the Sadducees is rationalism.