Sadducees The Sadducees (sedûqîm) were one of the three main Jewish political and religious movements in the years between c.150 BCE and 70 CE. (The other movements were the Essenes and the Pharisees.) They had a conservative outlook and accepted only the written Law of Moses. Many wealthy Jews were Sadducees or sympathized with them.Sources No Sadducee texts are known; their ideas and opinions are only known from hostile sources. The Pharisees were usually vehemently opposed to the Sadducees and as a consequence, the few passages in the rabbinical literature that refer to the Sadducees almost always portray them as enemies. For example, when Pharisee teachers were discussing whether a good person could become an evil person, the example of a Pharisee who went over to the Sadducees was quoted as proof that people could become evil.note[Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 29a.] In another text, it is stated that the Sadducee sect started as a group of Pharisee heretics.note['Avot de Rabbi Nahum A 5; quoted below.] Other sources are not kind on the Sadducees, either. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus writes in that the behavior of the Sadducees towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them.note[Josephus, Jewish War 2.166.] The Christian texts portray the Sadducees as opponents of Jesus of Nazareth: Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Jesus asked that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, 'When it is evening you say, "It will be fair weather, for the sky is red"; and in the morning, "It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening." Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.' And he left them and departed. Now when his disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said to them, 'Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.'{[Matthew 16.1-6.}} It may be interesting to note that this passage is derived from the gospel of Mark, where only the Pharisees are mentioned:note[Mark 8.11-13.] the author of the gospel of Matthew has added the Sadducees. The Dead Sea scrolls do not mention the Sadducees, but use a kind of code name, Manasse. (This was common practice: e.g., 'Babylon' usually means Rome.) For example, in a commentary on the prophet Nahum, we can read that @at the end of times, the rule of Manasse will be terminated, that his women, babies and little children will be imprisoned, and that his heroes and aristocrats will perish by the sword.note[4Q 169 iv.] It should be noticed that not all scholars are convinced that Manasse is identical to the Sadducees. However this may be, it is clear that none of our sources is really fiendly towards the Sadducees. If we want to reconstruct their ideas, we are forced to use hostile, circumstantial evidence. Ideas Due to our sources, we cannot give a systematic account of the ideas of the Sadducees. Nonetheless, they mention several aspects of Sadducee theology. The fundamental difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees is the interpretation of the Law of Moses (i.e., the five first books of the Bible, the Torah). The Sadducees maintained that the only way for truly pious behavior was to live according to the commandments in the written Law; the Pharisees, on the other hand, taught that the written Law had been given to the Jews and that they were free to interpret the Law. After all, the world had changed since the days of Moses. As a consequence, the Pharisees said that the 'written Torah' was to be supplemented with 'the oral Torah', the interpretation of the written Law by the Pharisee teachers, the rabbis. The Sadducees considered this an almost blasphemous act, because it seemed to deny the majesty of the Law of Moses. The fact that the Sadducees had a very high opinion of the five first books of the Bible, does not mean that they denied that the other books of the Bible -e.g., the prophets and the historical writings- were divinely inspired. But they refused to accept the other Biblical books as sources of law. When a Sadducee had to judge a case, he would look in the written Torah and ignore the oral traditions that the Pharisees accepted as normative. One of the consequences was that the Sadducees stressed the importance of the priests in the Temple cult, while the Pharisees insisted on the participation of all Jews. In practice, the Law of Moses is not always very clear and the Sadducees had interpretative traditions of their own, which were written down in a book of jurisprudence known as the Book of Decrees. The existence of this penal code is known from a rabbinical source, the Megilla Ta'anit, a calendar like text that states that the Book of...