Sadducees

Sadducees, Jewish school, or party, that arose in the 1st century bc, taking its name from Zadok, in the Old Testament (see 2 Samuel 15:24-29) a priest during the reigns of Kings David and Solomon, or from the Zadokites (see 1 Kings 4:2-4), a family of priests. The Sadducees, an aristocratic party, acknowledged only the written Torah as binding, rejecting the scribes' traditional interpretation and development of the Law. Their criminal jurisprudence was so rigorous that the day on which their code was abolished by the Sanhedrin was declared a festival. They rejected Pharisaic tradition, which represented an older legal and religious standpoint. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection or in any personal immortality, and they denied angels and spirits. Sadduceeism is denounced by Jesus Christ in the phrase “beware of the leaven [that is, the doctrine] of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6, 12). The Sadducees disappeared with the fall of the Jewish state in ad70.