A Second Temple Sect · The Sects of Second Temple Judaism
The Sadducees
The Sadducees held the Temple, the priesthood, and much of the nation’s political power, and they denied the one hope that gives the gospel its center. When they tried to trap Jesus with a riddle about the resurrection, he answered them from the five books they themselves accepted, and won the crowd’s astonishment. This page tells who they were, what they denied and held, and how their whole party disappeared from history the day the Temple they were built around fell.
Summary
The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy of Second Temple Judaism, centered on the Temple and its politics. They denied the resurrection of the dead, angels, spirits, and the oral tradition, holding only the written Torah as binding. Jesus refuted their resurrection riddle from Exodus 3, the very books they accepted, and the party vanished from history when the Temple fell in AD 70.
- The name most likely traces to Zadok, Solomon's high priest, marking a priestly-aristocratic line
- They denied resurrection, angels, and spirits, and rejected the oral Torah the Pharisees kept alongside Moses
- The high-priestly families who opposed the apostles in Acts belonged to this party
- Jesus answers their resurrection riddle from Exodus 3:6, the Torah they themselves granted as Scripture
- The Sadducees vanish from history with the Temple's fall in AD 70; the rabbinic Judaism that follows descends from the Pharisees instead
Who They Were
the name, the priestly line, and the Temple aristocracy
The most widely held reading traces the name Sadducee to Zadok, the priest who anointed Solomon and whose line held the high-priesthood for centuries afterward (1 Kings 2:35). On this reading, “Sadducee” marks a priestly-aristocratic family and its allies, the men who ran the Temple and, through it, much of the nation’s public life. A second reading derives the name from the Hebrew word for “righteous,” a self-description rather than a family name. Josephus and most historians favor the Zadokite reading, and this page follows it while naming the alternative.
Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees were never a popular movement. Their base was priestly and wealthy, their power ran through the Temple and its sacrifices, and their working relationship with Rome kept the Temple functioning and their own families in office. That arrangement gave them real authority and little affection from the crowds who filled the Temple courts each feast day.
- 1 Kgs 2:35Zadok, Solomon's high priest, the name's likely root
- AD 70the Temple falls; the party disappears with it
- G4523Saddoukaios, the Greek name, 14 uses in the NT
What They Denied and Held
Acts 23:8 and Josephus, Antiquities 18.16
“For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.” Acts 23:8
Luke states the doctrinal line plainly, and Josephus confirms it from the outside (Antiquities 18.16): the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of angels and spirits, and any reward or punishment continuing after death. They also rejected the Pharisees’ oral tradition, holding that only the written Torah bound the conscience. What they held, they held firmly: the five books of Moses as the sole rule of faith and practice, without the accumulated interpretation the Pharisees carried alongside it.
These understanding that the former had not succeeded, came with a knotty question, with which they had often puzzled the Pharisees, and hoped they should nonplus Christ with it, showing the absurdity of the doctrine of the resurrection, an article which they denied; as it follows, which say, that there is no resurrection of the dead: they denied that there were angels and spirits, and the immortality of the soul; they affirmed, that the soul died with the body, and that there was no future state.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1771Particular Baptist
Matt 22:23
The same day came the Sadducees ... No resurrection - The word “resurrection” usually means the raising up the “body” to life after it is dead, Joh 11:24; Joh 5:29; 1Co 15:22. But the Sadducees not only denied this, but also a future state, and the separate existence of the soul after death altogether, as well as the existence of angels and spirits ...
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Evangelical
Matt 22:23
Of the Sadducees I am silent, who, springing from the root of this error, had the hardihood to adjoin to this heresy the denial likewise of the resurrection of the flesh.
Tertullian· Against All Heresies, 220Church Father
Acts 23:8
A hard question the tradition itself notices: denying the future, keeping the lawAdam Clarke, 1832
Clarke points out the puzzle in the Sadducees’ own practice: they denied a future state, yet still observed the ordinances of the Torah, because they believed the five books of Moses to be a revelation from God even while reading the promises in them as reaching no further than this life. Their obedience aimed at present blessing, not a hope beyond death.
It is strange, since these denied a future state, that they observed the ordinances of the law; for they also believed the five books of Moses to be a revelation from God: yet they had nothing in view but temporal good; and they understood the promises in the law as referring to these things alone.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832
Acts 23:8
The High-Priestly Families
the Temple aristocracy behind the party
The Sadducees supplied the men who ran the Temple. Luke names “the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees” together as the party troubled by the apostles’ preaching of the resurrection (Acts 4:1-2), and later identifies the high priest and his circle outright as “the sect of the Sadducees” (Acts 5:17). Acts 5:17 makes the connection plain: the ruling high-priestly circle and the Sadducean party were, in practice, the same men.
The high priest Ananias who ordered Paul struck on the mouth during his defense before the council (Acts 23:2) belonged to this same aristocracy, a family whose power ran through the Temple treasury and its arrangement with the Roman governor rather than through popular teaching the way the Pharisees’ authority did.
The Resurrection Collision
Matthew 22:23-33: the riddle, and the answer from Exodus 3
“In the resurrection therefore whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.” Matthew 22:28
The riddle turns on levirate marriage, the Torah’s command that a man marry his brother’s childless widow to carry on the family line (Deut 25:5-10, the law behind the book of Ruth). The Sadducees stretch the case to seven brothers and one widow, meant to make the doctrine of resurrection look absurd on its own terms: if she rises with all seven still married to her, whose wife is she.
“But Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.” Matthew 22:29
Jesus answers on two fronts at once. Resurrected life is not marriage carried forward unchanged; those raised “neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven” (22:30), which removes the riddle’s premise. Then he proves the doctrine itself, and he proves it from the only Scripture the Sadducees granted, the five books of Moses:
“I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Matthew 22:32
I am the God of Abraham - The argument runs thus: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living: (for that expression, Thy God, implies both benefit from God to man, and duty from man to God) but he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead, but living.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Matt 22:32
Have ye not read - This quotation is taken from Exo 3:6, Exo 3:16; and as the five books of Moses were the only part of Scripture which the Sadducees acknowledged as Divine, our Lord, by confuting them from those books, proved the second part of his assertion, 'Ye are ignorant of those very scriptures which ye profess to hold sacred.'
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Matt 22:31
“And when the multitudes heard it, they were astonished at his teaching” (22:33). The astonishment is the point: Jesus did not need a book the Sadducees rejected to answer them. He beat them on their own chosen ground.
And see how the assault of the Jews against Christ becomes more faint. Their first challenge was in a threatening tone... Their second was with guile, to meet which was needed wisdom. This last was with ignorant presumption which is easier to cope with than the others. For he that thinks he knows somewhat, when he knows nothing, is an easy conquest for one who has understanding.
Pseudo-Chrysostom· Catena Aurea, c. 500
Matt 22:33
The Trial, and the End
the council in Acts 23, and the disappearance of the party in AD 70
The same high-priestly aristocracy that opposed Jesus and the apostles brought Paul before the council in Acts 23. Ananias the high priest orders Paul struck for claiming a clear conscience (23:1-2), and Paul, perceiving the council split between Sadducees and Pharisees, deliberately raises the resurrection to turn one party against the other in his defense (23:6-9). Rome’s soldiers, not either Jewish party, are what finally pull Paul out of the resulting riot (23:10).
The Sadducees’ whole identity was bound to the Temple: its sacrifices, its treasury, its politics with Rome. When the Temple fell to Roman armies in AD 70, the Sadducees had no institution left to hold onto and no popular base to fall back on the way the Pharisees did. The party disappears from history at that point. Every later Jewish tradition, the Mishnah, the Talmud, the rabbinic literature cited on this site, descends instead from the Pharisaic stream that survived the Temple’s fall. The Pharisees tells that side of the story in full.
The Voices
with the work named
Exposition of the New Testament (1746-1748) · public domain
Names the denial of resurrection, angels, and spirits in one line, and notes the puzzle of a sect that kept the law while denying a future state.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832-1869) · public domain
Distinguishes the denial of bodily resurrection from the Sadducees’ larger denial of any future state at all.
Commentary on the Bible (1832) · public domain
Points out that Jesus answers from Exodus, the one part of Scripture the Sadducees themselves accepted as divine.
Against All Heresies (c. 220) · public domain
An early Christian witness naming the denial of the resurrection of the flesh as the Sadducees’ defining error.
Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all. No roster voice met the relevance gate for this historical portrait; none is used. Historical framing draws on Josephus, Antiquities (Whiston translation, public domain), named for content and not quoted.
Word studies
The Hebrew and Greek under this study, each word in its own room.
Where it leads
Featured studies5
Built on the same Scripture2