Were These Groups Akin to the Essenes?
Because so many of the doctrines of the writers of these various books seem to show a near kinship to certain Essenistic beliefs, some scholars have endeavored to show that the authors were undoubtedly part of that group (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol.
p. 164). This may well be the case. Josephus mentions that the Essenes were fond of keeping "secret" books that related doctrines only the initiated could know (Wars of the Jews, ii, 8, 7). At least we are assured that these sects who wrote the various apocalyptic books were closer in doctrine to the Essenes than any other religious group among the Jews. They were not Pharisees; this much is certain!
"Those who really do know the Pharisaic literature, including all the great Jewish scholars, agree in the view that the Apocryphal and Apocalyptic writings represent a type (or types) of Judaism different from the Pharisaic type" (Her-ford, Judaism in the New Testament Period, p. 123).
The Truth About the Sadducees
The Sadducees completely rejected the traditions of the elders. They maintained that the Scripture alone was sufficient for religious truth (Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, p. 209). In this connection, the Sadducees were certainly right.
The actions of the Sadducees against the erroneous opinions of the Pharisees seemingly puts them in a good light — as though they were zealously upholding the Law of God and His divine truth. However, the Sadducean position was not as roseate as it may appear on the surface. There were real reasons behind the Sadducees' apparent stand for the acceptance of only the Scripture, and those reasons were not always out of honor for the Scripture or even God.
Can we say the Sadducees respected the Scripture when many of the plain teachings of the Word of God they openly renounced? They clearly rejected the Scripture teaching of the resurrection; they did not believe in angels nor spirits. Yet the Scriptures taught these truths! (See Job 14:4; Eze. 37:1-14; Dan. 12:1-3; Exo. 14:19; Dan. 6:22; I Sam. 18:10, etc) To reject such fundamental doctrines as the resurrection and the existence of the spirit world, shows that the Sadducees did not hold the Scripture teaching in very high esteem.
Why Sadducees Rejected Traditions of Elders
It will come as a surprise to many people to realize that the reason the majority of Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic traditions of the elders, so-called, was not because of a reverence for the Scripture and an abhorrence for heathen customs. Their motive for rejecting these new religious laws, in reality, was on account of their lack of interest in religion. They did not care for any more religious laws than were necessary.
It is clearly known that the majority of Sadducees were not zealous for religion. Their main interest lay in securing for themselves political positions of power among the influential people in Palestine — they reverenced the gaining of wealth and power more than anything else. They did not want to subject themselves to any of the religious laws of the Pharisees, nor [even] of the Scripture, as we will soon see. The Sadducees represented the "worldly-minded" sect of the Jews — not especially interested in religion. (Almost every society has had or presently has such religious sects, and the Jews were no exception — they had their "Unitarian" sect)
"They [the Sadducees] saw in the traditions of the elders an excess of legal strictness which they refused to have imposed upon them, while the advanced religious views [of the Pharisees] were, on the one hand superfluous to their worldly-mindedness, and on the other, inadmissible by their higher culture and enlightenment" (Schurer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, sec. ii, vol. ii, p. 41).
The Sadducees simply did not want to be burdened with more religious laws. They thought the Laws of Scripture were certainly enough, without adding more! And, in fact, sometimes, if the Scripture did not teach what they wanted, they would even disallow it.
"The Sadducees, with the easy indifference of men of the world, finding that there was quite enough in the Law for them to obey, denied that there was anything obligatory outside the Books of Moses" (Renan, History of the People of Israel, vol. 5, pp. 41, 42).
With their rejection of the traditions of the elders and their acceptance of only the Scripture, it is not to be supposed that they were interested in getting the people back to the religion of Moses or in bringing the people to a proper reverence for the Scripture. They were willing to accept just what they had to, in order to retain their political positions among the rich and wealthy of Jerusalem (Antiquities of the Jews, xviii, 10, 6).
"Their whole doctrinal position gave them liberty to follow their desires for political power and worldly satisfaction. Hence they had a deeper interest in sustaining the power of the reigning prince [whether Jewish or Roman] than in maintaining the observances of Moses" (Riggs, A History of the Jewish People, p. 111).
While on the surface it may have seemed like the Sadducees were a little closer to the truth, because they maintained that the Scripture was sufficient Law to have, yet the fact is, they were just as far away from the truth — even farther! While the Sadducees blamed the Pharisees for not adhering to Scripture for their doctrines, they themselves were rejecting doctrine after doctrine of plain Scripture. They were no more following the complete directions of the Scriptures than were the Pharisees.
Sadducees Reject Other Scripture Teaching!
Throughout the Scriptures we are distinctly shown by prophecies and by examples that God at certain times intervenes in the affairs of individuals and of nations. There are multitudes of prophecies which show that God is very soon going to personally intervene in the affairs of mankind. See, for example, the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
But the Sadducees believed not a word of this! They believed that God did not direct the mind of man in any form or manner — all things that happened were the result of man's own doing, God never intervened!
"And for the Sadducees, they take away fate [the determination of God], and say there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its [God's] disposal; but they suppose that all our actions are in our power, so that we are ourselves the cause of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly" (Antiquities of the Jews, xiii, 5, 9; Wars of the Jews, ii, 14).
The Sadducees were wrong in this! In the Scripture it shows that God at times directs individuals and nations to do certain duties (Isa. 10:13-15, etc). Of course, not every single action an individual does is being determined by God (Eccl. 9:11). The Pharisees, in this case, understood correctly that God intervenes in the affairs of mankind when He considers it necessary for the carrying out of His plan, but on the whole, mankind's actions are his own (Antiquities of the Jews, xiii, 5, 9).
The Sadducees certainly did not have belief in many truths of the Scripture. By disbelieving in the resurrection, disbelieving in the spirit world and also rejecting the fact that God ever intervenes in the affairs of man, they show clearly that they had little regard for the Word of God.
"They [the Sadducees] were very nearly free-thinkers, and in all cases were men of little religion, mere worldlings. Their wisdom was all worldly. The doctrines attributed to them by Josephus, concerning liberty and divine Providence [that is, the lack of divine Providence], are interpretations or compromises after the Greek fashion. For them all [the Sadducees] this was only an attempt to reduce the supernatural to its minimum, a process for eliminating God" (Renan, History of the People of Israel, vol. v, p. 40).
As pointed out by Schurer: "Their interests were entirely in this world, and they had no such intensively religious interest as the Pharisees" (The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, sec. ii, vol. ii, p. 39).
Brief History of the Sadducees!
When religious authority was again established among the Jews after the period of religious anarchy, the Pharisees were anxious for the people to start living a religious life, even though they brought into their religion many of the new customs from Hellenism. However, the majority of Sadducees made no real attempt to return to religion. They certainly saw no reason for accepting the many new customs as extra religious duties to perform.
The majority of Sadducees were priests (Cycl. of Bib. Theo. and Ecc. Lit., vol. ix, p. 238) who had been ordained of God to teach the people the Scriptures. The forefathers of the priests, the Sopherim, were entirely faithful in their appointed task. But the majority of priests after the period of religious anarchy made no attempt to teach the people the Scriptures. One of the main reasons for their attitude was because most of them had been out-and-out Hellenists! (Herford, Talmud and Apocrypha, pp. 77, 78). Among all the Jews in Palestine, the priests had become the most Hellenistic.
After the religious anarchy, when the lay leaders, the Pharisees, began to exert an influence over the people, they "refused to recognize the authority of the priests as a class, and inasmuch as many of the priests had proven unfaithful guardians of the Law, they would not entrust to them the religious life of the people" (Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, p. 209).
Thus, many of the priests joined with, or rather comprised the sect of the Sadducees, which, in all principles, rivaled the Pharisees. The origin of the priestly sect of the Sadducees was actually prompted as a reaction to the Pharisees' taking over much of the religious control of the Jewish people. The Sadducean sect was not formed because of any endeavor on the part of the priests to return to the original Law of Moses; nor did the priests attempt to gain the people to accept only the Scriptures as Law. This sect evolved as merely a reaction to the assumption of power by the lay Pharisees.
Many Priests Continue in Hellenism
After assimilating much of the "higher culture and enlightenment" of Hellenism, the priests were not altogether ready to disengage themselves from it. Even after the religious anarchy, many of the priests retained their love for the culture.
The Sadducees actually represented the division of the Jews which continued a reverence for the ethical views of Hellenism. It is true that they did not hold to the many religious doctrines of the pagan cults of Hellenism, but they did retain many of the social aspects of the culture. It was almost imperative that they did, so the Sadducees thought, for they were in constant contact with the political powers in Jerusalem who found it necessary to adhere to much of the Hellenistic beliefs in order to carry on matters of state with the other countries around. Thus, many of the priests did not completely repent of their secular Hellenism, even though on the religious side they acknowledged the Scriptures as the only Law.
"They [the Sadducees] made, however, the open door through which Greek influences CAME BACK into the land, and, as another has tersely said, 'the antagonism between them and the Pharisees was really a secondary version of the old feud between the Hellenists and the Hasideans' " (Riggs, A History of the Jewish People, p. 111). The Hasideans were those Jews of the Maccabean Revolt who maintained a zeal for religion, and, of course, the Hellenists were the Jews, many of them priests, who had no interest in religion.
It is clear that this comparison is correct. The Sadducees were simply the remnants of the Hellenists who cared nothing for religion, while the Pharisees were descendents of the religionists — the Hasideans.
"Politically, the Sadducees were, as a party, open to foreign influences, and it was through them that Hellenic culture spread in Israel" (The Cambridge Companion to the Bible, p. 134).
In other words, the Sadducees were really secular Hellenists. Their acceptance of the Scripture as the only code of Law, even though they rejected much of its teachings, was really out of spite to the Pharisees who accepted the so-called traditions of the elders. The Sadducees saw no need of being overly religious by the acceptance of burdensome customs and rites.
"Their interests were entirely in this world, and they had no such intensively religious interest as the Pharisees" (Schurer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, sec. ii, vol. ii, p. 39).
They had no desire to practice real religion, neither did they think it necessary to teach the people the Laws of God. Even though the majority of Sadducees were priests, and were ordained of God to instruct the people in righteousness, they totally renounced their responsibility.
"Such as they were, the Sadducees had little or no direct influence upon the mass of the people, nor did they seek to have. They made no effort to teach the people, presumably because the thought of doing so never entered their minds" (Herford, Judaism in the New Testament Period, p. 122).
"We shall perhaps be not far wrong if we represent the Sadducees as holding the ancestral religion mainly as an inheritance and NOT AS A LIVING REALITY. . . . It is in accordance with this view that they did NOTHING to enlarge the meaning or increase the influence of the Torah as the Pharisees did" (ibid., p. 121).
The Sadducees made no attempt whatever, that we have record of, to make the Scriptures known to the people or to carry out their God-given function of instructing the people in the Law. They did not see the importance of it! In fact, they were even willing to sacrifice the Laws of Scripture if they could gain politically from it.
"They were the less restrained by any religious scruples from engaging in public affairs which involved some amount of compromise with Gentiles" (ibid., p. 122).
Thus, Schurer adequately describes the Sadducees as pre-eminently having "a recession of the religious motive" rather than a zealousness for the Scriptures (The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, sec. ii, vol. ii, p. 39)
What You Should Remember About the Sects
It becomes quite obvious, when the truth is known, that the sects of Judaism were not really teaching the Law of Moses. What all of them had done, in one degree or another, was to blend many pagan customs and beliefs, along with various man-made opinions, with the Law of Moses and then endeavored to teach their contradictory doctrines as the truth of God.
The Pharisees had accepted many customs of the heathen as so-called traditional laws from Moses. They had also enacted many of their own commandments which by-passed the commands of the Scripture and in fact, the Pharisaic commands even annulled, in many cases, the plain commandments of God.
The Sadducees were disinterested in religion! The only reason, in reality, that they had any connection with religion at all was because most of them were priests who had the hereditary right to minister in the Temple and to have an association with the religious life of the people. They maintained their hereditary religious right mainly for political purposes in order for them to more easily pursue their worldly-minded aspirations, not out of any desire to teach the people the truth of God.
The Essenes had accepted many heathen customs and beliefs without reservation. Almost all their doctrines were antagonistic to the Law of Moses.
The writers of the Apocalyptic books also show, in varying degrees, an impress of foreign doctrines and philosophies. All of the books are different from one another and represent the contradicting opinions of certain individuals or minor sects. The writers of the Apocalyptic books were probably, in one way or another, connected with the Essenes.
Thus, all the religious sects of the Jews can be adequately shown to be schismatic deviations from the pure and simple Law of Moses. They were all affected by the beliefs that were encountered by the Jews during the period of religious anarchy
when Egyptian and Syrian Hellenism were rampant throughout Palestine.
The combined numbers of the Jews who belonged to the religious sects of Judaism, however, numbered less than 5 % of the total Jewish population of Palestine in the days of Christ. The great majority, the Common People, were not overly interested in religion. From the time of the religious anarchy, there was never any real collective religious authority among the Jews like the Sopherim. All the people went their own ways. The majority never got back to religion as during the days of the Sopherim. Outside of a nominal adherence to some basic forms of religion, the masses were not zealously concerned. And, there can be no doubt that the confusing and contradictory examples of the various sects were discouraging to the populace. Truly, Christ came to a people who had no shepherd to guide them into the truth of God (Matt. 9:36).