THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
they stand isolated in a wilderness of external precepts which smother the spirit of the law in their casuistical forcing of its letterT) In distinction from all this, the Sadducees evipceda strong inclination toward other than Jewish manners; and, consistently with this trait, they were fain to guard the advantages of their social standing, their culture and possessions, from prejudice in the way of a troublesome piety. They were charged with leading an effeminate mode of life (Josephus, Ant., XVIII., i. 3). The fourth of the Psalms of Solomon gives a picture, inspired by Pharisaism, of the worldly, even dissolute, life of the Sadducees and of their hypocritical show of pious ardor. And a late rabbinical tradition (Aboth of Rabbi Nathan) tells of their luxury in the article on tableware, and their scoffing at the economy of the worrying Pharisees.
This also affords a ready key to the particular theological disputes between the Pharisees and Sadducees. From the different fundamental religious trend of the two parties there
10. Theo- most immediately results their antilogical Dif- thetical relation toward that oral tra-
ferences. dition which had been early created by the scribes of the past age, through exposition and application of the law, for a sort of hedge to the same (Josephus, Ant., XIII., xvi. 2; Matt, xv 2; Mark vii. 3). This tradition was made of binding force by the Pharisees; by the Sadducees it was rejected (Josephus, Ant., XIII., x. 6). ^Through their endeavor to regulate the whole of human life, down to every detail, by meaffs^oTTJie law, the Pharisees were led to lay "great stress on enlarging the scope of the same by tradition, even to ascribe a paramount importance to the latter in comparison with the less exactly defined law (Mishnah, Sanhedrin, xi. 3). Ultimately, therefore, tradition, like the law, came to be traced back to Moses (Pirke Aboth, i. 11 sqq.), and so came the possibility of invalidating a legal provision by virtue of a traditional precept (cf. Mark vii. 11) J Moreover, the Sadducees did not altogether avoia developing an exegetical school tradition, partly diverging from the tradition of the Pharisees (Megillath Taanit, 10); partly, indeed, accordant with it (Sandehrin, xxxiii. 6. Horayoth 4a). But while they admitted no authority transcending the law, they so emphasized independence of judgment that they made it a boast to contradict their teachers themselves as far as possible (Josephus, Ant., XVIII., i. 4). But ihan. principled rejection of legal tradition resulted partly from their opposition to the Pharisaic scribes, partly from their desire to be constrained as little as possible through legal regulations. Hence they repudiated all" refining deductions from the law, and appealed simply to the letter thereof, which was easier to circumvent. Thus the letter of the law became for them their only categorical religious principle. Sometimes, again, they enforced the strictness of the letter, in contrast with its attenuation; particularly in imposing penal sentences, they were "more hard-hearted than all other Jews" (Josephus, Ant., XX., ix. 1). Jesus himself experienced this hard-heartedness on the part of his Sadducee judges.
This divergent attitude of the Pharisees and Sadducees in respect to the letter of the law and to tradition, also explains a number of the particular legal disputes which are attributed to them in Talmudic sources, many of which are historical. In certain cases
ii. Legal and Dog-
matic Dif- the Sadducees, as it appears, repreferences. sented the priesthood; in the rest, a definite principle of opposition is not to be ascertained. To be noted also are some dogmatic differences, among which the most important was the one touching the doctrine of resurrection; not, as Josephus presents it in Ilellenizing fashion (War, II., viii. 14; Ant., XVIII., i. 3, 4), the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. If the Sadducees rejected the doctrine in question, they advocated the older position of Judaism. For the like doctrine was not at all proposed in the earlier Old- Testament Scriptures, and not with complete distinctness before its appearance in the Book of Daniel. The Sadducees' position was reinforced by their directly practical contemplation of earthly conditions. On the other hand/Uhe fact that the Pharisees decidedly espoused the doctrine of resurrection was quite in accord with their very diligent fostering of hopes in the Messiah, which hopes, like their doctrine itself, on account of their avaricious temperament, assumed a strongly sensual cast. In like manner the doctrine concerning angels, which had been elaborated by the Pharisaic scribes on the basis of the Old Testament, was rejected by the Sadducees (Acts xxiii. 8) consistently with their preoccupation with mundane affairs. According to Josephus the Pharisees and Sadducees also diverged in their conception as to the relation between destiny and human free-will (War, II., viii. 14; Ant., XIII., v. 9, XVIII., i. 3). This seems to indicate that the Pharisees, -in .theiF-seligiQiia_dfioieiveness, .made everything dependent on divine prQyjderjjGe; whereas the Sadducees,, as, men of practical affairs, deducted the elements of welfare and calamity from human, transactions. ^} ~~""
The further development of the religious life
could not attach itself to the materialistic and
worldly bent of the Sadducees, but only to
Pharisaism, which, however legalistic,
12. Rela- traditional, and mercenary, was yet tion of distinguished by a certain religious Pharisaism potentiality, as appears from the relato Religion, tion of primitive Christianity to both parties. The contact between Christianity and the Sadducees' party was but slight and external. Enraged at the Christian revival of the hope of resurrection, and threatened in their hierarchical position by the Messianic claims of Jesus and the accordant expectations of the Apostolic Church, the Sadducees persecuted both those teachings with scorn and violence. [With Pharisaism, however, Christianity had to reach an understanding on inward grounds quite from the start. Proceeding from the common platform of the law and the Messianic hopes, Jesus attacked the formalism of the Pharisees and their entire externalizing of the moral and religious life in that he coupled the profoundest vitalization of the same with the renovating forces which emanated from