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Home , David Flusser, Pesher

CHAPTER TEN

THE PLACE OF THE IN FIRST-CENTURY JUDAISM

Traditional scholarship has long portrayed the Sadducees in first- century Judaea as wealthy aristocrats, primarily of priestly origins, whose lifestyle was more secular and hellenized than that of other Jews.1 We are told that their political stance was more in sympathy with the Romans than that of other Jews,2 but that their theology was more conservative.3 Their strong links to the priesthood, and especially the high priests,4 is said to have given them authority in first-century ,5 and is said to explain their disappearance from the historical record after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE.6 Such is the standard picture. In the course of his classic studies of late Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: practice and belief, Ed Sanders queried in a number of different places aspects of this picture.7 But, despite his skepticism, the picture has remained up to now more or less intact, with only occasional hints of dissent to be found in the secondary literature.8 It is the purpose of the present study to take further the

1 For one among many basic discussions, see Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols. in 4 parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes,; Edinburgh et al.: T & T Clark, 1973–87), 2:404–14. 2 See the views summarized by A.C. Sundberg, “Sadduccees,” in IDB, vol. 4 (ed. George A. Buttrick et al.; New York/Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 4:162. 3 Gerhard Kittel, TDNT (10 vols; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 7:49. 4 Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2: 413–4. 5 F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., ODCC (3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1439. 6 L.H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1991), 119. 7 E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM Press, 1990), 100–2, 107–8; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM Press, 1992), 317–40. 8 It would be inappropriate to provide a full bibliography here, but it is worth pointing out two studies of particular importance: J. Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens (Paris: Études Bibliques, 1972) and G.G. Porton, “Sadducees,” in ABD, vol. 5 (ed. D.N. Freedman; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 892–5. 124 chapter ten task of demolition and to suggest that every aspect of the traditional view requires re-evaluation and, in many cases, rejection. The evidence about the Sadducees is not particularly extensive if, as I suggest one should, one takes a minimalist approach and uses only the evidence which is certainly applicable to them.9 Beyond the references in the Gospels and Acts, the only Greek references of any value are those in the writings of Josephus, since all later Christian commentators seem to have derived their material either from him or from the .10 Apart from these Greek texts, references in early (i.e. Tannaitic) rabbinic texts to tsadukim can be used with some confidence in those passages where tsadukim and perushim are found in dispute with each other.11 It is possible in theory that stories about arguments between tsadukim and perushim in the Hebrew texts might not be related to stories in the Greek texts which refer to arguments between pharisaioi and saddoukaioi, but such a coincidence of names seems exceptionally unlikely: Josephus specifically described the nature of Sadducee doctrine as ‘in opposi- tion to the Pharisees’ (A.J. 13.293). Beyond such texts it is unsafe to go (although scholars often do).12 References in rabbinic texts to individual Sadducees may be mislead- ing: since later rabbis used the term tsaduki as a generic term for

9 For a justification of this minimalist approach, see M. Goodman, “Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism,” in Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. 7.6 (2000), 201–13 [Chapter 3 above]. 10 The main passages by Josephus are B.J. 2 164–6; A.J. 13.173, 297–8; 18.16–17; 20.199; Vita 10–11. See E. Main, “Les Sadducéens vus par Flavius Josèphe,” RB 97, no. 2 (1990): 161–206, who notes that Josephus’ depiction of the Sadducees should be treated with some caution because he generally discussed them in relation to the Pharisees with whom he aligned himself. The extended discussion of haireseis by Josephus in B.J. 2.119–66 constitutes a peculiar excursus in the context of Josephus’ history of the Jewish war, and it is not unlikely that Josephus originally composed the passage for a different purpose, but I find it hard to imagine that so learned a Jew could have taken over from a non-Jewish author a description of contemporary Judaism which he himself knew to be false, particularly since in three places in the Antiquities (A.J. 13.173, 298, 18.11) Josephus referred his readers back to the specific passage in B.J. where the haireseis were described. 11 E.g. m. Yad. 4.6–7. See J. Lightstone, “Sadducees Versus Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, vol. 3 (ed. J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 206–17. 12 The most common extrapolation is from the word “Manasseh” in Pesher Nahum from ; see especially D. David Flusser, “Pharisees, Sadducees and in Pesher Nahum,” in Essays in Jewish History and Philology in Memory of Gedalyahu Alon (eds. M. Dorman, et al.; Tel Aviv, 1970), 159.