It is believed by some that the Sadduccees or Zadokites were originally identical with the sons of Zadok, Zadok being the priest who declared in favour of Solomon to succeed David. All the High Priests from that time claimed to be a descendant of his, but there is no record of any such group by that name in that era. It is also claimed that there was another Zadok around 250B.C. from whom they got their name, and this perhaps is more plausible. They were a politico/religious movement closely associated with the High Priestly class: in fact, 20 of the 28 High Priests in the last hundred years before the destruction of Jerusalem were Sadduccees. The Pharisees were opposed to the Sadduccees to such a degree that in one of the few texts in Rabbinical literature that refer to them, a Pharisaic teacher was asking whether a good person could become an evil person: it was possible, he said, and as proof he offered an instance of a Pharisee becoming a Sadduccee!
One of their great differences with the Pharisees was their rejection of oral law which the Pharisees upheld. They believed in the written law of Moses only, whereas the Pharisees believed in the oral interpretation of the Rabbis. Whilst they are prominent in the N.T. record, they died out rapidly after the end of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Their beliefs contributed to this: cf. Acts 23:6-9 – no angels, no spirits, no resurrection. They had come under the Hellenistic influence, possibly due to the fact they interfaced with foreign powers through the role of the High Priest who, after the exile, had both priestly and civil power. It was this pagan influence that destroyed their faith (nothing has changed – the world continues to witness the struggle between the revelation of God and the wisdom of men). After the destruction of Jerusalem the only consolation for the Jew was to be in a blessed future state of which the Sadduccees taught nothing, and of course the rise of Christianity with the resurrection of Jesus Christ as central: to attempt to stop this with an appeal to the laws of the Pentateuch would have been futile.
Very probably when Jesus started His ministry, they thought very little of it, and the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees was seen to be a religious scuffle between religious extremists. Only when Jesus captured the interest of the general populace and there was talk of King and Kingdom, then the Sadduccees took an interest because of their position under the patronage of the Romans (John 11:48).
It was on one of the few occasions of interaction with Jesus that we see the fruits of their religious persuasions – Matt. 22:23ff. Their question about the resurrection was because they didn’t believe in such. They posed what they thought was a dilemma for those who did believe in such a thing. It was not a dilemma to Jesus and he quickly pointed out that the question was a nonsense. He put their poor showing in the debate down to two main problems:
1. Not knowing the power of God.
Jesus’ answer? – God can make the human into an angel-like creature! How is that possible? If He could make spirits of both us and angels out of nothing, is anything too hard for the Lord? If He could make Adam’s body out of dust and He could then make Eve, not out of the hair of a dog but out of a rib from the man, can he not make a man into an angelic creature?! (Isa. 40:25-28). They weren’t the only ones to stumble at this point. Some of the Corinthians (no doubt also influenced by Grecian thought) erred (1 Cor. 15:12). Paul’s answer is found in 1 Cor. 15:13-19.
J.B. Phillips wrote a book, “Your God is too small”, and in it he speaks of the narrow perceptions man has of God. So often the atheist is not objecting to the Biblical teaching of God but rather to an idol or caricature of his own invention. The list is almost endless: the far-away God (Deism); the god of predestination; the local God; a God of confusion; Out-of-date loudspeaker; Cosmic Book-Keeper; A God who gives time off; a senile old Grandfather; a physical God (in man’s image). None of these pigeon-hole views of God are adequate.
The second problem that caused a gap in the Sadduccees concept of life was;
2. Not knowing the Scriptures.
How many problems have their origin right here. He actually used a Scripture from the Pentateuch, because they believed Moses was from God and was given the law. Yet they did not know the Scriptures they claimed to believe in!
These two important things lie at the base of so much unbelief. People don’t believe in miracles because of this. People don’t believe in life after death because of this. They don’t know God and neither do they know what he has said. When you think about it, if you don’t know God and His power and what he has said, what can you really know? What can you build your life upon? What can any hope for the future lie in?
We have a huge machine in Switzerland (the large Hadron Collider) trying to create conditions 1 billionth of a second after the so-called ‘big bang’. Why are they trying to create this mythological scenario? Because of these two important things: they do not know the power of God nor the Scriptures. “As the heavens are higher than the earth….so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts”. We know how “high” the heavens are (millions of light years) so how great is God and how great are His thoughts?
Some people are worried because we might create a so-called “black hole” and destroy the earth (that would be the ultimate act of suicide terrorism wouldn’t it?). A girl in India committed suicide, others fasted and prayed, while yet others had parties because of this fear at the beginning of its operational life. Why the fear? They don’t know the Scriptures which tell us that life will be going on when Christ returns and takes His own to Himself and destroys the world (Matt. 24:37-39). How must God feel to know that His competitor is a big bang?! In times past he competed with Ashtoreth, Molech, Baal etc.: people at least used to make big gods (cf Dan. 3:1; Isa. 46:1). They made idols that had representation of life – Rom. 1:23. But now God competes with a big bang! A tiny, tiny speck of matter is the alternative to God. They call this the “God particle”! How blasphemous! They have pushed God back and back and back and they have almost got Him where they want Him – non-existent and unneeded! God didn’t need to hold the universe in place; we discovered gravity. We didn’t need God to make the lightning; we discovered electricity. We didn’t need God to send the rain; we discovered evaporation, condensation and El Nino! We didn’t need God to make life; we invented evolution. Now we’ve almost squeezed Him out of the picture; we’ve got Him down to a squizzy line on a photographic plate! (a photograph of what gets shaken out of a collision between two sub-atomic particles that run into one another at some incredible speed) They keep talking about creating the conditions a billionth of a second after the ‘big-bang’. But that billionth of a second is quite a barrier isn’t it! Who was it that made that first incredibly dense and incredibly small piece of ‘junk’ and who set the detonator to set off the big bang? You can’t get past that. Something ought to tell us that we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. When you get to a dead end you turn around and go back rather than driving through the Dead End sign do you? Those of you who do Sudoku have experienced this – you’ve been happily filling in the squares and you’re almost to the end and you find you have 2 of one number in a line of numbers where you are only supposed to have one of each number from 1 to 9. Somewhere you made a boo-boo, but it’s not easy to go back and find out where, for every number you change results in other numbers having to be changed to keep the integrity of the square. Especially is this true when you’re using a pen, not a pencil. In like manner, men have been writing down their God-denying theories in indelible ink to convince themselves and the world that they must be true and unchallengeable and they don’t want to go back and start again. Professing themselves to be wise they have become fools, says the Holy Spirit. We have been reduced to worshipping at the altar of the squizzy line. Look, give me a piece of paper and a pen and I’ll draw you a squizzy line and we can publish it and tell the next generation of children, “This is your God”. And look at how much money has been invested in this thing (over 10 billion dollars!). It has been called the most expensive race track in the world! (We got Velcro, Teflon, and good photos from the space race so I suppose we’ll get something from this huge machine (27 kilometres around). Some are saying there may be some medical breakthroughs as a result of this research – let’s hope we get some good things from the money and effort.
But if we’re going to have an alternative to God, let’s have something of note! In the April 1970 issue of reader’s Digest, David Klein said that a godless philosophy has to be a fabric of negatives. Such as?
No absolutes
no goals
no constructive, healing principles
no meaning to life
no direction
no dignity (except what I invent)
no worth
no hope
no values (other than created by man under the pressure of his necessities or moods and which are subject to unlimited variation)
no right or wrong (atheism pretends to believe in right and wrong but it has to beg borrow and steal its ethical systems from somewhere else for if God is not anything is permitted [Satre])
no true or false
What validity of permanence do these value judgements have, if the Supreme Unchanging Value – God – is gone? Life has no more meaning or worth than death. Health has no more meaning or worth than sickness. Cleanliness has no more meaning or worth than filth. Food has no more meaning or worth than poison. Love has no more meaning or worth than hate. He concludes; Our godless materialism is itself so shallow; based on blatant assumptions that are hardly more than guesswork; unpalatable and unsatisfying; demeaning; flagrantly incomplete, and yet arrogant in its premises. The Idea of God deserves a better substitute.
Follow it through. Would we stand for those blatant assumptions in other fields? For example, where did my house come from? Just happened – big explosion? The model of the planetary system that Newton had built was observed by a friend of his. His skeptical friend wanted to know who built it, and Newton told him that nobody made it, rather it had made itself. His friend wouldn’t believe him, yet believed the universe itself had made itself!
If you live in filth you will get sick. So what? If you get sick you will die. So what? If injustice has the final say why do we worry about justice in the world? If there is no meaning, why do we try to find meaning in life? We need to want to know our reason for living – our purpose in having been granted life. Some people want nihilism – no meaning and therefore no responsibility – absolute freedom they believe- yet religious thoughts trouble them.
The problem with the Sadduccees is in large part, the problem with modern man – not knowing the power of God or the Scriptures. It is unbelief – not believing that God can create, sustain, save or judge. And not believing His word is the truth by which we can be saved, directed and by which we shall be judged.