Sadducees
[3] According to Abraham Geiger, the Sadducee sect of Judaism derived their name from that of Zadok, the first High Priest of Israel to serve in Solomon's Temple.
[4] The aggadic work Avot of Rabbi Natan tells the story of the two disciples of Antigonus of Sokho (3rd century BCE), Zadok and Boethus.
Eventually, either the two teachers or their pupils understood this to express the belief that there was neither an afterlife nor a resurrection of the dead, and founded the Sadducee and Boethusian sects.
They lived luxuriously, using silver and golden vessels, because (as they claimed) the Pharisees led a hard life on earth and yet would have nothing to show for it in the world to come.
Josephus mentioned in Antiquities of the Jews that "one Judas, a Gaulonite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt".
During this period, the High Priest of Israel was generally appointed with the direct approval of the Greek rulership, continuing the intermixing of religious politics with government.
King Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucids began a persecution of traditional Jewish practices around 168–167 BCE, which set off a rebellion in Judea.
While the Sadducees are not attested to this early, many scholars presume that the later sects began to form during the Maccabean era (see Jewish sectarianism below).
[12] In the beginning of Karaite Judaism, the followers of Anan ben David were called "Sadducees" and set a claim of the former being a historical continuity from the latter.
[citation needed] The Sadducee concept of the mortality of the soul is reflected on by Uriel da Costa, who mentions them in his writings.
He described the Sadducees as "harming Israel and causing the nation to stray from following God" in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchoth Avodah Zarah 10:2.
Though the Sadducees produced no primary works themselves, their attributes can be derived from other contemporaneous texts, including the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and later, the Mishnah and Talmud.
The scrolls suggest that the Sadducees (Manasseh) and the Pharisees (Ephraim) became religious communities that were distinct from the Essenes, the true Judah.
Clashes between the Essenes and the Sadducees are depicted in the Pesher on Nahum, which states "They [Manasseh] are the wicked ones ... whose reign over Israel will be brought down ... his wives, his children, and his infant will go into captivity.
Furthermore, it suggests that the Essenes challenged the authenticity of the rule of the Sadducees, blaming the downfall of ancient Israel and the siege of Jerusalem on their impiety.
The Dead Sea Scrolls specify the Sadducaic elite as those who broke the covenant with God in their rule of the Judean state, and thus became targets of divine vengeance.
He also insults them on their own terms as knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God, presumably a claim that even though the Sadducee insisted on the written law, Jesus considered them to have gotten it wrong.
