[6] The lineage of Zadok is presented in the genealogy of Ezra (his descendant) as being of ninth generation of direct patrilineal descent from Phinehas the son of Eleazar.

[7] A certain Zadok had been one of those who joined David at Hebron and helped him win the crown of all Israel, his house then including twenty-two captains.

[15] On the suppression of the Absalom rebellion, King David sent Zadok and Abiathar to the elders of Judah, urging them to hasten to bring the monarch back.

[26][27] Historical data show that the high-priesthood remained in the progeny of the Zadokites from the time of Zadok up until the rise of the Hasmoneans, in about 167 BCE.

The house of Zadok occupied the high priesthood through much of the Second Temple period, from Jehoshua ben Jehozadak after the Exile, down to Simon II (Simon the Just, much praised in Ben Sira 50), his eldest son Onias III, and his usurping second son Jason, who introduced the programme of Hellenisation that eventually led to the Maccabean Revolt.

Some have speculated that as Zadok does not appear in the text of Samuel until after the conquest of Jerusalem, he was actually a Jebusite priest co-opted into the Israelite state religion.

Harvard Divinity School Professor Frank Moore Cross refers to this theory as the "Jebusite Hypothesis", criticising it extensively, although he terms it the dominant view among contemporary scholars.

[29] Elsewhere in the Bible, the Jebusites are described in a manner that suggests that they worshipped the same God (El Elyon) as the Israelites, in the case of Melchizedek.

[31] However, Rabbinic sources describe the Sadducee and Boethusian groups have originated at the same time, with their founders, Zadok and Boethus, both being students of Antigonus of Sokho (roughly 3rd century BCE).