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. The leaders of the sect were proposed as the
Kohanim (priests, the "
Sons of Zadok", descendants of
Eleazar, son of
Aaron). The
aggadic work
Avot of Rabbi Natan tells the story of the two disciples of
Antigonus of Sokho (3rd century BCE), Zadok and Boethus. Antigonus having taught the maxim, "Be not like the servants who serve their masters for the sake of the wages, but be rather like those who serve without thought of receiving wages", his students repeated this maxim to their students. 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. The two sects of the Sadducees and Boethusians are thus, in all later Rabbinic sources, always mentioned together, not only as being similar, but as originating at the same time. The use of gold and silver vessels perhaps argues against a priestly association for these groups, as priests at the time would typically use
stone vessels, to prevent transmission of
impurity.
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".
Paul L. Maier suggests that the sect drew their name from the Sadduc mentioned by Josephus.
The Second Temple period '' Throughout the
Second Temple period (between the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 516 BCE and its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE following the
siege of Jerusalem) Jerusalem saw several shifts in rule. In
Achaemenid Judea ( to 332 BCE), the
Temple in Jerusalem became the center of worship in Judea. Its priests and attendants appear to have been powerful and influential in secular matters as well, a trend that would continue into the
Hellenistic period. This power and influence also brought accusations of corruption.
Alexander's conquest of the Levant in 333 to 332 BCE brought an end to Achaemenid control of Jerusalem and ushered in the Hellenistic period, which saw the spread of Greek language, culture, and philosophical ideas, which intermixed with Judaism and led to
Hellenistic Judaism. After the
death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE,
his generals divided the empire amongst themselves, and for the next 30 years they fought for control of territory. Judea was first controlled by
Ptolemaic Egypt () and later by the
Seleucid Empire of Syria (). 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. The most successful rebels, led by the
Hasmonean family in what became the
Maccabean Revolt, eventually established the independent
Hasmonean kingdom around 142 BCE. While no record of the Sadducees survives from this early period, many scholars presume that the later sects began to form during the Maccabean era (see
Jewish sectarianism below). It is often speculated that the Sadducees grew out of the Judean religious élite in the early Hasmonean period, under rulers such as
John Hyrcanus. Hasmonean rule lasted until 63 BCE, when the Roman general
Pompey conquered Jerusalem, at which point the Roman period of Judean history began. The province of
Roman Judea was established in 6 CE (see also
Syria Palaestina). While
cooperation between the Romans and the Jews had been strongest during the reigns of
Herod the Great () and his grandson,
Agrippa I (), the Romans moved power out of the hands of vassal kings and into the hands of
Roman administrators, beginning with the
Census of Quirinius in 6 CE. The
First Jewish–Roman War broke out in 66 CE. After a few years of conflict, the Romans retook Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, bringing an end to the Second Temple period in 70 CE.
After the Temple destruction After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Sadducees appear only in a few references in the Talmud and some Christian texts. 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. The Sadducee concept of the mortality of the soul is reflected on by
Uriel da Costa, who mentions them in his writings. == Role of the Sadducees ==