Topic(s): Bible Study

When we study the enemies of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, our focus is normally on the scribes and Pharisees. We know the ways of the haughty Pharisees so well that “Pharisee” and “hypocrite” are almost synonymous. The Sadducees, on the other hand, are in the background, not really confronting Jesus often. The Sadducees were more a political party than a religious sect, although they were members of the aristocratic priestly families. Their name meant “to be righteous.”

Only mentioned directly about a dozen times in the New Testament, they would be included in the oft mentioned “chief priests.” Historically, they favored the adoption of Greek ways after Alexander the Great conquered the area, and they had opposed the revolt of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes. The Pharisees were more respected by the people.

Their views differed significantly from the Pharisees. They accepted only the written law, while the Pharisees counted as authoritative the oral traditions of the scribes. They rejected the resurrection and the existence of angels and spirits. Their hope was only in this life. Paul said that “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Luke describes a theoretical question the Sadducees put to Jesus concerning seven brothers who died in succession, each married to the same woman according to Levirate law, but producing no descendants. “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she?” they asked (Luke 20:33).

Answering their trick question, Jesus appealed to scripture to show the error of their doctrines.

The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him (Luke 20:34–38).

—Bob Prichard