January 24

Pharisees and Sadducees

In the NT, these two groups are frequently lumped together. In our reading for today, 16:1 says ‘the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.’ This makes it sound like these are two allied groups and perhaps they were in the quest to get rid of Jesus, either by discrediting him or by having him killed.
However, these two groups were almost never in agreement about anything. The Pharisees had their origins in the Babylonian conquest of Judah. With the Temple destroyed and the upper class Jews removed to Babylon, the religious leaders created houses of study and prayer. These are the precursors to the synagogues. Study, debate, memorization, and the rise of interpretation from respected leaders (known as rabbis) were the trademarks. Even after the Persian king Cyrus allowed Nehemiah and Ezra to rebuild the Temple, these houses of study and prayer continued in the outlying areas as well as the other centers of learning. When Alexander conquered Persia in 332 BCE, the Jews spread even further and bumped into the Hellenization of conquered peoples. It was then that the Pharisees coalesced and named themselves Pharisees which has a Greek root meaning Separatist.
The Sadducees evolved from the ruling classes that formed after the Maccabean revolt of 161 BCE. They supported the monarchy and strict interpretations of the written Torah. They rejected the writings of the rabbis and insisted on following the letter of the Law. The Sadducees were heavily involved in the Priestly realms of the Temple and insisted that the Temple was the one true place of worship.
“Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic tenet of an oral Torah, and created new interpretations based on a literal understanding of verses.[citation needed] In their personal lives this often meant an excessively stringent lifestyle from a Jewish perspective, as they did away with the oral tradition, and in turn the Pharisaic Jewish understanding of the Torah. An example of this differing approach is the interpretation of, "an eye in place of an eye". The Pharisaic understanding was that the value of an eye was to be paid by the perpetrator.[14] In the Sadducees' view the words were given a more literal interpretation, in which the offender's eye would be removed.[15] From the point of view of the Pharisees, the Sadducees wished to change the Jewish understanding of the Torah.”1

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees became the dominant force in Judaism and this is the basis for the rabbinic Judaism as we know it now.
Some common differences between the two groups:
Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead. Sadducees did not.
Pharisees believed in God having forethought as to what will happen in the future although people do have free will. Sadducees believed only in free will.
The Pharisees believed in the coming Messianic age while the Sadducees totally rejected that.
Pharisees believed in study, argument, and interpretation of the law on the local level. The Sadducees rejected this stating that only the Priests in the Temple had the right to perform rituals and recite Torah.
The Pharisees were zealous observers of the Law, prominent among the people and especially concerned with ritual purity, tithing, and correct observance of the Sabbath with emphasis on rabbinic interpretations. The Sadducees rejected all rabbinic interpretations and were considered ‘Hellenized’.
The Sadducees were involved in the governance of Israel from the Hasmonean monarchy all the way through until the destruction of Jerusalem. They were also involved in collecting taxes and administering the army. The Sanhedrin was probably mostly Sadducees.

Jesus was probably taught in a Pharisaic synagogue. He certainly uses the story, advice, and argument that are so prevalent in the Mishnah and the Talmud, two key Pharisee writing collections. Paul was a Pharisee having studied under Gameliel, on e of the most prominent Judaic scholars of the day. When the Christian Councils were working on canonizing the Bible, the OT books that were used were the ones that the Jewish Rabbis had canonized and preserved through their use of memorization and study.
Sources:
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees
Harper’s Bible Dictionary copyrighted 1985