‘jewish doctrine takes three forms’ 123
connection to the name of David’s High Priest Zadok is plausible since
we have seen the prestige accorded to this priestly family (and we shall
see more when we look at references to the ‘Sons of Zadok’ in the Dead
Sea scrolls), but that does not account for the double delta in the Greek
name. Conversely, a reference to tsaddik, ‘righteous’, would make sense
for the self- designation of a religious group, but that does not account
for the - ou‑ in Saddoukaios in its spelling both in Josephus’ writings and
in the New Testament. Early rabbinic mentions of Boethusians (baitu‑
sin ) probably also referred to the Sadducees, since this group is found,
like the Sadducees, in debate with Pharisees and early rabbis in the
Herodian period, and the views that the rabbis attribute to the Boethu-
sians are ascribed to the Sadducees elsewhere in the rabbinic corpus.
The name is probably connected to Boethus, one of the High Priests
appointed by Herod. Group names may, of course, bear little relation in
any case to the concerns of the group itself as it developed over cen-
turies. Josephus refers to Sadducees first in the time of John Hyrcanus,
so they had a history of at least two centuries, and quite possibly much
more.^20
In the early 60s ce, the Jewish king Agrippa II, great- grandson of
Herod the Great, exercised the right devolved on him by the Roman
authorities to appoint the High Priest in the Jerusalem Temple by depos-
ing the current incumbent and bestowing the office on a certain Ananus,
one of five sons of another Ananus who, most unusually, had all become
High Priest in turn. The younger Ananus was, according to Josephus,
‘rash in his temper and unusually daring’. He was also, wrote Josephus,
notable in that he ‘followed the school of the Sadducees’, whose ‘heart-
less’ approach in judgement had a decisive effect on his brief tenure of
this high religious office. In the absence of the Roman governor, Ananus
took action against a series of alleged malefactors:
And so he convened the judges of a sanhedrin and brought before them a
man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and
certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and deliv-
ered them up to be stoned. Those of the inhabitants of the city who were
considered the most fair- minded and who were strict in observance of the
law were offended at this. They therefore secretly send to King Agrippa
urging him, for Ananus had not even been correct in his first step, to order
him to desist from any further such actions. Certain of them even went to
meet [the governor] Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and
informed him that Ananus had no authority to convene a sanhedrin