124 A History of Judaism
without his consent. Convinced by these words, Albinus angrily wrote to
Ananus threatening to take vengeance upon him. King Agrippa, because of
Ananus’ action, deposed him from the high priesthood which he had held
for three months and replaced him ...^21
This Ananus is, remarkably, the only individual Sadducee named as
such in the ancient sources, although (as we have seen) Josephus said he
had tasted Sadducee doctrine, and the Hasmonaean John Hyrcanus is
said to have favoured the Sadducees when he fell out with the Pharisees
for refusing to punish with sufficient vigour a certain Eleazar who slan-
dered him by alleging falsely that his mother had been a captive. Ananus
was to have an illustrious and tumultuous later career. In October 66 he
became one of two commanders- in- chief of the Jewish rebels against
Rome, presiding over a coalition which included at least one Pharisee
and at least one Essene among his fellow commanders. It was a role
that, according to Josephus (who was one such ally), he performed with
distinction and diplomatic skill until hounded to death by his political
opponents:
A man on every ground revered and of the highest integrity, Ananus, with
all the distinction of his birth, his rank and the honours to which he had
attained, yet delighted to treat the very humblest as his equals. Unique in
his love of liberty and an enthusiast for democracy, he on all occasions put
the public welfare above his private interests. To maintain peace was his
supreme object.^22
What characterized Ananus as a Sadducee apart from his attitude to
judgement? The Sadducee doctrine of greatest interest to the New Tes-
tament authors was their denial of life after death: ‘the Sadducees say
that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit.’ Josephus noted
similarly that they would have none of such notions as ‘the persistence
of the soul after death, penalties in the underworld, and rewards’,
although he mentioned nothing about a denial of angels. As we have
seen (p. 120), tannaitic texts record Sadducee legal interpretations at
odds with Pharisees or rabbinic sages over specific purity issues such as
whether impurity can climb up an unbroken stream of liquid. Most
important was their view that a priest who burned the red heifer (whose
ashes alone could remove corpse contamination) must wait till sunset
after immersion before carrying out the ritual: ‘they had [first] rendered
unclean the priest that should burn the heifer, because of the Sadducees:
that they should not be able to say, “It must be performed only by them