‘jewish doctrine takes three forms’ 127
was evidently possible both to adopt and reject at will, since (as we have
seen) Josephus claimed to have done just that as a teenager. He described
the Sadducees as ‘men first in estimation’, and as ‘persuading only the
well- to- do’, but this seems to have been a sociological observation
rather than a reflection of any entry requirement for the group – the
rabbinic references to tsedukim give no hint that they came from a dif-
ferent social standing to the perushim. It is worth noting that Rabban
Gamaliel, whom we have seen as part of a family of leading Pharisees,
assumed that Pharisees and Sadducees were neighbours, since he
referred to a ruling by his father about managing relations with a Sad-
ducee who once lived in the same alley as his family in Jerusalem. The
Pharisee Simon b. Gamaliel was a close political ally of the Sadducee
Ananus b. Ananus in 66– 7 ce during the first two years of the war
against Rome.^29
As Josephus notes in the passage just quoted, Sadducees do not seem
to have shown much group solidarity or even respect for each other.
They ‘own no observance of any sort apart from the laws; in fact, they
reckon it a virtue to dispute with the teachers of the path of wisdom
that they pursue’ and they are ‘even among themselves rude’.^ These
were fierce individualists: each Sadducee relied on his reading of the
sacred text alone. It is therefore rather surprising that in the Hasmo-
naean period they are described by Josephus as a quasi- political group
in their assertion of authority over John Hyrcanus, who (as we have
seen) is said to have deserted the Pharisees to join the Sadducees. We
have seen in the name of the Boethusians a possible connection to one
of the High Priests appointed by Herod, but there is nothing in any of
our sources to suggest that Sadducees were normally priests (let alone
that priests were normally Sadducees). The fact that Ananus was explic-
itly described by Josephus as a Sadducee suggests that affiliation to the
Sadducees could not be taken for granted for High Priests, although the
author of Acts referred to a group of Sadducees as hangers- on with the
High Priest in Jerusalem when Peter and John were spreading the Gos-
pel in the Temple.^30
It is probably right to think of the Sadducees as a marginal group in
the wider history of late Second Temple Judaism. That their philosophy
was incompatible with Pharisaism is obvious in light of the extensive
evidence for the disputes between these groups, but their views on
the lack of a life after death, and their doctrine that God does not influ-
ence the world, will also have made it hard to combine their philosophy
with most other branches of Judaism. On the other hand, there is no strong