I read a very interesting piece yesterday on the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the opposition to Jesus. It is a chapter in a book on the life and teachings of Christ by Jeffrey R. Chadwick; the book is a compilation of chapters written by different authors.
Chadwick suggests that it was the Sadducees rather than the Pharisees that as a group "represented a significant and imminent threat to Jesus' life or liberty." While there were some Pharisees that opposed Jesus on some matters, as a group the Pharisees were generally benign regarding him. "But the chief priests and Sadducees despised Him and felt threatened by Him for reasons that were doctrinal, economic, and political," writes Chadwick. "These are the men who conceived and carried out the plot that led to Jesus' death."
The Sadducees were the elite priestly part of Jerusalem, and were descendants of the Zadokites. Zadok was the Aaronic priest loyal to David and Solomon, and appointed by Solomon to be the high priest at the Jerusalem temple. The family of Zadok became the clan of Aaronic priests who, generation after generation , perpetually managed the temple in Jerusalem. The Greek term Sadducee most likely represents the Hebrew work tzaddoki, or Zadokite.
Joseph Caiaphas, who held the office of high priest, was a Sadducee, even if he was not a Zadokite by lineage. Most of the high priests in the first century were from on of four Sadducean families, one of which was the house of Annas. Annas was the father-in-law of Caiaphas. Since Hellenistic times, the office of high priest had often been bought from whatever monarch or governor happened to be ruling -- to include the Roman governors. Caiaphas paid the Roman governor Valerius Gratus a large fee to obtain the office of high priest in 18. A.D. and continued to pay to remain in the position when Pontius Pilate became governor in 26 A.D.
"The relationship of Caiaphas and the other chief priests and Sadducees to the Roman governor was essentially that of collaborator to occupier," writes Chadwick. "This arrangement worked well for both Rome and the chief priests and Sadducees. The local government functions of Jerusalem and Judea, from legislation and taxation to police control, were under the control of the chief priests as executives and certain 'elders' or aldermen appointed by them. The high priest himself reported directly to the Roman governor, who exercised overall executive discretion for security, military control, and capital punishment."
"Thus," continues Chadwick, "Caiaphas could order the arrest of Jesus and preside over a trial to convict Him of a crime for which execution was the punishment, but only Pontius Pilate could mandate that Roman soldiers be present at the arrest and carry out a capital sentence. Still, by any measure, the chief priests, elders, and Sadducees in general were allies of the Roman occupiers of Judea. They were resented by a great many of the common Jews of the country as well as by other Aaronic priests who served at the Jerusalem temple.
The Sanhedrin was the Judean senate, and assembly of 70 Jewish "elders" or aldermen, and the only place where the chief priests and the Sadducees shared their control of Judea. The Sanhedrin, which was initiated during the second temple period, was presided over by the high priest, bringing the total number of senate seats to 71, an operated as the local governing assembly for Judea. Positions on the Sanhedrin were alloted by monarchs or governors, after which they were of hereditary. During the reign of Hasmonian queen Salmome Alexandra, Pharisees were appointed in large numbers to the Sanhedrin, and thereafter constituted a majority vote in the body. However, the Sadducees could get around the Pharisee majority by calling a quorum of Sadducees, often a little more than 23 members, which has been referred to as a "small Sanhedrin.
Other than the Sadducees, twenty-four courses or clans of Aaronic priests served at the temple. The members of these 24 clans served voluntarily, and gained no wealth from their temple activity. The Sadducees, on the other hand, made their living at the management of the temple and the industries associated with its rituals and purity. The chief priests control the franchises for merchants who traded in goods used at the temple, for those who sold sacrificial animals and birds, and for the money changers who provided coinage acceptable for donations at the temple treasury. "When Jesus cast out the money changers and animal sellers from the temple courts during his first visit to the temple at the beginning of His public ministry," writes Chadwick, "He was not only challenging the authority of the chief priests but also interfering with their source of income."
In stark contrast to the financial activities of the Sadducees and chief priests, stood the students of the scriptures known as the Pharisees. "When the information available about them from the New Testament and other sources is carefully considered," writes Chadwick, "we see clearly that many of the Pharisees were either respectfully benign or enthusiastically supportive in their attitudes and actions toward Jesus. It is unfortunate that the Pharisees have been so maligned in Christian commentary and conversation ove the centuries. Too often, Christians have laid blame at the door of the Pharisees for events that were actually the doings of the Sadducees."
Of course, that doesn't mean that there were no Pharisees who opposed Jesus, but the Pharisees were not a monolithic movement, and they held different and often contradictory religious views even among themselves. The term Pharisees comes from the Greek form of the Hebrew word perushim, which can be translated loosely as "separitists." It also carries the connotation of being holy and can therefore be rendered as "saints." The Pharisees emerged in the second century B.C (or B.C.E.), during the Hasmonian period, as opponents of the trend toward Hellenistic interpretation and influence in Jewish religious and social life. They advocated that the Jewish people should remain holy by keeping themselves apart from the corrupting Gentile influences, which they believed had been the case during the centuries before the Hasmonian revolt. As the Sadducees moved increasingly in the direction of Greco-Roman philosophy and religion (such as denying the physical resurrection), the Pharisees became strong advocates for the traditional, biblical teachings and practices that had prevailed in the centuries after the return from Babylon. These were the "traditions of the elders" that the Pharisees wished to preserve, including the notion that many of the traditions were actually an "oral law" given by God to supplement the "written law" received by Moses.
The Pharisee, as it turns out, did not always agree on just which tradition or "oral law" was actually correct. This was because there were two different sects of Pharisees, or followings of the scholars Hillel and Shammai. Hillel was a scholar who moved from Babylon to Jerusalem during the reign of Herod the Great, and became the most revered teacher of his time, recognized by consensus at nasi (president) of the diverse community of Pharisee scholars. Hillel is said to have been active in his teaching from around 30 B.C. to 10 A.D. Shammai was probably younger than Hillel and became the av bet din (chief of court, or vice president), also by consensus. But Shammai stood in opposition to Hillel on many questions of interpretation and procedure about Mosaic law. Based on the Talmud and other early Jewish sources, Shammai and his disciples represented only a minority of Pharisee opinion. The Shammai were less concerned for average citizens than they were for the wealthy, and were more extreme in their interpretations of the law of Moses than Hillel and his supporters.
In a famous story, a Gentile asked Shammai to expound the entire law of Mose while he stood upon one foot, meaning he wanted a summary statement. Shammai drove the Gentile away with a builders cubit, so he then went to Hillel. Hillel answered the Gentile's request by saying, "Whatever is hateful to yourself, do to no other person -- this is the whole law, the rest is but commentary. Now go and do it. Hillel's "golden rule" was well known among the Jews during Jesus' lifetime and Jesus' "golden rule" is but a positive rephrasing" "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." We can safely assume that Jesus was influenced to some degree by Hillel.
Hillel and Shammai established academies in Jerusalem where Pharisees and others could study scripture and the oral law (or traditions of the elders), beyt Hillel and beyt Shammai. One significant difference between Hillel and Shammai that would play out during the ministry of Jesus, was on the question of Sabbath day healing. The Shammai ruled that practicing the healing arts was not permitted on either the weekly Sabbath or the festival Sabbaths. The Hillels took a more pragmatic view, however, that danger to life or health suspends the prohibitions of the Sabbath and that the healing arts were permissible. Hillel himself had received medical care on the Sabbath when he was young.
Source:
Holzapfel, R. N. & Wayment, T. A., Ed. (2005). The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ: Vol. I, From Bethlehem Through the Sermon on the Mount. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book -- Chapter 3, "The Jerusalem Temple, the Saducees, and the Opposition to Jesus" by Chadwick, J. R.
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