CHAPTER XI.

OF THE SADDUCEES AND SAMARITANS.

As for the Sadducees, Epiphanius derives the name from p tsedhek, justitia ;* but that derivation neither suits the word Sadducee, nor the true character of the sect. For so far were they from being eminently righteous, that they are commonly said to be the most wicked and profligate of all the Jews; neither were they given to boast of their own righteousness, as the Pharisees were.

Another etymology, which Theophylact mentions together with the former,† is therefore esteemed to be the more probable one, that their name was derived απο αιρεσιάρχου Σαδωκ. This he borrowed from the Talmud, which tells us, that Sadoc was a scholar of Antigonus Sochæus, president of the Sanhedrim about two hundred and sixty years before Christ; who having inculcated upon his scholars, that they ought to serve God out of pure love to him, and not in a servile manner, either for fear of punishment or hope of reward; Sadoc, not understanding this spiritual doctrine, concluded there was no future state of rewards and punishments, and accordingly taught and propagated that error after his master's death. However that be (for I must confess with me talmudical stories have but little credit), this is said to have been the doctrine of the Sadducees. That they denied the resurrection, and that there are angels and spirits, appears from the account given of them in the New Testament: Matt. xxii. 23; Acts xxiii. 8. According to Josephus, they rejected the traditions of the

Epiphan. adversus Hæres. lib. i. hæres. xiv. p. 31, C. edit. Petav. Colon. 1682.

Theophylact. Comment. in Matt. iii. 7, p. 18.

Mishn. tit. Pirke Abhoth, cap. i. sect. iii. et Maimon. in loc. See Lightfoot, Hora Hebraicæ, in Acts xxiii. 8.

Pharisees; they not only denied the resurrection of the body, but the life and existence of the soul after death: they likewise denied all divine decrees, and held that man was absolutely master of his own actions, with a full freedom to do either good or evil, as he thought proper; that God did not influence him in doing either; and that his prosperity or adversity are placed within his own power, and are respectively the effect of his wisdom or his folly ;t a notion which in effect amounts to denying a providence, and to the subversion of all religion; so that they were, upon the whole, Epicurean Deists in all other respects, except that they acknowledged the world to have been created, and perhaps to be upheld and preserved by God. This historian gives them a very bad character as to their morals, and says, "they were a set of men churlish and morose toward each other, and cruel and savage to all besides." However, we must remember, that Josephus himself was a Pharisee, of an opposite sect, and that such persons are very apt, from their mutual aversion, to misrepresent and calumniate each other. Perhaps his account of the Sadducees is not without some tincture of pharisaical misrepresentation; for it can hardly be supposed, that men of such very corrupt principles, as he represents them, should continue uncensured and uncondemned by the Sanhedrim, much less be suffered to fill the highest posts in church and state, as we find they did; it appearing that Caiaphas, the high-priest, who condemned our Saviour, was of this sect; Acts v. 17. Besides, the character given them by this historian is altogether inconsistent with their receiving, which all admit they did, the five books of Moses, even though it were true that they rejected all the other sacred books, which Godwin lays to their charge, but from which Scaliger endeavours to exculpate them.§ Indeed, the silence of Josephus renders this charge upon them justly suspected; for though he often mentions them, and loads them with imputa

Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii. cap. x. sect. vi. p. 663; lib. xviii. cap. i. sect. iv. p. 71, edit. Haverc.

† Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. i. sect. iv. p. 871; De Bello Judaic. lib. ii. cap. viii. sect. xiv. p. 166; Antiq. lib. xiii. cap. v. sect. ix. p. 649.

De Bello Judaic. lib. ii. cap. viii. sect. xiv. p. 166.

§ Elench. Trihæres, cap. xvi.

tions of many corrupt principles and practices, yet he never speaks of their rejecting any part of the holy Scriptures, which no doubt he would have done, if it had been fact. Nay, he says, that though they rejected the traditions of the fathers, they received ra yɛypaμμɛva, the written books,* an expression too general, and too much in their favour, to have flowed from his pen, if he could with any plausibility have accused them of rejecting any one of them. And even in the Talmud the Sadducees are introduced as disputing and arguing from passages in the prophets, and the Pharisees as answering them from the same books,† which implies, that those books were received by them; nor are they ever accused by any of the ancient rabbies with rejecting them. Some of them, indeed, style them ɔ chuthiim, which is another name for the Samaritans. But, perhaps, that was only as a term of reproach, which the Jews bestowed upon those whom they hated, as upon our Saviour, who, they said, was "a Samaritan, and had a devil;" John viii. 48. However, the Samaritans admitting only the five books of Moses to be canonical, hence it hath come to pass, that the Sadducees being by the rabbies sometimes styled ▷ chuthiim, or Samaritans, hath been the occasion, without sufficient reason, of the Sadducees being supposed, as well as the Samaritans, to have rejected all the writings of the Old Testament except those of Moses. Scaliger's opinion seems to be more probable, that they did not reject the prophets and the hagiographa, but only expounded them in a different sense from the Pharisees and other Jews.‡ It is a question of some difficulty, how the Sadducees could

* Antiq. lib. xiii. cap. x. sect. vi. p. 663. Aɛyov erɛiva deiv ǹyeiod ai voμικα τα γεγραμμενα, τα δ' εκ παραδόσεως των πατέρων μη τηρειν. The word νομικα is here applied to τα γεγραμμενα, the whole Scripture, as opposed to tradition; and the word voμov seems to be used in the same comprehensive sense, lib. xviii. cap. i. sect. iv. p. 871.

+ Cod. Sanhedrin, cap. Chelek, ab init.; Vid. Reland. Antiq. part ii. cap. ix. sect. x. p. 273, edit. 3; Sadducæi testimonium citant contra resurrectionem ex Job vii. 9, in Ilmedenu, fol. ii. col. iv., inquit Drusius, de Tribus Sectis Judæor. lib. iii. cap. ix. in margin. See especially Lightfoot, Horm Hebraic. John iv. 25.

1 Scaliger, ubi supra; Drusius de Tribus Sectis Judæor. lib. iii. cap. ix.; et Respons, ad Serar. Minerv. lib. ii. cap. xi.; Reland. Antiq. part ii. cap. ix, sect x. p. 273.

disbelieve the existence of angels, and yet receive even the five books of Moses as canonical Scripture, wherein are so many narratives of the appearance of angels. Probably their opinion concerning angels was, that they were not permanent beings, but temporary phantoms, formed by the divine power for particular purposes, and dissipated again when these were answered.

In the time of Josephus this sect was not large, but it is said to be the richest, and that those of the greatest quality and opulence generally belonged to it ;* which we can easily credit, as we observe in our day, that the great and rich are apt to prefer the pleasure and grandeur of this life to any expectancy in a future; and greedily to embrace such doctrines as tend to encourage their luxury and sensuality, by ridding their minds of uneasy reflections on the judgment-day and world to come.†

Of the Samaritans.

With the Sadducees Godwin joins the Samaritans, with whom he says they have a near affinity; that is, on supposition of their rejecting all the sacred writings but the five books of Moses, which Origen, Jerome,§ and Epiphanius say the Samaritans did.

The Samaritans were originally heathens, consisting of persons of several nations, to whom the king of Assyria gave the cities and lands of the Israelites upon the Assyrian captivity. They were called Samaritans from the city Samaria,

*Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii. cap. x. sect. vi. p. 663; lib. xviii. cap. i. sect. iv. p. 871.

See an account of the Sadducees, not only in the authors before cited, but in Le Clerc's Histor. Eccles. Prolegom. sect. i. cap. iii. p. 12-15; Basnage's History of the Jews, book ii. chap. vi. vii.; Bayle's Dictionary, article Sadducees; and Lightfoot, Hora Hebr. Matt. iii. 7.

↑ Origen. contra Celsum, lib. i. p. 38, edit. Cantab. 1677; Comment. in Johan. apud Comment. in Scripturas, part. posterior. p. 218, edit. Huet. Colon. 1685.

Hieron. in Dialogo adversus Luciferianos, as quoted by Prideaux, part i. book vi. anno 409 ante Christum, vol. ii. p. 597.

|| Epiphan. adversus Hæres. lib. i. hæres. ix. Samarit. sect. ii. tom. i. p. 24, edit. Petav. Colon. 1682.

the metropolis of the kingdom of Israel. When they first settled in the country, they practised only the idolatrous rites of the several nations from whence they came; but upon being infested with lions, which they supposed a judgment upon them for not paying due honour to the ancient god of the country, the king of Assyria sent a Jewish priest to instruct them in the worship of Jehovah; upon which, out of the several customs and modes of worship of the nations to which they belonged, and the rites of the worship of Jehovah, they made up a very motley religion; 2 Kings xvii. 24, et seq. Upon the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, and the rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple, the religion of the Samaritans received another alteration on the following occasion. One of the sons of Jehoiada, the high-priest, whom Josephus calls Manasseh,* married the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite; but the law of God having forbidden the intermarriages of the Israelites with any other nation, Nehemiah set himself to reform this corruption, which had spread into many Jewish families, and obliged all that had taken strange wives immediately to part with them; Nehem. xiii. 23-30. Manasseh, unwilling to quit his wife, fled to Samaria, and many others, who were in the same case with him, being also of the same mind, went and settled under the protection of Sanballat, governor of Samaria. From that time the worship of the Samaritans came much nearer to that of the Jews; and they afterward obtained leave of Alexander the Great to build a temple on mount Gerizim, near the city Samaria, in imitation of the temple at Jerusalem, where they practised the same forms of worship. It is very common for people, who are nearly, but not entirely of the same religion, to have a greater aversion to one another, than those whose sentiments and forms of worship are more different. So it was with the Jews and Samaritans. Hence it was the highest term of reproach among the Jews to call a person a Samaritan, as was before observed; and so great was their mutual animosity, that they would neither ask nor receive any favours from each other. The woman of Samaria, therefore, wondered that Christ, "being a Jew, would ask drink of her who was a Samaritan;" John iv. 9. And when our Lord had occasion to Joseph. Antiq, lib. xi. cap. viii. sect. i. ii. p. 578, 579.