The Pharisees and Sadducees: Did They Really Hate Jesus?

When we read the Gospels, two groups dominate the religious landscape: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These influences and others rarely united around anything. That is, until Jesus entered the scene. 

Even the newest Bible Nerds have heard of the first two groups we need to look at. They’re all over the Gospels. These two groups pretty much hated each other. But thank goodness Jesus came along to bring them together! One of these moments is found in Matthew 16:

Now when the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He said, “When evening comes you say, ‘It will be fair weather, because the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, because the sky is red and darkening.’ You know how to judge correctly the appearance of the sky, but you cannot evaluate the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Then he left them and went away (Matthew 16:1-4 NET)

The Sadducees

The Sadducees were the big boys of First Century Judea. Think of them as the religious aristocracy. Because they were the priests and the Levites, they ran the show in the Temple. When you read about them in the Gospels, it’s almost always around one of the Feasts in Jerusalem. 

At one point, these were the good guys. Their ancestors built the Second Temple.  These were the priestly families that came back to Jerusalem with the rest of the Exiles. Around 200 years before Christ, they led a revolt against the Greeks. Their leader, Judah Maccabees, called the people back to the Torah. He became a priest/king, and his family became the Hasmonean Dynasty that ruled all the way to the time of Herod the Great.

But as the saying goes, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  The Hasmoneans eventually became as evil as the Greeks they warred against. When the Romans finally secured their hold over Judea, these priests and Levites compromised with the Roman officials and established an uncomfortable, but stable, peace with the Empire.

Torah Only, Please

The Sadducees were the fundamentalists of First Century Judaism. They believed that the Torah was the only true Word of God. That means they rejected most of what we call the Old Testament. Because of this, the Sadducees didn’t believe in a bodily resurrection of a coming Messiah.

What we have to remember about the Sadducees, is that they had power. They were in league with the Romans and couldn’t let anything upset the status quo. If a revolutionary came to the pilgrimage feasts of Passover or Sukkot and stirred things up, it could be disastrous for their position.

The Pharisees

This next part may shock you: the Pharisees were the liberals of their day. Just about everything was Scripture for them. All the rest of the books of the Old Testament and more. They added to the Torah and rules and sacred Scriptures all of the time. They’d change the rules to suit whatever they needed at any particular moment.

Most of the Pharisees returned to Israel within the 200 years before Christ. They were extremely passionate about seeing the Son of David come to take the throne. They saw the Sadducess as totally compromised, and their claim to authority lost.

According to the Pharisees, the only thing that would prevent the Jewish people from being thrown out of Israel again, is perfect obedience to Torah. To ensure this, they developed a doctrine of “fences” around the Torah. A modern example of this could be a prohibition against bicycle riding on the Sabbath. What happens if the bicycle breaks down? The rider might be forced to repair it. Is this work? If it is, then it’s a violation of the Sabbath.

Semikhah

But the problem with these fences was the question of who had the right to make them. From this came the idea of “semikhah” – or “authority.” The Pharisees claimed to be able to trace their semikhah all the way back to the 70 elders who went up Sinai with Moses. They believed that this semikhah was passed down from generation to generation through the laying on of hands, until it came to specific rabbis who were permitted to make new interpretation of the Torah.

Another thing that might surprise you about the Pharisees is their passion for missionary work. They read in Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophetic books that one day the nations would also be ruled by the Son of David. They desperately wanted to see this Messiah reign. So, they sent missionaries throughout the nations to convert pagans to worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The final act of this conversion would be to circumcise the males, making them fully Jewish in their eyes.

All of this missionary work outside of Jerusalem created a whole new problem. Were these converts expected to go up to Jerusalem for the Feasts? And what about other sacrifices? The solution has to establish synagogues – community centers where the people would come together for prayer and Torah study. Then, they taught that these acts were just as important as the sacrifices and Feasts.

Is it any wonder why the Pharisees and the Sadducees didn’t get along?

The Groups You Haven’t Heard Of

The Essenes

The Essenes were a group that didn’t like both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So, they went to the desert and built a community to wait for the Messiah, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah:

A voice cries out,
“In the wilderness clear a way for the Lord;
build a level road through the rift valley for our God. (Isaiah 40:3 NET)

In a lot of ways, the Essenes were a mixture of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, with a little apocalyptic fanaticism thrown in. They were priests and Levites (like the Sadducees), but they hated the corruption of the religious establishment in Jerusalem. They accepted the entire Old Testament and more as Scripture (like the Pharisees), but rejected any efforts to proselytize the Gentiles.

Add to all of that their belief that YHWH was coming to destroy the Romans and setup His Messiah in Jerusalem with only their group remaining alive, and you have some fun theology.

The Herodians

The Herodians were on the completely opposite side of the spectrum. These were completely secular Jews who sought political power and favors within the Roman rulership and their puppet rulers.

The Zealots

And last, but not least, the Zealots were a group of secular Jewish nationalists that wanted to kill any Roman they saw, and most of the other Jewish people who didn’t agree with their political agenda.

So What?

Understanding these different groups helps us properly understand Jesus’ response to them. They were all looking for a solution to their problems. Some were religious. Some were political. All of them were right… and wrong.

The Kingdom of God isn’t about political or religious ideology.
The Kingdom of God is about the rule and reign of the King.