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THE SADDUCEES, THE PHARISEES, AND THE SACRED:

MEANING AND IDEOLOGY IN THE HALAKHIC
CONTROVERSIES BETWEEN THE
SADDUCEES AND PHARISEES

Eyal Regev
Bar-Ilan University

In the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, a group called Sadducees

(öãå÷éí) had a prominent share in the political and religious gov-
erning institutions. The Hasmoneans John Hyrcanus and Alexander
Jannaus, as well as the high priests Joseph Caiphas (who headed the
Sanhedrin that turned Jesus in to Pilate) and Annaus son of Annaus
(who sentenced Jacob, the brother of Jesus, to death), were all
Sadducees.1 However, the Sadducees were the Jewish group in the
Second Temple period about which our knowledge is the most scarce
and obscure. Here I introduce some of the results of my study of
the Sadducees, The Sadducees and Their Halakhah: Religion and Society in
the Second Temple Period,2 in which I reconstruct the Sadducees’ law,
religious ideology, and social history, and by doing so also juxtapose
the parallel religious history of the Pharisees and early rabbis with
the Sadducees.
Although the Pharisees and the Sadducees were perhaps the most
influential religious group in Second Temple Judaism, Josephus, the
New Testament, and other contemporary sources do not describe
their views concerning law and theology in detail.3 The richest evi-
dence about what the Pharisees and Sadducees aimed for and how
they interpreted the Torah is found in the Rabbinic corpus, especially

1 Ant. 13:288–96 (Hyrcanus). Ant. 13:399–404 ( Jannaus); Acts 10:17 (Caiphas);

Ant. 20:199 (Annaus son of Annaus).
2 Jerusalem, 2005 (in Hebrew).
3 For Josephus’s reports on the Pharisees, mainly on their beliefs, see S. Mason,

Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (Leiden, 1991). For Pharisees and Sadducees in the
New Testament, see idem, “Chief Priests, Sadducees, Pharisees and Sanhedrin in
Acts,” in R. Bauckham, ed., The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, VI: The Book
of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting (Grand Rapids, 1995), pp. 119–77; A.J. Hultgren, Jesus
and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition
(Minneapolis, 1979).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Review of Rabbinic Judaism 9

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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 127

in the Mishnah (but also in the Tosefta, the halakhic midrashim, the
Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds). This is unfortunate, since, for
two reasons, such evidence may not be reliable and accurate. First,
the Rabbinic corpus was edited centuries after the destruction of the
Temple, when the Pharisees and Sadducees ceased to exist; how,
then, were the rabbis able to know what these groups thought and
how they acted? Second, in many cases the Rabbinic accounts are
tendentious, showing Pharisaic superiority and achievements. After
all, the rabbis were the heirs of the Pharisees.4
For these reasons, reconstructing the religious and ideological world
of the Pharisees and the Sadducees might seem impossible.5 To
address these difficulties, I suggest a new approach to the halakhic
disputes between the Pharisees/rabbis and Sadducees/Boethusians.6
The key to this reevaluation lies in examining the Rabbinic descriptions
without prejudice, searching for pieces of information that do not
seem polemical and that do not seem to be a product of a later
imagination. I believe that authentic and reliable information can be
sifted from the Rabbinic evidence if one is conscious enough of the
difficulties raised above but is nevertheless sensitive to traces of
halakhah and religious ideology that the rabbis could hardly have
fabricated.
As I will try to show below, when the Rabbinic records are closely
analyzed in light of our knowledge of Second Temple Halakhah
(especially having in mind the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls), the con-
clusion that appears is very clear: the rabbis were extremely consistent
in portraying the Sadducees as holding stricter views than the rabbis

4 J. Neusner, The Rabbinic Tradition about the Pharisees before 70 (Leiden, 1971), 3

vols., discusses the non-halakhic evidence.

5 R. Leszynsky, Die Sadduzäer (Berlin, 1912); Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens (Paris, 1972)

already showed that the Sadducees were a religious (and not only political) group
and that they held stricter views than the Pharisees. Still, some scholars erroneously
regard them as Hellenized (“secular”) aristocrats. See, for example, E.P. Sanders,
Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London, 1990) pp. 214–54.
6 For sources in which rabbis (and not Pharisees) confront the Sadducees, see

E. Rivkin, “Defining the Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” in Hebrew Union College
Annual 40–41 (1969–1970), pp. 205–49. I take the Boethusians as another name
for the Sadducees or as being a sub-group within the Sadducees as a whole. I also
see no reason to confuse the Sadducees or Boethusians with the Qumran sectari-
ans and to argue that the rabbis actually had disputed with the Qumranites. The
first were high priests and aristocrats, whereas the latter separated themselves from
the rest of the Jews and hardly influenced the governing institutions. See Regev,
The Sadducees, pp. 32–58.
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128 eyal regev

themselves concerning Sabbath, ritual purity, the penal code, and as

putting a much greater emphasis on the priests and their promi-
nence in relation to the laity.7 (These views seem somewhat close to
the laws of the book of Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, and 4QMMT
from Qumran; hence, although the laws of the Sadducees were not
at all identical with them, there is clear evidence of such strictness
in certain circles of Second Temple Judaism.)8 The strictness of the
Sadducees appears time and time again throughout the Rabbinic
corpus. The rabbis could scarcely invent it or increase it. They would
have gained nothing from such a fabrication; indeed, it would have
suggested that, in their leniency, the rabbis were less devoted to the
Torah than the Sadducees. Their portrait of the Sadducean rigor-
ous Halakhah does not emerge from a single text or editor, but
encompasses the whole Rabbinic halakhic corpus.
For this reason, and as the result of an examination of each and
every source discussed here, I take the Rabbinic portrayal of the
halakhic disputes between Pharisees and Sadducees as relatively reli-
able in terms of the actual views of each side. I, however, doubt
that the outcomes of the disputes, namely, the Pharisees/rabbis over-
coming the Sadducees/Boethusians, are historical. Here we have no
objective criteria to judge the authenticity of our sources, while it is
clear that the rabbis were eager to show the superiority of the side
with which they identified.
My main concern in the present discussion is to uncover the reli-
gious ideology that lies behind the different halakhic views of the
Sadducees and Pharisees, the ideology that apparently motivated
them to strive to implement their laws in the Temple and the courts
even at the cost of a violent struggle (in the days of Alexander
Jannaus, for example).9 I examine several selected halakhic contro-
versies and point to the specific religious idea or value implicit in
them. Then I suggest a model that aims to correspond to all those
halakhic or religious values of the Sadducees on the one hand, and
the Pharisees on the other hand. The model presents two concepts

7 For the “multitude attestation” of this strictness in these different fields of Jewish

Law, see Regev, The Sadducees, pp. 223–26.

8 For the points of similarity and especially points of difference between the

Sadducees and the Qumranites, see E. Regev, “Were the Priests all the Same?
Qumranic Halakhah in Comparison with Sadducean Halakhah,” in Dead Sea Dis-
coveries (in press).
9 Ant. 13:372–83 (compare B. Qid. 66a); Regev, The Sadducees, pp. 261–74.
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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 129

or world-views—dynamic holiness vs. static holiness—and is inspired

by studies in cultural anthropology.

Sabbath Laws

The Sadducean neighbor of Simeon b. Gamaliel did not share

Simeon’s eruv hazerot (literally “sharing of courtyards,” a procedure
that transforms a courtyard or alley into common property, which
makes it available for use on the Sabbath) with him. The Sadducee
took his vessels out to the courtyard (apparently before the Sabbath)
in order to show that his part of the courtyard would not be included
in the eruv hazerot, and thus purposely prevented this transformation
from being carried out before the Sabbath (M. Erub. 6:2). This case
indicates that the Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic concept of the
eruv hazerot and, on the Sabbath. refrained from moving vessels from
the house to the courtyard or back. According to the rabbis, the
Sadducee did not violate the Sabbath by using the courtyard during
the Sabbath, since Meir believes that the neighbors of the Sadducee
can take possession of the courtyard by placing their vessels there
right before the Sabbath.10
The Sadducees opposed the practice of striking the willow on
Hoshana Rabbah when it falls on the Sabbath (the Boethusians even
put rocks on the willow in the Temple in order to prevent striking
them on Sabbath; T. Suk. 3:1). It is possible that they did acknowledge
this practice, but, in contrast to the Pharisees, they emphasized the
priority of observance of the Sabbath.
The Sadducees also opposed harvesting the omer on the day after
the first day of the Passover festival, since it may fall on the Sabbath.
They interpreted “the morrow of the Sabbath” as Sunday, thus pre-
venting the violation of the Sabbath by harvesting the omer.11
In a previous article “How Did the Temple Mount Fall to
Pompey?”12 I suggested that the Sadducees refrained from any kind
of warfare (including defensive fighting) on Sabbath. I showed that
Josephus’ description of the manner in which the supporters of

10 This conclusion draws on my reading of B. Erub. 66b.

11 M. Men. 10:3; T. Men. 10:23. This also led to the dispute regarding the date
of Pentecost (seven weeks after the harvest of the Omer). See T. R.H. 1:15;
B. Men 65b.
12 Journal of Jewish Studies 48 (1997), pp. 276–89.
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130 eyal regev

Aristobulus II did not engage in offensive warfare on Sabbath is con-

fused (Ant. 14:62–68) and that Josephus’ sources and the fact that
the Temple Mount was conquered on the Sabbath indicate that
these supporters did not fight at all on Sabbath. Following Pesher
Nahum from Qumran,13 I was able to identify these supporters with
Manasseh, the Qumranic designation of the Sadducees.
There are therefore four different cases in which the Sadducees
were stricter than the Pharisees and rabbis in observing Sabbath
restrictions. The Sadducees were more sensitive to Sabbath violations
that were associated with daily work, even at the cost of human life.

Purity Laws

The Sadducees argued that the red heifer should be burned only by
a high priest who is entirely pure at sundown (that is, immersed in
a ritual bath and then waited for sundown). The Pharisees claimed
that the high priest may burn it in a state of incomplete Levitical
purity, tebul yom, that is, even when he had just immersed and did
not wait until sundown.14 Thus, the Sadducees demanded that the
ritual of the red heifer be executed in a state of perfect purity,
whereas the Pharisees seemed to claim that Scripture does not require
this. In the Pharisaic view, since this ritual is not performed in the
Temple, but on the mount opposite it, a perfect state of purity is
unnecessary. In fact, the concept of the ritual state of tebul yom was
created by the Pharisees, who deemed it a condition under which
one may eat ordinary food in a state of purity.15 Rabbinic sources
mention that the rabbis purposely defiled the high priest in order to
make sure that he would immerse and be forced to burn the red
heifer in a state of tebul yom (M. Par 3:7–8; T. Par. 3:8).
The Sadducees viewed the nizzok, the stream of liquid pouring
from a pure vessel into an impure one, as contaminating (M. Yad.
4:7). Thus the Sadducees argued that the lower vessel’s impurity

13 4Q169 fags. 3–4, 3:8–4:4, in M.P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of

Biblical Books (Washington, 1979), appendix, pp. 49–50.

14 M. Par. 3:7–8; cf. M. Par. 5:4; T. Par. 3:6, 8. See J.M. Baumgarten, “The

Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts,” Journal of

Jewish Studies 31 (1980), pp. 157–70.
15 See E. Regev, “Pure Individualism: The Idea of Non-Priestly Purity in Ancient

Judaism,” in Journal for the Study of Judaism 31 (2000), pp. 176–202.

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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 131

“climbs” to the upper vessel. The Pharisees, on the other hand,

regarded the stream as pure, apart from cases of viscous liquids, like
honey (M. Toh. 8:9; M. Makh. 5:9).
The Sadducees and Pharisees disagreed about the identification of
the blood of menstruation. Whereas the Pharisees considered several
physical indications of the menstruation period, the Sadducees stressed
that a woman is impure upon observing any blood. They were not
acquainted with the principle of the monthly cycle of menstruation
(vesset) as a means of identifying menstrual blood, or with other
definitions in Rabbinic literature that permit such identification. In
Sadducean halakhah, the defiling sate of niddah was therefore much
more frequent.16
In these three instances the Sadducees were stricter than the
Pharisees, who reduced the scope of impurity and its consequences.
The Sadducees strictly observed the division of pure and impure,
while the Pharisees made more nuance observations—not derived
from Scripture—that blurred such a stark and dualism. According
to the Pharisees, the most prominent ritual of cleansing, that of the
red heifer, did not require a complete state of purity; the contact
between pure and impure liquids was limited to thick ones; and the
definition of menstrual blood was dependent upon the human under-
standing of how the female body functioned. All this seemed too
innovative and baseless for the Sadducees.

Sacrifices and Temple Cult

The scholion to Megilat Tahanit reports about the Pharisaic takeover

of the Temple cult.17 While the Sadducees argued that the daily
sacrifices should be financed by individuals (perhaps the serving
priests) the Pharisees insisted that all the Jewish people should spon-
sor them. Consequently, the Pharisees (probably with the cooperation

16 E. Regev, “On Blood, Impurity and Body Perception in the Halakhic Schools

in the Second Temple and Talmudic Period,” in AJS Review 27.1 (2003), pp. 1–23
(Hebrew section).
17 MS. Oxford, of the beginning of the Scholion, in V. Noam, Megillat Ta aanit:

Versions, Interpretation, History ( Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 57–59, 165–73. See also the par-
allel in B. Men. 65a. Noam has analyzed the Scholion’s earliest manuscripts and
relationship with the talmudic corpus and concluded that an early version of the
Scholion was known, at least partly, to the Babylonian amoraim.
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132 eyal regev

of the Hasmoneans) determined the half-shekel payment in which

every Jew had an equal share in financing the sacrificial cult.18 This
victory is dated to the first-to-the eighth of Nissan, but Rabbinic
sources do not explain its eight day duration or why it was assigned
in the beginning of Nissan.
Interestingly, the very same days are assigned by the Temple Scroll
as the days of priestly inauguration (mill’uim). The Temple Scroll
orders that this ritual be held every year, as an annual consecration
of the priesthood.19 I think that the rabbis did not confuse the
Sadducees or Boethusinas with the Temple Scroll; I suggest that the
scholion implies that the Pharisees canceled the Sadducean days of
inauguration.20 If indeed the Sadducees regulated this ritual, this
would attest to their view that the priests needed to renew their
appointment and consecration. This would also be in accordance
with their opposition to the laity’s equal share in financing the
sacrificial cult.
The Sadducees held that on the day of atonement, the high priest
should burn the incense in the heikhal before he enters the devir (the
qodesh qodashim, the inner sancta). The Pharisees, on the other hand,
insisted that the high priest should first enter the devir and then burn
there the incense.21 The debate on this seemingly marginal matter
was far-reaching. According to the Mishnaic aggadah, the high-priest
(probably a Sadducee) had to take an oath before the elders that
he would not alter the (probably Pharisaic) instructions in performing
the sacrificial rituals.22 But what was the actual meaning behind this
controversy? I suggest that the question of where the incense would
be burned had implications concerning its symbolic meaning. In the
multitude accounts of this debate the opposing sides discuss the terms
of the cloud of incense and the cloud of heavenly revelation. I there-
fore propose that the Sadducees viewed this cloud as a symbolic
boundary between the high priest in his awesome moment and the

18 For the half-shekel payment as polemical act, see M. Sheq. 3:3.

19 Temple Scroll 15:3–17:5; Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll ( Jerusalem, 1977),
vol. 1, p. 110; vol. 2, pp. 45–54 (in Hebrew).
20 For the Rabbinic view that this ceremony was not annual but was practiced

only once, by Moses, see B. Suk. 43a.

21 M. Yom. 5:1; T. Yom. 1:8; Sifra, Akhrei Mot 3:10 (ed. Weiss, 81a); B. Yom.

19b; Y. Yom. 1:5, 39a.

22 M. Yom. 1:2–5; T. Yom. 1:8; B. Yom. 19b.
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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 133

rest of the people, a boundary that stresses his closeness to God in

comparison to the rest of the people of Israel.23
The Pharisees argued that the cereal offering (elsewhere I have
shown that this was the offering that accompanied the shelamim
sacrifice) should be offered on the altar. The Sadducees responded
that this cereal offering should be given to the priests, who eat it as
holy food, just as he eats other cereal offerings.24
In the same vein I suggest interpreting cases in which, according
to Rabbinic sources and Josephus, priests who may be identified as
Sadducees took tithes from their owners, even forcefully.25 They did
not wait for the delivery of the tithes to the Temple and their dis-
tribution to priests, destitute and lay-Pharisees (depicted in Yerushalmi
Mahaser Sheni), nor did they follow the later Rabbinic practice that
the main duty of the lay owners is to set aside the tithe, whether
or not the priest or Levite will demands it. I propose that these
Sadducean priests believed that the tithes were a holy crop assigned
to them, like the portions of the sacrifices.
The Sadducees also reject lay cultic rituals such as the Pharisaic
practice of the pouring of the water on the altar in the simhat beit
ha-shoheva (literally “the feast of the house of drawing water”) on
Sukkot. Rabbinic sources even mention a case in which a Boethisian
priest poured the water on his feet instead of on the altar and was
stoned by the laity with citrons.26 The Sadducees may have objected
to it as a non-scriptural ritual, and perhaps also because during the
ritual’s course lay people entered the priestly court when they encir-
cled the altar.
The Sadducees probably also wished to exclude the laity from
entering the priestly court and having direct contact with the sacred.
This seems to be attested to in their opposition to the Pharisaic
immersion of the Menorah.27 In the conclusion of the festival, the
Menorah and other sacred vessels were purified in water since the

23 The cloud symbolizes revelation or disclosure as well as a veil for the divine
presence. See Exod. 24:16–18; 25:22; 30:6, 36.
24 The scholion to Megillat Taaanit for 27 Marheshvan; Noam, Scholion, pp. 97–98

and 250–54. See Eyal Regev, “The Sectarian Controversies about the Cereal
Offerings,” in Dead Sea Discoveries 5.1 (1998) pp. 33–56.
25 Ant. 20:199–81, 204–7; Y. M.S. 5:9, 56d; Y. Sot. 9:11, 24a. See my inter-

pretation in Regev, The Sadducees, pp. 160–70, 323–25.

26 T. Suk. 3:18; M. Suk. 4:9; B. Suk. 48b. Cf. Ant. 13:372.
27 T. Hag. 3:35. A similar view regarding the incense altar and showbread table

may be implied in the Temple Scroll 3:10–12.

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134 eyal regev

Pharisees suspected that the lay people defiled them by their touch
(M. Hag. 3:7–8). It seems that the Sadducees objected to the very
circumstances that led to this suspicion.

Penal Laws

Josephus states that the Sadducees imposed stricter punishments than

the Pharisees.28 According to the scholion to Megilat Ta’anit, the
Sadducees required physical punishment for the one who damaged
his fellow’s body, literally interpreting the command of an “eye for
eye, tooth for tooth.” The Pharisees, on the other hand, deduced
that these verses allude to monetary compensation equal to the phys-
ical damage.29
It seems that the Sadducees also literally followed the commands
pertaining to execution. A later source suggests that they maintained
that execution by burning should be practiced by “wood and ropes”
whereas the rabbis substituted this torturous procedure with swallowing
a poison (hot lead) and, if the sentenced person resisted, strangling
(B. San. 52b). This possibility is supported by the fact that the rabbis
refined the scriptural process of death penalties. The rabbis also
altered the execution by stoning ruling so that the death sentence
would be executed by throwing the sentenced person from a height
of two floors. In cases in which Scripture does not specify the means
of execution, they substituted the traditional stoning with the inno-
vation of strangling.30 Under these circumstances, it is more than
plausible that the Sadducees followed the traditional crueler death
penalties (which are also attested to in the book of Jubilees and
Philo).

The World-Views behind the Laws: Dynamic Holiness and Static Holiness

There are several major characteristics to the Sadducean positions:

First, strictness regarding prohibitions, taboos, and penalties; second,

28 Ant. 13:294; 20:199. Cf. War 2:166.

29 Scholion to Megillat Taaanit, Ms. Oxford, 10 Tammuz; Noam, The Scholion,
pp. 78–79, 211–12.
30 A. Shemesh, Sins and Punishments ( Jerusalem, 2003) (in Hebrew).
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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 135

stressing the centrality of the priesthood or the high priest and its
share of priestly dues or offerings; third, commitment to the literal
sense of Scripture, rejecting non-scriptural categories, definitions, and
values that were followed or invented by the Pharisees.
But is it possible to find a deeper common ground for most of
the laws of the Sadducees (as well as for the Pharisees’)? Is there a
general theological or ideological motive for their positions? Such an
ideological motive would perhaps explain the actual nature of strictness
as opposed to leniency in halakhic positions.31 In order to introduce
such a theory, it is necessary to review the core of the controversies
just discussed: What religious or cultic values were promoted by the
Sadducees and guided their halakhic decisions?
The Sadducees were very strict regarding Sabbath prohibitions:
abstention from any sort of moving or carrying of vessels from the
house to the courtyard, the striking of the willow, the harvest of the
omer, and warfare. This tendency probably derived from the aim to
observe the Sabbath as a holy day. Abstaining from any kind of work
is a sacred taboo that the Pharisees softened due to certain consid-
erations based on traditions that the Sadducees did not acknowledge.
The Sadducees emphasized purity restrictions, some of which were
related directly to the Temple cult, while the extensive definition of
menstruation concerned gender and sexual taboos. All these are asso-
ciated with the observance of sacredness and the elimination of nat-
ural negative forces (corpse, blood, etc.) from the realm of the
heavenly. The Pharisees’ moderate attitude towards these taboos
suggests their willingness to accept a state of relative pollution and
desecration.
In cases of sacrificial rituals, the Sadducees stressed the superior-
ity of the priests vis-à-vis lay Israelites. They objected to an equal
share in financing the daily sacrifices, regulated an annual priestly
consecration ritual, distinguished the high priestly ritual of incense
on the Day of Atonement, and objected to the presence of the laity
in the priestly court in the Temple. Their attitude derives from the
biblical conception in which the priests are holier than the laity.

31 In searching for such a theoretical guiding principle I was influence by Clifford

Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in his Interpretations of Cultures (New York,

1973), pp. 87–125, who defined religion as a system of symbols that formulate
certain conceptions or order of existence, unconscious as they may be. See also
J.Z. Smith, Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (Leiden, 1978),
pp. 67–206, who also proposed such a general model.
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136 eyal regev

Therefore, the Sadducees distinguished the role of the priests through

special rituals, and their exclusiveness was preserved. Considerable
involvement of non-priests in the cult would be regarded as violat-
ing the boundary of holiness by “a foreigner” (cf. Num. 3:10, 38;
18:7). On the other hand, it is well known that the rabbis dimin-
ished the role of the priests and gave prominence to non-priestly,
Rabbinic religious authority.32 The Sadducean emphasis on the priestly
share of the cereal offering and the tithes may also be viewed in
this light. Since it is holy, the priests are entitled to the cereal offering,
and since the tithe is a priestly due, it cannot be shared with non-
priests or remain stocked in a peasant’s barn.
In cases of physical punishments and death penalties derive from
viewing the offence as severe one. I suggest that the Sadducees were
stricter because they were more sensitive to the implication of the
offence as a sin against God. Like all previous cases, these also con-
cern the idea of holiness. The Pharisees were latent and merciful,
but they were also less committed to the aim of restoring social val-
ues, or, in our case, God’s “honor” or holiness that was violated by
the crime. The Sadducean “penal liturgy”33 of execution is a ritual
that externalized this restoration. In a sense, these cases have much
in common with those involving the Sabbath, impurity, and sacrifices.
My conclusion is that all the controversies discussed above con-
cern the behavioral approach to the holy.34 I therefore suggest that
it is possible to deduce from the Sadducean laws a world-view con-
cerning the holy and how it should be handled.35 This reconstructed
world-view would portray the Sadducean laws in a more theoretical
(“reductionist”) manner, in terms that are usually applied in cultural

32 See, for example, S.D. Fraade, “Shifting from Priestly to Non-Priestly Legal

Authority: A Comparison of the Damascus Document and the Midrash Sifra,” in

Dead Sea Discoveries 6 (1999), pp. 109–25.
33 For this term, see M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, trans.

A. Sheridan (Harmondsworth, 1977).

34 I am following the approach of W.R. Comstock, “A Behavioral Approach to

the Sacred: Category Formation in Religious Studies,” in Journal of the American

Academy of Religion 49 (1981), pp. 625–43.
35 My debt is to J. Milgrom, M. Weinfeld, I. Knohl, and B. Schwartz, who stud-

ied the nature of holiness in the so-called Priestly code. For my model of biblical
concepts of holiness, see E. Regev, Priestly Dynamic Holiness and Deuteronomistic
Static Holiness,” in Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001), pp. 243–61; idem, “Moshe Weinfeld
Reconsidered: Towards the Typology of Holiness in the Priestly Schools and
Deuteronomy,” in Shenaton. An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 14
(2004), pp. 51–74 (in Hebrew).
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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 137

anthropology. Moreover, it may provide an explanation for the views

of the Sadducees.
Obviously, the Pharisees’ leniency regarding taboos and restric-
tions related to the sacred did not derive from a secularized approach
to the holy. I think that they had a different conception of sacred-
ness from the Sadducees. The difference related to the quality or
substance of holiness. It is expressed in different degrees of sensitiv-
ity to violation or desecration of the Temple cult, the Sabbath, and
certain divine laws.
This measuring of the sensitivity towards the sacred in behavioral
terms of taboos and restrictions leads me to introduce the following
model. The Sadducees viewed the sacred (or the Divine Presence)
as vulnerable, more easily violated or desecrated and hence insisted
that certain measures be taken in order to protect or preserve it.
Their perception of holiness is as a dynamic entity that might be trans-
formed or perhaps even vanish if handled improperly. It may there-
fore be termed “dynamic holiness.”
In contrast, the Pharisees regarded holiness as relatively indifferent
to desecration and were less interested in its protection from pollu-
tion and desecration. Following the (later) Rabbinic approach to rit-
ual purity, the priesthood and sacrificial prescriptions, I suggest that
for the Pharisees and rabbis the holy was mainly a status, not an entity.
It was a designation, an etiquette, that God named for certain cul-
tic objects or activities that relate to the worship of God. Hence
holiness is static. It may be approached more overtly, by the non-
priests for example, and desecration is only an unwelcome change
of this status and not a real cosmic or natural event. In fact, I think
that for the Pharisees and rabbis, the priestly sacrificial system lacked
the inner meaning, the complex symbolism, that other Jews found—
not only the Sadducees but also the Qumran sectarians, Ben Sira
and Philo. For the rabbis, the Temple cult was a system of mitzvoth.
Its aim was to fulfill God’s commands and attain reward.36
In order to illustrate this characterization of the Pharisaic per-
ception of holiness, and also clarify my statements regarding the

36 E. Regev, “On the Differences in Religious Outlook between Qumranic and

Rabbinic Halakhah: Dynamic versus Static Sanctity,” in Tarbiz 72.1–2 (2002–2003),

pp. 113–32, here 128–29 (Hebrew); idem, “Reconstructing Qumranic and Rabbinic
World-Views: Dynamic Holiness vs. Static Holiness,” in S. Fraade and A. Shemesh,
ed., Rabbinical Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Eighth Inter-
national Symposium of the Orion Center (Leiden, forthcoming).
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138 eyal regev

Sadducees’ approach, I turn to later Rabbinic sources. An illumi-

nating example of the uniqueness of the Rabbinic cultic presuppositions
appears in M. Zeb. 3:1: “All unfit people who slaughtered—their
act of slaughter is valid. For an act of slaughter is valid when done
by non-priests, women, slaves, and unclean men, even in the case
of slaughtering Most Holy Things, on the condition that the unclean
people do not touch the flesh. Therefore they also invalidate by
improper intention (áîçùáä) in the act of slaughtering.”37 Here the
rabbis permit non-priests and even defiled persons to slaughter
sacrifices as long as they are not physically defiling the animals. The
rabbis disregard the apprehension of cultic hierarchy and ritual impu-
rity within the sacred realm that is typical of the Priestly Schools,
yet this halakhah does not contradict any explicit scriptural command.
The rabbis, however, are more concerned with a cognitive category
of intention that is not specified in the Pentateuch nor in of the
Qumran documents.38
Two later aggadic sources reveal how the rabbis (apparently, not
all of then) viewed the sacrificial system and purity laws not as inspir-
ing symbolic systems but as a complex of mitzvoth, divine commands,
that are not necessarily supposed to make sense. Rabbinic midrash
attributes to Yohanan b. Zakkai a statement concerning the ratio-
nale of the red heifer ritual:
By your lives, I swear: the corpse does not have the power by itself,
nor does the mixture of ash and water have the power by itself, to
cleanse. The truth is that the purifying power of the Red Heifer is a
decree of the Holy One. The Holy One said: ‘I have set it down as
a statute, I have issued it as a decree. You are not permitted to trans-
gress My decree. This is the statute of the Torah’ (Num. 19:1).39

37 Translation follows J. Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven

and London, 1988), p. 703, with slight changes. For slaughtering, see M. Zeb. 3:1.
For the people invalid for sacrificial offering, see M. Zeb. 2:1.
38 For a general discussion of the emphasis on intention in Rabbinic Halakhah,

see Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago and London, 1981), pp.
270–83; H. Eilberg-Schawrtz, Human Will in Judaism: The Mishnah’s Philosophy of
Intention (Atlanta, 1986).
39 Pesikta de-rav Kahana, piska 4 (Parah), trans. W.G. Braude and I.J. Kapstein,

Pesikta de-Rab Kahana (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 82–83. See also the parallels in
Tanhuma, hukat 26; Psikata Rabbati 14 (Ish Shalom ed. 65a). Compare B. Yom
67b. Interestingly, the core of Yohanan ben Zakkai’s saying is already embedded
in Sifra Akhrei Mot 13:10 (ed. Weiss, 86a).
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the sadducees, the pharisees, and the sacred 139

Yohanan b. Zakkai does not even try to find an explanation for the
so-called paradox of the red cow, namely, that the ashes that purify
the corpse-contaminated-person defile the one who sprinkles them.
He thinks that there is nothing to understand here, and there is no
explanation for this paradox. The importance of this provocative say-
ing is that the greatest biblical cleansing ritual has no inner logic at
all. One may presume that other rabbis had a similar approach con-
cerning additional cultic practices.
A saying of Levi is even anti-sacrificial:
Because the people of Israel were passionate followers after idolatry in
Egypt and used to bring their sacrifices to the satyrs . . . and they used
to offer their sacrifices in the forbidden high places, on account of
which punishments used to come upon them, the Holy One, blessed
be He, said: ‘Let them offer their sacrifices to me at all times in the
Tent of Meeting, and thus they will be separated from idolatry and
be saved from punishment.’40
Here Levi views the Temple cult as circumstantial and believes that
the ideal and indigenous Judaism would have existed without any
sacrifices.41
The model presented here leads to further understanding of the
competing social perceptions regarding the Temple cult and the idea
of the holy, those of the Sadducean priest and the Pharisaic or
Rabbinic sage. The Sadducees’ cultural construction of reality is built
upon that of the so-called Priestly Code: the priestly system and the
Temple cult are the main means of linkage between Israel and God.
The priests maintain and lead this system. The Rabbinic cultural
construction of reality (already established by the Pharisees) is built
upon a broader concept of Torah and commandments, a system of
interpretation that is led by the sage. According to their world-view,

40 Leviticus Rabbah 22.8, trans. J.J. Slotki, in Midrash Rabbah, Leviticus (London,

1939), pp. 286f.

41 This idea was latter developed by Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed 3:32, (see

also 3:46). Cf. W.Z. Harvey, “Les sacrifices, la prire, et l’tude chez Mamonide,” in
REJ 154 (1995), pp. 97–103. Although this saying is documented in the relatively
late Leviticus Rabbah, the use of the same argument by Justin Martyr and the
Pseudo-Clementines (ca. 150–200 C.E.) is significant. Local Christian circles prob-
ably used a traditional Jewish or Rabbinic idea in order to refute the Jewish belief
in the rebuilding of the Temple. See D. Rokeah, Justin Martyr and the Jews ( Jerusalem,
1998), pp. 48–50 (in Hebrew). Thus, it should be concluded the core of the say-
ing attributed to Levi is a later midrashic compilation circulated among Jews, prob-
ably in Rabbinic circles, well before the days of Levi.
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140 eyal regev

access to and closeness to God and fulfillment of His will is open

to any Jew through human religious intention and intellectual efforts.
Thus, the Pharisaic-Rabbinic social system is individualistic in com-
parison to the hierarchic one of the Sadducees.
The ideas briefly presented here may be elaborated in light of
sociological and anthropological models and comparative evidence
from other cultures. This approach also has implications for under-
standing the historical development of the two parties. For present
purposes, I hope that I was able to demonstrate that there is a coher-
ent meaning behind the laws of the Sadducees and the Pharisees
and that the struggle between them was not merely a matter of pol-
itics. Behind very specific halakhic controversies are hidden traces of
competing cosmologies and cultural paradigms that lay at the base
of the development of ancient Judaism.