Sources: Josephus, Antiquities 13.5.9, 18.1.4; War 2.8.14; Matthew 22:23–33; Acts 23:6–8; Talmud Bavli Avot de-Rabbi Natan, Yoma.

The Tzedukim (Sadducees, probably from Zadok — the high priest of David’s era) were the priestly aristocratic party of Second Temple Judaism, controlling the Temple and the high priesthood. Their defining theological positions: (1) No resurrection of the dead — they accepted only the written Torah and found no clear support for resurrection there (the Pharisees derived it from Daniel 12:2 and allegorical readings); (2) No oral Torah — the Pharisees’ oral tradition was an innovation they rejected; (3) No divine providence in individual affairs — humans have free will, God does not intervene in individual lives (Josephus); (4) Temple worship as the center of religious life. Jesus’s confrontation with Sadducees over resurrection (Matt 22:23–33) — where they present the “seven brothers and one wife” problem — shows the theological stakes. After 70 AD the Sadducees disappear: without the Temple, their institutional base and theological raison d’être are gone. The Pharisees, whose portable Torah-based piety required no Temple, survive and become rabbinic Judaism. The Sadducee-Pharisee debate is the direct ancestor of later Christian disputes about scripture alone vs tradition.