The Tzedukim privileged the written Torah and resisted expanding ancestral law through oral interpretive chains. Authority was anchored in text, priestly custody, and temple practice.

This made them opponents of Perushim legal traditions, which preserved rulings, customs, and interpretive methods beyond the written text alone.

Sources: Josephus; later accounts of Tzedukim legal disputes; temple-centered legal memory.

The phrase does not mean the Tzedukim had no customs or interpretations. Every legal community interprets. The point is that they rejected the Perushim claim that transmitted rulings carried binding authority alongside the written text. This had practical consequences for purity, inheritance, Sabbath boundaries, penal law, festival timing, and priestly procedure. On the map it functions as the legal foundation for the Tzedukim cluster: their authority is textual and priestly, not based on portable chains of teachers and household-level practice.