Supposing, however, that the Sadducees accepted the Prophets and Hagiographa, as these four arguments suggest, why do Hippolytus and Origen say that they did not? No certain answer can be given, but the likeliest seems to be that the Sadducees had joined up with the Samaritans in the second or early third century ad, not long before the time of Hippolytus and Origen, and as a result had adopted, or had had attributed to them, Samaritan tenets which they had not previously held. The two groups had long held certain tenets in common, suggesting influence from one side or the other at a formative period in the past,127 so, when the Sadducees lost their only centre of influence among the Jews through the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, it was reasonable that they should seek a home among the Samaritans. In the rabbinical literature, indications of Sadducean activity die out in the mid second century,128 so the merger would have taken place between then and the writing of Hippolytus’s Refutation, a few decades into the third century. Actual evidence for this hypothesis is not entirely lacking. For Hippolytus does not stop short at attributing Samaritan beliefs to the Sadducees—he completely identifies the two groups, giving no separate account of the Samaritans, and stating that the Sadducees live mainly round Samaria (Refutation 9.29). Similarly, pseudo-Tertullian’s third-century appendix to Tertullian’s De Praescriptione 45 describes the Sadducees as an offshoot of the Dositheans, the main divergent sect among the Samaritans, perhaps indicating that by his time they were a Samaritan rather than a Jewish group; and other Fathers, such as Epiphanius, repeat this. Nor is Samaritan testimony wanting on the matter, for in the Samaritan chronicle written in Arabic in the fourteenth century by Abu al-Fath it is stated that the subdivisions of the Dositheans included some who pretended to be Sadducees, and also an elder named Zadok (the name from which the title ‘Sadducee’ is usually derived).129
It seems, therefore, that for as long as the Temple stood there was no essential disagreement among the different Jewish schools about the public canon. And if that was so, the very rivalry between the schools must have been one of the main factors responsible. This rivalry, between Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, had first become important around the time of the high-priesthood of Jonathan Maccabaeus (152–142 bc), as a statement to that effect by Josephus (Ant. 13.5.9, or 13.171–3) and other evidence indicates.130 From then onwards it is likely, in view of the intensity of the rivalry, that the canon remained unaltered until after the suppression of the first Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple in ad 70, as a result of which events the Essenes and Sadducees lost most of their influence, and the Temple Scriptures were dispersed. Any literature, consequently, which is referred to as canonical by Pharisaic or Essene writers, or both, during the period of just over two centuries preceding the destruction, was probably canonical throughout the period for all three schools; and though, when the period had ended, it would have been possible for the triumphant Pharisees to have added further books to the canon, they would hardly have thought such action appropriate after the canon had remained unchanged for so long. Both their traditionalism and their continuing veneration for the Temple would have restrained them.131 Certainly, they are not likely to have celebrated their triumph by making concessions to Essenism, and it follows that any book included in the later form of the Pharisaic canon, which is also reckoned canonical by Essene writers of the Temple period, is a probable part of the common heritage of both schools, dating back to the time before their longstanding rivalry began.132
The Jewish Cano
Beckwith, Roger T.: The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism. London : SPCK, 1985, S. 86
