Were the saducees right?

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I read somewhere that the resurrection came from zoroastrianism? is this true?
 
The resurrection was and is a belief among most Orthodox Jews, from ancient times until now. The Sadduccees were the exception.

Take a look at the ‘Principles of Faith’ composed by the Jewish philosopher Maimonides:

"13 Principles of Faith:
Code: 
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no unity in any manner like His, and that He alone is our God, who was, and is, and will be.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, has no body, and that He is free from all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.
I believe with perfect faith that to the Creator, Blessed be His Name, and to Him alone, it is right to pray, and that it is not right to pray to any being besides Him.
I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.
I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, was true, and that he was the chief of the prophets, both those who preceded him and those who followed him.
I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah that is now in our possession is the same that was given to Moses our teacher, peace be upon him.
I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be exchanged, and that there will never be any other Torah from the Creator, Blessed be His Name.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, knows all the deeds of human beings and all their thoughts, as it is written, "Who fashioned the hearts of them all, Who comprehends all their actions" (Psalms 33:15).
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, rewards those who keep His commandments and punishes those that transgress them.
I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.
I believe with perfect faith that there will be a revival of the dead at the time when it shall please the Creator, Blessed be His name, and His mention shall be exalted for ever and ever."
Note: 1) the similarity to quite a few of the beliefs of Christians; and 2) particularly, the last line. “There will be a revival of the dead…”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. 🙂
 
well, I read it in a book by Denish D’sousa, who, as one would expect, was trying to DEFEND christianity. he asserted that the resurrection was not an original part of Judeism, so I don’t get it, is it true? If the ressurrection isn’t part of Jewish faith originally, how is it part of Christian fatih?
 
I generally understand that the Sadduccees accepted only the Torah as inspired and normative for Judaism.

They basically disappeared after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. because their doctrines could not survive without a temple.

The Pharisees were much more liberal and loose in interpretation and were a better fit for the problems that arouse during the captivities and later during reconstruction.

The Pharisees were mixed groups of Jews, priests, and levites, and lay people, as I seem to recall
 
I read in the catholic encyclopedia that the resurrection is mentioned in job. I also understand that job is one of the older books of the old testament. Does this help the argument that the resurrection is a native jewish idea?
 
Beg to differ on several points
Crumpy said:
I generally understand that the Sadduccees accepted only the Torah as inspired and normative for Judaism.

True, but they were strict interpreters, and did not believe in an afterlife. All religious Jews had to follow the Torah. In Jesus’ time, along with the Sadducees were the Pharisees and the mystical Essenes.

They basically disappeared after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. because their doctrines could not survive without a temple.

Not so sure about that. As I said, they followed the Torah strictly, but they were great businessmen, not averse to making money, and ran the Temple festivals spendidly. Both Caiaphas and Ananus were of the Sadducee sect. After the Jewish revolt was crushed, the Roman’s outlawed the high Priesthood and many of their rituals, including animal sacrifice. That did the Sadducee in as much as anything.

The Pharisees were much more liberal and loose in interpretation and were a better fit for the problems that arouse during the captivities and later during reconstruction.

***Wrong. The Pharisees were much more strict in the interpretation of Jewish law, with their own set of laws and sub-laws amplifying and expounding on Jewish law as written in the Torah. ***

The Pharisees were mixed groups of Jews, priests, and levites, and lay people, as I seem to recall
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***They were Jewish Priests, and not laymen.
Source Hagan “Year of the Passover” (all this from Josephus, of course, in various places in his works)
 
GIR said:
well, I read it in a book by Denish D’sousa, who, as one would expect, was trying to DEFEND christianity. he asserted that the resurrection was not an original part of Judeism, so I don’t get it, is it true?
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As described in the book of Hebrews, Abraham had to have faith in the Resurrection. Otherwise, how could he sacrifice the very son that God promised descendants through.

And you are right, Job is one of the older books of the Bible. But that doesn’t mean it reflected pure Jewish teaching of the time. Jewish teaching, I would say, developed because of books like Job, but only gradually.

The teaching of the Resurrection was a gradual development in Jewish thinking. It wasn’t spelled out in the Torah, which is why the Sadducees didn’t buy into it.
GIR said:
If the ressurrection isn’t part of Jewish faith originally, how is it part of Christian fatih?
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I don’t understand this question. Its part of Christian Faith because Jesus taught the Resurrection, irregardless of what the Sadducees or the Pharisees thought.
 
steve53 said:
Wrong. The Pharisees were much more strict in the interpretation of Jewish law, with their own set of laws and sub-laws amplifying and expounding on Jewish law as written in the Torah.
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Well, the Sadducees are stricter in the sense that they follow literally and conservatively what is written and only what is written, without the Pharisaic system of ‘oral law’, which could allow for a more lenient interpretation of the harsher parts of the Law. The Essenes and their exegesis are even stricter.
 
patrick457 said:
Well, the Sadducees are stricter in the sense that they follow literally and conservatively what is written and only what is written, without the Pharisaic system of ‘oral law’, which could allow for a more lenient interpretation of the harsher parts of the Law. The Essenes and their exegesis are even stricter.
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Patrick, I doubt that the Pharisees made the laws in the Torah any less strict. That would have gotten them stoned! They likely focused on gray areas of the law- which were many and varied over the centuries since the Torah was set down.

The Sadducees certainly followed the law to the letter, but then cut corners or were unconcerned with the gray areas that so concerned the Pharisees. After all, the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, nor the immortality of the soul. Many amassed great wealth, like Ananus, and were not above collaborating with the Romans.

Don’t worry, the Sadducees had a good time in those days…🙂
 
steve53 said:
Patrick, I doubt that the Pharisees made the laws in the Torah any less strict. That would have gotten them stoned! They likely focused on gray areas of the law- which were many and varied over the centuries since the Torah was set down.

The Sadducees certainly followed the law to the letter, but then cut corners or were unconcerned with the gray areas that so concerned the Pharisees. After all, the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, nor the immortality of the soul. Many amassed great wealth, like Ananus, and were not above collaborating with the Romans.

Don’t worry, the Sadducees had a good time in those days…🙂
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No, I’m not sure this is correct. What the Pharisees did, for example, was to take many of the purification laws that only applied to the Levitical priesthood, and they bound them to all Jews. All those questions that the Pharisees and the Scribes brought to Jesus about “why don’t your disciples cleanse themselves before eating?” were laws that only applied to the priests in the Old Testament.

That’s what our good Patrick meant when he said the Pharisees were more strict.

Come to think of it, the Pharisees wanted nothing to do with the Romans. The Sadducees worked with the Romans, which is why they had so much authority in the Jewish Sanhedrin.
 
Actually, this is the quote from Patrick I was responding to:

*Well, the Sadducees are stricter in the sense that they follow literally and conservatively what is written and only what is written, without the Pharisaic system of ‘oral law’, which could allow for a more lenient interpretation of the harsher parts of the Law. *

I don’t think the evidence supports the “leniency” part of that.

To be considered Jewish, and certainly to be considered a Jewish Priest, the Torah had to be adhered to. All three priestly sects did so in Jesus’ time- the Sadducee, the Pharisee, and the Essene. Of course, a big controversy in the early Christian times was that if Christianity was a “true” offshoot of Judaism. If that were the case, then all new converts had to be circumcised as a matter of course. Paul didn’t think so, but that is another topic.

The Pharisees were challenging Jesus just to show him, and the people who were watching, that Jesus was no Priest. He was Rabbi, or a teacher, but anyone with the proper motivation could assume the role of Rabbi. Whether anyone would listen to them or not is another question. Certainly, in the Jewish Synagogue ceremonies of the time, a period of the service was set aside for comments or observations from any male Jew.

The Essenes were an especially interesting bunch. Josephus argues that Pythagoras patterned his own sect after these most-ancient Essenes, after visiting them in the Carmel region of the Galilee. True ascetics, they believed that the divine existed in every man, along with the natural. To know god, one had to deny the natural as much as was consistent with life, in order to reveal the divine within themselves. Not believing in animal sacrifice, the Essenes were rarely seen at the Temple, and so are not mentioned in the NT. Hagan devotes an interesting chapter to them in “Passover.” Only about four thousand existed in Jesus’ time.

But I ramble…
 
GIR said:
I read somewhere that the resurrection came from zoroastrianism? is this true?
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NotWorthy said:
The teaching of the Resurrection was a gradual development in Jewish thinking. It wasn’t spelled out in the Torah, which is why the Sadducees didn’t buy into it.
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Indeed, NotWorthy, this is it “in a nutshell”. I’ll just elaborate a bit more in support of what you posted. The resurrection of the body is not expressly found in the Torah, nor is any developed notion of an afterlife for humans (the closest thing that the Torah has in this regard is the mysterious reference made specifically concerning Enoch in Genesis, the man who did not die by was taken up by God). As a side note, the earliest concept of an “afterlife” among the Jews was a shadowy existence, devoid of any purpose or ability, even the ability to praise God. We see this sentiment, for example, in some of the Psalms.

Hence, the beliefs of the Sadducees were not influenced by zoroastrianism.

Because they only used the Torah as the foundation of doctrine, the Sadducess did not believe in resurrection nor any afterlife to look forward to.

And (pun alert) this explains why they were “sad, you see.”
 
well, my question was about Jews who were not Saduccees borrowing the beliefs
 
EricFilmer said:
Indeed, NotWorthy, this is it “in a nutshell”. I’ll just elaborate a bit more in support of what you posted. The resurrection of the body is **not expressly found in the Torah, nor is any developed notion of an afterlife **
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maybe not *developed, *but it is in the Torah,

Matt 22: (to the Sadducees)
31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

not that the Pharisees and Sadducees understood this verse in the Torah
Jesus quoting Ex 3:6

Exodus 3:6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

not “I was” the God of Abe but “I am” his God, therefore Abe must be alive somewhere in an afterlife. Not really developed because noone saw anything having to do with the afterlife in this verse until Jesus pointed it out (I think). The Sadducees were “put to silence” by Jesus’ reply.
 
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