Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2019 12:51 pm
Solomon Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries, Volume 1, page xxi: The term Zadokites naturally suggests the Sadducees; but the present state of knowledge of the latter's doctrines and practices does not offer enough points of resemblance to justify the identification of them with our Sect.
And our main sources of information on the Sadducees happens to be sources absolutely hostile to the Sadducees. I've been saying the same thing with regards to the Marcionites. We've got to just stop 'cutting and pasting' source material and think critically about the source material. And the garbage about 'Zadok' it's not possible that a community of the same would be founded given that the Sadducees already existed. This isn't fucking difficult. Schiffman's arguments are the best regarding the beliefs of the community. No question in my mind. He's a nice guy too.
Josephus doesn't seem hostile to the Sadducees to me, but rather fairly neutral, and he says he had even joined them when he was younger. And that he doesn't give them a lot of space in his writings applies to the Pharisees too, which even Baumbach notes (pg. 174):
Yet, it is surprising that, with his individual presentations [of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes], he begins with the Essenes
and describes their doctrine and life in forty-three paragraphs ... thereafter devoting
only two paragraphs each to the Pharisees ... and Sadducees ... together with a single paragraph on both the Pharisees and Sadducees together. The author's sympathy in this survey is so clearly with the Essenes ...
https://books.google.com/books?id=lV70m ... ees&f=true
You could thus argue in this respect that Josephus was hostile to the Pharisees too (even though he
was one, just as he had once been a Sadducee).
But given that he was a Pharisee and had once been a Sadducee and says that the Sadducees deferred to the rulings of the Pharisees, I don't get the impression that he had any issue with them. The worst thing he seems to say about them is that they argued with each other a lot (as Baumback notes), which makes sense considering that they did not have an oral Torah (i.e., an agreed upon body of interpretation).
War 2.8.14:
... but the behavior of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them.
And the DSS community called themselves lots of things besides "sons of Zadok," and only call themselves the latter
esoterically, in keeping with their unique method of interpretation, and even
alter the underlying OT verse by adding vavs to it and making a wordplay on "Levites" to make the original one thing ("the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok") into
three things (as noted by your favorite scholar Eisenman). Thus they don't mean that they are
literally sons of Zadok, just like the Levites aren't literally Levites and the priests aren't literally priests.
Ezek. 44:15:
But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord God.
Cf., Damascus Document col. 3 and 4:
As God ordained for them by the hand of the Prophet Ezekiel, saying, "The Priests and the Levites and the Sons of Zadok, who kept the service of the Temple, when the Sons of Israel strayed from me, will offer me the fat and blood." The Priests are the Penitents of Israel, who went out from the Land of Judah and the joiners [nilvim, playing on "Levites" and arguably meaning Gentiles] with them. And the Sons of Zadok are the Elect of Israel, called by name, who will stand up [which arguably means be resurrected, in keeping with Ezekiel's resurrected bones passage, which uses a form of the same word in 37:10, and other parts of the Damascus Document and contrary to what all sources say about the Sadducees] in the Last Days.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.