(printed p. 139 — Book II)
The second part of this second book was assigned at its beginning to the Sadducees. As I did with the Pharisees, I begin from their name, for which a twofold etymology is brought forward not badly.
One etymology comes from the appellative name Tsedek, which signifies justice. Saint Epiphanius, heresy 14, says that they call themselves Sadducees, as though by an appellation fitted to justice, for sedek is interpreted as justice. Saint Jerome hints at the same thing on Matthew 22; so does Abulensis on the same chapter, question 123; and Melanchthon, a refugee from the Christian faith and justice, says in book 2 of the Chronicle: “The Zadducees named themselves from Zaddic, which means just, as if they were named the just or justiciaries.”
The other etymology comes from Tsadok, the first founder of this sect. So Philastrius; Elias in the Tishbi; Rabbi Jacob in the preface to the book En; the author of Cozri; Rabbi Abraham Levi in the historical Kabbalah; Rabbi Nathan
[margin: Whence the Sadducees are named. Opinions 1 and 2.]
(printed p. 140)
in his commentary on Pirke Aboth; and, among more recent Christians, many Catholics as well as innovators. Who this Tsadok was, and how he framed this sect, I shall say not much later. For now I shall make this note concerning the spelling.
The first Hebrew letter is the one which, as I said earlier from Saint Jerome’s preface to Amos, is sometimes rightly represented by S. And so our evangelists, Saint Matthew chapters 3, 16, and 22; Saint Mark chapter 12; Saint Luke chapter 20; and Acts chapters 4, 5, and 23, and after them all Greeks and Latins, call and write them Sadducees.
Yet the innovators Junius and Tremellius, so that they might introduce something new wherever there is even the smallest occasion, call them Zaducaeans, as Melanchthon had also said a little earlier. For although that letter is rightly expressed also by Z, as in Nazareth and Nazarene, which is done by those same evangelists, why abandon the other form, which is also good and customary? Likewise, to put a single d in the middle is certainly allowed by the Hebrew, and it is sometimes read in the Greek Josephus; Drusius holds to it tooth and nail, with no opposition from me. But since those same evangelists and other ancient writers place two ds, why should we depart even a fingernail’s breadth from them?
Nevertheless those same innovators write Tsaducaeans in their note on Mark 7. Therefore another innovator, Hugh Broughton, rightly gives them the rod in his English consensus, together with his Latin interpreter and the minister of the Frankfurt Calvinists,
[margin: How to write “Sadducees.”]
(printed p. 141)
Isaac Genius, who says: “I write Sadduc in imitation of the seventy interpreters in some passages, and I do this to vindicate the Scripture of the New Testament from the criticism of a certain learned critic,” the Calvinist Junius.