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First, they cut down the number of sacred books and admitted only the five books of Moses, rejecting all the rest: historical, prophetic, and hagiographic alike. Rabbi Elias Levi,
[margin: Chapter 17. Second way.]
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in the Tishbi, under the word Sadok, says this; so does Tertullian, Prescription, chapter 49, after saying that Dositheus rejected the prophets: “The Sadducees, arising from the root of this error, dared to add other things also to this heresy, concerning which later.” Origen, book 1 Against Celsus and tractate 21 on Matthew; Saint Jerome on Matthew 22; and the Venerable Bede likewise say this. For that reason they say that Christ the Lord, although several other and clearer Scriptures were available, wished to use against them only that passage from Exodus 3: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” For, as Saint Jerome says in the cited passage, “the Sadducees received only the five books of Moses, rejecting the oracles of the prophets. Therefore it was foolish to bring forward testimonies from a source whose authority they did not follow.”
Origen, book 3 on the Epistle to the Romans: “The Samaritans make themselves strangers to the letters of God by repudiating the prophets.” In this matter of denying certain books of sacred Scripture and expunging them from the sacred canon, today’s innovators are so similar to them that Calvin writes on Matthew 22 that the Sadducees rejected the books of the prophets in the same way that he and his party reject Ecclesiasticus and Maccabees.
Saint Epiphanius, before heresy 9 and within it, gives some occasion for why this was done by them. Moreover, the Samaritans, to whom Sadoc fled, mutilated those same five books of Moses by three further letters whenever they occurred — ע, ח, ה [so the errata leaf; the text itself misprints them] —
[margin: From the sacred Bible the Sadducees cast out certain books, just as Lutherans and Calvinists do today.]
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the first of these is, as it were, in the middle of Abraham; the second in his son Isaac; the third in his grandson Jacob. Benjamin of Tudela noted this on page 40 of his Itinerary, saying that in place of those letters they substitute aleph, that is, the light breathing.
Moreover, they also corrupted the very first verse of Moses. Where it is written, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth,” they themselves read, “In the beginning Asima created heaven and earth,” because Asima was the idol of the Emathites, as Rabbi Abenezra reported concerning them at the beginning of the book of Esther.
Scaliger, however, in book 7 of On the Correction of Time, denies these latter two claims, and says that they are Jewish slander against the Samaritans. First, because Postellus says otherwise. Second, because they would rather have said, “In the beginning Nergel created heaven and earth,” since Nergel was the idol of the Cuthaeans, 4 Kings chapter 18, not Asima. But first, it could have happened that in Benjamin’s time the Samaritans rejected those three letters, while in our century, in which Postellus lived, they receive them. Second, since the Cuthaeans had several idols, they could have had some reason to put one rather than another.
Second, they admitted no tradition of the elders or interpretation of the written law derived from Moses, the prophets, and other doctors. Elias in the Tishbi says: “Antigonus, a man of Socho, had two disciples,
[margin: Samaritans change certain sacred letters. They also corrupt certain words. The Sadducees despised doctors’ interpretations in the sacred letters.]
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one of whom was named Zadok, and the other Baiethos. Defecting from their teacher, they began among evil men to deny the law handed down orally. Nor did they trust anything except what was written in the law.” For this reason, as Elias reports in the same place and later under the word karah, they were called Caraim.
Hence comes that Jewish distinction: some are Rabbanim, that is, Rabbinists or master-followers, who admit the statutes, traditions, and interpretations of the rabbis. These are called in Arabic Damascenes or Syrians, and in Hebrew Israelites and Habaeans. Others are called in Arabic Greeks and in Hebrew Babylonians. Still others are Caraim, that is, lectionaries, scripturaries, or textualists, about whom I already spoke above, book 1, chapter 5. Scaliger, in book 2 of On the Correction of Time, makes these twofold: some acknowledge only the Pentateuch; others acknowledge other books of the Bible as well, but, as I said, reject every tradition and exposition of the doctors.
Origen, book 3 of the commentary on Romans, after saying the things I cited above about the Samaritans, continues: “But I would not say that the oracles of God have been entrusted to heretics, who speak iniquity on high, who by their impiety divide the unity of the Godhead, and who separate the law from the Gospels, merely because divine volumes seem to be read among them. Rather, because they understand nothing spiritual in them, nothing worthy of God, I would say that among them there is only the letter which kills.”
Saint Hilary, book 2 On the Trinity: “Heresy is not from Scripture but from understanding; the sense, not the word, becomes the crime.” Saint Augustine,
[margin: The heretics of our own time despise the same things.]
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letter 222 to Consentius: “Love understanding greatly; for even the sacred Scriptures themselves, which commend faith in great matters before understanding, cannot be useful to you unless you understand them rightly. For all heretics who receive them as authoritative seem to themselves to follow them, although they rather follow their own errors; and for this reason they are heretics not because they despise the Scriptures, but because they do not understand them.”
Third, they believed that after this life there was no reward for good works and no punishment for bad ones. Josephus, book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12, says that they remove punishments and honors in Hades. The same is also clear from the preceding chapter and from the following items in this chapter. Hence the Apostle said in Acts 23:6, “Concerning hope,” that is, the hope by which rewards are expected, “and the resurrection of the dead I am judged.”
Fourth, they acknowledged no resurrection of bodies: Matthew 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27; Acts 23:8.
Fifth, they said that human souls perish together with their bodies and vanish into nothing. Saint Jerome on Matthew 22; Josephus, book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12, and book 18 of Antiquities, chapter 2. This is also relevant to what I noted in book 2 of Maccabees, chapter 12, against the objection of heretics. For surely against those men, whose mad faction had arisen nearly in those times,
[margin: No reward or punishment after this life. Resurrection denied. The perpetuity of souls also denied.]
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the excellent and most wise judgment of Judas Maccabaeus was directed, as the author of that book noted in that passage.
Sixth, they denied angels, Acts 23:8. Calvin says there, and in book 1 of the Institutes, chapter 14, section 9, that this heresy is sprouting up again today, just as six hundred others are sprouting up again; and Beza will be cited in the following doctrine.
Seventh, they denied spirit, in the same passage of Acts. Some, in Saint Chrysostom’s treatment of that passage, take “spirit” for angel. But in so brief a narration of doctrines, how could angels be signified by two names? And would this be a sufficiently suitable distinction of denials: “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit”? Abulensis, on Matthew 22, question 127, understands it as soul, whose immortality the Sadducees denied, as I said above, because this is often called pneuma or spirit. But either they would be denying that human beings are furnished with a soul, if they denied soul simply, or it would have to be added and understood: after death, namely that then the human spirit does not survive.
In the cited passage of Abulensis, it is said that perhaps demon can be understood. But this is contained under angel, and there is no reason why it should be called spirit, and indeed without any addition, rather than a good angel. Therefore spirit of God is better understood, as it was understood by Philastrius in the heresy of Dositheus and by Saint Epiphanius when he says, in heresy 14, that “they did not know the Holy Spirit,”
[margin: Angels also denied. How spirit is denied by them: 1, angel; 2, soul; 3, demon; 4, divine Spirit.]
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and as is indicated by verse 9 in the same place, when it is said, “What if a spirit has spoken to him, or an angel?”
But some supporter of the first interpretation may say that in that passage only two things seem to be mentioned which those men denied, because it is added as if about two things: “But the Pharisees confess both.” I answer that amphotera, “both,” can be said of several things when those several things can be brought back to two kinds, as Budaeus noted in his commentaries on the Greek language. So too Cicero in the second Catilinarian says, “I place both kinds, citizens, in the same class of plunderers and robbers.” Therefore, because there is one kind, as it were, of spirits both divine and angelic or human, though the name is extended more broadly than to be included within the logical categories, Saint Luke said amphotera. And Saint Chrysostom, in the same passage, notes that the word can be taken of several things; the Arabic and Syriac texts also indicate this, for they translate, “But the Pharisees confess all these things.”
Beza notes there that the Libertines are even today in this heresy, so that they deny the subsistence of angels and souls.
Eighth, they said that God neither does evil nor foresees it. The former is most true; the latter most false. Josephus, book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12.
Ninth, they were also troublesome to Christ the Lord: by asking a sign from him, Matthew 16; Matthew
[margin: Objection and response. The sign-request citation appears to be printed as Matthew 26, but the episode is Matthew 16:1.]
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22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27; by testing him with captious questions, Matthew 22; by being indignant that his disciples were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead, Acts 4:1-2; by seizing them and casting them into prison, Acts 5:17-18; and by bringing them to judgment, Acts 23:6.
Tenth, Philastrius says that they proclaimed that one should live according to the flesh, and that the body should be circumcised and baptized.
Eleventh, the same Philastrius says, “They followed Epicurean madness rather than the rights of the divine law.” Indeed, from the preceding doctrines, what else could be born except pure Epicureanism? Once the resurrection of bodies is removed, the immortality of souls denied, and the recompense of rewards and punishments mocked, what remains but a beastly life and that old line, “Eat, drink; after death there is no pleasure”? See Chrysostom on Matthew 22, and Abulensis, question 126. Hence in chapter 2 of Pirke Aboth, Rabbi Eleazar says: “Apply yourself to learning the law, so that you may have something to answer the Epicurean. And consider before whom you labor, and who is the Lord of your work, who will repay you a reward for your work.”
Twelfth, Josephus, book 13, chapter 9, says that the Sadducees remove fate, holding that nothing happens by it, and that human affairs do not receive their completion according to it. Rather, they place all things in ourselves, so that we ourselves become the causes of good things, and receive worse things through our own folly. There are similar things in book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12.
[margin: Sadducees as Epicureans. Sadducees remove fate.]
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Thirteenth, the same Josephus, book 18, chapter 2, says that this doctrine of the Sadducees reaches only a few men, though these are among the first in dignities. They do almost nothing by themselves, so to speak. When they come into offices, unwillingly and by necessity they yield to what the Pharisee says, because otherwise they would not be tolerable to the multitude.
Fourteenth, the same Josephus, book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12, says that the behavior of the Sadducees toward one another is harsher and that their dealings with those like themselves are savage, as with foreigners. In book 20, and Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2, chapter 23, say: “The Sadducees are, more than the other Jews, cruel and harsh in punishments.”