(printed p. 160 — Book II)
We may take Sadducees either properly, as those who have not been initiated into the Christian rites, or figuratively. Concerning Sadducees of the former kind Genebrard, book 2, gives three answers.
First, he says that the heresy of the Sadducees was very numerous down to the destruction of Jerusalem made by Titus and to the Roman captivity of the Jews.
Second, he says that almost seven hundred years later the same heresy was again renewed among the Jewish people, though they were dispersed and afflicted by various exiles,
[margin: Luke 20. Response 1: properly so-called Sadducees.]
(printed p. 161)
by a certain Rabbi Anan and his son Saul. Anan wished, like Dositheus mentioned above, to be Gaon, that is, he desired to be distinguished by the title and dignity of a Talmudic doctorate. For whoever rose to that rank was at that time called Gaon, that is, illustrious and eminent. But when he did not obtain what he desired, he boiled over with anger and revived the old fable of the Sadducees about divine books, their interpretations, and ancestral traditions. He professed that he and his followers accepted only those books which he knew certainly had come from God, and that he adhered to the word of God alone, not to the explanations of any doctors.
Rabbi Abraham, in the cited Kabbalah, argues repeatedly against him and against another leading man of the same sect, Carcasnaeus. After Rabbi Abraham had recounted the miracle by which Jaddus, or Simon the Just, mentioned elsewhere, appeased and disarmed Alexander the Great when he was angry and armed, he says: “That remarkable miracle was accomplished through Simon the Just, such as did not happen to Anan or Carcasnaeus, the leaders of the heretical Sereans.”
Third, John Leo testifies in his Description of Africa that some Sadducees still exist today, but that they are called by the name Caraim. Elias discusses this under the words Sadok and Kara. I have already previously produced the words of Leo and others concerning them.
As for those who are Sadducees by metaphor, Maldonatus treats them on Matthew chapters 3 and 22.
[margin: Book 2, chapter 19. Maccabean harmony, Josephus, Origen, Jerome on Daniel 9, Nicephorus, and related references. Response 2: metaphorical Sadducees.]
(printed p. 162)