Tag Archives: Sadducees

Matthew 22: 23-33 One Bride for Seven Brothers

By James Tissot – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007, 00.159.143_PS2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10195994

Matthew 22: 23-33

Parallels Mark 12: 18-27, Luke 20: 27-40

²³ The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection;and they asked him a question, saying, ²⁴ “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ ²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. ²⁶ The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. ²⁷ Last of all, the woman herself died. ²⁸ In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.”

²⁹ Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. ³⁰ For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angelsin heaven. ³¹ And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ³² ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” ³³ And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.

The second conflict story in this pattern of three shifts opponents to the Sadducees. This is the second time in Matthew the Sadducees are mentioned as challenging Jesus, previously they were mentioned with the Pharisees in Matthew 16:1-4, but now in Jerusalem they act on their own. Their question uses the practice of Levirate marriage and a story of one bride for seven brothers to mock the idea that both Jesus and the Pharisees apparently preached of the resurrection. Even though this is the only time the Sadducees are explicitly mentioned in the final week in Jerusalem, the chief priests and elders were probably composed mainly of Sadducees, and the silencing of the Sadducees before the crowds contributes to their desire to end the words of Jesus.

Just as the Pharisees and the Herodians can work together for mutually beneficial purposes, the Sadducees have maintained their power in the temple through their relationship with Rome. There is an old Christian saying that Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they were sad-you-see, and while this is a catchy play on words it misses the point of who the Sadducees are. The Sadducees, like much of the Hebrew Scriptures, do not have a concept of the resurrection and their belief that God’s blessings are a part of their experience in the world is probably confirmed in their minds by the more affluent priestly positions they occupied. Their faith centers on the first five books of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and particularly their actions as the cultic leaders for the temple.

The story that the Sadducees use focuses on the practice of Levirate marriage (the term comes from the Latin levir meaning husband’s brother, not Leviticus) which is outlined in Deuteronomy 25:5-10

When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out in Israel. Deuteronomy 25: 5-6

This practice is active in both the stories of Tamar (Genesis 38, Matthew 1:3) and Ruth (Ruth 4, Matthew 1:5) and was to ensure security for the widow by providing her both with a household and children (who will take care of her in old age), The story of seven brothers and one bride takes the practice to a ridiculous end, which is intentional, as the Sadducees attack the belief in a resurrection which they found contrary to their reading of scripture.

Jesus claims they have been led astray (Greek planao) in both their knowledge of scripture and their understanding of God’s power. Jesus answers first from God’s power to transform humanity in the resurrection where the values of securing one’s future through familial ties and reproduction are no longer important. In challenging the Sadducees’ reading of Moses, Jesus returns to God’s initial call of Moses where God refers to Godself as: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3: 6) Even though the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died millennia earlier, Jesus refers to this ancient self-titling of God to point to both an ongoing relationship between God and these patriarchs and that the promises God made to them have not been broken by death. As Richard B. Hays, following J. Gerald Janzen, can state:

ust as God delivered and saved the patriarchs, so he will do for his people in their plight in Egypt. Furthermore, if God acted to deliver his people from the “death” of slavery in Egypt, surely he will do so again in the future—not precisely in the same way, but in ways that are recognizably analogous. Consequently, Jesus’ use of Exodus 3:6 in support of the resurrection—that claim that God will finally save his beloved people from death—is nothing other than a metaphorical extension of the Exodus theophany claim. (Hays 2020, 59)

Jesus’ claim and repurposing of the title God claims as the God of Moses’ father, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob places the resurrection of the dead alongside God’s work to fulfill God’s promises to God’s people. The language of raising up seed (NRSV childless, the Greek is sperma where we get the English sperm) which is used frequently in the Hebrew scriptures in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The failure of the seven brothers to ‘raise up seed’ for the first one corresponds to the misunderstanding of the scriptures and the power of God that the Sadducees have in their inability to believe God will raise the dead. In a manner, Jesus points to a sterility in their claims which matches the sterility in their story. Only a God who can raise up children for ones as good as dead and who can raise the dead can open their eyes where they have been led astray. In Matthew, Jesus comes out the victor in the eyes of the crowd and the Sadducees are silenced. Yet, the conflict between Jesus and those in religious authority will continue until his death.

Matthew 16: 1-12 Demanding a Sign or Needing Instruction

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By Unknown – Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection: entry 453683, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32908844

Matthew 16: 1-12

Parallels Mark 8: 11-2; Luke 12: 54-56, 12:1, 11:29

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. ² He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ ³ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. ⁴ An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Then he left them and went away.

⁵ When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. ⁶ Jesus said to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” ⁷ They said to one another, “It is because we have brought no bread.” ⁸ And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? ⁹ Do you still not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? ¹⁰ Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? ¹¹ How could you fail to perceive that I was not speaking about bread? Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” ¹² Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the disciples all fail to understand Jesus in this passage, but there is a critical difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees whom Jesus leaves and the disciples whom Jesus teaches: the openness to the work that has been done by Jesus already. While the Pharisees and Sadducees in the narrative demand a new sign from the heavens the disciples are reminded of the acts of power and the teaching of Jesus to correct their misunderstanding. It seems a little faith can make a lot of difference in the relationship between Jesus and those who approach, and yet even the faithless will not be left without a sign. But the sign which is given will not be a sign easily accepted by the religious leaders who are in conflict with Jesus or the disciples attempting to follow him where he leads. This scene marks a transition in the narrative as the focus intensifies on the disciples and their journey to understanding who Jesus is and what being a faithful one of his followers will mean for their own lives.

The scene begins, presumably in the region of Magadan, with Jesus separated from his disciples and approached by the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees have been in conflict with Jesus throughout the previous eight chapters but this is the first introduction of the Sadducees since their encounter with John the Baptist in Matthew 3. The Pharisees and Sadducees may have been competing for positions of authority and prominence among the Jewish people and they did have theological differences but both groups find themselves in conflict with John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus seems to have little use for the representatives of these groups other than to confront the way they impede the advance of the kingdom of heaven and lead others astray.

The Pharisees and Sadducees come to test Jesus, and the word for test (Greek piarazo) alludes to the temptation of Jesus where the tempter (Greek piarazon) attempts to challenge Jesus’ identity and one of Jesus’ responses is to quote Deuteronomy 6:17 “Do not put the LORD you God to the test (Greek ekpiarazo– piarazo with he prefix ek attached). The Pharisees and scribes already asked for a sign in 12: 38-42 and received the same answer, no sign except the sign of Jonah, but even more recently Jesus said to his disciples, about the Pharisees, “Every plant that my Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides to the blind.” (15: 13-14) We expect the Pharisees and Sadducees to be unsatisfied with Jesus, but it is worth slowing down to attend to the answer Jesus gives in this scene. Jesus takes their demand from a sign from heaven and shows they are looking for the wrong thing, the signs of the times have been all around them. Most English translations obscure the play on words going on when the Pharisees and Sadducees ask for a sign from the heaven (Greek ouranos) and Jesus replies with the accepted wisdom the “It will be fair weather, for the heavens (ouranos) are brilliant red in the evening, or it will be storms because the heavens (ouranos) are gloomy and brilliant red in the morning. They know how to interpret the face of the heavens (prosopon tou ouranos) but are not able to know the signs of the time. (kaipos-appointed time) They are looking to the heavens, but as Jesus said in 12: 40, the sign of the times they will receive will be, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” The sign they seek will not be in the heavens, but in the earth. They fail to see in all the things Jesus has done the presence of the kingdom of heaven among them, and so Jesus leaves them to attend to the disciples who are open to learning.

The disciples enter the scene unaware of the previous conflict with the Pharisees and Sadducees, and we are given the key to their misunderstanding of Jesus in their failure to take bread with them to this new location. When Jesus says, “See and attend to (that) from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” Most English translations smooth this out to make the focus the ‘yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees’ missing the crucial preposition apo which means from, but this also misses why the disciples may think of bread which is made out of leaven folded into flour. While the kingdom of heaven may be like a woman who fold leaven into three measures of flour, (13:33) what is resulting from the actions of the Pharisees and Sadducees is, in Jesus’ view, decidedly not the kingdom of heaven. Jesus wants his disciples to see and attend to what results from the Pharisees and Sadducees, but they begin discussing the lack of bread they have.

Most English translations of Matthew tend to make Jesus sound angry and judgmental towards his disciples (try to read Jesus’ response to the disciples in a kind manner, it is difficult in English) but the Greek which the scriptures are translated from leaves open a much softer reading. Those who have followed this reading to this point will be familiar with my translation of oligopistoi/oligopistos as ‘little faith ones’[1] but the harshness of the NRSV and other’s translations carries throughout Jesus response. I would modify this to:

And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “Why are you discussing among yourselves not having bread little faith ones? You don’t understand yet, but rather remember the five bread for the five thousand and how many baskets (of pieces of bread) you received. Or rather the seven bread and the four thousand and how many large baskets (of pieces of bread) you received. How do you not understand (now) that not about bread I spoke to you? But attend to (the things) from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.[2]

Perhaps, rather than berating the disciples for their misunderstanding of what was said, Jesus interprets for them what he said as he has done with multiple parables previously. The disciples may be ‘little faith ones’ but that ‘little faith’ will enable them to understand, at least in part, who Jesus is and be willing to accept correction when they become stumbling blocks. This faith will allow them to see what has been revealed by the Father in Heaven. As Jesus said earlier, “you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” (11: 25) Now the Pharisees and Sadducees in our narrative are the ‘wise and intelligent’ who cannot see while the disciples, the little faith ones, are the infants who have truth revealed to them.

[1] This term always refers to the disciples of Jesus and occurs in 6:30, 8:26. 14:31, and 17:20 in addition to here.

[2] The punctuation included in NA28 indicates questions in the middle sentences, but like English, a line of questions can be statements leading up to a final question. Otherwise the translation stays pretty literal to the Greek (insertions for context shown in parenthesis.

The Place of Authority: A Brief History Part 4: Re-establishment, Disillusionment and Germination

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Wojceich Stattler, Machabeusze (Maccabbes) Public Domain Art

I think I need to be clear at this point that while I am doing a historical trek through Israel’s story, I am not trying to do a history of Israel at this point, or even of the Hebrew Scriptures. I am intentionally trying to locate where authority rested within their story. Within key transitions the places of authority do change and how the people react to that authority changes and see how that might inform our current questions of authority. Hence, while it might be interesting to focus in greater detail on particular events, or to spend more time interpreting what is going on within a particular piece of scripture or what the theology of a particular author might be, that will have to be for another time and place as we continue on through the story.

A humorous illustration before we proceed. The Hebrew people remain deeply suspicious of external authorities which exercise authority over them, and so there will remain an antagonism between them and those who come to occupy their land. In another Monty Python reference we have the scene of the French Castle where the French refuse to recognize Arthur’s authority. For this period the Hebrew people will stubbornly resist assimilation by the empires that they are a part of.

Beginning around 538 BCE, during the reign of Cyrus of Persia, there is the beginnings of the return to Jerusalem and Judea. There are at least four major stages of the return which span a period of roughly 80 years, longer than the original period of exile, and even with the final return many of the people choose to remain settled and scattered throughout the empires of the day. The diaspora (the dispersion) those Jewish people scattered throughout the empire continue to at various levels maintain their practices and stories that make them distinguishable from the nations around them, but I will be focusing in on the remnant that returns to the promised land since that is where the final pieces of the remembered story of the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament) come from.

Over the eighty years of re-establishment, many of the people return and their first concern is the reclamation of their land (or perhaps in some cases the claiming of land for their family).Remember that in an agrarian society land is the primary source of wealth and power. It takes a great deal of effort by the leaders and prophets to get the people to focus on the effort to rebuild the temple, and even once it is rebuilt it cannot compete with the memory of the former temple. In the memory of the people it is a shadow of the greatness of their past. Even with the codification of the Torah (law-quite possibly Deuteronomy) by Ezra and the completion of the city wall under Nehemiah, Jerusalem and what remains of the former nation are completely dependent on the will of the nations around them. The temple worship does regain some of its former status as one authority figure, but in the absence of a true monarch-temple authority that has the power to authorize the story of the people, the written and oral set of practices begin to take on a greater and greater role of what it means to be the chosen people.

Internal fault lines begin to emerge, not that they didn’t exist previously, but issues of purity and justice come into conflict with one another. At least, in the remembered story it seems that in the time of re-establishment purity becomes the dominant issue, the removal of foreign influences—even when it means disbanding families—and being a ‘purer’ Hebrew people who worship the one Lord in holiness. This is the mark of a society intent on establishing and maintaining boundaries between the insider and the outsider—and I don’t mean this to sound as critical as it may sound—when one feels the world is out to destroy you it is natural for an us/them (or Jew/Gentile) dichotomy to emerge. Yet even though this seems to be the dominant voice a counter-voice emerges, the prophetic voice that never went away and attempts to refocus the central focus on justice. Although there is a strong presence of the prophetic voice in the collected scriptures, it also never seems to gain the influence to reframe the story to create the type of society the prophets imagine.

Certainly within the prophetic voice, but also within the population there is disillusionment with the way things are. Things are not the way people hoped they would be, the temple is a shell of its former self, different religious groups vie for power and influence among the people, various incarnations of leaders try to rally the people with varying levels of success-but the reality is that for most of this 500 year stretch they are a people under the rule first of the Persians, then briefly under Greece. When the Greek empire splits up into the Ptolemaic Empire (in the South) and the Seleucid Empire (in the North) Jerusalem will find itself firmly at the middle of the struggle for power.

A final defining moment comes in 167 BCE with the Maccabean revolt, an event commemorated by Hanukkah today and remembered in the books named Maccabees, where the pressure of the outside influence to conform to a Hellenistic (Greek) culture causes a religious revolt which for a brief moment grants Jerusalem its independence. It is short lived, but it gives the people a memory of their practices defining themselves as a people who are willing to die for what they believe in. Again this is not universal, there are certainly those willing to accommodate, but there are also those willing to revolt, and that fire will not go out again for some time.

Deep divisions continue to grow within Judaism. They will not be fully in control of their own destinies after the fall of the Maccabees , but the hope for a new king, a new David, a messiah will persist. Religious authority will split between Saducees, who predominantly control the temple and accommodate with the kings like Herod, or whichever government official Rome places to govern Judea. With Herod the Great (who rules from 40 BCE-6 CE) reconstructing the temple in magnificent fashion (at a magnificent cost) the Sadducees are able to operate from a position of privilege. The Pharisees in contrast are more of a people’s movement focused on maintaining their identity through purity and right practice of the Torah. There are other groups, the Essenes who pull away and isolate themselves to remain pure, the zealots intent on driving the foreign influence from the promised land. Herod and Rome have the military authority, the Saducees in partnership with the Roman authorities run the temple and all is in a state of tension at the turning of the ages. We are approaching a great turning point in the story, from one group will emerge two-one that is new and one that will be completely reshaped. It is to the turning of the ages that we turn next.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular