Note 179 — Chapter VII · The Pharisees and Sadducees

Lauterbach (Op. cit., p. 186 f.) would explain the matter a little differently, though the final result is much the same; he says that the Sadducees “laid down their own decisions and rules in a book called ‘Book of Decrees’ or ‘Decisions’ to guide them in deciding questions to which no answer could be found in the Mosaic Code. They did not deem it right or necessary to invent new rules of hermeneutics, or to develop methods of interpretation to enable them to force their laws and decisions into the meaning of the words of the Torah, so as to pass off their own rules and decisions as part of, or derived from, a Mosaic law, thus making them of equal authority with, and of the same binding character as, the written Law. For, in their opinion, no other laws could ever acquire the authority of the Laws of the Torah.... The Sadducees distinguished strictly between the absolutely binding written laws and their additional laws and decisions. The latter ... were authoritative only as long as they were considered necessary or feasible by the leaders and rulers of the community. For the same reason, they did not consider the decisions and practices instituted by their predecessors, the priests and teachers of former generations, which constituted the traditional laws, of absolute authority like the written Law. Hence their peculiar attitude towards the traditional Law, and their objection to its authority. They did not deny the existence of these old traditional laws, for they themselves were the possessors and transmitters of the same. Nor did they reject them as spurious or as without any authority, for they recognized the right of former priests and teachers to enact such laws. They only refused to consider these traditional laws as of authority absolute and equal with the written Law contained in the Torah.” The result, therefore, so far as their controversy with the Pharisees on this point was concerned, was the same: traditional laws, by whomsoever put forth, whether based on the written Law or not, were not permanently binding nor of equal authority with the written Law; the Pharisees, on the other, since they contended that the oral Law was based upon the written Law, regarded both as of equal authority and permanently binding.