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Updated: June 4, 2025
I shall only add one observation more on this subject, viz., that it is very singular that Christian divines should assert, that life and immortality were first brought to light by the Gospel, when the New Testament itself represents the resurrection of the dead as being perfectly well known to the Jews, and describes Jesus himself as proving it to the Sadducees out of the Old Testament!!!
Jesus had foiled the scribes and the chief priests in their plan to entrap him in his public teaching. He was now attacked by the Sadducees who were the priestly and most powerful party among the Jews. They denied the immortality of the soul and believed neither in angels nor in spirits; they represented the modern materialists.
It was, in short, a meeting of the teachers of the colleges, of the chief priests, and of the doctors most noted in the city for learning the leaders of opinion, expounders of the different creeds; princes of the Sadducees; Pharisaic debaters; calm, soft-spoken, stoical philosophers of the Essene socialists.
AND as they were thus speaking, the priests, and the captain of the temple-guard, and the Sadducees, came upon them, worn down with vexation, because they taught the people, and preached by Jesus the resurrection of the dead. And they laid hands on them, and committed them to prison till the next day: for it was then evening.
So the Apostles had gained favour by the attempt to silence them, and that led to the second round, part of which is described in this passage. The first point to note is the mean motives which influenced the high-priest and his adherents. As before, the Sadducees were at the bottom of the assault; for talk about a resurrection was gall and wormwood to them.
The sects of the Jews arose, like Pharisees and Sadducees, and religious and political parties exhibited an unwonted fierceness and intolerance. While the Greeks and Romans were absorbed in wars, the Jews perfected their peculiar economy, and grew again into political importance.
His speech before the Council had set Pharisees and Sadducees squabbling, and the former had swallowed his Christianity for the sake of his being 'a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee. Probably, therefore, the hatchers of this plot were Sadducees, who hated Pharisees even more than they did Christians. A Christian man's defence of himself and his faith gains nothing by clever tactics.
A few specimens of her remarks may be given: "When the people saw that Jesus was not there ... they took shipping and came ... seeking for Jesus." "The secret of our failures in winning men; they don't find Him with us." "The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came and tempted Him that He would, show them a sign from Heaven." "Man's cry for the moon! What does a sign prove? Is God known by magic?"
But the sensation which it caused in England and the controversy waged over it between the upholders of witchcraft and the "Sadducees," give the story a considerable interest and render the outcome of the trial significant. The only case of its sort in its time, it was nevertheless most typical of the superstition of the time. A little town in Wiltshire had been disturbed by a stray drummer.
Cotton Mather was not the only dupe. "The old heresy of the sensual Sadducees, denying the being of angels either good or evil," says the recommendatory preface to this book, signed by the other four ministers of Boston, "died not with them, nor will it, whilst men, abandoning both faith and reason, count it their wisdom to credit nothing but what they see or feel.
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