The New Testament often mentions the Pharisees and the Sadducees, two groups of prominent leaders during Jesus' day, but who were these leaders, and what did they believe? That's what we'll explore in this article.
Who Were the Pharisees?
The Sanhedrin was the ruling council of Israel, both religious and judicial, in Jesus's day. It was comprised of various groups, including the scribes, priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees.
The Pharisees were a sect of Jewish leaders and teachers who rose to prominence during the Second Temple period. This was the time following Israel's return from Exile, when the temple was rebuilt towards the end of the Old Testament period. Between the testaments were “400 years of God’s silence.” During this time, various groups with divergent thinking about specifics of the faith rose to power.
The Pharisees emphasized strict adherence to the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) as well as to the rabbis’ teachings that had developed around the written law, known as the “oral law,” designed to create “hedges” around the laws to keep the people far from violating God’s rules.
The Israelites had lost their homeland due to their disobedience so it’s possible these religious leaders began with a desire to prevent this from ever happening again. They had been influenced, too, and some of their thinking was compromised by their time spent in Persia and over the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments when influence and pressure would have come from both the Greeks and Romans. Just as we experience today, there was continual cultural shift and repeated temptations to compromise the faith. The Pharisees' devotion to the written and oral law was perhaps driven from fear of losing their land again and the hope that if they showed God they could obey, they might eventually escape oppression from these overseers. They were, however, misguided in the legalism that resulted.
The Pharisees were more popular with the people than the Sadducees, but many of them grew to love this popularity and the privilege and power associated with it. By Jesus’s day, according to Jesus’s charges against them, many had compromised for an external faith that loved to be seen as religious but didn’t impact their private lives. The Pharisees feared the people more than they feared God, and this should be a warning to us to be on guard to not let this become characteristic of our faith.
Who Were the Sadducees?
The Sadducees were the aristocrats and nobles of the Jewish people. They controlled two essential and important aspects of Jewish life, Herod’s Temple or The Jerusalem Temple and the Sanhedrin. They had authority over much of Jewish life except the military. The leader of the Sanhedrin, or the High Priest, was usually a Sadducee. Caiaphas, the high priest who ruled over Jesus’s trial, was a Sadducee.
The Sadducees, often well-educated and monied, were known for compromising with the ruling government of the times. Of course, they would have seen this as being adept at diplomacy and as practical business to protect whatever independence Israel could experience under each new ruler. However, it wasn’t unusual for them to be highly concerned with keeping the peace so that they could remain in favor (while lining their own pockets) with the Persians, the Greeks, or the Roman leaders—whoever was ruling at the time. This meant, at times, oppressing their own people to demonstrate that they could be trusted by their oppressors. This was a crucial dynamic in the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus.
What are the Main Differences/Similarities between Pharisees and Sadducees?
The Sadducees rejected the idea, so deeply held by the Pharisees, that the oral tradition carried as much weight as the written law of Moses. They believed Moses’ law was the sole authority governing their lives. Each group was legalistic in their own way.
However, the Sadducees also believed that God was distant and played no active role in their lives. Essentially, they taught that God had given the laws to Moses and then withdrew, so the people had to act and think for themselves. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees saw no place in life for the supernatural (angels, demons, souls), and they taught that this life is all a man or woman is given. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, but the Sadducees believed this is all there was to life: what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Their religion was pragmatic and ritualistic.
The Pharisees valued personal piety, prayer, and observance of religious traditions, while the Sadducees emphasized temple worship and sacrifice. The Sadducees largely disappeared from history after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.
The differences between these ruling groups were problematic for everyday Jews and were a dynamic of conflict in Jesus’s day. Their commonality was that while externally they appeared devoted to God and were “known” for their religious fervor, their hearts told a different story. Jesus, seeing their hearts, spoke out publicly against their hypocrisy, and this put Him in conflict with them from the start of His ministry to His crucifixion. Of course, rising again and ascending to His throne provided Jesus the last and authoritative Word on their disagreement.
Why Understanding the Differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees Matters
Why is it important for everyday Christians to understand the Pharisees and Sadducees of the Bible, including how they were different from one another? Generally, the Bible records the activities of three types of people: the people following the Living God, the lost who need to know the Living God, and those who openly defy and/or oppose the Living God. Often we learn that the “religious leaders of the day,” who should be grouped with those following God, are actually inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) opposing Him. God gives them the opportunity to repent and return to Him, but they usually prefer to be seen as religious and yet live with unchanged hearts. We want to be certain we don’t drift into this group.
God makes it clear in both the Old and the New Testaments that He wants “heart-followers.” God is interested in those who don’t just make a show of religious activity or following traditions and rituals, but who love Him from the inside out. The Shema, one of the most important prayers in Judaism that would have been foundational for the Pharisees and Sadducees begins like this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV). So, it has been clear since the beginning what God desires.
Centuries earlier, the ancient Israelites suffered greatly because of their choice to settle for following traditions over heart transformation. They compromised their faith with idolatry, and the religious leaders of the day both tolerated and sometimes even led in this. The prophet Isaiah decried their behavior.
“Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people approaches Me with their words and honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of the commandment of men that is taught; Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the understanding of their men who have understanding will be concealed.’ Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord,
And whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, ‘Who sees us?’ or ‘Who knows us?’” (Isaiah 29:13-15 NASB).
Because of this repeated disobedience, God sent His people into exile for years before allowing them to return to the Promised Land.
When John the Baptist appeared to prepare the way for Jesus, he spoke directly to the Pharisees and Sadducees, referring to them as a “brood of vipers” and calling them to repentance and to bear spiritual fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:7-12). In other words, John warned them that outward obedience was not good enough for God. Their hearts and characters should demonstrate their repentance, not just their mouths.
Jesus then repeatedly warned the religious leaders about hypocrisy and loving the praise of people more than the praise of God. Matthew records in chapter 23 Jesus’s long list of charges against them. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus’s warning to His followers to “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). This is repeated in Mark 8:15, and Luke 12:1. While we know some Pharisees demonstrated interest in Jesus (Nicodemus in John 4, and Simon in Luke 7, for example), none became as prominent in the leadership of the new church as Paul whose conversion occurred after Jesus’s resurrection.
Paul emphasized internal heart change over external following of rules in his writings to the early church. He wrote in Romans 2:29, “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from people, but from God.” This struggle to be followers of God and not simply appear to be followers of God continues throughout the Bible even into Revelation. In Revelation 2 and 3, John records Jesus’s warnings to seven churches. His message to them focuses heavily on inner change, on heart-level repentance, and on the dangers of compromise.
Since we can imagine that most of these Jewish religious leaders began their lives with an interest in God and then spent most of their days searching the Scriptures and yet missed the mark, we can see the importance of knowing what to watch for in our own lives.
Lessons for Christians Today from the Pharisees and Sadducees
There is one essential lesson for all believers from the Pharisees and Sadducees that should take priority, and that is that God desires not our outward devotion but our hearts. And He cannot be fooled because He sees our hearts.
Following Jesus should be marked by an inner transformation (Romans 12:1-2) that is demonstrated by changed lives. We don’t obey God to be saved; we obey because He saved us.
Hypocrisy has no place in the life of a Christian. Titus wrote, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work” (Titus 1:16 ESV). In fact, authentic faith vs hypocrisy is a biblical theme from beginning to end.
Just as we want to be loved from the heart, so does God. Just as we can tell when someone is faking their devotion to us, even more so can God. Too many Christians have been hurt or compromised, their faith shipwrecked, because of false teachers or fake followers who spout God’s rules but still largely live for their own power and desires.
God is not fooled. God sees our hearts. Jesus’s warning to His followers to be on guard against the “leaven of the Pharisees” is a warning to us to love Him from our hearts and not just with our lips. This is a warning for believers in all ages until Jesus returns. Anyone can clean up their external acts and put on a show of faith, but only hearts truly surrendered to Jesus can see soul-deep transformation.
Further Reading
How Did the Pharisees and Sadducees Interact with Jesus?
What is the Difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees?
Why Did Jesus Clash with the Pharisees and Sadducees?
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