SADDUCEES

of a bloodless offering in the shape of an oblation of flour (§ 14, end). Nevertheless, although the doctrine that the death of the victim was a vicarious punishment for the sin of the offerer is not to be found in the legisla-tion itself, the thought was one that could scarcely fail to suggest itself to the popular mind — a conclusion to which it was doubtless assisted by the representation of the vicarious sufferings of the Servant in Is 53.

Summing up the conclusions of this section on the significance of sacrifice in OT, we find it represented in all periods as a gift, mainly of homage to the Divine Sovereign, in the earlier period also as a rite of table communion with the covenant God of Israel, and finally in the later period as pre-eminently the appointed means of purification and expiation as the ■prelimiTiary to forgiveness, in other words of atonement.

Of the ultima ratio of sacrifice no explicit statement is found in OT. The explanation of the Priestly writers would doubtless have been — 'God hath so appointed it.' Beyond this we cannot go. The ' conclusion of the whole matter ' may therefore be given in the words of Jesus ben-Sira: ' See that thou appear not in the presence of the Lord empty; for all these things are to be done because of the commandment ' (35<) . The final ground of the sinner's pardon and restoration is thus not the precedent sacrifice but the free grace of a merciful and loving God. A. R. S. Kennedy.

SADDUCEES.— Probably the name 'Sadducee' is derived from the name Zadok, a notable priest in the time of David and Solomon (2 S 8" 15", 1 K !«)• His descendants long played the leading part among the priests, so that Ezekiel regarded them as the only legitimate priests (Ezk 40« 43" 44i5 48"). The name indicates the fact that is most decisive for the right understanding of the Sadducees. About the year 200 B.C., when party lines were beginning to be drawn, the name was chosen to point out the party of the priests. That is not saying that no priest could be a Pharisee or a Scribe. Neither is it saying that all the priests were Sadducees. In- our Lord's time many of the poor priests were Pharisees. Bijt the higher priestly families and the priests as a body were Sadducees. With them were joined the majority of the aristocratic lay families of Judsea and Jerusalem. This fact gives us the key to their career. It is wrapped up in the history of the high priesthood. For two centuries after the Exile the high priesthood earned the right to the leadership of the Jewish nation. But in our Lord's time its leadership lay far back in the past. Its moral greatness ha,d been undermined on two sides. On one side it had lost touch with what was deepest in the being of the Jews. For the most part this was due to its aristocratic bias. The Levitical priesthood was a close corporation. No man not born a priest co^Jld become a priest. More and more, as the interests of the nation widened and deepened, the high priesthood failed to keep pace. Its alliance with the aristocratic families made things worse. The high priesthood and the people drifted apart. No great institution can do that and remain great.

From another side also — the political — the high priest-hood was undermined. Owing to the mixture of Church and State the high priests were necessarily in politics all the time. Consequently the historical process, which ended by incorporating Palestine in the Roman Empire, sucked out of the high priesthood all the moralizing influences involved in the handling of large affairs. So, undermined on two sides, the high priest-hood lost the right to lead. And the party built up around It — the Sadducees — became the party of those who cared more for their own well-being and for the maintenance of things as they were than for the Kingdom of God.

When we turn to the tenets of the Sadducees, it is still the contrast with the Pharisees that puts them

818

SALECAH

in an intelligible light. Pharisaism, with all its faults, was the heart and soul of the nation, the steward of its treasures — the Holy Scriptures — the trustee of its vitalizing hope. The Sadducees stood for the tenaciously conservative tendencies in the nation. They lay under the curse which rests upon all aristocracies, the inability to realize that the best things must grow. They denied the Pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection of the body (Mk 12", Mt 22«=, Lk 20", Ac 238). The NT is a better guide in this field than Josephus, who affirms (,BJ ii. viii. 14, Ant. xviii. i. 4) that they denied the immortality of the soul. Josephus overstated things in his desire to make the Jewish parties look like the philosophical schools of Greece. The Sadducees did not deny the immortality of the soul. But they lingered in the past, the period when the belief in immortality was vague, shadowy, and had not yet become a working motive for goodness. They did not accept the developed faith in immortality which was part and parcel of the Pharisaic teaching regarding the Kingdom of God. And this meant that their nation had outgrown them. The Sadducees also denied the Pharisaic doctrine re-garding angels and ministering spirits (Ac 23*). Thereby they maintained a certain sobriety. They even emanci-pated themselves from a considerable amount of super-stition bound up vrith Pharisaism. But they paid for it by a wholly disproportionate sacrifice of vital piety.

From this sketch we can see why our Lord had almost no dealings with the Sadducees during His ministry. His interests were with the common people. This brought Him into continual conflict with the Pharisees. It was not until His popularity seemed to threaten the peace of Jerusalem that the high priest, with the Sadducees at his back, was moved to decisive action. We can also see why the Apostolic Church, in her first years, had most to fear from the Sadducees (Ac 4 and 5). See also artt. Phakisees, Sckibes. Henby S. Nash.

SADDUK (1 Es 82)=Zadok, Ezr 7^.

SADOC— 1. (2Esl')=Zadok, Ezr72. 2. An ancestor of Jesus (Mt 1»).

SAFFRON (Ca 4").— The Heb. karkSm is identical with the Arab, kurkum or za'farSu) (whence is derived the Eng. 'saffron'), the name of a variety of crocus (.Crocus sativus), of which the yellow styles and stigmas are used for dyeing and for flavouring food. A similar dye, also called saffron, is more commonly derived from the florets of the Carthamus tinctorius (Compositce) cultivated everywhere in Palestine for this purpose. E. W. G. Masteeman.

SAHIDIO VERSION.— See Greek Versions of OT, 11 (b), and Text of NT, § 27.

SAILS. — See Ships and Boats, p. SSOi".

SAINTS. — See Holiness, II. 2, and Sanotification.

SALAIVOEL.— An ancestor of Judith (Jth 8').

SALAHHS, which must not be confused with the scene of the great battle between Xerxes and the Greeks in B.C. 480, was the first place visited by Paul and Barna-bas on the first missionary journey (Ac 13'). It existed as early as the 6th cent. B.C. as an important Greek town on the E. coast of Cyprus. In Roman times it remained a flourishing commercial city, and the eastern half of the island was governed from there. There were very many Jews in Cyprus. Christianity was early preached there (Ac 11"- ^o), and among early converts were Mnason (Ac 21") and Barnabas (Ac 4>«).

A. SOUTER.

SALASADAI.— An ancestor of Judith (Jth 8i).

SALATHIEL.— 1. (1 Es 5«- *»■ » 6^) = Shealtiel (wh. see). 2. Another name of Esdras (2 Es 3').

SALECAH (Dt 3", Jos 13" 12', 1 Ch 5") was the most easterly of the towns claimed by Israel. It was assigned to the tribe of Gad, and is always described as being on the eastern frontier of Bashan. But it is better indicated less theoretically as being in the extreme south-east of