I swear I’m not a Sadducee TB Yoma 19

 In our massekhet Yom Kippur is drawing closer and closer. The mishnayot on today’s daf TB Yoma 19 describes the Kohen Hagadol’s day erev Yom Kippur. Because oaths incorporated God’s holy name, they were taken very seriously. When a person broken oath, he literally took the Lord’s name in vain. That is why many religious Jews when making a promise will add the phrase bli neder (בלי נדר) without an oath.

“MISHNA: The Elders of the court who read the order of the service of the day before the High Priest passed him to the Elders of the priesthood, and they took him up to the House of Avtinas. And they administered him an oath and took leave of him and went on their way. When they administered this oath they said to him: My Master, High Priest. We are agents of the court, and you are our agent and the agent of the court. We administer an oath to you in the name of Him who housed His name in this House, that you will not change even one matter from all that we have said to you with regard to the burning of the incense or any other service that you will perform when alone. After this oath, he would leave them and cry, and they would leave him and cry in sorrow that the oath was necessary.” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Elders of the court were afraid that the Kohen Hagadol would perform the Yom Kippur ritual according to the Sadduceean dictates and not according to the pharisaic understanding of the law. To prevent that from happening, they administered the oath. The Kohen Hagadol’s two chambers, Parhedrin chamber and the Chamber of the House of Avtinas, were on opposite sides of the Temple’s courtyard forcing the Kohen Hagadol to walk back and forth to accomplish the Yom Kippur rite.  One of the reasons given is: “we impose upon him even more, so that if he is a Sadducee, he will retire. As he is not a God-fearing person, he would prefer to walk away rather than subject himself to that added exertion. That is a desirable result, ridding the High Priesthood of a Sadducee.” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Gemara goes on to tell a cautionary tale about a Sadduceean High Priest.

“The Gemara asks: And why were the Elders so insistent that the High Priest take an oath? The Gemara explains: So that he would not prepare the incense and light it outside in the Sanctuary, before entering the Holy of Holies, and bring the coal pan with the incense already burning on it into the Holy of Holies in the manner that the Sadducees did. Since the High Priest is alone inside the Sanctuary and there is no way to ascertain whether he is in fact performing the service in the proper manner, the Elders insisted that he take an oath to perform it according to their instructions.

“The Sages taught in the Tosefta: There was an incident involving a certain Sadducee who was appointed as High Priest, who prepared the incense outside and then brought it into the Holy of Holies. Upon his emergence he was overjoyed that he had succeeded. The father of that Sadducee met him and said to him: My son, although we are Sadducees and you performed the service in accordance with our opinion, we fear the Pharisees and do not actually implement that procedure in practice. The son said to his father: All my days I have been troubled over this verse: “For I will appear in the cloud above the Ark cover” (Leviticus 16:2). The Sadducees interpreted this verse to mean that God will appear above the Ark cover, i.e., will enter the Holy of Holies, only after the incense cloud is already there. I said: When will the opportunity become available to me, and I will fulfill it according to the Sadducee interpretation? Now that the opportunity has become available to me, will I not fulfill it?

“The Sages said: Not even a few days passed until he died and was laid out in the garbage dump, and worms were coming out of his nose in punishment for his actions. And some say that he was struck as soon as he emerged from the Holy of Holies, as Rabbi Ḥiyya taught: A type of sound was heard in the Temple courtyard, as an angel came and struck him in the face. And his fellow priests came in to remove him from there and they found the likeness of a footprint of a calf between his shoulders. That is the mark left by an angel striking, as it is stated with regard to angels: “And their feet were straight feet, and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot” (Ezekiel 1:7).” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Jewish people during the early second Temple period were divided into different sects. The three most famous sects were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. We have to understand that the Gemara was written by the victors, the rabbis, who unfairly disparaged their rival’s practices as demonstrated above describing that a Sadducee High Priest was not a God-fearing person and unwilling to schlep back and forth. Who were the Sadducees? Most probably they were Jerusalem aristocracy, the wealthy, many priests, and officers of the Temple were Sadducees. We can imagine that they were politically conservative. When the Temple was destroyed, they lost their power base and disappeared into oblivion.

They rejected the validity of the oral Torah proposed by the Pharisees/rabbis. They had their own method of interpreting the Torah as the above story shows. They had three major beliefs. 1, they denied the resurrection, personal immortality, the future life, and retribution. 2, they denied the existence of angels or demons. 3, they rejected the supremacy of fate or determinism and believed in the freedom of the will.

Most scholars believe that none of the Christian Testament’s Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. Three of the four were written after the destruction of the Temple. The only surviving Jewish sect were the Pharisees. Wanting to shift the blame of Jesus’s death from Rome to the Jews (because who wants to antagonize the world’s power at that time?!), the only Jews left were the Pharisees upon whom they heaped their venom.