Week 21 Matthew 3
Two of the religious subdepartments in first-century Judaism show up in chapter 3: the Pharisees & Sadducees.
I checked my word-book. Neither of them are mentioned in the OT. In the gospels the Pharisees are named less than 100-times (the Sadducees less than 10). So anyway the point is that right away I bump-up against a couple of names that I have no background information on. (I did jump forward to a cross-reference in Acts where Luke explains that the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things. Other than that it’s slim-pickings.)
When the Pharisees & Sadducees first appear in Matthew they’re curious about what John the Baptist is doing. In the bible I’m reading it actually sounds like they came to John to be baptized. But other versions say they just came to watch. Either way – potential-participants or critical-observers – John’s view of both was that they were a brood of vipers (I think that a NT viper is similar to our southern-Alberta rattlesnake – and around here being called a rattlesnake isn’t normally taken as a compliment).
So anyway I get a reminder as I start the NT that I’m in a bit of an informational quandary. Who are the Pharisees & Sadducees? Where did they came from? What did they think?
But one thing I know right away is that John had nothing good to say about them.
Note: quote from Acts 23:8 & Matthew 3:7 (NIV)