It is of importance to recognize that, with one exception, viz. the _Zadokite Fragments_, the main sources which give us information about the Sadducees come from the hands of adversaries. Josephus was a Pharisee, or at all events he claimed to be; the New Testament writers, for obvious reasons, had little sympathy with the Sadducees; the Rabbis were the spiritual descendants of the bitterest enemies of the Sadducees. But even so, some of the adverse impressions about the Sadducees widely current do not receive much support from the sources. For example, it is often assumed that the Sadducees were lax in regard to the Law, that they were sceptics and irreligious generally; but this is not borne out by the evidence when used with discrimination. Josephus nowhere says that the Sadducees were irreligious or antagonistic to the Law; nor does the New Testament represent them to have been so. Neither do the acrimonious discussions between the Sadducees and Pharisees on legal questions preserved in Rabbinical writings give the impression that the former were indifferent to the Law. No doubt the Pharisees looked upon the Sadducees as irreligious, but not because of their attitude to the Law; to the Pharisees anyone who repudiated the binding character of their conception of the Law would come under condemnation; but we have no right to brand as irreligious those who in their loyalty to the written Law denounced Pharisaic accretions to the same as of subordinate authority. That there were some Sadducees who were worldly and irreligious is likely enough to have been the case; but to characterize the Sadducees as such, as the worldly, irreligious party, is to fall into the same kind of error as those who say that the Pharisees were all hypocrites. Again, it is of course true that the Sadducees were always on the side of the suzerain power; the high-priestly party in the time of the Seleucidæ, as well as during the Roman dominion, held to the ruling power; but to say that for this reason the Sadducees were wholly occupied with politics, and that they were merely a political party, is an exaggeration. Their position necessitated a certain amount of intercourse with the ruling power; but this did not involve the exclusion of every other occupation, nor must we suppose that all Sadducees were concerned even with a _minimum_ of political business. A Sadducee was not _ipso facto_ a politician, but those who were at the head of affairs, and who were, therefore, necessarily politicians, happened to belong to the Sadducæan party. It was precisely the same thing with the Pharisees at one time, viz., at the beginning of the reign of John Hyrcanus (B.C. 135-104), when they were in close touch with the ruling power (in the person of the high-priest), and were necessarily to some extent occupied with politics[196]; yet nobody would say that at that time the Pharisees as a body were wholly given up to politics.