that as used in connection with the name Pharisee it has the sense of to “interpret” or “expound.” The term Pharisees may thus be said to mean “expounders” of the Scriptures in the interests of the oral Law; and this is just what the Pharisees were _par excellence_. Their close association with the Scribes, as often alluded to in the Gospels, serves still further to support this view. (_b_) _Sadducees._ When transliterated from its Hebrew form the term “Sadducees” appears as _Zaddūkim_; it has been held that this is derived from the Hebrew word _zaddik_, “righteous.”[155] But this derivation is improbable, for no analogy exists for this change of an _i_ into _u_; but, even apart from this, to explain _Zaddūkim_ as meaning the “righteous ones” has no support from fact; for the Sadducees were never regarded as particularly righteous by others, nor did they ever make such a claim themselves. An interesting explanation, offered, however, “with great diffidence,” is that given by Cowley. He says: “In modern Persian the word _Zindīk_ is used in the sense of Manichæan, or, in a general sense, for infidel, one who does not believe in the resurrection or in the omnipotence of God. It has been adopted in Arabic with the meaning of infidel, and also in Armenian. Masūdi (tenth century) says that the name arose in the time of Manes to denote his teaching, and explains that it is derived from the Zend, or explanation, of the Avesta. The original Avesta was the truly sacred book, and the person who followed only the commentary was called a _Zindīk_, as one who rejected the word of God to follow worldly tradition, irreligious. But the term cannot have originated in the time of Manes (third century A.D.), for the Zend ‘commentary,’ whatever view be taken as to its date, was by then already becoming unintelligible. It must be much earlier, and have acquired the general sense of infidel very soon.... Makrīzī (fifteenth century), who borrows largely from Masūdi, confuses the _Zanādikah_ with the Samaritans and Sadducees, and says that they deny the existence of angels, the resurrection, and the prophets after Moses, whence it has been suggested that _Zanādikah_ is a corruption of _Zaddūkim_. The reverse, may, however, be the case. It is quite possible that the Persian word was used about B.C. 200 in the sense of ‘Zoroastrian,’ and if so, it might be applied by opponents to a party in Judæa who sympathized with foreign ideas, and rejected beliefs which were beginning to be regarded as distinctively Jewish. It would thus have been used at first in a contemptuous sense, and, later, when the original meaning was forgotten, was, in the well-known Jewish manner, transformed in such a way as to bear the interpretation ‘Sons of Zadok’ (_Bĕni Zadōk_) with a suggestion of ‘righteous’ (_Zaddīkim_).... It may be mentioned, though perhaps as a mere coincidence, that _Zanādikah_ is used for Sadducees in Arabic translations of the New Testament.”[156]