Pharisees vs Sadducees: What We Actually Know

My Weird Prompts · Sep 23, 2026 · 21m

The Pharisees and Sadducees are two of the most famous groups of the Second Temple period, and almost everything we think we know about them comes from sources that either loved them or opposed them. This episode works through the actual evidence: where the names come from, who belonged to each group, how a movement of roughly six thousand Pharisees came to be credited with dominating Jewish religious life, and why scholars have spent forty years arguing about it. Along the way we get into the real disputes — the Oral Law, resurrection and the afterlife, fate and free will, and two very…