Mark 12:13

Ver. 13-18. See Poole on "Matthew 22:15", and following verses to Matthew 22:22. The Sadducees most probably derived their name from one Sadoc, scholar to Antigonus Sochaeus. It is said that the occasion of their heresy was their master's teaching them, that they must not serve God as servants for rewards. Upon which they builded their notion, that there is no resurrection, no rewards nor punishments in another life. They denied the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, and angels, and spirits, Acts 23:8; attributed all to free will, denying fate and destiny; they rejected traditions, and owned no Scriptures but the five books of Moses. They seemed to be a kind of rational divines, that would own and believe nothing but what they could fathom by their reason, or was obvious to their sense; and their doctrine was excellently suited to men's lusts, who desire not to be troubled with any thoughts of a world to come. Nothing more shows the degeneracy and debauchery of human nature than this, that to gratify their sensual appetites more freely in the things of this life, they will be content to think of annihilation, (which nature not debauched abhors), and of quitting all hopes of eternal life and happiness, that they may have a principle to warrant their living like beasts. They come to our Saviour, thinking to flout him and his hearers out of the doctrine of the resurrection, as having insuperable difficulties to clog it. But he that takes the wise in their own craftiness, shows these wise men, that all their wisdom was but folly, and their argument wholly proceeded ex ignoratione elenchi, from their not understanding the thing they would philosophize about.