ITT we discuss Christianity, for or against. Christianity is a religion which makes it political. So long as the world has the two masters it has, loving God will remain politically incorrect.

I'll start this thread off by talking about the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the religious and political elite of Israel and came from the priestly line of Zadok who was the high priest appointed by Solomon, and they managed the Temple and the practices within it. The Sadducees were very rationalistic, and denied things like the Resurrection that will take place, and were also denying the existence of angels, demons, spirits, life after death, and other unearthly phenomena. Faith to the Sadducees is a strictly earthly affair, and stated that one cannot do worship outside of the Temple.

Also interestingly, the Sadducees only accepted the Torah as scripture and not the whole of the TaNaKh, meaning only the Pentateuch; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As you read the Bible and when Jesus was debating them about the Resurrection, Jesus only ever cited from the Torah pertaining to the Resurrection, while with the Pharisees, he cited from Isaiah and Daniel both (for the Pharisees used the TaNaKh). Interestingly, Jesus never tore into the Sadducees for their not using the Prophets and Wisdom Literature despite them being known to Him. What did get Jesus' goat so to speak was how much the Jews were adding onto God's work, not what holy scripture they were not including to any given divine table-of-contents. The question is, how big of a deal is it to have the exact right amount of books in scripture? The Catholics and Protestants have had disagreements about the inclusion of the Deuterocanon since the Council of Trent. Does the interaction Jesus had with the Sadducees have any bearing on its resolution?