The Sadducees were the wealthy priestly aristocracy of Jesus' day. They traced their name and lineage to Zadok, the high priest under David and Solomon. They controlled the high priesthood, the temple, and much of the Sanhedrin. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees rejected oral tradition and accepted only the written Torah (the first five books of Moses) as authoritative. This made them theological minimalists: they denied the resurrection, denied angels and spirits, and had no expectation of a messianic age (Acts 23:8, Mark 12:18). They were politically collaborationist, cooperating with Rome to preserve their position. Jesus had sharp conflicts with them, especially when they tried to trap Him with a trick question about resurrection (Mark 12:18-27): Jesus answered by quoting Exodus 3 — a Torah text they accepted — and showing that God identifies Himself as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which would be meaningless if those patriarchs were permanently dead. "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." When Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, the Sadducees lost their power base (the temple) and disappeared from history entirely. The Pharisees, who had always been more populist and oral-tradition-oriented, survived and became rabbinic Judaism. The Sadducees are a cautionary tale: political power + theological minimalism = no legacy.