Endnote 20 – The People of The Dead Sea Scrolls

David Daube, in “On Acts 23: Sadducees and Angels,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990), pp. 493–497), has recently made the interesting suggestion that Acts 23:8—the only ancient passage which says the Sadducees denied there were angels and spirits—means that the Sadducees rejected the notion of an angelic or spirit-like interim phase for the departed prior to the general resurrection (which they also rejected). I am not convinced that he is correct and that his theory explains the Pharisaic jibe in Acts 23:9, but it would have been strange for the Sadducees to deny there were angels when their Bibles were full of them. It has been suggested that Acts 23:8 means only that they denied there were vast armies of angels while accepting the existence of a smaller number.