sadducees as fundies (quote of the day)

"One possible explanation is that the Sadducees were like some Christian fundamentalists who champion what they call the 'literal' interpretation of Scripture as the sole rule of faith and yet hold to various dogmas of Christian orthodoxy that in fact are not contained as such in Scripture - though the fundamentalists manage to find them in the Bible by highly creative and imaginative exegesis."

John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew (v 3): Companions and Competitors (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 405.