Halakhah for Sanhedrin 104:6
הי אמר להו ברישא אילימא הא קמייתא אמר להו ברישא א"ל כשהוא גדול ולא אשגחו ביה אמר להו כשהוא קטן ואשגחו ביה
R. Joseph said: It was a Sadducee<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' The party opposed to the Pharisees, and drawing their support mainly from the aristocratic classes. As they represented the nobility and wealth of the country, their interests were centred chiefly in the political, not the religious life, of the people. Their origin is wrapped in obscurity (Weiss, Dor, 1, 100); but Halevy, Doroth Voi. III: 'The Sadducees and Boethusians', regards them as the children of the Hellenizing Jews in the days of the Maccabeans; he denies that they were a religious party at all. The passage from Josephus (Ant. XIII, 10, 6) upon which this assertion is commonly based is explained by him as referring to the rejection of distinctive Rabbinic ordinances as apart from laws derived through interpretation of Scripture. In regard to criminal jurisdiction, they were very rigorous and, as seen in this passage, carried out the penalty of death by fire in a literal manner. Halevy (op. cit. Vol. III, p. 412f) observes that the reply of the Sages to R. Eleazar b. Zadok, — Because the Beth din at that time (amplified by R. Joseph as meaning a Beth din of the Sadducees) were not well learned in the law', shews that their ruling was in the first instance not based on the principle of literal interpretation, but the result of ignorance, it was only subsequently that such ruling crystallized into definite principles. J. Derenbourg (Essai, p. 251, n. 2) suggests that the burning of the priest's adulterous daughter, as described by R. Eleazar b. Zadok, took place during the short interval between the death of Festus, the Roman Procurator, (in 62 C.E.) and the coming of Albinus (63 C.E.). during the High-Priesthood of Hanan b. Hanan (a Boethusian mentioned in Tosef. Yoma i). Cp. also ibid p. 262. ');"><sup>6</sup></span>