Q&A: A Hasty People
A Hasty People
Question
The Talmud in Tractate Shabbat tells about the Sadducee who said to Rava, "You are a hasty people, for you put 'we will do' before 'we will hear.'" Why isn’t that also a claim against the Sadducee himself? It also doesn’t seem connected to the Written Torah or the Oral Torah.
Answer
A nice observation. Note that in Shabbat 88a it speaks about "that heretic," not about a Sadducee. True, in Ketubot 112a it is brought in the name of a Sadducee. Perhaps there were gentiles who attached themselves to the Sadducees, or perhaps this is just a conventional expression and they said "Sadducee" while really meaning just an ordinary gentile. Or perhaps the Sadducees did not accept the rabbinic exposition about "we will do" and "we will hear"—that they put "we will do" before "we will hear."
The Sadducees ceased to exist hundreds of years before Rava was born.
In the manuscripts too, Ketubot says "heretic," and it is possible that the version "Sadducee" in the printed editions was meant to satisfy Christian censorship.