By contrast, the Temple priests, dominated by the Sadducees, or descendants of Zadok, the great high-priest from Davidic times, insisted that all law must be written and unchanged. They had their own additional text, called the Book of Decrees, which laid down a system of punishment: who were to be stoned, who burned, who beheaded, who strangled. But this was written and sacred: they would not admit that oral teaching could subject the Law to a process of creative development.
