Acts 23:8 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection; against this our Saviour argued, Matthew 22:23, &c. Neither angel; it seems strange that they should deny that there were angels, whereas they owned the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, in which mention is made frequently of angels: but it seems that they understood those places allegorically, either for good instincts, or apparitions caused by God to manifest his mind by them unto men, wresting those places to their own destruction. Nor spirit; they denied the existence of the soul of man, as different from the crasis and temperament of his body; and therefore believed that the soul perished with the body. Nay, they were so far from believing there was any spirit, that they held, blasphemously, that God himself was corporeal. But the Pharisees confess both; the three things here mentioned, which the Sadducees denied, may be well spoken of as but two, viz. the resurrection and the existence of spirits. When men sin with much obstinacy against supernatural light, God justly withdraws from them even natural light, and they are, punished (as the Egyptians were) with such darkness which may be felt, Exodus 10:21.