The Pharisees and Sadducees, if you read up on them a little, were literally the Republicans and Democrats of ancient Judea.
The Pharisees were the cultural conservatives; the hard-line (Mosaic) law & order types, took the word and laws of the Talmud literally, and were the founders of what we now know as rabbinical Judaism.
Lawyers and judges and priests, the lot of them (which, in a theocratic State, the three are really one and the same).
Conversely, the Sadducees were the Current-Year-ers of ancient Judea. They championed the spread of Greek culture (read: polytheism, gay buttsex with little boys) in Judea. They also formed a weird sort of religious/trade union, but really encompassed all of what we would know as "blue-collar" type jobs and workers, including those whose job was to tend to and maintain the temple in Jerusalem. They also monitored butchers and farmers and such to make sure that food was processed in accordance with the law (Kosher), made sure that playwrights' and artists' work was lawful (Kosher), and shit like that.
You can think of them as an amalgamation of the Kosher Food Mafia that makes sure all the food we goyim eat has the little Ⓚ on the package, and the freaks and weirdos that run Hollywood and the porn industry, and modern religious leaders who tell you who to vote for because they are a Friend to Israel™.
I sum a lot up, skip a lot of details, and am by no means a biblical scholar. But if you do read the Bible, and check out the wikipedia entries for each, it'll get you started to seeing them for what they were.
