"... three specific rulings in 4QMMT (Miqsat Ma'aseh ha-Torah) are attributed to Sadducees in the Mishnah: the red heifer could be burned only by priests who were in a state of complete ritual purity [4QMMT B:13-17/m. Parah 3:7]; non-kosher animals' bones were considered impure [4QMMT B:21-23/m. Yadayim 4:6]; and liquid poured from a pure vessel into an impure one rendered the former impure [4QMMT B:55-58/m. Yad. 4:7/m. Toh. 8:9]. In m. Yadayim 4:6 and 4:7, the contrary positions are assigned to Pharisees ..."

"... in the 1980s the position took a new form when Joseph Baumgarten noticed that a ruling in 4QMMT agreed with a position identified in the Mishnah as a Sadducean one. The scrolls passage is section B, lines 55–58 of A Sectarian Manifesto: [Co]ncerning streams of liquid, we have determined that they are not intrinsically [p]ure. Indeed, streams of liquid do not form a barrier between the impure and the pure. For the liquid of the stream and that in its receptacle become as one liquid. (WAC, 362) The meaning is that a liquid poured from a container that is ritually pure into one that is not conveys the ritual impurity through the liquid back to the pure container. Mishnah Yadayim 4:7, which records a series of points disputed between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, begins: 'The Sadducees say, We cry out against you, O ye Pharisees, for ye declare clean an unbroken stream of liquid. The Pharisees say, We cry out against you, O ye Sadducees, for ye declare clean a channel of water that flows from a burial ground.' The Pharisees clearly came to the opposite conclusion about the stream of liquid, saying that impurity was not conveyed through it, and they adduced an inconsistency they had found in the Sadducees, who failed to apply their own principle to a stream that flowed from an unclean source. This is a firm example of a legal stance in the scrolls that agrees with a Sadducean view ..."