I. Influences that Gave Rise to the Jewish Parties.  The Maccabean period witnessed the birth of the great parties that henceforth distinguished Judaism.  They represented the crystallizing of the different currents of thought that were traceable in the Greek period and even earlier.  These diverse points of view were in part the result of that democratic spirit which has always characterized Israel’s life.  In the striking antithesis between the idealists and the legalists and the practical men of affairs it is also possible to detect the potent influence which the prophets had exerted upon the thought of their nation.  In the Greek period the Chronicler and certain of the psalmists, with their intense devotion to the temple and its services to the practical exclusion of all other interests, were the forerunners of the later Pharisees.  Ben Sira, with his hearty appreciation of the good things of life, with his devotion to the scriptures of his race, with his evident failure to accept the new doctrine of individual immortality, and with his great admiration for the high priests, was an earlier type of the better class of Sadducees.  The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes developed these parties.  As has already been noted, the Hasideans who followed Judas in the struggle to restore the law and the temple service were the immediate predecessors of the early Pharisees.  The word “Pharisees” means separatists, and is used first in the days of Jonathan (Jos. Ant.  III 5:9) In the same connection Josephus refers to the Sadducees.  The name of this second party is probably derived, not from the Hebrew word sadik, meaning righteous, but from Zadok (later written Sadok or Sadduk), who was placed by Solomon in charge of the Jerusalem temple.  It was thus the designation of the aristocratic, high-priestly party.  In the Persian and Greek periods the high priests had ruled the Judean state without opposition.  It was the rise of the party of the Pharisees that apparently developed that of the Sadducees.  This party included the hereditary nobles who supported and sympathized with the Maccabean leaders.  The Essenes evidently represent a reaction against the prevailing moral corruption.  In many respects they were simply extreme Pharisees.  They were zealots in religion, just as the later party of the Zealots were extremists in their hatred of Rome and in the methods which they were ready to use in order to attain their ends.

II.  Character and Beliefs of the Pharisees.  Originally the Pharisees were not a political but a religious party.  The opposition of the Sadducees in time led them to enter public life.  In politics they were conservatives.  They had little sympathy with the popular ambition for political independence, and probably regarded with alarm the tendency toward national expansion.  Alliances with the heathen nations seemed to them disloyalty to Jehovah.  In belief they were progressives.  While they stood squarely on the ancient law, they recognized