of the temple service from the priests to the congregation.  The service of song, though executed by choirs of singers, was yet in idea the song of the congregation, and came to be of more importance than the acts of worship which it accompanied and inspired.  The Holy One of Israel sat enthroned, not on the smoke-pillars of the altar, but in the praises of the congregation pouring out its heart in prayer; the sacrifices were merely the external occasion for visiting the temple, the real reason for doing so lay in the need for the strength and refreshment to be found in religious fellowship.

By the Torah religion came to be a thing to be learned.  Hence the need of teachers in the church of the second temple.  As the scribes had codified the Torah, it was also their task to imprint it on the minds of the people and to fill their life with it; in this way they at the same time founded a supplementary and changing tradition, which kept pace with the needs of the time.  The place of teaching was the synagogue; there the law and the prophets were read and explained on the Sabbath.  The synagogue and the Sabbath were of more importance than the temple and the festivals; and the moral influence of the scribes transcended that of the priests, who had to be content with outward power and dignity.  The rule of religion was essentially the rule of the law, and consequently the Rabbis at last served themselves heirs to the hierarchs.  At the same time, while the government of the law was acknowledged in principle, it could at no time be said to be even approximately realised in fact.  The high-born priests who stood at the head of the theocracy, cared chiefly, as was quite natural, for the maintenance of their own supremacy.  And there were sheep in the flock not to be kept from breaking out, both in the upper and in the lower classes of society; the school could not suppress nature altogether.  It was no trifle even to know the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the written law, and the incalculable number of the unwritten.  Religion had to be made a profession of, if it was to be practiced aright.  It became an art, and thereby at the same time a matter of party:, the leaders of the religious were of course the scribes.  The division became very apparent in the time of the Hellenization which preceded the Maccabaean revolt; at that period the name of Pharisees, i.e., the Separated, came into vogue for the party of the religious.  But the separation and antipathy between the godly and the ungodly had existed before this, and had marked the life of the congregation after the exile from the very first.