"Pharisees"

Pharisees were Jewish religious party that flourished in Palestine during the latter part of the Second Temple period (515 bce–70 ce). The Pharisees’ insistence on the binding force of oral tradition (“the unwritten Torah”) remains a basic tenet of Jewish theological thought. When the Mishna (the first constituent part of the Talmud) was compiled about 200 ce, it incorporated the teachings of the Pharisees on Jewish law.

The Pharisees emerged as a distinct group shortly after the Maccabean revolt, about 165–160 BC. They were likely spiritual descendants of the Hasideans. They were a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees, who were the party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people. The split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees developed from their respective attitudes toward the Torah. The Sadducees, on the one hand, refused to accept any precept as binding unless it was based directly on the Torah—i.e., the Written Law. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that the Law that God gave to Moses was twofold, consisting of the Written Law and the Oral Law, i.e., the teachings of the prophets and the oral traditions of the Jewish people. Whereas the priestly Sadducees taught that the written Torah was the only source of revelation, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in the Law.