The Pharisees (; ) were a Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism. Although the group no longer exists, their traditions are of great importance for the manifold Jewish religious movements.
Conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts amongst Jews (exacerbated by the Roman conquest). One conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization (the Sadducees) and those who resisted it (the Pharisees). Another was juridical-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Temple with its rites and services (Sadducees), and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic Laws (Pharisees). A specifically religious point of conflict involved different interpretations of the Torah and how to apply it to Jewish life: Sadducees recognized only the Written Torah (), rejecting Prophets, Writings, and doctrines such as the Oral Torah and the resurrection of the dead.
The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, believed by many historians to have been a Pharisee, estimated there were around 6,000 adherents to the Pharisee movement before the fall of the Second Temple. He said that Pharisee influence over the common people was so great that anything they said against the king or the high priest was believed, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees, who were the upper class. Pharisees claimed Mosaic authority for their interpretation of Jewish religious law, while Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon, when Zadok, their ancestor, officiated as high priest.
Etymology
"Pharisee" is derived from Ancient Greek (), from Aramaic (), plural (), meaning "set apart, separated", related to Hebrew (), plural (), the Qal passive participle of the verb (). It may refer to their separation from Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity, or from irreligious Jews.Alternatively, it may have a particular political meaning as "separatists", due to their division from the Sadducee elite: Yitzhak Isaac Halevi characterizes the Sadducees and Pharisees as political rather than religious sects. Scholar Thomas Walter Manson and Talmud expert Louis Finkelstein suggest that "Pharisee" derives from the Aramaic words or , meaning "Persian" or "Persianizer", based on the demonym , meaning 'Persian' in the Persian language, and further akin to and . Harvard University scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen denies this, stating: "Practically all scholars now agree that the name "Pharisee" derives from the Hebrew and Aramaic or .") Other sects may have emerged at this time, such as the early Christians in Jerusalem and the Therapeutae in Egypt. However, their status as Jews is unclear.
The Books of the Maccabees—two deuterocanonical books in the Bible—focus on the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucids under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and concludes with the defeat of General Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work. It includes several theological points: prayer for the dead, the last judgment, intercession of saints, and martyrology. The New Testament apocrypha, known as the Gospel of Peter, also alludes to the Pharisees.
Judah ha-Nasi redacted the Mishnah, an authoritative codification of Pharisaic interpretations, around 200 AD. Most of the authorities quoted in the Mishnah lived after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD; consequently, it marked the beginning of the transition from Pharisaic to Rabbinic Judaism. The Mishnah was important because it compiled the oral interpretations and traditions of the Pharisees (and later the rabbis) into a single authoritative text, thus allowing oral tradition in Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple. However, none of the rabbinic sources include identifiable eyewitness accounts of the Pharisees and their teachings.
History
From
The deportation and exile of an unknown number of Jews of the Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II—starting with the first deportation in 597 BC, and continuing after the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple in 587 BC—resulted in dramatic changes to Jewish culture and religion. During the 70-year exile in Babylon, Jewish houses of assembly (known in Hebrew as a , or in Greek as a synagogue) and houses of prayer (Hebrew ; Greek , ) were the primary meeting places for prayer, and the house of study () was the counterpart for the synagogue.
In 539 BC, the Persians conquered Babylon, and in 537 BC, Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple. He did not, however, allow the restoration of the Judean monarchy, which left the Judean priests as the dominant authority. Without the constraining power of the monarchy, the authority of the Temple in civic life was amplified. It was around this time that the Sadducee party emerged as the party of priests and allied elites. However, the Second Temple, which was completed in 515 BC, had been constructed under the auspices of a foreign power, and there were lingering questions about its legitimacy. This provided the condition for the development of various sects or "schools of thought", each of which claimed exclusive authority to represent "Judaism", and which typically shunned social intercourse, especially marriage, with members of other sects.
The Temple was no longer the only institution for Jewish religious life. After the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra, the houses of study and worship remained important secondary institutions in Jewish life. Outside Judea, the synagogue was often called a house of prayer. While most Jews could not regularly attend the Temple service, they could meet at the synagogue for morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat, a weekly Torah portion was read publicly in the synagogues, following the tradition of public Torah readings instituted by Ezra. Although priests controlled the rituals of the Temple, the scribes and sages, later called rabbis (Hebrew for "Teacher/master"), dominated the study of the Torah. These men maintained an oral tradition that they believed had originated at Mount Sinai alongside the Torah of Moses; a God-given interpretation of the Torah.
The Hellenistic period of Jewish history began when Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 332 BC. The rift between the priests and the sages developed during this time, when Jews faced new political and cultural struggles. This created a sort of schism in the Jewish community. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies until 198 BC, when the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control. In 167 BC, the Seleucid King Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects. He imposed a program of forced Hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs, thus precipitating the Maccabean Revolt. Jerusalem was liberated in 165 BC, and the Temple was restored. In 141 BC, an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon Maccabeus as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty.
Emergence of the Pharisees
thumb|right|John Hyrcanus from [[Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum (1553)]]
After defeating the Seleucid forces, Judas Maccabaeus's nephew, John Hyrcanus, established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BC, thus establishing priests as both political and religious authorities. Although the Hasmoneans were considered heroes for resisting the Seleucids, their reign lacked the legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple era.
The Pharisees emerged largely out of the group of scribes and sages. Some scholars observe some Idumean influences in the development of Pharisaical Judaism. The Pharisees, among other Jewish sects, were active from the middle of the 2nd century BC until the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. One of the factors that distinguished the Pharisees from other groups prior to the destruction of the Temple was their belief that all Jews had to observe the purity laws (which applied to the Temple service) outside the Temple. The major difference, however, was the continued adherence of the Pharisees to the laws and traditions of the Jewish people in the face of assimilation. As Josephus notes, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.
Josephus indicates that the Pharisees received the backing and good-will of the common people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees associated with the ruling classes. In general, whereas the Sadducees were aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular, and more democratic. The Pharisaic position is exemplified by the assertion that "A learned takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest." (A —literally "bastard", according to the Pharisaic definition—is an outcast child born of a forbidden relationship, such as adultery or incest, in which marriage of the parents could not lawfully occur. The word is often but incorrectly translated as "illegitimate".)
Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic tenet of an Oral Torah, creating two Jewish understandings of the Torah. An example of this differing approach is the interpretation of "an eye in place of an eye". The Pharisaic understanding was that the value of an eye was to be paid by the perpetrator. In the Sadducees' view, the words were given a more literal interpretation, in which the offender's eye would be removed.
The sages of the Talmud saw a direct link between themselves and the Pharisees, and historians generally consider Pharisaic Judaism to be the progenitor of Rabbinic Judaism, that is normative, mainstream Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple. All mainstream forms of Judaism today consider themselves heirs of Rabbinic Judaism and, ultimately, the Pharisees.
Hasmonean period
Although the Pharisees did not support the wars of expansion of the Hasmoneans and the forced conversions of the Idumeans, the political rift between them became wider when a Pharisee named Eleazar insulted the Hasmonean ethnarch John Hyrcanus at his own table, suggesting that he should abandon his role as High Priest due to a rumour (probably untrue) that he had been conceived while his mother was a prisoner of war. In response, he distanced himself from the Pharisees.
After the death of John Hyrcanus, his younger son, Alexander Jannaeus, made himself king, and openly sided with the Sadducees by adopting their rites in the Temple. His actions caused a riot in the Temple, and led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees. However, on his deathbed, Jannaeus advised his widow, Salome Alexandra, to seek reconciliation with the Pharisees. Her brother was Shimon ben Shetach, a leading Pharisee. Josephus attests that Salome was favorably inclined toward the Pharisees, and their political influence grew tremendously under her reign, especially in the Sanhedrin or Jewish Council, which they came to dominate.
Following Salome's death, her elder son, Hyrcanus II, was generally supported by the Pharisees. Her younger son, Aristobulus II, was in conflict with Hyrcanus and tried to seize power. The Pharisees seemed to be in a vulnerable position at this time. The conflict between the two sons culminated in a civil war that ended when the Roman general Pompey intervened and captured Jerusalem in 63 BC. Josephus' account may overstate the role of the Pharisees. He reports elsewhere that the Pharisees did not grow to power until the reign of Salome. As Josephus was a Pharisee, his account may represent a historical creation meant to elevate the status of the Pharisees during the height of the Hasmonean dynasty.
Later texts, like the Mishnah and the Talmud, record a host of rulings by rabbis, some of whom are believed to be from among the Pharisees, concerning sacrifices and other ritual practices in the Temple, torts, criminal law, and governance. In their day, the influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people was strong, and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many.
Roman period
thumbnail|right|Pompey in the Temple of Jerusalem, by [[Jean Fouquet]]
According to Josephus, the Pharisees appeared before Pompey, asking him to interfere and restore the old priesthood, while abolishing the royalty of the Hasmoneans altogether. The Pharisees also opened Jerusalem's gates to the Romans, and actively supported them against the Sadducean faction. When the Romans finally broke the entrance to Jerusalem's Temple, the Pharisees killed the priests who were officiating the Temple services on Sabbath. They regarded Pompey's defilement of the Temple in Jerusalem as a divine punishment of Sadducean misrule. Pompey ended the monarchy in 63 BC, and named Hyrcanus II high priest and ethnarch (a lesser title than "king"). Six years later, Hyrcanus was deprived of the remainder of political authority, and ultimate jurisdiction was given to the proconsul of Syria, who ruled through Hyrcanus's Idumaean associate, Antipater, and later, Antipater's two sons, Phasael (military governor of Judea) and Herod (military governor of Galilee). In 40 BC, Aristobulus's son, Antigonus, overthrew Hyrcanus, and named himself king and high priest, whereafter Herod fled to Rome.
In Rome, Herod sought the support of Mark Antony and Octavian, and secured recognition by the Roman Senate as king, confirming the termination of the Hasmonean dynasty. According to Josephus, Sadducean opposition to Herod led him to treat the Pharisees favorably. Herod was an unpopular ruler, perceived as a Roman puppet. Despite his restoration and expansion of the Second Temple, Herod's notorious treatment of his own family and of the last Hasmonaeans further eroded his popularity. According to Josephus, the Pharisees ultimately opposed him, and thus fell victims (4 BC) to his bloodthirstiness. The family of Boethus, whom Herod had raised to the high-priesthood, revived the spirit of the Sadducees, and thenceforth the Pharisees again had them as antagonists.
While it stood, the Second Temple remained the center of Jewish ritual life. Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices at the Temple three times per year: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), and Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). The Pharisees, like the Sadducees, were politically quiescent, and studied, taught, and worshiped in their own way. At this time, serious theological differences emerged between the Sadducees and Pharisees. The notion that the sacred could exist outside the Temple, a view central to the Essenes, was shared and elevated by the Pharisees.
From Pharisees to rabbis
Following the Jewish–Roman wars, revolutionaries like the Zealots had been crushed by the Romans, and had little credibility (the last Zealots died at Masada in 73 AD). Similarly, the Sadducees, whose teachings were closely connected to the Temple, disappeared with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. The Essenes also disappeared, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the concerns of the times, or perhaps because they were sacked by the Romans at Qumran. Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remained. Their vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives was a position meaningful to the majority of Jews. Such teachings extended beyond ritual practices. According to the classic midrash in Avot D'Rabbi Nathan (4:5):
Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governed Judea through a procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish patriarch, and additionally levied the Fiscus Judaicus. Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Pharisee, was appointed the first patriarch (the Hebrew word nasi also means prince or president), and he reestablished the Sanhedrin at Yavneh (see the related Council of Jamnia) under Pharisee control. Instead of giving tithes to the priests and sacrificing offerings at the destroyed Temple, the rabbis instructed Jews to give charity. Moreover, they argued that all Jews should study in local synagogues, because the Torah is "the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob" (Deuteronomy 33:4).
After the destruction of the First Temple, Jews believed that God would forgive them and enable them to rebuild the Temple—an event that actually occurred within three generations. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews wondered whether this would happen again. When the Emperor Hadrian threatened to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city dedicated to Jupiter in 132 AD, some of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin supported a rebellion led by Simon Bar Kosiba (later known as Bar Kokhba), who established a short-lived independent state that was conquered by the Romans in 135 AD. With this defeat, the Jews' hopes that the Temple would be rebuilt were crushed. Nonetheless, belief in a Third Temple remains a cornerstone of Jewish belief.
Romans forbade Jews to enter Jerusalem (except for the day of Tisha B'Av), and prohibited any plan to rebuild the Temple. Instead, it took over the Province of Judea directly, renaming it Syria Palaestina, and renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina. Romans did eventually reconstitute the Sanhedrin under the leadership of Judah haNasi (who claimed to be a descendant of King David). They conferred the title of "nasi" as hereditary, and Judah's sons served both as patriarch and as heads of the Sanhedrin.
Post-Temple developments
According to historian Shaye Cohen, by the time three generations had passed after the destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews concluded that the Temple would not be rebuilt during their lives nor in the foreseeable future. Jews were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions:
- How to achieve atonement without the Temple?
- How to explain the disastrous outcome of the rebellion?
- How to live in the post-Temple, Romanized world?
- How to connect present and past traditions?
Regardless of the importance they gave to the Temple, and despite their support of Bar Koseba's revolt, the Pharisees' vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews. Their responses would constitute Rabbinic Judaism.
The rabbinic era is divided into two periods. The first period was that of the Tannaim (from the Aramaic word for "repeat;" the Aramaic root TNY is equivalent to the Hebrew root SNY, which is the basis for "Mishnah". Thus, Tannaim are "Mishnah teachers"), the sages who repeated and thus passed down the Oral Torah. During this period, rabbis finalized the canonization of the Tanakh, and in 200 AD, Judah haNasi edited together Tannaitic judgements and traditions into the Mishnah, considered by the rabbis to be the definitive expression of the Oral Torah (although some of the sages mentioned in the Mishnah are Pharisees who lived prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, or prior to the Bar Kozeba revolt, most of the sages mentioned lived after the revolt).
The second period is that of the Amoraim (from the Aramaic word for "speaker") rabbis and their students, who continued to debate legal matters and discuss the meaning of the books of the Bible. In Judea, these discussions occurred at academies at Tiberias, Caesarea, and Sepphoris. In Babylonia, these discussions largely occurred at academies that had been established at Nehardea, Pumpeditha, and Sura. This tradition of study and debate reached its fullest expression in the development of the Talmudim, elaborations of the Mishnah and records of Rabbinic debates, stories, and judgements, compiled around 400 AD in Judea and around 500 AD in Babylon.
Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged as normative Judaism, and in fact, many today refer to Rabbinic Judaism simply as "Judaism." Rabbinic scholar Jacob Neusner, however, stated that the Amoraim had no ultimate power in their communities. They lived at a time when Jews were subjects of either the Roman or Iranian (Parthian and Persian) empires. These empires left the day-to-day governance in the hands of the Jewish authorities: in Roman Palestine, through the hereditary office of patriarch (also simultaneously the head of the Sanhedrin); in Babylonia, through the hereditary office of the Reish Galuta, the "Head of the Exile" or "Exilarch" (who ratified the appointment of the heads of Rabbinical academies.) According to Jacob Neusner: