Ques.:Who were the Pharisees?

Ans.:The two most powerful sects in Judea were the Pharisees and the Sadducees:the former
being more numerous and influential, while the latter were more intellectual and wealthy. The
Pharisees labored with unbounded zeal_ worthy of a better cause_to extend their influence and
increase their numbers (Matt. 23:15), and to a very large extent they succeeded, being regarded
by the great body of the people with peculiar veneration and respect, and being by far the most
numerous ecclesiastical party in the country. The Maccabees, in their bold struggle to regain their
country’s freedom, received powerful support from two classes of their countrymen, the
CHASIDIM or pious, and the ZADIKIM or righteous; these ultimately came to be designated
under the well-known and familiar names of Pharisees and Sadducees.

Pharisee is derived from a word signifying to separate; hence Separatists or Pharisees. These have
their counterpart in the Christian, profession as pointed out in Jude, verse 19:"These be they who
separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." The Pharisees were a highly religious class,
keen observers of the life and ways of Jesus, rigid exacters of the tithes and dues prescribed in
their cumbersome ritual, most scrupulous in their observance of the traditions of the elders to
which they attached more authority, practically, than even to the commandments of the Lord;
right, too, as to doctrine in which they bitterly opposed their opponents the Sadducees. Of this
strictest of all sects (Acts 26:5) was Paul; but if they were the most religious, they were also the
most hypocritical class of persons that ever lived.* They were ever the op-posers of the Lord in
His most holy life and ways, and when baffled by a life which exposed their hollow pretensions,
they conspired His death. The Lord gives a most withering exposure of Pharisaical life and
practice, denouncing "woe" upon "woe" on that proud, haughty, and hypocritical people (Matt.
23).

*Paul was, however, an exception surely to this remark. See Phil. 3:6 and II Tim.1:8. Ed