Pharisee

/far"euh see'/, n.

1. a member of a Jewish sect that flourished during the 1st century B.C. and 1st century A.D. and that differed from the Sadducees chiefly in its strict observance of religious ceremonies and practices, adherence to oral laws and traditions, and belief in an afterlife and the coming of a Messiah.

2. (l.c.) a sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical person.

[bef. 900; ME Pharise, Farise, OE Fariseus < LL Phariseus, var. of PHARISAEUS < Gk Pharisaîos < Aram parishayya, pl. of PARISHA lit., separated]

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Member of a Jewish religious party in Palestine that emerged с 160 BC in opposition to the Sadducees.

The Pharisees held that the Jewish oral tradition was as valid as the Torah. They struggled to democratize the Jewish religion, arguing that the worship of God was not confined to the Temple of Jerusalem and fostering the synagogue as an institution of worship. Their belief that reason must be applied in the interpretation of the Torah and its application to contemporary problems is now basic to Jewish theology.

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▪ Jewish history

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

      The Pharisees (Hebrew: Perushim) emerged as a distinct group shortly after the Maccabaean revolt, around 165–160 BC; they were, it is generally believed, spiritual descendants of the Hasideans (q.v.). The Pharisees emerged as a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees (Sadducee), i.e., the party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people. The basic difference that led to the split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees lay in their respective attitudes toward the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the problem of finding in it answers to questions and bases for decisions about contemporary legal and religious matters arising under circumstances far different from those of the time of Moses. In their response to this problem, 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; men must use their reason in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems. Rather than blindly follow the letter of the Law even if it conflicted with reason or conscience, the Pharisees harmonized the teachings of the Torah with their own ideas or found their own ideas suggested or implied in it. They interpreted the Law according to its spirit; when in the course of time a law had been outgrown or superseded by changing conditions, they gave it a new and more acceptable meaning, seeking scriptural support for their actions through a ramified system of hermeneutics. It was due to this progressive tendency of the Pharisees that their interpretation of the Torah continued to develop and has remained a living force in Judaism.

      The Pharisees were not primarily a political party but a society of scholars and pietists. They enjoyed a large popular following, and in the New Testament they appear as spokesmen for the majority of the population. Around 100 BC a long struggle ensued as the Pharisees tried to democratize the Jewish religion and remove it from the control of the Temple priests. The Pharisees asserted that God could and should be worshiped even away from the Temple and outside Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, worship consisted not in bloody sacrifices—the practice of the Temple priests—but in prayer and in the study of God's law. Hence the Pharisees fostered the synagogue as an institution of religious worship, outside and separate from the Temple. The synagogue may thus be considered a Pharasaic institution since the Pharisees developed it, raised it to high eminence, and gave it a central place in Jewish religious life.

      The active period of Pharasaism, the most influential movement in the development of Orthodox Judaism, extended well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The Pharisees preserved and transmitted Judaism through the flexibility they gave to Jewish scriptural interpretation in the face of changing historical circumstances. The efforts they devoted to education also had a seminal importance in subsequent Jewish history; after the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it was the synagogue and the schools of the Pharisees that continued to function and to promote Judaism in the long centuries following the Diaspora.

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