Pharisees - News, Updates, Images & Quotes

In the Hasmonean period, numerous, often competing Jewish religious groups, sometimes referred to as sects, had begun to form. They continued to vie for influence in the Herodian period. The best known of these were the Pharisees, the only group (other than the Christians) to survive the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Pharisaic thought became the foundation of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism that has survived to this day.

— Hershel Shanks; Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (quoted by Michael Tsarion) view

The Sadducees were aristocrats. They were a conservative upper class while the Pharisees were distinguished by their intellectual expertise and great learning. The word Pharisee meant "those set apart" or "those standing alone."

— Michael Tsarion; The Irish Origins of Civilization, Volume 2 view

The Pharisees were...a class whose tendency was to form a kind of intellectual aristocracy among the Jews. At first, they formed a sort of brotherhood, a "haburah," the members being called "haburim" or brothers. They were a subversive element, aiming at the overthrow of the Sadducean High-Priesthood, whose members prided themselves on their aristocracy of blood and birth...The Pharisees, who, although they professed, as one of their chief tenets, the utmost contempt of the am-haretz, or simple people, did not overlook the fact that they needed their mass support for the attainment of their own aim...the power of the Sadducees fell with the destruction of the temple by Titus and thenceforth the Pharisaic element held supremacy among the Jews.

— Lady Queensborough; Occult Theocracy (quoted by Michael Tsarion) view

…we can see that many of the religious ideas and movements in Jesus' time have their counterpart in our own day. The Sadducees, the corrupt, politically minded heirs of the ancient church, were an Establishment. The Pharisees were liberal reformers filled with self-righteousness and zeal. The Essenes were perfectionists, who had withdrawn from a corrupt society to build the new and more perfect world of their own. The Zealots were revolutionaries who believed that drastic political action would provide salvation from the injustices they saw all around.

— Andrew M. Greeley; The Jesus Myth (quoted by Michael Tsarion) view

Jesus said, "Damn the Pharisees! They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor [lets] the cattle eat."

— Gospel of Thomas; Verse 102 view