ome
champions who argued for their theological position; but the mass of them
cared for other things.

9. The leaders of the popular thought, on the other hand, were chiefly
noted for their religious zeal and theological acumen. They represented
the outgrowth of that spirit which in the Maccabean time had risked all to
defend the sanctity of the temple and the right of God's people to worship
him according to his law. They were known as Pharisees, because, as the
name ("separated") indicates, they insisted on the separation of the
people of God from all the defilements and snares of the heathen life
round about them. The Pharisees constituted a fraternity devoted to the
scrupulous observance of law and tradition in all the concerns of daily
life. They were specialists in religion, and were the ideal
representatives of Judaism. Their distinguishing characteristic was
reverence for the law; their religion was the religion of a book. By
punctilious obedience of the law man might hope to gain a record of merit
which should stand to his credit and secure his reward when God should
finally judge the world. Because life furnished many situations not dealt
with in the written law, there was need of its authoritative
interpretation, in order that ignorance might not cause a man to
transgress. These interpretations constituted an oral law which
practically superseded the written code, and they were handed down from
generation to generation as "the traditions of the fathers." The existence
of this oral law made necessary a company of scribes and lawyers whose
business it was to know the traditions and transmit them to their pupils.
These scribes were the teachers of Israel, the leaders of the Pharisees,
and the most highly revered class in the community. Pharisaism at its
beginning was intensely earnest, but in the time of Jesus the earnest
spirit had died out in zealous formalism. This was the inevitable result
of their virtual substitution of the written law for the living God. Their
excessive reverence had banished God from practical relation to the daily
life. They held that he had declared his will once for all in the law. His
name was scrupulously revered, his worship was cultivated with minutest
care, his judgment was anticipated with dread; but he himself, like an
Oriental monarch, was kept far from common life in an isolation suitable
to his awful holiness. By a natural consequence conscience gave place to
scrupulous rega