(Gr. Φαρισαῖοι, derived from the Hebrew παρεστῶν, to separate), the most celebrated of all the Jewish sects. As their name implies, they were separated from all others by the assumed correctness of their opinions and Pharisees, the holiness of their lives. The precise origin of the sect is not known. That they, however, as well as their natural opponents, the Sadducees, existed in the priesthood of Jonathan,—that is, between 159 and 144 before Christ,—is known from Josephus, who (Antiq. xiii. 5) makes mention of them as well as of the sect of the Essenes. The terms he employs warrant the conviction that they were then no novelties, but established religious parties.

The same historian (who was himself a Pharisee, and who says they were "of kin to the sect of Stoics, as the Greeks call them") further describes them in the following terms:—

"The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses, and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. Hence great disputes. The Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side." (Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 10.) "The Pharisees live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason, and what that prescribes to them as good they do. They also pay respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in anything which they have introduced; and when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away from men the freedom of acting as they think fit, since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a constitution of things whereby what He wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as men have lived virtuously or viciously in this life. The latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison; but the former shall have power to revive and live again: on account of which doctrine they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever is done about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, is performed according to their directions, insomuch that the cities gave great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct." (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 1, 3.) "The Pharisees say that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate (ἐπιχείρησις); that some of them are in our own power, and that they are liable to fate, but are not caused by fate" (Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 9). "The sect of the Pharisees are supposed to excel others in the accurate knowledge of the laws of their country" (Joseph. Vita, sect. 88). "The Pharisees have so great a power over the multitude, that when they say anything against the king or against the high-priest, they are generally believed" (Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 10, 5). "The bodies of all men are mortal, and are created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies." (De Bell. Jud. iii. 8, 5.)

There is another source of our knowledge of the Pharisees—the books of the New Testament. The light in which they here appear varies, of course, with the circumstances to which its origin is due. The Gospels present the character of the Pharisees in a darker hue, insomuch as here a higher standard of morality is brought into use. Here they are charged continually with the worst forms of pride, hypocrisy, avarice, and sensuality. At an early period they determined in the Sanhedrim to withstand and destroy Jesus, instigated doubtless by the boldness with which he taught the necessity of personal righteousness and pure worship. (Matt. xii. 14.)

Staudlin, in estimating the character of the Pharisees, has the following remarks:—"The Pharisees held anxiously to the decisions of the holy writings and the older Jewish teachers. Thus their whole system was built upon authority, and their morality was changed into a casuistry, like that of the Jesuits. To every event that happened they knew how to apply either a passage of the sacred books or an explanation of the same, or a corollary, an inference, an arbitrary extension or restriction. On this account nothing is more pitiable or more ridiculous than their exegetical theology, whence their system of morality became uncertain and unconnected; without general principles, life, and spirit. Thus arbitrariness and ingenuity, instead of reason and solidity, were applied to morals; and to a party which assumed, and by its nature must assume, dominion over the minds of men, the temptation was often too great to accommodate their principles to the passions of men, and to use for the same purpose their casuistry, dependent on authority, which so easily lent itself to this end. The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, the opposition of the Sadducees, bound them only the more to their old precepts and method of teaching, and filled them with an ever-living opposition to every Gentile doctrine and custom. They considered themselves the more as the only genuine and pure Israelitish teachers of religion; they preserved the reverence for the holy books which had been of old widely spread among the people; and, aided by their principles, which were in fact very rigid, they could not fail to gain with the people a reputation for superior holiness. The greater this reputation became, the greater was the temptation to hypocrisy. The more rigorous were their principles, the more difficult it was to act entirely up to them, and the easier were they led to observe that with a holy appearance they could attain the power of imposing on the mass of the people and of ruling over them. This dominion of the Pharisees over the minds of the people was nourishment for their pride, and incentive enough to use it for selfish purposes. Like cunning priests and Jesuits, they played with forms and phrases, they seized a place in the hearts and consciences of men, corrupted them even by means of pious instruction, led them whither they would have them go, acquired many a fair prize, and became rulers of an earthly kingdom of darkness. (Städtlin, Sittenlehre, i. 431.)

We are not to suppose, however, that there were no individuals in the body free from its prevailing vices. There did not fail to be upright and pure-minded men, who united inward piety to outward correctness of conduct, and were indeed superior to the principles of their sect; such was Nicodemus (John iii. 1); such also Gamaliel may have been (Acts v. 34). Of men of this kind many were led to embrace the Gospel. (Acts xv. 5.) In the time of our Lord there were two leading parties, that of Hillel and that of Shammai, the former representing a moderate Pharisaism, the latter "the strictest sect," to which Paul had probably belonged. (See Trium Scriptorum Illust. de tribus Judaeorum Sectis Syntagma, in quo R. Serarii, J. Drusii, J. Scaligeri opuscula cum aliis exhibentur, found in Ugolini's Thesaurus, vol. xxiii.; also Städtlin's Sittenlehre Jesu, i. 417, sq.; Beer, Gesch. Lehren in Meinung aller relig. Sect. der Juden, Brünn, 1822; and Tholuck, Comm. de vi quam Graeco Philosophia in Theologiam tum Muhammadanum, tum Judaeor. exerceret, Hamb. 1835-7.)