A lay renewal movement, not a priesthood — scholars and craftsmen and villagers who held that the whole of life was to be lived under the Law, and who carried an ORAL tradition of interpretation alongside the written text. They believed in the resurrection of the dead, in angels, and in a coming age; Josephus (himself sympathetic) says they had the people's confidence, and after the temple fell in AD 70 it was their kind of Judaism, portable and text-centred, that survived. ⚠ The Gospels put them in constant argument with Jesus, which is partly a measure of how CLOSE they were: he debates Sabbath, purity and divorce with them because they are the people who care about those questions. Reading 'Pharisee' as a synonym for hypocrite is a later English habit and a poor guide to the first century. Matthew first names them at 3:7, standing beside the Sadducees, whom they otherwise agreed with about almost nothing.