The Pharisees, who not only accepted the Torah, but the rest of the Hebrew scriptures also, believed in the Resurrection of the Dead, and it is known to have been a major point of contention between the two groups ( see ).

When Jesus told Lazarus ’ sister, Martha, that Lazarus would rise again, she replied, " I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day ". 11: 24 Also, one of the two main branches of the Jewish religious establishment, the Pharisees, believed in and taught the future resurrection of the body. Acts 23: 1-8

Pharisees believed that in death, people rest in their graves until they are physically resurrected with the coming of the Messiah, and within that resurrected body the soul would exist eternally.

This is believed to be a more accurate historical depiction of the Pharisees, who made debate one of the tenets of their system of belief.

Pharisees believed in resurrection, while Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul, and Sadducees, apparently, believed in neither.

The Pharisees believed in Resurrection of the Dead, and the Sadducees did not.

The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the Pharisees believed in a literal resurrection of the body.

Later texts like the Mishnah and the Talmud record a host of rulings by Rabbis, some of whom are believed to be from among the Pharisees, concerning sacrifices and other ritual practices in the Temple, torts, criminal law, and governance.

According to Josephus, whereas the Sadducees believed that people have total free will and the Essenes believed that all of a person's life is predestined, the Pharisees believed that people have free will but that God also has foreknowledge of human destiny.

According to Josephus, Pharisees were further distinguished from the Sadducees in that Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead.

Unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead in a future, messianic age.

The Pharisees believed in a literal resurrection of the body.

First, Pharisees believed in a broad and literal interpretation of Exodus ( 19: 3 – 6 ), " you shall be my own possession among all peoples ; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation ," and the words of 2 Maccabees ( 2: 17 ): " God gave all the people the heritage, the kingdom, the priesthood, and the holiness.

The Pharisees believed that all Jews in their ordinary life, and not just the Temple priesthood or Jews visiting the Temple, should observe rules and rituals concerning purification.

The Pharisees believed that in addition to the written Torah recognized by both the Sadducees and Pharisees and believed to have been written by Moses, there exists another Torah, consisting of the corpus of oral laws and traditions transmitted by God to Moses orally, and then memorized and passed down by Moses and his successors over the generations.

Cohen points out that “ not all priests, high priests, and aristocrats were Sadducees ; many were Pharisees, and many were not members of any group at all .” As mentioned above, it is widely believed that the Sadducees were descended from the House of Zadok and sought to preserve this priestly line and the authority of the Temple.

In 1624 he published a book titled An Examination of the Traditions of the Pharisees which questioned the fundamental idea of the immortality of the soul.

Jesus ' warning in that " this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled " is tied back to his similar warning to the Scribes and the Pharisees that their judgment would " come upon this generation " (), that is, during the first century rather than at a future time long after the Scribes and Pharisees had passed from the scene.

* The New Covenant is not purely an expansion of the Old Covenant because the Pharisees and all who did not have faith in Jesus are excluded from the New Covenant, but were acceptable under the old.

Jesus ' warning in that " this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled " is tied back to his similar warning to the Scribes and the Pharisees that their judgment would " come upon this generation " (), that is, during the first century rather than at a future time long after the Scribes and Pharisees had passed from the scene.

Most commentators consider that Jesus ' statements refer to the specific group of Pharisees he was addressing, or possibly the Pharisaic movement as a whole, but not to the Jewish people as a whole, which would have included Jesus and all his followers.

One of the factors that distinguished the Pharisees from other groups prior to the destruction of the Temple was their belief that all Jews had to observe the purity laws ( which applied to the Temple service ) outside the Temple.

First of all, Josephus reports elsewhere that the Pharisees did not grow to power until the reign of Queen Salome Alexandra ( JW. 1. 110 ) The coins minted under Hyrcanus suggest that Hyrcanus did not have complete secular authority.

One belief central to the Pharisees was shared by all Jews of the time: monotheism.

The Pharisees washed themselves before Sabbath and festival meals ( in effect, making these holidays " temples in time "), and, eventually, before all meals.

The Pharisees based their authority to innovate on the verses: ".... according to the word they tell you ... according to all they instruct you.

Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remained, poised with teachings directed to all Jews that could replace Temple worship.

Regardless of the importance they gave to the Temple, and despite their support of Bar Koseba ’ s revolt, the Pharisees ’ vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews.

Thus, as the Pharisees argued that all Israel should act as priests, the Rabbis argued that all Israel should act as rabbis: " The rabbis furthermore want to transform the entire Jewish community into an academy where the whole Torah is studied and kept .... redemption depends on the " rabbinization " of all Israel, that is, upon the attainment of all Jewry of a full and complete embodiment of revelation or Torah, thus achieving a perfect replica of heaven.

According to the New Testament, many Pharisees objected to Jesus's mission to outcast groups such as beggars and tax-collectors, but Rabbinic texts actually emphasize the availability of forgiveness to all.

In the Book of John, Jesus calls certain Pharisees " children of the devil ".

The Roman centurion is willing to execute the Pharisees because of their attempt to bribe him, yet Jesus says to let them go, after dividing their plunder: one third to Rome, one-third to the centurion's local needs, and one-third to the poor people of the nearby communities, some of whose children had been kidnapped by the Pharisees, to be sold as slaves.

According to Nehemiah Gordon, the Pharisees -- for example --" do not follow the calendar given to the People of Israel in the Tanach ".

Over the succeeding 47 chapters, Jesus is recorded as developing the theme that the ancient prophets, specifically Obadiah, Haggai and Hosea, were holy hermits following this religious rule ; and contrasting their followers – termed " true Pharisees " – with the " false Pharisees " who lived in the world, and who constituted his chief opponents.

Around the 1st century CE there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians.

Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees ' belief system ( which became the basis for modern Judaism ), were also dismissed by the Sadducees.

Another explanation is that the passages were added to the Antiquities to highlight the power of the Pharisees, but he considers the last explanation less likely than the others.

In his earliest work, Neusner had argued that the most credible evidence showed that the Second Commonwealth Pharisees were a sectarian group centered on " table fellowship " and ritual food purity practices, and less interested in wider Jewish values or social issues.

In Hellenistic and Roman times, some Pharisees were eager proselytizers, and had at least some success throughout the empire.

# Judaism's oppressiveness reflects the disposition of Jesus ' opponents called " Pharisees " ( predecessors of the " rabbis "), who in their teachings and behavior were hypocrites ( see Woes of the Pharisees ).

However, although this was how the Pharisees saw the biblical implication, the Sadducees argued that if there were only female descendants of an individual's sons, and the sons themselves were dead, then the individual's daughters had the right to inherit.

The first surviving historical mention of the Pharisees is from the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus ( 37 – 100 CE ), in a description of the " four schools of thought ," or " four sects ," into which the Jews were divided in the 1st century CE ; the other schools were the Essenes, who were generally apolitical and who may have emerged as a sect of dissident priests who rejected either the Seleucid-appointed or the Hasmonean high priests as illegitimate ; the Sadducees, who were the main antagonists of the Pharisees ; and the " fourth philosophy " possibly associated with the anti-Roman revolutionary groups such as the Sicarii and the Zealots.

As Josephus noted, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.

The Pharisees were one of at least four major schools of thought within the Jewish religion around the 1st century.

In general, whereas the Sadducees were conservative, aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular, and more democratic.

In their day, the influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people remained strong and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many.