But gradually a divergence appeared, not wholly unlike that which had led to the rebellion. The princes of the Maccabean house naturally looked for their supporters in the great families to whom belonged the chief positions of rank and wealth, especially those connected with the Temple. The religion of Torah was mixed up with politics to a degree which displeased those who did not belong to the governing class. There was, therefore, again a movement towards a stricter interpretation of the Torah and a more thorough-going obedience to its requirements, on the part of a minority on the one side, to correspond with the movement towards what might be called "worldliness" on the part of a minority on the other side. These two extremes had names by which they were distinguished. Those who formed the governing class, the great families and the chief priests, were the Sadducees. Those who maintained the full strictness of the religion of Torah were the Pharisees. They were virtually the Ḥasidim over again, under another name. They were in a minority, when compared with the whole nation; but the sympathy of the people in general was with them as against the Sadducees. The particular reason why they were called Pharisees (_Pherūshim_, separated), was that they formed themselves into separate societies pledged to observe certain rules in the matter of meat, drink, clothing, etc., according as these were clean or unclean, allowed or forbidden. They thereby "separated" themselves from such as were less strict, or who at least did not take their pledge as a guarantee of strictness. But it is clear that there was practically nothing new in what the Pharisees did or in the religion they held, except the mere fact of association in pledged companies. The religion which they thus set themselves to realise in its full extent was essentially the religion of Torah as Ezra had moulded it. Successive generations of Sopherim had worked out into fuller detail the implicit contents of the Torah, as changing circumstances called for further interpretation of the original precepts. But there was no breach of continuity between Ezra and the Pharisees, either in principle or even in the means by which that principle was worked out. For there were in every generation the teachers and expounders of the Torah, as there were always those who depended on the guidance of such teachers. The name of the Men of the Great Synagogue had passed out of use, as it was believed that the institution itself came to an end. But the Rabbinical tradition recorded the names of those who successively handed on the teaching in which the meaning of the Torah was unfolded, and its application to new conditions indicated. The line of this descent is through the Pharisees and not through the Sadducees. Not because the Sadducees did not care about the religion of Torah; but because the Pharisees, strange as it may sound, kept the religion of Torah as a living principle, capable of being