If Christians usually get their ideas about the Pharisees from the Gospels, they learn their general conception of Judaism from the Epistles of Paul. And, when they find that the Judaism which he condemns is in fact the Judaism of the Pharisees, they combine their information, and rest content with the conclusion that alike in theory and practice the Pharisees were as far as they well could be from the Kingdom of Heaven. A verdict which claims the authority of both Jesus and Paul would seem, to Christians at least, to leave nothing more to be said, and to admit of no appeal. And in fact it has prevailed, and still prevails, in spite of all the efforts of the Jews to obtain even a hearing on the other side. As, in the preceding chapter, I examined the relation of the Pharisees to Jesus, and tried to explain how it was that they came to stand to each other in such sharp antagonism, so in the present chapter I shall try to explain how it was that Paul came to represent the Pharisaic conception of religion in the way he did, and what grounds there are for saying that his representation does not correspond with the facts. Pharisaic Judaism is, or can be, perfectly well known; for it is written large in the Rabbinical literature, by men who were remarkably honest in setting down their faults as well as their virtues. It is there for anyone to study; and no one is entitled to say that the description of it given by Paul, or by anybody else, is accurate or not, until he has studied the thing itself. The fact that it can only be studied in books which are written in Hebrew and Aramaic (except so far as translated) does not exempt the student from the duty of reading them, if he really means to learn what is true in the matter. If he does not, then what is his opinion worth?