to the Law of their forefathers into legal burdens, the latter clung loyally to the simple belief of those self-same forefathers, a belief which was not blurred by intricate learning and a superabundant ‘oral tradition’; theirs was a piety, on the contrary, which was born of the spirit of the times and, therefore, such as was characteristic of the common folk.”[130] It will, no doubt, strike some as incongruous that the Pharisees, with their circumscribed anti-Hellenistic views, and the Apocalyptists, with their enlarged purview and pre-Hellenistic ideas, should be said to have possessed a common ancestry; but there are two facts which are of themselves sufficient to show the probability of this having been the case: belief in a future life among the Jews was largely due to Greek thought; it was one of the main themes of apocalyptic teaching; but it was also one of the most prominent tenets of the Pharisees, who developed it from the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul to a definite belief in the resurrection of the body. That two schools of thought, differing in some vital respects, should nevertheless be in agreement in differing from the normal teaching of the Old Testament on such a special and peculiarly important subject as that of the future life, certainly points to an originally identical parentage. We have laid stress on the fact that in pre-Maccabæan times the Jewish nation, as a whole, was more or less influenced by the Hellenistic spirit; one section of the people would be influenced in this way, another in that. Thus, as an example, the _Chassidim_ were influenced by the Hellenistic teaching on the future life; but the ruling classes were not, they clung to the old traditional teaching as contained in the Old Testament. Or again, among the _Chassidim_ were many who were influenced by the freer and more tolerant atmosphere of the Greek spirit, agreeing in this with the ruling classes, but differing from those with whom they were in some other respects in agreement. So that when, later, clearly defined parties came into existence, they would not necessarily differ on _all_ points; and Pharisees and Apocalyptists agreed as a whole upon the subject of a belief in the future life, though, as we shall see, various opinions on certain points concerning the future life were held by the Apocalyptists.