The Pharisees פרושים
Those who held to the Oral Torah received at Sinai and to the belief in the resurrection of the dead. The bulk of the people stood behind them, and from them came the sages of the Mishnah.
The name is disputed and was apparently given from outside: perushim means 'the separated'—probably in the laws of purity and food.
What defined them. The Oral Torah: the law was given at Sinai in two forms, written and oral, and the second cannot be read without the first. From this follows everything else: the right to interpret, the ordinances of the sages, judgment by tradition. From it too the belief in the resurrection of the dead and the world to come—not stated outright in the written text, and resting on tradition.
Who they were. Not an estate. Unlike the Sadducees, tied to the priesthood and the nobility, the Pharisees came from every layer, and their support was among the people. They taught those who were not priests, and that changed everything: holiness ceased to be the business of one Temple and one lineage.
What came of it. When the Temple was destroyed the Sadducees had nothing left: their structure rested on the service. The Pharisees had everything left, because theirs rested on teaching. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai went to Yavneh, and from there came the Mishnah. Everything called Judaism after 70 CE is their line.
A word of caution. In Christian usage 'Pharisee' became an insult—a hypocrite. That has nothing to do with who they were: it is the trace of later polemic carried over onto the name itself. The Talmud, incidentally, itself lists types of perushim, some of them for show—but it does so as self-criticism, not as a definition.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Kiddushin 66a — the account of the rupture under John Hyrcanus
- Mishnah Yadayim 4:6–8 — the disputes of Pharisees and Sadducees recorded in the Mishnah itself
Basis: documents and evidence.