years 165 and 105 B.C., on their
discovery that the later Maccabaean chiefs were aiming at more than
religious liberty, and in their own interests contemplating the erection
of a worldly kingdom that would be the death of the theocratic, which it
was the purpose of Providence they should establish; this was the
separate ground which they at first assumed alone, but they in the end
carried the great body of the nation along with them. They were
scrupulously exact in their interpretation and observance of the Jewish
law as the rule to regulate the life of the Jewish community in every
department, and were the representatives of that legal tendency which
gave character to the development of Judaism proper during the period
which elapsed between the date of the Captivity and the advent of
Christianity. The law they observed, however, was not the written law as
it stood, but that law as expounded by the oral law of the Scribes, as
the sole key to its interpretation, so that their attitude to the Law of
Moses was pretty much the same as that of the Roman Catholics and the
High Churchmen in relation to the Scriptures generally, and they were
thus at length the representatives of clericalism as well as legalism in
the Jewish Church, and in doing so they took their ground upon a
principle which is the distinctive article of orthodox Judaism in the
matter to the present day. In the days of Christ they stood in marked
opposition to the SADDUCEES (q. v.) both in their dogmatic views
and their political principles. As against them, on the dogmatic side,
they believed in a spiritual world and in an established moral order, and
on the political their rule was to abstain from politics, except in so
far as they might injuriously affect the life and interests of the
nation; but at that time they had degenerated into mere formalists, whose
religion was a conspicuous hypocrisy, and it was on this account and
their pretensions to superior sanctity that they incurred the indignation
and exposed themselves to the condemnation of Christ.

PHAROS, an island of ancient Egypt, near Alexandria, on which the
first lighthouse was erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus in 48 B.C.

PHARSALIA, a district in the N. of Greece, the southern portion of
the modern province of Larissa; was the scene of Caesar's victory over
Pompey, 48 B.C.

PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART, American authoress, born at Andover; wrote
"Gates Ajar" and other popular stories, is a gre