e other
the Scribes and Pharisees.

{14}

After the death of Herod the Great the Romans made a census of his
country, and a certain Judas of Galilee endeavoured to raise an active
rebellion. The influence of the ruling classes in Jerusalem suppressed
this movement for the time, but it remained, as Josephus[5] terms it,
the fourth philosophy, or sect, among the Jews, maintaining that no
pious Jew could recognise any ruler except God, and steadily insisting
that active resistance to the power of Rome was justifiable and even
necessary. The sect apparently remained anonymous until about A.D. 66,
when one branch of those who accepted its tenets took to themselves the
name of Zealots and were largely instrumental in bringing about those
final disturbances which led to the fall of Jerusalem. We know very
little of this party except from Josephus, and the reasons for which
his book was written did not encourage him to give unnecessary
information, but, judging by results, the fourth philosophy must have
been in the first half of the first century a steadily growing menace
to all organised government, willing to destroy but unable to build,
concealing under the name of patriotism that pathological excitement
which is the delirium of diseased nations.

It is possible, but not certain, that these Jews were influenced by and
possibly helped to produce some parts of that curious literature known
as Apocalypses,[6] {15} which seems in the main to have been intended
to comfort the discouraged and to inspire them with enthusiasm by
giving them the assurance that a better time was at hand.

A very different type of Jew was represented by the Scribes and
Pharisees. They believed implicitly that the law of Moses and the
tradition of the elders had a divine sanction, and that to live in
accordance with it, not to take part in political intrigue, was the way
of Life. Their main object was to interpret the Law in such a way as
to make it possible to follow, and to extend its explanation so as to
cover every possible problem in practical life. They were opposed to
Jesus during his life, and afterwards bitterly opposed to his
followers. It is therefore natural that there is in the Christian
Scriptures a large amount of polemic against the Pharisees,[7] and
there would be probably more against the Christians in the rabbinical
writings had it not been for the activities of the mediaeval censors,
so that statements in the Talmud whic