Читать книгу A Class-Book of New Testament History онлайн

126 страница из 159

Aiming as they did at a philosophic elevation of sentiment they found little favour with the common people, and caring little about making proselytes numbered their followers chiefly among the rich and powerful162, and especially the young men of Judæa, and those who were in a position to live a life of ease and worldly enjoyment163.

(b) The Pharisees.

The tendency to adopt Grecian customs and modes of thought above alluded to was not, of course, shared by the entire nation. When Mattathias unfurled the banner of revolt against the heathenizing policy of Antiochus Epiphanes, it will be remembered that he was joined before long by a class calling themselves Assideans164 (1 Macc. ii.42), who seem to have been already in existence as a distinct party, and bound by a vow to the strict observance of the Law. The name they assumed sufficiently indicates their views. Living in times when their countrymen were becoming more and more infected with heathen customs, they protested against such declension from the spirit of the law, and in opposition to the impious (1 Macc. iii.8; vi.21; vii.5), the lawless (1 Macc. iii.6; ix.23), the transgressors (1 Macc. i.11), as they called the Hellenizing faction, adopted for themselves the title of the Assideans, the pious, and in these days of mixing (2 Macc. xiv. 3,38) maintained the strictest observance of the Law165.