Matthew 16:6-12; Yeshua said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” … 11 How is it that you don’t perceive that I didn’t speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that he didn’t tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Matthew 5:17-20; “Don’t think that I came to destroy the Torah or the Prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill. 18 For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the Torah, until all things are accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Pharisees (Hebrew: Perushim) emerged as a distinct group shortly after the Maccabean revolt, about 165–160 bce; they were, it is generally believed, spiritual descendants of the Hasideans. The Pharisees emerged as a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees—i.e., the party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people. The basic difference that led to the split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees lay in their respective attitudes toward the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the problem of finding in it answers to questions and bases for decisions about contemporary legal and religious matters arising under circumstances far different from those of the time of Moses. In their response to this problem, the Sadducees, on the one hand, refused to accept any precept as binding unless it was based directly on the Torah—i.e., the Written Law. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that the Law that Elohim gave to Moses was twofold, consisting of the Written Law and the Oral Law—i.e., the teachings of the prophets and the oral traditions of the Jewish people. Whereas the priestly Sadducees taught that the written Torah was the only source of revelation, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in the Law: humans must use their reason in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems.
The Pharisees were primarily not a political party but a society of scholars and pietists. They enjoyed a large popular following, and in the New Testament they appear as spokesmen for the majority of the population. About 100 bce a long struggle ensued as the Pharisees tried to democratize the Jewish religion and remove it from the control of the Temple priests. The Pharisees asserted that Elohim could and should be worshipped even away from the Temple and outside Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, worship consisted not in bloody slaughters—the practice of the Temple priests—but in prayer and in the study of Elohim’s law. Hence, the Pharisees fostered the synagogue as an institution of religious worship, outside and separate from the Temple. The synagogue may thus be considered a Pharasaic institution, since the Pharisees developed it, raised it to high eminence, and gave it a central place in Jewish religious life.
The active period of Pharasaism, the most-influential movement in the development of Orthodox Judaism, extended well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries ce. The Pharisees preserved and transmitted Judaism through the flexibility they gave to Jewish scriptural interpretation in the face of changing historical circumstances. The efforts they devoted to education also had a seminal importance in subsequent Jewish history. After the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce, it was the synagogue and the schools of the Pharisees that continued to function and to promote Judaism in the long centuries following the Diaspora.