PHARISEES

defined Pharisaism. Another war, even more terrible, gave it the final victory. The two wars together created the Judaism Icnown to Europeans and Americans. And this, allowing for the inevitable changes which a long and varied experience brings to pass in the most tenacious race, is in substance the Pharisaism of the 2nd century.

A wide historical study discovers moral dignity and greatness in Pharisaism. The Pharisees, as contrasted with the Sadducees (wh. see) , represented the democratic tendency. As contrasted with the priesthood, they stood both tor the democratic and for the spiritualizing tendency. The priesthood was a close corporation. No man who was unable to trace his descent from a priestly family could exercise any function in the Temple. But the Pharisees and the Scribes opened a great career to all the talents. Furthermore, the priesthood exhausted itself in the ritual of the Temple. But the Pharisees found their main function in teaching and preaching. So Pharisaism cleared the ground for Christianity. And when the reader goes through his NT with this point in mind, and when he notes the striking freedom of the NT from ritualistic and sacerdotal ideas, he should give credit to Pharisaism as one of the historical forces which made these supreme qualities possible.

We have not yet exhausted the claims of the Pharisees on our interest and gratitude. It was they who, for the most part, prepared the ground for Christianity by taking the Messianic idea and working it into the very texture of common consciousness. Pharisaism was inseparable from the popularization of monotheism, and the universal acceptance by the nation of its Divine election and calling. We need only consider our Lord's task to see how much preparatory work the Pharisees did. Contrast the Saviour with Gautama (Buddha), and the greatness of His work is clearly seen. Buddha teaches men the way of peace by thinking away the political and social order of things. But our Lord took the glorified nationalism of His nation as the trunk-stock of His thought, and upon it grafted the Kingdom of God. Now, it was the Pharisees who made idealized nationalism, based upon the monotheism of the prophets, the pith and marrow of Judaism. It was they who wrote the great Apocalypses (Daniel and Enoch). It was they who made the belief in immortality and resurrection part of the common consciousness. It was they who trained the national will and purpose up to the level where the Saviour could use it.

But along with this great work went some lamentable defects and limitations. Though they stood for the spiritualizing tendencies which looked towards the existence of a Church, the Pharisees never reached the Church idea. They made an inextricable confusion be-tween the question of the soul and the question of descent from Abraham. They developed the spirit of proud and arrogant orthodoxy, until the monotheism of the prophets became in their hands wholly incompetent to found a society where Jew and Gentile should be one (Gal S^s, Col 3"). They developed Sabbatarianism until reverence for the Sabbath became a superstition, as our Lord's repeated clash with them goes to show. And in spite of many noble individual exceptions, the deepest tendency of Pharisaism was towards an over- valuation of external things, Levitical correctness and precision (Mt 23"), that made their spirit strongly antagonistic to the genius of Prophetism. For Prophetism, whether of the Old or of the New Dispensation, threw the whole emphasis on character. And so, when John the Baptist, the first prophet for many centuries, came on the field, he put himself in mortal opposition to the Pharisees, no less than to the Sadducees (Mt 3"-, Jn 1"»). And our Lord, embodying the moral essence of Prophetism, found His most dangerous opponents, until the end of His ministry, not in the Sadducees or the Essenes or the Zealots, but in the Pharisees.

See also artt. Sadducees and Scribes.

Henry S. Nash.

720

PHILADELPHIA

FHARFAB. — A river of Damascus mentioned with the Abanah (2 K S'^) by Naaman as contrasting favour-ably with the Jordan. Its identification is by no means so certain as that of Abanah with the Barada. The most probable is that suggested by Thomson, namely, the 'Awaj, a river rising east of Hermon. A wady near, but not tributary to, one of its sources is called the Wady Barbar, which may possibly be a reminiscence of the ancient name. The principal obstacle to this identification is the distance of the river from the city; but Naaman was perhaps thinking as much of the fertile plain of Damascus as of the city itself. Other identi-fications have been with either the river fiowing from 'Ain Fijeh, or else one or other of the canals fed by the Barada. R. A. S. Macalistek.

PHASELIS is mentioned 1 Mac 15" as a city to which the Romans in B.C. 139 sent letters on behalf of the Jews. It was at the E. extremity of the coast of Lycia, a Dorian colony which apparently always maintained its inde-pendence of the rest of Lycia. Its early importance was due to its position In the trade between the M%x3,n and the Levant. Its alliance with Cilician pirates caused it to be captured by Servilius Isauricus in B.C. 77, and it seems never to have recovered its former import-ance. It was a bishopric in the Byzantine period.

A. E. HiLLARD.

FHASIRON.— A NabatiEan tribe (1 Mac 9»«); un-known.

PHASSURTJS (1 Es 5!»)=Pashhur, Ezr 10«.

FHEBEZITE.— See Pehizzites.

PHICOL.— Abimelech's captain (Gn 21«- « 26M).

PHILADELPHIA was a city of Lydia, 28 miles from Sardis, in the valley of the Cogamis, a tributary of the Hermus, and conveniently situated for receiving the trade between the great central plateau of Asia Minor and Smyrna. The district known as Katakekaumme (' Burnt Region'), because of its volcanic character, rises immedi-ately to the N.E. of Philadelphia, and this was a great vine-producing region.

Philadelphia was founded and named by Attalus Philadelphus of Pergamus before B.C. 138. It was liame to serious earthquakes, but remained an important centre of the Roman province of Asia, receiving the name of Neo-Caesarea from Tiberius, and, later on, the honour of the Neocorate (i.e. the wardenship of the temple for Emperor-worship). There is no record of the beginning of the Church at Philadelphia, but in the Apocalypse it is one of the seven churches to which, as heads of districts, special messages are sent. In its message (Rev 3'-") it is said to have ' a little strength ' (which perhaps refers to its recent origin), and to have set before it 'an open door,' which seems to refer to the opportunities it had of spreading the gospel in the centre of Asia Minor. In 3' 'the synagogue of Satan which say they are Jews and are not' must mean that the Jews of Philadelphia had been lax, and had conceded too much to Gentile ways. But the message contains no reproach against the Christians, although they are bidden to hold fast that which they have, and the promise to him that overcometh is that 'I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, . . . and mine own new name.' Doubt-less there is a reference here, as in the message to Per-gamus, to the new name taken at baptism, and apparently sometimes kept secret.

Philadelphia was the seat of a bishop, but was not a metrop-olis until about a.d. 1300, when the importance of Sardis had become less. In the 14th cent., when the Greek Empire retamed nothing on the mainland of Asia except a strip of territory opposite Constantinople, Philadelphia still resisted the Ottoman arms, though far from the sea and almost forgotten by the Emperors. In the words of Gibbon (ch. Ixiy): ' Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect, a column in a scene of ^ ruins: a