The story of the Pharisees

Reading Luke, I noticed how Jesus spent a lot of time with Pharisees: dining with them, preaching with them, studying with them. But, He also spoke openly against them, which angered them a lot. This stirred my curiousity on the background of this people. I'd like to share some highlights I read from the book entitled, "The Compact Handbook of New Testament Life."

• Pharisee seems to have been derived from a Hebrew verb which means, "to separate". It is unclear whether it means that they are separate from Greek influence, or from the gentile world, or from the mass of the population who are ignorant of the continual demands of the Pharisaic code.
• They were formed during 2 BC in order to form a front against the Hellenism, which is the spread of the Greek culture. The Greek culture threatened to destroy the Mosaic law, which they tried to preserve.
• This placed the Pharisees in aristocracy among the Jews. They love the places of honor.
• The Pharisees were able to successfully eliminate idolatry which used to be the object of God's jealousy in the Old Testament times. Thus, during Jesus' time, it was no longer a subject of concern. The Jews stopped practicing idolatry despite the fact that the Greeks worship graven images.
• The Pharisees had so much time (compared to the masses), so they took painstaking hours to elaborate the law. Their zeal for the scripture solidified into deadening rigidity.
• One of the subjects around which they created so many rules, is the subject of Sabbath practice. The Sabbath is a healthy provision for man by God to set aside a 7th day for rest.
• The Pharisees made the Sabbath observance into an unbearable burden. They cluttered Sabbath with prohibitions (and equally numerous escape clauses, "exemptions to the rules") that any sane person couldn't possibly follow them.
• The regulations on Sabbath are so many that they make up 64 folio columns in the Jerusalem talmud and 156 double pages of folio in the Babylon talmud. A teacher once spent 2 to 3 years studying one of the 24 divisions.
• It became impossible to keep the Sabbath, even for the Pharisees and teachers of the law themselves, that is why, alongside with the regulations, there are as numerous escpape clauses as there can be. (Luke 11:4,6,52)
• Example: It is illegal to eat an egg laid on the Sabbath. But if a person declares before the Sabbath that the hen, which is to commit such "abomination, will soon be killed and eaten, then the egg might legitimately be eaten. The egg becomes merely an object dropped from an already doomed bird.
• Because of this, the Pharisees and experts in the law, unable to fully obey their rules, fell into open hypocrisy. This led to the hardness of their hearts which Jesus could only describe as, "sin against the Holy Spirit."
• The Pharisees failed to provide spiritual leadership. They became "blind leaders of the blind","false shepherds who care not about the sheep."