Note 153 — Chapter VII · The Pharisees and Sadducees

It is sometimes said that they were “separatists” in the sense that they desired Israel to be separate from all the world; but this ignores the fact that the Pharisees pursued an active missionary propaganda among the Gentiles, which is witnessed to, e.g., in Matthew xxiii. 15, where Christ says that the Pharisees “compass sea and land to make one proselyte.”