title: Minstrel show

text: Early blackface songs often consisted of unrelated verses strung together by a common chorus. In this pre-Emmett minstrelsy, the music "jangled the nerves of those who believed in music that was proper, respectable, polished, and harmonic, with recognizable melodies." It was thus a juxtaposition of "vigorous earth-slapping footwork of black dances … with the Irish lineaments of blackface jigs and reels." Similar to the look of a blackface performer, the lyrics in the songs that were sung have a tone of mockery and a spirit of laughing at black Americans rather than with them. The minstrel show texts sometimes mixed black lore, such as stories about talking animals or slave tricksters, with humor from the region southwest of the Appalachians, itself a mixture of traditions from different races and cultures. Minstrel instruments were also a mélange: African banjo and tambourine with European fiddle and bones In short, early minstrel music and dance was not true black culture; it was a white reaction to it. This was the first large-scale appropriation and commercial exploitation of black culture by American whites.


title: Minstrel show

text: In the late 1830s, a decidedly European structure and high-brow style became popular in minstrel music. The banjo, played with "scientific touches of perfection" and popularized by Joel Sweeney, became the heart of the minstrel band. Songs like the Virginia Minstrels' hit "Old Dan Tucker" have a catchy tune and energetic rhythm, melody and harmony; minstrel music was now for singing as well as dancing. The "Spirit of the Times" even described the music as vulgar because it was "entirely too elegant" and that the "excellence" of the singing "[was] an objection to it." Others complained that the minstrels had foregone their black roots. In short, the Virginia Minstrels and their imitators wanted to please a new audience of predominantly white, middle-class Northerners, by playing music the spectators would find familiar and pleasant.


title: Minstrel show

text: Despite the elements of ridicule contained in blackface performance, mid-nineteenth century white audiences, by and large, believed the songs and dances to be authentically black. For their part, the minstrels always billed themselves and their music as such. The songs were called "plantation melodies" or "Ethiopian choruses", among other names. By using the black caricatures and so-called black music, the minstrels added a touch of the unknown to the evening's entertainment, which was enough to fool audiences into accepting the whole performance as authentic.


title: Minstrel show

text: The minstrels' dance styles, on the other hand, were much truer to their alleged source. The success of "Jump Jim Crow" is indicative: It was an old English tune with fairly standard lyrics, which leaves only Rice's dance—wild upper-body movements with little movement below the waist—to explain its popularity. Dances like the Turkey Trot, the Buzzard Lope, and the Juba dance all had their origins in the plantations of the South, and some were popularized by black performers such as William Henry Lane, Signor Cornmeali ("Old Corn Meal"), and John "Picayune" Butler. One performance by Lane in 1842 was described as consisting of "sliding steps, like a shuffle, and not the high steps of an Irish jig." Lane and the white men who mimicked him moved about the stage with no obvious foot movement. The walk around, a common feature of the minstrel show's first act, was ultimately of West African origin and featured a competition between individuals hemmed in by the other minstrels. Elements of white tradition remained, of course, such as the fast-paced "breakdown" that formed part of the repertoire beginning with Rice. Minstrel dance was generally not held to the same mockery as other parts, although contemporaries such as Fanny Kemble argued that minstrel dances were merely a "faint, feeble, impotent—in a word, pale Northern reproductions of that ineffable black conception."


title: Minstrel show

text: The introduction of the jubilee, or spiritual, marked the minstrels' first undeniable adoption of black music. These songs remained relatively authentic in nature, antiphonal with a repetitive structure that relied heavily on call and response. The black troupes sang the most authentic jubilees, while white companies inserted humorous verses and replaced religious themes with plantation imagery, often starring the old darky. "Jubilee" eventually became synonymous with "plantation".


title: Minstrel show

text: The minstrel show played a powerful role in shaping assumptions about black people. However, unlike vehemently anti-black propaganda from the time, minstrelsy made this attitude palatable to a wide audience by couching it in the guise of well-intentioned paternalism.


title: Minstrel show

text: Popular entertainment perpetuated the racist stereotype of the uneducated, ever-cheerful, and highly musical black person well into the 1950s. Even as the minstrel show was dying out in all but amateur theater, blackface performers became common acts on vaudeville stages and in legitimate drama. These entertainers kept the familiar songs, dances, and pseudo-black dialect, often in nostalgic looks back at the old minstrel show. The most famous of these performers is probably Al Jolson, who took blackface to the big screen in the 1920s in films such as "The Jazz Singer" (1927). His 1930 film "Mammy" uses the setting of a traveling minstrel show, giving an on-screen presentation of a performance. Likewise, when the sound era of cartoons began in the late 1920s, early animators such as Walt Disney gave characters such as Mickey Mouse (who already resembled blackface performers) a minstrel-show personality; the early Mickey is constantly singing and dancing and smiling. The face of Raggedy Ann is a color-reversed minstrel mask, and Raggedy Ann's creator, Johnny Gruelle, designed the doll in part with the antics of blackface star Fred Stone in mind. As late as 1942, as demonstrated in the Warner Bros. cartoon "Fresh Hare", minstrel shows could be used as a gag (in this case, Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny leading a chorus of "Camptown Races") with the expectation, presumably, that audiences would get the reference. Radio shows got into the act, a fact perhaps best exemplified by the popular radio shows "Two Black Crows", "Sam 'n' Henry", and "Amos 'n' Andy", A transcription survives from 1931 of "The Blue Coal Minstrels", which uses many of the standard forms of the minstrel show, including Tambo, Bones and the interlocutor. The National Broadcasting Company, in a 1930 pamphlet, used the minstrel show as a point of reference in selling its services.


title: Minstrel show

text: As recently as the mid-1970s the BBC broadcast "The Black and White Minstrel Show" starring the George Mitchell Minstrels. The racist archetypes that blackface minstrelsy helped to create persist to this day; some argue that this is even true in hip hop culture and movies. The 2000 Spike Lee movie "Bamboozled" alleges that modern black entertainment exploits African-American culture much as the minstrel shows did a century ago, for example.


title: Minstrel show

text: Meanwhile, African-American actors were limited to the same old minstrel-defined roles for years to come and by playing them, made them more believable to white audiences. On the other hand, these parts opened the entertainment industry to African-American performers and gave them their first opportunity to alter those stereotypes. Many famous singers and actors gained their start in black minstrelsy, including W. C. Handy, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Butterbeans and Susie. The Rabbit's Foot Company was a variety troupe, founded in 1900 by an African American, Pat Chappelle, which drew on and developed the minstrel tradition while updating it and helping to develop and spread black musical styles. Besides Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, later musicians working for "the Foots" included Louis Jordan, Brownie McGhee and Rufus Thomas, and the company was still touring as late as 1950. Its success was rivalled by other touring variety troupes, such as "Silas Green from New Orleans."


title: Minstrel show

text: The very structure of American entertainment bears minstrelsy's imprint. The endless barrage of gags and puns appears in the work of the Marx Brothers and David and Jerry Zucker. The varied structure of songs, gags, "hokum" and dramatic pieces continued into vaudeville, variety shows, and to modern sketch comedy shows such as "Hee Haw" or, more distantly, "Saturday Night Live" and "In Living Color". Jokes once delivered by endmen are still told today: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?" Other jokes form part of the repertoire of modern comedians: "Who was that lady I saw you with last night? That was no lady—that was my wife!" The stump speech is an important precursor to modern stand-up comedy.


title: Minstrel show

text: Another important legacy of minstrelsy is its music. The hokum blues genre carried over the dandy, the wench, the simple-minded slave characters (sometimes rendered as the rustic white "rube") and even the interlocutor into early blues and country music incarnations through the medium of "race music" and "hillbilly" recordings. Many minstrel tunes are now popular folk songs. Most have been expunged of the exaggerated black dialect and the overt references to blacks. "Dixie", for example, was adopted by the Confederacy as its unofficial national anthem and is still popular, and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" was sanitized and made the state song of Virginia until 1997. "My Old Kentucky Home" remains the state song of Kentucky. The instruments of the minstrel show were largely kept on, especially in the South. Minstrel performers from the last days of the shows, such as Uncle Dave Macon, helped popularize the banjo and fiddle in modern country music. And by introducing America to black dance and musical style, minstrels opened the nation to black cultural forms for the first time on a large scale.


title: Minstrel show

text: A small number of films available today contain authentic recreations of Minstrel show numbers and routines. Due to their content they are rarely (if ever) broadcast on television today, but are available on home video.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The Living Daylights is a 1987 spy film, the fifteenth entry in the "James Bond" series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by John Glen, the film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story "The Living Daylights", the plot of which also forms the basis of the first act of the film. It was the last film to use the title of an Ian Fleming story until the 2006 instalment "Casino Royale". It is also the first film to have Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny, replacing Lois Maxwell. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli, his stepson Michael G. Wilson, and co-produced by his daughter, Barbara Broccoli. "The Living Daylights" grossed $191.2 million worldwide, and received mixed reviews from critics.


title: The Living Daylights

text: James Bond is assigned to help KGB General Georgi Koskov defect, covering his escape from a concert hall in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. During the mission, Bond notices that a KGB sniper is a female cellist from the orchestra. Disobeying his orders to kill the sniper, he shoots the rifle from her hands, then uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline to smuggle Koskov across the border to the West.


title: The Living Daylights

text: In his post-defection debriefing, Koskov informs MI6 that the KGB's old policy of "Smiert Spionam", meaning "Death to Spies", has been revived by General Leonid Pushkin, the new head of the KGB. Koskov is later abducted from the safe-house and assumed to have been taken back to Moscow. Bond is directed to track down Pushkin in Tangier and kill him, to forestall further killings of agents and escalation of tensions between the Soviet Union and the West. Bond agrees to carry out the mission when he learns that the assassin who killed 004 in Gibraltar (as depicted in the pre-title sequence) left a note bearing the same message, "Smiert Spionam".


title: The Living Daylights

text: Bond returns to Bratislava to track down the cellist, Kara Milovy. He finds out that Koskov's entire defection was staged, and that Kara is actually Koskov's girlfriend. Bond convinces Kara that he is a friend of Koskov's and persuades her to accompany him to Vienna, supposedly to be reunited with him. They escape Bratislava while being pursued by the KGB, crossing over the border into Austria. Meanwhile, Pushkin meets with an arms dealer, Brad Whitaker, in Tangier, informing him that the KGB is cancelling an arms deal previously arranged between Koskov and Whitaker.


title: The Living Daylights

text: During his brief tryst with Milovy in Vienna, Bond visits the Prater to meet his MI6 ally, Saunders, who discovers a history of financial dealings between Koskov and Whitaker. As he leaves their meeting, Saunders is killed by Koskov's henchman Necros, who again leaves the message "Smiert Spionam". Bond and Kara promptly leave for Tangier, where Bond confronts Pushkin, who disavows any knowledge of "Smiert Spionam" and reveals that Koskov is evading arrest for embezzlement of government funds. Bond and Pushkin then join forces, and Bond fakes Pushkin's assassination, inducing Whitaker and Koskov to progress with their scheme. Meanwhile, Kara contacts Koskov, who tells her that Bond is actually a KGB agent, and convinces her to drug him so that he can be captured.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Koskov, Necros, Kara, and the captive Bond fly to a Soviet air base in Afghanistan, where Koskov betrays Kara and imprisons her, along with Bond. The pair escape, and in doing so, free a condemned prisoner, Kamran Shah, leader of the local Mujahideen. Bond and Milovy discover that Koskov is using Soviet funds to buy a massive shipment of opium from the Mujahideen, intending to keep the profits with enough left over to supply the Soviets with their arms and buy Western arms from Whitaker.


title: The Living Daylights

text: With the Mujahideen's help, Bond plants a bomb aboard the cargo plane carrying the opium, but is spotted and has no choice but to barricade himself in the plane. Meanwhile, the Mujahideen attack the air base on horseback and engage the Soviets in a gun battle. During the battle, Kara drives a jeep into the cargo hold of the plane as Bond takes off, and Necros also leaps aboard at the last second from a jeep driven by Koskov. After a struggle, Bond throws Necros to his death and deactivates the bomb. Bond then notices Shah and his men being pursued by Soviet forces. He re-activates the bomb and drops it out of the plane and onto a bridge, blowing it up and helping Shah and his men escape the Soviets. The plane subsequently crashes, destroying the drugs, while Bond and Kara escape.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Bond returns to Tangier to kill Whitaker, infiltrating his estate with the help of his ally Felix Leiter, and Pushkin arrests Koskov, ordering him to be sent back to Moscow "in the diplomatic bag".


title: The Living Daylights

text: Some time later, Kara is the solo cellist in a Vienna performance. Kamran Shah and his men jostle in during the intermission and are introduced to now-diplomat General Gogol (Pushkin's predecessor at the KGB), and the Soviets. After her performance, Bond surprises Kara in her dressing room, and they embrace.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Originally the film was proposed to be a prequel in the series, an idea that eventually resurfaced with the reboot of the series in 2006, "Casino Royale". SMERSH, the fictionalised Soviet counterintelligence agency that featured in Fleming's "Casino Royale" and several other early James Bond novels, was an acronym for 'Smiert Shpionam' - 'Death to spies'.


title: The Living Daylights

text: In autumn 1985, following the financial and critical disappointment of "A View to a Kill", work began on scripts for the next Bond film, with the intention that Roger Moore would not reprise the role of James Bond. Moore, who by the time of the release of "The Living Daylights" would have been 59 years old, chose to retire from the role after 12 years and 7 films. Albert Broccoli, however, claimed that he let Moore go from the role. During an extensive search for a new actor to play Bond, a number of actors, including New Zealander Sam Neill, Irish-born Pierce Brosnan, and Welsh-born stage actor Timothy Dalton, auditioned for the role in 1986. Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, director John Glen, Dana and Barbara Broccoli "were impressed with Sam Neill and very much wanted to use him." However, Albert Broccoli was not sold on the actor. Neill said that he never wanted the role. Meanwhile, financial backers at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer recommended Mel Gibson, but Broccoli was not interested. Other actors touted in the press included Bryan Brown, Michael Nader, Andrew Clarke, and Finlay Light.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The producers eventually offered the role to Brosnan after a three-day screen-test. At the time, he was contracted to the television series "Remington Steele", which had been cancelled by the NBC network due to falling ratings. The announcement that he would be chosen to play James Bond caused a surge in interest in the series, which led to NBC exercising (less than three days prior to expiry) a 60-day option in Brosnan's contract to make a further season of the series. NBC's action caused drastic repercussions, as a result of which Broccoli withdrew the offer given to Brosnan, citing that he did not want the character associated with a contemporary television series. This led to a drop in interest in "Remington Steele", and only five new episodes were filmed before the series was finally cancelled. The edict from Broccoli was that ""Remington Steele" would not be James Bond."


title: The Living Daylights

text: Dana Broccoli suggested Timothy Dalton. Albert Broccoli was initially reluctant given Dalton's public lack of interest in the role, but at his wife's urging agreed to meet the actor. However, Dalton would soon begin filming "Brenda Starr" and so would be unavailable. In the intervening period, having completed "Brenda Starr", Dalton was offered the role once again, which he accepted. For a period, the filmmakers had Dalton, but he had not signed a contract. A casting director persuaded Robert Bathurst—an English actor who would become known for his roles in "Joking Apart", "Cold Feet", and "Downton Abbey"—to audition for Bond.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Bathurst believes that his "ludicrous audition" was only "an arm-twisting exercise" because the producers wanted to persuade Dalton to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning other actors. Dalton agreed to the film while travelling between airports: "Without anything to do, I decided to start thinking about whether I really, really should or should not do James Bond. Although obviously we'd moved some way along in that process, I just wasn't set on whether I should do it or shan't I do it. But the moment of truth was fast approaching as to whether I'd say yes or no. And that’s where I said yes. I picked up the phone from the hotel room in the Miami airport and called them and said, "Yep, you're on: I'll do it."


title: The Living Daylights

text: Dalton's take was very different from that of Moore, regarded as much more of a reluctant hero following an undeniable influence of the Fleming Bond in the way that the veteran agent was often uncomfortable in his job. Dalton wished to create a Bond different from Moore's, feeling he would have declined the project if he were asked to imitate Moore. In contrast to Moore's more jocular approach, Dalton found his creative muse from the original books: "I definitely wanted to recapture the essence and flavour of the books, and play it less flippantly. After all, Bond's essential quality is that he's a man who lives on the edge. He could get killed at any moment, and that stress and danger factor is reflected in the way he lives, chain-smoking, drinking, fast cars and fast women."


title: The Living Daylights

text: Moore declined to watch "The Living Daylights" in cinema as he did not wish to demonstrate any negative opinions about the project. Broccoli enjoyed the change of tone, feeling that Brosnan would have been too similar to Moore. Neill thought Dalton performed well in the role and Brosnan called Dalton a good choice in 1987, but felt it too near the bone to watch the finished film. He would win the role in 1994, based on his filmed audition from 1986. Sean Connery endorsed Dalton in an interview, and Desmond Llewelyn enjoyed working with a fellow stage actor.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The English actress Maryam d'Abo, a former model, was cast as the Czechoslovak cellist Kara Milovy. In 1984, d'Abo had attended auditions for the role of Pola Ivanova in "A View to a Kill". Barbara Broccoli included d'Abo in the audition for playing Kara, which she later passed.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Originally, the KGB general set up by Koskov was to be General Gogol; however, Walter Gotell was too sick to handle the major role, and the character of Leonid Pushkin replaced Gogol, who appears briefly at the end of the film, having transferred to the Soviet diplomatic service. This was Gogol's final appearance in a James Bond film. Morten Harket, the lead vocalist of the Norwegian rock group A-ha (which performed the film's title song), was offered a small role as a villain's henchman in the film, but declined, because of lack of time and because he felt they wanted to cast him due to his popularity rather than his acting. John Rhys Davies was optioned to revive his part in both "Licence to Kill" and "GoldenEye" in the scripting stages. Joe Don Baker was hired based on his performance in "Edge of Darkness", which was helmed by future Bond director Martin Campbell.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Director John Glen decided to include the macaw from "For Your Eyes Only". It can be seen squawking in the kitchen of Blayden House when Necros attacks MI6's officers.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The film was shot at Pinewood Studios at its 007 Stage in the United Kingdom, as well as Weissensee in Austria. The pre-title sequence was filmed on the Rock of Gibraltar and although the sequence shows a hijacked Land Rover careering down various sections of road for several minutes before bursting through a wall towards the sea, the location mostly used the same short stretch of road at the very top of the Rock, shot from numerous different angles. The beach defences seen at the foot of the Rock in the initial shot were also added solely for the film, to an otherwise non-military area. The action involving the Land Rover switched from Gibraltar to Beachy Head in the UK for the shot showing the vehicle actually getting airborne.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Trial runs of the stunt with the Land Rover, during which Bond escapes by parachute from the tumbling vehicle, were filmed in the Mojave Desert in the southwestern United States, although the final cut of the film uses a shot achieved using a dummy. Bratislavan sequences were filmed in Vienna. The outside shots of the Bratislavan concert hall show the Volksoper, while the interior were shot in Sofiensäle. The tram scene was filmed in Währing, Vienna and the border chase was filmed in Carinthia, also in Austria. Other locations included Germany, the United States, and Italy, while the desert scenes were shot in Ouarzazate, Morocco. The conclusion of the film was shot at the Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna and Elveden Hall, Suffolk.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Principal photography commenced at Gibraltar on 17 September 1986. Aerial stuntmen B. J. Worth and Jake Lombard performed the pre-credits parachute jump. Both the terrain and wind were unfavourable. Consideration was given to the stunt being done using cranes but aerial stunts arranger B. J. Worth stuck to skydiving and completed the scenes in a day. The aircraft used for the jump was a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, which in the film had M's office installed in the aircraft cabin. The initial point of view for the scene shows M in what appears to be his usual London office, but the camera then zooms out to reveal that it is, in fact, inside an aircraft.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Although marked as a Royal Air Force aircraft, the one in shot belonged to the Spanish Air Force and was used again later in the film for the Afghanistan sequences, this time in Soviet markings. During this later chapter, a fight breaks out on the open ramp of the aircraft in flight between Bond and Necros, before Necros falls to his death. Although the plot and preceding shots suggest the aircraft is a C-130, the shot of Necros falling away from the aircraft show a twin engine cargo plane, a Fairchild C-123 Provider. Worth and Lombard also doubled for Bond and Necros in the scenes where they are hanging and fighting on a bag in a plane's open cargo door, with the exterior shots filmed over the Mojave Desert.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The press would not meet Dalton and d'Abo until 5 October 1986, when the main unit travelled to Vienna. Almost two weeks after the second unit filming on Gibraltar, the first unit started shooting with Andreas Wisniewski and stunt man Bill Weston. During the course of the three days it took to film this fight, Weston fractured a finger and Wisniewski knocked him out once. The next day found the crew on location at Stonor House, Oxfordshire, doubling for Bladen's Safe House, the first scene Jeroen Krabbé filmed.


title: The Living Daylights

text: There was also location work outside the United Kingdom, in Morocco and Austria. Maryam d’Abo has recalled “One big and happy family traveling and filming together for five months.”


title: The Living Daylights

text: The film reunites Bond with the car maker Aston Martin. Following Bond's use of the Aston Martin DBS in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", the filmmakers then turned to the brand new Lotus Esprit in 1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me", which reappeared four years later in "For Your Eyes Only". Aston Martin then returned with their V8 Vantage.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Two different Aston Martin models were used in filming—a V8 Volante convertible, and later for the Czechoslovakia scenes, a hard-top non-Volante V8 saloon badged to look like the Volante. The Volante was a production model owned by then Aston Martin Lagonda chairman, Victor Gauntlett.


title: The Living Daylights

text: "The Living Daylights" was the final Bond film to be scored by composer John Barry. The soundtrack is notable for its introduction of sequenced electronic rhythm tracks overdubbed with the orchestra—at the time, a relatively new innovation.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The title song of the film, "The Living Daylights", was co-written with Pål Waaktaar of the Norwegian pop-music group A-ha and recorded by the band. The group and Barry did not collaborate well, resulting in two versions of the theme song. Barry's film mix is heard on the soundtrack (and on A-ha's later compilation album "Headlines and Deadlines"). The version preferred by the band can be heard on the A-ha album "Stay on These Roads", released in 1988. However, in 2006, Waaktaar complimented Barry's contributions: "I loved the stuff he added to the track, I mean it gave it this really cool string arrangement. That's when for me it started to sound like a Bond thing". The title song is one of the few 007 title songs not performed or written by a British or American performer.


title: The Living Daylights

text: In a departure from previous Bond films, "The Living Daylights" was the first to use different songs over the opening and end credits. The song heard over the end credits, "If There Was A Man" (which also acts as the "love theme" of the film), was one of two songs performed for the film by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. The other song, "Where Has Everybody Gone?", is heard from Necros's Walkman in the film - the melody of the song is subsequently used in the score to announce Necros whenever he attacks. The Pretenders were originally considered to perform the title song. However, the producers had been pleased with the commercial success of Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill", and felt that A-ha would be more likely to make an impact on the charts.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The original soundtrack was released on LP and CD by Warner Bros. and featured only 12 tracks. Later re-releases by Rykodisc and EMI added nine additional tracks, including alternate instrumental end credits music. Rykodisc's version included the gun barrel and opening sequence of the film as well as the jailbreak sequence, and the bombing of the bridge.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Additionally, the film featured a number of pieces of classical music, as the main Bond girl, Kara Milovy, is a cellist. Mozart's 40th Symphony in G minor (1st movement) is performed by the orchestra at the Conservatoire in Bratislava when Koskov flees. As Moneypenny tells Bond, Kara is next to perform Alexander Borodin's String Quartet in D major, and the finale to Act II of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" (in Vienna) also features. When arriving in Vienna, an orchestra outside the hotel in playing a movement from the Wein, Weib und Gesang waltz by Johann Strauss. Before Bond is drugged by Kara, she is practicing the Cello solo from the first movement of Dvořák's cello concerto in B minor., Kara and an orchestra (conducted onscreen by John Barry) perform Tchaikovsky's "Variations on a Rococo Theme" to rapturous applause.


title: The Living Daylights

text: The Prince and Princess of Wales attended the film's premiere on 29 June 1987 at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. In the three days following the premiere, the film grossed £52,656 in Leicester Square and £13,049 at the Odeon Marble Arch before expanding to 18 screens where it grossed £136,503 for the weekend, finishing third at the UK box office for the weekend and second for the week behind "The Secret of My Success". The following week it expanded to 60 screens and grossed £252,940 for the weekend, finishing second to "". A week later it expanded to 116 screens but remained in second place for the weekend with a gross of £523,264 however finally reached number one for the week with a gross of £1,072,420 from 131 screens. It went on to gross £8.2 million ($19 million) in the UK. On the film's opening weekend in the US, it grossed $11 million, surpassing the $5.2 million grossed by "The Lost Boys" that was released on the same day, and setting a record 3-day opening for a Bond film, beating "Octopussy" (1983) $8.9 million. However, it did not beat the 4-day record of $13.3 million set by "A View to a Kill" (1985). It went on to grossed $51.2 million in the United States and Canada. "The Living Daylights" grossed the equivalent of $191.2 million worldwide. Other large international grosses include $19.5 million in Germany, $12.6 million in Japan and $11.4 million in France.


title: The Living Daylights

text: In the film, Koskov and Whitaker repeatedly use vehicles and drug packets marked with the Red Cross. This action angered a number of Red Cross Societies, which sent letters of protest regarding the film. In addition, the British Red Cross attempted to prosecute the filmmakers and distributors. However, no legal action was taken. As a result, a disclaimer was added at the start of the film and some DVD releases.


title: The Living Daylights

text: Rita Kempley, reviewing for "The Washington Post", praised Dalton's performance naming him: Furthermore, she praised the film as "graciously paced, though overplotted, so some seat-shifting sets in about 30 minutes before the end." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" complimented Dalton's performance feeling that he had "enough presence, the right debonair looks and the kind of energy that the Bond series has lately been lacking." While praising the supporting characters, she criticised the long runtime and noted the "direction, by John Glen, has the colorful but perfunctory style that goes with the territory, and it's adequate if uninspired."


title: The Living Daylights

text: Roger Ebert of his "Chicago Sun-Times" gave "The Living Daylights" two stars out of four, criticising the lack of humour in the protagonist and feeling General Whitaker was:


title: The Living Daylights

text: Gene Siskel of "The Chicago Tribune" also gave the film two stars out of four, commending Dalton as superior to his predecessor but feeling he "simply doesn't have the manliness or the charm of Sean Connery." He criticised the film for its perceived tentativeness writing that the "filmmakers were trying to strike a middle ground between the glamor of the Connery Bond films and the dubious humor of the Moore Bonds. The result is a film that is not so much bad as mechanical and uptight." Jay Scott of "The Globe and Mail" wrote of Dalton's Bond that "you get the feeling that on his off nights, he might curl up with the "Reader's Digest" and catch an episode of "Moonlighting"".


title: The Living Daylights

text: Retrospective reviews of the film have been considerably more positive. The Independent placed the film as the fourth best Bond movie, praising the tough, nervy edge Dalton brought to the franchise. Dalton himself has said he preferred "The Living Daylights" over "Licence to Kill". Dalton's predecessor, Roger Moore, discussing the Bond series in 2012, called the film a "bloody good movie". IGN lauded the film for bringing back realism and espionage to the film series, and showing James Bond's dark side. Les Roopanarine, in a retrospective review for The Guardian, called the film his favourite Bond film, praising Dalton for “bringing a more nuanced interpretation to the role, with his relationships evolving in a way never seen before in previous Bond films.” In a poll involving Bond experts and fans of the franchise, The Living Daylights was ranked the sixth best Bond film. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 74% based on 57 reviews and an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Newcomer Timothy Dalton plays James Bond with more seriousness than preceding installments, and the result is exciting and colorful but occasionally humorless." On Metacritic it has a score of 60% based on reviews from 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A" on scale of A to F.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is the only such consolidated town-county in Massachusetts. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,255, making it the least populated county in Massachusetts. Part of the town is designated the Nantucket CDP, or census-designated place. The region of Surfside on Nantucket is the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts.


title: Nantucket

text: The name "Nantucket" is adapted from similar Algonquian names for the island, but is very similar to the endonym of the native Nehantucket tribe that occupied the region at the time of European settlement.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony. Due to tourists and seasonal residents, the population of the island increases to at least 50,000 during the summer months. The average sale price for a single-family home was $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2018.


title: Nantucket

text: The National Park Service cites Nantucket, designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966, as being the "finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town."


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket probably takes its name from a Wampanoag word, transliterated variously as "natocke", "nantaticu", "nantican", "nautica" or "natockete", which is part of Wampanoag lore about the creation of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The meaning of the term is uncertain, although according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica" it may have meant "far away island" or "sandy, sterile soil tempting no one". Wampanoag is an Eastern Algonquian language of southern New England. The Nehantucket (known to Europeans as the Niantic) were an Algonquin-speaking people of the area.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket's nickname, "The Little Grey Lady of the Sea", refers to the island as it appears from the ocean when it is fog-bound.


title: Nantucket

text: The earliest European settlement in the region was established on the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard by the English-born merchant Thomas Mayhew. In 1641, Thomas secured Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands, and other islands in the region as a proprietary colony from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Earl of Sterling. Thomas led several families to settle the region, establishing several treaties with the indigenous inhabitants of Nantucket, the Wampanoag people. These treaties helped prevent the region from becoming embroiled in King Philip's War. The growing population of settlers welcomed seasonal groups of other Native American tribes who traveled to the island to fish and later harvest whales that washed up on shore. Nantucket was officially part of Dukes County, New York, until 17 October 1691 when the charter for the newly formed Province of Massachusetts Bay was signed. Following the arrival of the new Royal Governor on 14 May 1692 to effectuate the new government, Nantucket County was partitioned from Dukes County, Massachusetts in 1695.


title: Nantucket

text: In October 1641, William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, deeded the island to Thomas Mayhew of Watertown, Massachusetts. In 1659, Mayhew sold an interest in the island to nine other purchasers, reserving 1/10th of an interest for himself, "for the sum of thirty pounds ... and also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife".


title: Nantucket

text: Each of the ten original owners was allowed to invite one partner. There is some confusion about the identity of the first twenty owners, partly because William Pile did not choose a partner and sold his interest to Richard Swain, which was subsequently divided between John Bishop and the children of George Bunker.


title: Nantucket

text: Anxious to add to their number and to induce tradesmen to come to the island, the total number of shares were increased to twenty-seven. The original purchasers needed the assistance of tradesmen who were skilled in the arts of weaving, milling, building and other pursuits and selected men who were given half a share provided that they lived on Nantucket and carried on their trade for at least three years.


title: Nantucket

text: European settlement of Nantucket did not begin in earnest until 1659, when Thomas Mayhew sold his interest to a group of investors, led by Tristram Coffin. The "nine original purchasers" were Tristram Coffin, Peter Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain and William Pile. These men are considered the founding fathers of Nantucket, and many islanders are related to these families. Seamen and tradesmen began to populate Nantucket, such as Richard Gardner (arrived 1667) and Capt. John Gardner (arrived 1672), sons of Thomas Gardner. The first settlers focused on farming and raising sheep, but overgrazing and the growing number of farms made these activities untenable, and the islanders soon began turning to the sea for a living.


title: Nantucket

text: Before 1795, the town on the island was called Sherburne. The original settlement was near Capaum Pond. At that time, the pond was a small harbor whose entrance silted up, forcing the settlers to dismantle their houses and move them northeast by two miles to the present location. On June 8, 1795, the bill proposed by Micajah Coffin to change the town's name to the "Town of Nantucket" was endorsed and signed by Governor Samuel Adams to officially change the town name.


title: Nantucket

text: In his 1835 history of Nantucket Island, Obed Macy wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony, a whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers. This event started the Nantucket whaling industry. A. B. Van Deinse points out that the "scrag whale", described by P. Dudley in 1725 as one of the species hunted by early New England whalers, was almost certainly the gray whale, which has flourished on the west coast of North America in modern times with protection from whaling.


title: Nantucket

text: In the beginning of the 17th century, whaling on Nantucket was usually done from small boats launched from the island's shores, which would tow killed whales to be processed on the beach. These boats were only about seven meters long, with mostly Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by English Nantucketers—a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white Nantucketer at the steering oar. Author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that "without the native population, which outnumbered the white population well into the 1720s, the island would never have become a successful whaling port."


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, influenced its leading citizens to remain neutral during the American Revolutionary War, favoring neither the British nor the Patriots.


title: Nantucket

text: Herman Melville commented on Nantucket's whaling dominance in "Moby-Dick", Chapter 14: "Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires". The "Moby-Dick" characters Ahab and Starbuck are both from Nantucket. The tragedy that inspired Melville to write his novel Moby-Dick was the final voyage of the Nantucket whaler "Essex".


title: Nantucket

text: The island suffered great economic hardships, worsened by the "Great Fire" of July 13, 1846, that, fueled by whale oil and lumber, devastated the main town, burning some . The fire left hundreds homeless and poverty-stricken, and many people left the island. By 1850, whaling was in decline, as Nantucket's whaling industry had been surpassed by that of New Bedford. Another contributor to the decline was the silting up of the harbor, which prevented large whaling ships from entering and leaving the port, unlike New Bedford, which still owned a deep water port. In addition, the development of railroads made mainland whaling ports, such as New Bedford, more attractive because of the ease of transshipment of whale oil onto trains, an advantage unavailable to an island. The American Civil War dealt the death blow to the island's whaling industry, as virtually all of the remaining whaling vessels were destroyed by Confederate commerce raiders.


title: Nantucket

text: As a result of this depopulation, the island was left under-developed and isolated until the mid-20th century. The isolation kept many of the pre-Civil War buildings intact and, by the 1950s, enterprising developers began buying up large sections of the island and restoring them to create an upmarket destination for wealthy people in the Northeastern United States.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket and towns on Martha's Vineyard contemplated seceding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which they considered at various town meetings in 1977, unsuccessfully. The votes were sparked by a proposed change to the Massachusetts Constitution that would have reduced the size of the state's House of Representatives from 240 to 160 members and would therefore reduce the islands' representation in the Massachusetts General Court.


title: Nantucket

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (85%) is water. It is the smallest county in Massachusetts by land area and second-smallest by total area. The area of Nantucket Island proper is . The triangular region of ocean between Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod is Nantucket Sound. Altar Rock at , Saul's Hill at , and Sankaty Head at are some of the highest points on the island.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket was formed by the outermost reach of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the recent Wisconsin Glaciation, shaped by the subsequent rise in sea level. The low ridge across the northern section of the island was deposited as glacial moraine during a period of glacial standstill, a period during which till continued to arrive and was deposited as the glacier melted at a stationary front. The southern part of the island is an outwash plain, sloping away from the arc of the moraine and shaped at its margins by the sorting actions and transport of longshore drift. Nantucket became an island when rising sea levels covered the connection with the mainland, about 5,000–6,000 years ago.


title: Nantucket

text: The island and adjoining islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget comprise the Town and County of Nantucket, which is operated as a consolidated town and county government. The main settlement, also called Nantucket, is located at the western end of Nantucket Harbor, where it opens into Nantucket Sound. Key localities on the island include Madaket, Surfside, Polpis, Wauwinet, Miacomet, and Siasconset (generally shortened to "'Sconset").


title: Nantucket

text: According to the Köppen climate classification system, Nantucket features a climate that borders between a "Dfb" (humid continental climate) and a "Cfb" (oceanic climate – east half of the island based on the location of the weather station), the latter a climate type rarely found on the east coast of North America and closest to the same by the original classification. Nantucket's climate is heavily influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, which helps moderate temperatures in the town throughout the course of the year. Average high temperatures during the town's coldest month (January) are around , while average high temperatures during the town's warmest months (July and August) hover around . Nantucket receives on average of precipitation annually, spread relatively evenly throughout the year. Similar to many other cities with an oceanic climate, Nantucket features a large number of cloudy or overcast days, particularly outside the summer months. The highest daily maximum temperature was on August 2, 1975, and the highest daily minimum temperature was on the same day. The lowest daily maximum temperature was on January 8, 1968, and the lowest daily minimum temperature was on December 31, 1962, and January 16, 2004.


title: Nantucket

text: As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 10,172 people, 4,229 households, and 2,429 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 11,618 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 87.6% white, 6.8% black, 1.2% Asian, 0.1% American Indian, 2.6% from other races, and 1.8% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 9.4% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 20.9% were English, 18.8% were Irish, 11.5% were American, 10.9% were German, and 6.4% were Italian.


title: Nantucket

text: Of the 4,229 households, 28.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.8% were married couples living together, 8.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 42.6% were non-families, and 29.7% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 2.93. The median age was 39.4 years.


title: Nantucket

text: The median income for a household in the county was $83,347 and the median income for a family was $129,728. Males had a median income of $82,959 versus $46,577 for females. The per capita income for the county was $53,410. About 3.6% of families and 7.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 6.9% of those under age 18 and 8.2% of those age 65 or over.


title: Nantucket

text: As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the median value of homes in Nantucket County was $1,370,522, an increase of 22.3% from the prior year, and ranked the highest in the US by median home value.


title: Nantucket

text: Town and county governments are combined in Nantucket (see List of counties in Massachusetts). Nantucket's elected executive body is its Select Board (name changed in 2018 from Board of Selectmen), which is responsible for the town government's goals and policies. Legislative functions are carried out by an open Town Meeting of the Town's registered voters. It is administered by a town manager, who is responsible for all departments, except for the school, airport and water departments.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is represented in the Massachusetts House of Representatives by Dylan Fernandes, Democrat, of Woods Hole, who represents Precincts 1, 2, 5 and 6, of Falmouth, in Barnstable County; Chilmark, Edgartown, Aquinnah, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury and West Tisbury, all in Dukes County; and Nantucket. Rep. Fernandes has served since January 4, 2017. Nantucket is represented in the Massachusetts Senate by Julian Cyr, Democrat, of Truro, who has also served since January 4, 2017.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is in Massachusetts's 9th congressional district, which has existed since 2013. , it was represented in the United States House of Representatives by Bill Keating, a Democrat of Bourne. Massachusetts is currently represented in the United States Senate by senior senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat) and junior senator Ed Markey (Democrat).


title: Nantucket

text: In 2019, 55% of Nantucket residents were unaligned with a major political party, 30% were registered Democrats, and 12% were registered Republicans.


title: Nantucket

text: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts allows voters to enroll with a political party or to remain "unenrolled".


title: Nantucket

text: Throughout the late 19th and most of the 20th century, Nantucket was a Republican stronghold in presidential elections. From 1876 to 1984, only two Democrats carried Nantucket: Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson. Since 1988, however, it has trended Democratic.


title: Nantucket

text: According to Nantucket's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the town are:


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket's public school district is Nantucket Public Schools. The Nantucket school system had 1,583 students and 137 teachers in 2017.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket Public Schools District information and meetings are broadcast on Nantucket Community Television (Channel 18) in Nantucket.


title: Nantucket

text: A major museum association, the Maria Mitchell Association, offers educational programs to the Nantucket Public Schools, as well as the Nantucket Historical Association, though the two are not affiliated.


title: Nantucket

text: The University of Massachusetts Boston operates a field station on Nantucket. The Massachusetts College of Art & Design is affiliated with the Nantucket Island School of Design & the Arts, which offers summer courses for teens, youth, postgraduate, and undergraduate programs.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket has several noted museums and galleries, including the Maria Mitchell Association and the Nantucket Whaling Museum.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is home to both visual and performing arts. The island has been an art colony since the 1920s, whose artists have come to capture the natural beauty of the island's landscapes and seascapes, including its flora and the fauna. Noted artists who have lived on or painted in Nantucket include Frank Swift Chase and Theodore Robinson. Artist Rodney Charman was commissioned to create a series of paintings depicting the marine history of Nantucket, which were collected in the book "Portrait of Nantucket, 1659–1890: The Paintings of Rodney Charman" in 1989. Herman Melville based his narrative in "Moby Dick" on the Nantucket whaling industry.


title: Nantucket

text: The island is the site of a number of festivals, including a book festival, wine and food festival, comedy festival, daffodil festival, and a cranberry festival.


title: Nantucket

text: Several historical, literary and dramatic works involve people from, or living on, Nantucket. These include:


title: Nantucket

text: From 1900 to 1918, Nantucket was one of few jurisdictions in the United States that banned automobiles.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket can be reached by sea from the mainland by Seastreak, The Steamship Authority, Hy-Line Cruises, or Freedom Cruise Line, or by private boat. A task force was formed in 2002 to consider limiting the number of vehicles on the island, in an effort to combat heavy traffic during the summer months.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket is served by Nantucket Memorial Airport (IATA airport code ACK), a three-runway airport on the south side of the island. The airport is one of the busiest in Massachusetts and often logs more take-offs and landings on a summer day than Boston's Logan Airport. This is due in part to the large number of private planes used by wealthy summer inhabitants, and in part to the 10-seat Cessna 402s used by several commercial air carriers to serve the island community.


title: Nantucket

text: Nantucket Regional Transit Authority operates seasonal island-wide shuttle buses to many destinations including Surfside Beach, Siasconset, and the airport.


title: Nantucket

text: While many notable people own property or regularly visit the island, the following have been residents of the island:


title: Disney family

text: The Disney family is an American family that gained prominence when brothers Roy and Walt began creating films through the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, today known as mass media and entertainment conglomerate The Walt Disney Company. The Disney family's influence on American culture grew with successful feature films such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937 and the opening of the Disneyland theme park in 1955. Other Disney family members have been involved in the management and administration of the Disney company, filmmaking, and philanthropy.


title: Disney family

text: The family name, originally "d'Isigny ("from Isigny")", is of Norman French derivation, coming from the town of Isigny-sur-Mer. The Disneys, among others, descended from Normans who colonised Ireland around the 11th century.


title: Disney family

text: Elias Charles Disney (1859–1941) was born in the rural village of Bluevale, in what is now Ontario, Canada, to Irish Protestant immigrants Kepple Elias Disney (1832–1891) and Mary Richardson (1838–1909). Both parents had emigrated from Ireland to Canada as children, accompanying their parents.


title: Disney family

text: Disney married Flora Call (1868–1938) on January 1, 1888, in Kismet, Lake County, Florida. The couple had five children:


title: Disney family

text: Roy Oliver Disney (June 24, 1893 – December 20, 1971) was an American businessman and co-founder of The Walt Disney Company. Roy was married to Edna Francis from April 1925 until his death. Roy's nephew Charles Elias Disney chose to name his son Charles Roy Disney in Roy's honor.


title: Disney family

text: Their son, Roy Edward Disney (January 10, 1930 – December 17, 2009), was a longtime senior executive for the Walt Disney Company and the last member of the Disney family to be actively involved in the company. Disney was often compared to his uncle and father. He had two sons (one, Tim Disney, a documentary film producer), and two daughters; his daughter Abigail Disney is a documentary filmmaker.


title: Disney family

text: Walter "Walt" Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American entrepreneur, animator, writer, voice actor and film producer who cofounded Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy. He received 59 Academy Award nominations, including 22 awards: both totals are records.


title: Disney family

text: He married Lillian Bounds in 1925. Their marriage produced two daughters, Diane (December 18, 1933 – November 19, 2013) and Sharon (adopted in December 1936, born six weeks previously).


title: Disney family

text: Diane married Ronald William Miller, who became president of Walt Disney Productions in 1980 and CEO in 1983, before being ousted by Roy E. Disney.


title: Disney family

text: In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum, designed by Disney's daughter Diane and her son (Walt's grandson) Walter E. D. Miller, opened in the Presidio of San Francisco. The museum was established to promote and inspire creativity and innovation and celebrate and study the life of Walt Disney.


title: Pharisees

text: The Pharisees (; ) were a Jewish social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism.


title: Pharisees

text: Conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts among Jews, made worse by the Roman conquest. One conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization (the Sadducees) and those who resisted it (the Pharisees). Another was juridical-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Temple with its rites and services, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic Laws. A specifically religious point of conflict involved different interpretations of the Torah and how to apply it to current Jewish life, with Sadducees recognizing only the Written Torah and rejecting Prophets, Writings, and doctrines such as the Oral Torah and the resurrection of the dead.


title: Pharisees

text: Josephus (), believed by many historians to be a Pharisee, estimated the total Pharisee population before the fall of the Second Temple to be around 6,000. He claimed that the Pharisees’ influence over the common people was so great that anything they said against the king or the high priest was believed, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees, who were the upper class. Pharisees claimed Mosaic authority for their interpretation of Jewish Laws, while Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon, when Zadok, their ancestor, officiated as high priest.


title: Pharisees

text: Pharisees have also been made notable by numerous references to them in the New Testament. While the writers record hostilities between some of the Pharisees and Jesus, there are also several references in the New Testament to Pharisees who believed in him, including Nicodemus, who said it is known Jesus is a teacher sent from God, Joseph of Arimathea, who was his disciple, and an unknown number of "those of the party of the Pharisees who believed", among them the Apostle Paul – a student of Gamaliel, who warned the Sanhedrin that opposing the disciples of Jesus could prove to be tantamount to opposing God – even after becoming an apostle of Jesus Christ.


title: Pharisees

text: "Pharisee" is derived from Ancient Greek (), from Aramaic (), plural (), meaning "set apart, separated", related to Hebrew (), plural (), the Qal passive participle of the verb (). This may be a reference to their separation from the Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity, or from non-religious Jews. Alternatively, it may have a particular political meaning as "separatists" due to their division from the Sadducee elite, with Yitzhak Isaac Halevi characterizing the Sadducees and Pharisees as political sects, not religious ones. Scholar Thomas Walter Manson and Talmud-expert Louis Finkelstein suggest that "Pharisee" derives from the Aramaic words or , meaning "Persian" or "Persianizer", based on the demonym , meaning 'Persian' in the Persian language and further akin to and . Harvard University scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen denies this, stating: "Practically all scholars now agree that the name "Pharisee" derives from the Hebrew and Aramaic or ."


title: Pharisees

text: The first historical mention of the Pharisees and their beliefs comes in the four gospels and the Book of Acts, in which both their meticulous adherence to their interpretation of the Torah as well as their eschatological views are described. A later historical mention of the Pharisees comes from the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus (37–100 CE) in a description of the "four schools of thought", or "four sects", into which he divided the Jews in the 1st century CE. (The other schools were the Essenes, who were generally apolitical and who may have emerged as a sect of dissident priests who rejected either the Seleucid-appointed or the Hasmonean high priests as illegitimate; the Sadducees, the main antagonists of the Pharisees; and the "fourth philosophy".) Other sects emerged at this time, such as the Early Christians in Jerusalem and the Therapeutae in Egypt, if they were Jews, which is unclear.


title: Pharisees

text: 1 and 2 Maccabees, two deuterocanonical books in the Bible, focus on the Jews' revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of his general, Nicanor, in 161 BCE by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work. It included several theological points - prayer for the dead, the last judgment, intercession of saints, and martyrology. The non-canonical text known as the Gospel of Peter also alludes to the Pharisees.


title: Pharisees

text: Judah haNasi redacted the Mishnah, an authoritative codification of Pharisaic interpretations, around 200 CE. Most of the authorities quoted in the Mishnah lived after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE; it thus marks the beginning of the transition from Pharisaic to Rabbinic Judaism. The Mishnah was supremely important because it compiled the oral interpretations and traditions of the Pharisees and later on the Rabbis into a single authoritative text, thus allowing oral tradition within Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple.


title: Pharisees

text: However, none of the Rabbinic sources include identifiable eyewitness accounts of the Pharisees and their teachings.


title: Pharisees

text: The deportation and exile of an unknown number of Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II, starting with the first deportation in 597 BCE and continuing after the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple in 587 BCE, resulted in dramatic changes to Jewish culture and religion. During the 70-year exile in Babylon, Jewish houses of assembly (known in Hebrew as a or in Greek as a "synagogue") and houses of prayer (Hebrew ; Greek , ) were the primary meeting places for prayer, and the house of study () was the counterpart for the synagogue.


title: Pharisees

text: In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon, and in 537 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple. He did not, however, allow the restoration of the Judean monarchy, which left the Judean priests as the dominant authority. Without the constraining power of the monarchy, the authority of the Temple in civic life was amplified. It was around this time that the Sadducee party emerged as the party of priests and allied elites. However, the Second Temple, which was completed in 515 BCE, had been constructed under the auspices of a foreign power, and there were lingering questions about its legitimacy. This provided the condition for the development of various sects or "schools of thought," each of which claimed exclusive authority to represent "Judaism," and which typically shunned social intercourse, especially marriage, with members of other sects. In the same period, the council of sages known as the Sanhedrin may have codified and canonized the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), from which, following the return from Babylon, the Torah was read publicly on market-days.


title: Pharisees

text: The Temple was no longer the only institution for Jewish religious life. After the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra the Scribe, the houses of study and worship remained important secondary institutions in Jewish life. Outside Judea, the synagogue was often called a house of prayer. While most Jews could not regularly attend the Temple service, they could meet at the synagogue for morning, afternoon and evening prayers. On Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbats, a weekly Torah portion was read publicly in the synagogues, following the tradition of public Torah readings instituted by Ezra.


title: Pharisees

text: Although priests controlled the rituals of the Temple, the scribes and sages, later called "rabbis" (Hebrew for "Teacher/master"), dominated the study of the Torah. These men maintained an oral tradition that they believed had originated at Mount Sinai alongside the Torah of Moses; a God-given interpretation of the Torah.


title: Pharisees

text: The Hellenistic period of Jewish history began when Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 332 BCE. The rift between the priests and the sages developed during this time, when Jews faced new political and cultural struggles. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies until 198 BCE, when the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control. Then, in 167 BCE, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects. He imposed a program of forced Hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs, thus precipitating the Maccabean Revolt. Jerusalem was liberated in 165 BCE and the Temple was restored. In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon Maccabeus as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty.


title: Pharisees

text: After defeating the Seleucid forces, Judas Maccabaeus's nephew John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE, thus establishing priests as political as well as religious authorities. Although the Hasmoneans were considered heroes for resisting the Seleucids, their reign lacked the legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple era.


title: Pharisees

text: The Pharisee ("separatist") party emerged largely out of the group of scribes and sages. The term "Pharisee" comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic or , which means "one who is separated." It may refer to their separation from Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity or from irreligious Jews. The Pharisees, among other Jewish sects, were active from the middle of the second century BCE until the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Josephus first mentions them in connection with Jonathan, the successor of Judas Maccabeus. One of the factors that distinguished the Pharisees from other groups prior to the destruction of the Temple was their belief that all Jews had to observe the purity laws (which applied to the Temple service) outside the Temple. The major difference, however, was the continued adherence of the Pharisees to the laws and traditions of the Jewish people in the face of assimilation. As Josephus noted, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.


title: Pharisees

text: Josephus indicates that the Pharisees received the backing and good-will of the common people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees associated with the ruling classes. In general, whereas the Sadducees were aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular, and more democratic. The Pharisaic position is exemplified by the assertion that "A learned takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest." (A , according to the Pharisaic definition, is an outcast child born of a forbidden relationship, such as adultery or incest, in which marriage of the parents could not lawfully occur. The word is often, but incorrectly, translated as "illegitimate".)


title: Pharisees

text: Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic tenet of an Oral Torah, creating two Jewish understandings of the Torah. An example of this differing approach is the interpretation of, "an eye in place of an eye". The Pharisaic understanding was that the value of an eye was to be paid by the perpetrator. In the Sadducees' view the words were given a more literal interpretation, in which the offender's eye would be removed.


title: Pharisees

text: The sages of the Talmud see a direct link between themselves and the Pharisees, and historians generally consider Pharisaic Judaism to be the progenitor of Rabbinic Judaism, that is normative, mainstream Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple. All mainstream forms of Judaism today consider themselves heirs of Rabbinic Judaism and, ultimately, the Pharisees.


title: Pharisees

text: Although the Pharisees did not support the wars of expansion of the Hasmoneans and the forced conversions of the Idumeans, the political rift between them became wider when a Pharisee named Eleazar insulted the Hasmonean ethnarch John Hyrcanus at his own table, suggesting that he should abandon his role as High Priest due to a rumour, probably untrue, that he had been conceived while his mother was a prisoner of war. In response, he distanced himself from the Pharisees.


title: Pharisees

text: After the death of John Hyrcanus, his younger son Alexander Jannaeus made himself king and openly sided with the Sadducees by adopting their rites in the Temple. His actions caused a riot in the Temple, and led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees. However, on his deathbed Jannaeus advised his widow, Salome Alexandra, to seek reconciliation with the Pharisees. Her brother was Shimon ben Shetach, a leading Pharisee. Josephus attests that Salome was favorably inclined toward the Pharisees, and their political influence grew tremendously under her reign, especially in the Sanhedrin or Jewish Council, which they came to dominate.


title: Pharisees

text: After her death her elder son Hyrcanus II was generally supported by the Pharisees. Her younger son, Aristobulus II, was in conflict with Hyrcanus, and tried to seize power. The Pharisees seemed to be in a vulnerable position at this time. The conflict between the two sons culminated in a civil war that ended when the Roman general Pompey intervened, and captured Jerusalem in 63 BCE.


title: Pharisees

text: Josephus' account may overstate the role of the Pharisees. He reports elsewhere that the Pharisees did not grow to power until the reign of Queen Salome Alexandra. As Josephus was himself a Pharisee, his account might represent a historical creation meant to elevate the status of the Pharisees during the height of the Hasmonean Dynasty.


title: Pharisees

text: Later texts like the Mishnah and the Talmud record a host of rulings by rabbis, some of whom are believed to be from among the Pharisees, concerning sacrifices and other ritual practices in the Temple, torts, criminal law, and governance. In their day, the influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people was strong and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many.


title: Pharisees

text: According to Josephus, the Pharisees appeared before Pompey asking him to interfere and restore the old priesthood while abolishing the royalty of the Hasmoneans altogether. Pharisees also opened Jerusalem's gates to the Romans, and actively supported them against the Sadducean faction. When the Romans finally broke the entrance to the Jerusalem's Temple, the Pharisees killed the priests who were officiating the Temple services on Saturday. They regarded Pompey's defilement of the Temple in Jerusalem as a divine punishment of Sadducean misrule. Pompey ended the monarchy in 63 BCE and named Hyrcanus II high priest and ethnarch (a lesser title than "king"). Six years later Hyrcanus was deprived of the remainder of political authority and ultimate jurisdiction was given to the Proconsul of Syria, who ruled through Hyrcanus's Idumaean associate Antipater, and later Antipater's two sons Phasael (military governor of Judea) and Herod (military governor of Galilee). In 40 BCE Aristobulus's son Antigonus overthrew Hyrcanus and named himself king and high priest, and Herod fled to Rome.


title: Pharisees

text: In Rome, Herod sought the support of Mark Antony and Octavian, and secured recognition by the Roman Senate as king, confirming the termination of the Hasmonean dynasty. According to Josephus, Sadducean opposition to Herod led him to treat the Pharisees favorably. Herod was an unpopular ruler, perceived as a Roman puppet. Despite his restoration and expansion of the Second Temple, Herod's notorious treatment of his own family and of the last Hasmonaeans further eroded his popularity. According to Josephus, the Pharisees ultimately opposed him and thus fell victims (4 BCE) to his bloodthirstiness. The family of Boethus, whom Herod had raised to the high-priesthood, revived the spirit of the Sadducees, and thenceforth the Pharisees again had them as antagonists.


title: Pharisees

text: While it stood, the Second Temple remained the center of Jewish ritual life. According to the Torah, Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices at the Temple three times a year: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), and Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). The Pharisees, like the Sadducees, were politically quiescent, and studied, taught, and worshiped in their own way. At this time serious theological differences emerged between the Sadducees and Pharisees. The notion that the sacred could exist outside the Temple, a view central to the Essenes, was shared and elevated by the Pharisees.


title: Pharisees

text: At first the values of the Pharisees developed through their sectarian debates with the Sadducees; then they developed through internal, non-sectarian debates over the law as an adaptation to life without the Temple, and life in exile, and eventually, to a more limited degree, life in conflict with Christianity. These shifts mark the transformation of Pharisaic to Rabbinic Judaism.


title: Pharisees

text: No single tractate of the key Rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Talmud, is devoted to theological issues; these texts are concerned primarily with interpretations of Jewish law, and anecdotes about the sages and their values. Only one chapter of the Mishnah deals with theological issues; it asserts that three kinds of people will have no share in "the world to come:" those who deny the resurrection of the dead, those who deny the divinity of the Torah, and Epicureans (who deny divine supervision of human affairs). Another passage suggests a different set of core principles: normally, a Jew may violate any law to save a life, but in Sanhedrin 74a, a ruling orders Jews to accept martyrdom rather than violate the laws against idolatry, murder, or adultery. (Judah haNasi, however, said that Jews must "be meticulous in small religious duties as well as large ones, because you do not know what sort of reward is coming for any of the religious duties," suggesting that all laws are of equal importance).


title: Pharisees

text: One belief central to the Pharisees which was shared by all Jews of the time is monotheism. This is evident in the practice of reciting the , a prayer composed of select verses from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4), at the Temple and in synagogues; the begins with the verses, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God; the Lord is one." According to the Mishna, these passages were recited in the Temple along with the twice-daily offering; Jews in the diaspora, who did not have access to the Temple, recited these passages in their houses of assembly. According to the Mishnah and Talmud, the men of the Great Assembly instituted the requirement that Jews both in Judea and in the diaspora pray three times a day (morning, afternoon and evening), and include in their prayers a recitation of these passages in the morning () and evening () prayers.


title: Pharisees

text: Pharisaic wisdom was compiled in one book of the Mishna, . The Pharisaic attitude is perhaps best exemplified by a story about the sages Hillel the Elder and Shammai, who both lived in the latter half of the 1st century BCE. A Gentile once challenged Shammai to teach him the wisdom of the Torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai drove him away. The same gentile approached Hillel and asked of him the same thing. Hillel chastised him gently by saying, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation – now go and study."


title: Pharisees

text: According to Josephus, whereas the Sadducees believed that people have total free will and the Essenes believed that all of a person's life is predestined, the Pharisees believed that people have free will but that God also has foreknowledge of human destiny. This also accords with the statement in 3:19, "Rabbi Akiva said: All is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given". According to Josephus, Pharisees were further distinguished from the Sadducees in that Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead.


title: Pharisees

text: Unlike the Sadducees, who are generally held to have rejected any existence after death, the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees on the afterlife. According to the New Testament the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead. According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people would be resurrected or reincarnated and "pass into other bodies," while "the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment." Paul the Apostle declared himself to be a Pharisee even after his belief in Jesus Christ.


title: Pharisees

text: Fundamentally, the Pharisees continued a form of Judaism that extended beyond the Temple, applying Jewish law to mundane activities in order to sanctify the everyday world. This was a more participatory (or "democratic") form of Judaism, in which rituals were not monopolized by an inherited priesthood but rather could be performed by all adult Jews individually or collectively; whose leaders were not determined by birth but by scholarly achievement.


title: Pharisees

text: Many, including some scholars, have characterized the Sadducees as a sect that interpreted the Torah literally, and the Pharisees as interpreting the Torah liberally. R' Yitzhak Isaac Halevi suggests that this was not, in fact, a matter of religion. He claims that the complete rejection of Judaism would not have been tolerated under the Hasmonean rule and therefore Hellenists maintained that they were rejecting not Judaism but Rabbinic law. Thus, the Sadducees were in fact a political party not a religious sect. However, according to Jacob Neusner, this view is a distortion. He suggests that two things fundamentally distinguished the Pharisaic from the Sadducean approach to the Torah. First, Pharisees believed in a broad and literal interpretation of Exodus (19:3–6), "you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," and the words of 2 Maccabees (2:17): "God gave all the people the heritage, the kingdom, the priesthood, and the holiness."


title: Pharisees

text: The Pharisees believed that the idea that all of the children of Israel were to be like priests was expressed elsewhere in the Torah, for example, when the Law itself was transferred from the sphere of the priesthood to every man in Israel. Moreover, the Torah already provided ways for all Jews to lead a priestly life: the laws of kosher animals were perhaps intended originally for the priests, but were extended to the whole people; similarly the prohibition of cutting the flesh in mourning for the dead. The Pharisees believed that all Jews in their ordinary life, and not just the Temple priesthood or Jews visiting the Temple, should observe rules and rituals concerning purification.


title: Pharisees

text: The standard view is that the Pharisees differed from Sadducees in the sense that they accepted the Oral Torah in addition to the Scripture. Anthony J. Saldarini argues that this assumption has neither implicit nor explicit evidence. A critique of the ancient interpretations of the Bible are distant from what modern scholars consider literal. Saldarini states that the Oral Torah did not come about until the third century CE, although there was an unstated idea about it in existence. Every Jewish community in a way possessed their own version of the Oral Torah which governed their religious practices. Josephus stated that the Sadducees only followed literal interpretations of the Torah. To Saldarini, this only means that the Sadducees followed their own way of Judaism and rejected the Pharisaic version of Judaism. To Rosemary Ruether, the Pharisaic proclamation of the Oral Torah was their way of freeing Judaism from the clutches of Aaronite priesthood, represented by the Sadducees. The Oral Torah was to remain oral but was later given a written form. It did not refer to the Torah in a status as a commentary, rather had its own separate existence which allowed Pharisaic innovations.


title: Pharisees

text: The sages of the Talmud believed that the Oral law was simultaneously revealed to Moses at Sinai, and the product of debates among rabbis. Thus, one may conceive of the "Oral Torah" not as a fixed text but as an ongoing process of analysis and argument in which God is actively involved; it was this ongoing process that was revealed at Sinai, and by participating in this ongoing process rabbis and their students are actively participating in God's ongoing act of revelation.


title: Pharisees

text: "...because there men achieve sainthood through study of Torah and imitation of the conduct of the masters. In doing so, they conform to the heavenly paradigm, the Torah believed to have been created by God "in his image," revealed at Sinai, and handed down to their own teachers ... If the masters and disciples obey the divine teaching of Moses, "our rabbi," then their society, the school, replicates on earth the heavenly academy, just as the disciple incarnates the heavenly model of Moses, "our rabbi." The rabbis believe that Moses was (and the Messiah will be) a rabbi, God dons phylacteries, and the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions. These beliefs today may seem as projections of rabbinical values onto heaven, but the rabbis believe that they themselves are projections of heavenly values onto earth. The rabbis thus conceive that on earth they study Torah just as God, the angels, and Moses, "our rabbi," do in heaven. The heavenly schoolmen are even aware of Babylonian scholastic discussions, so they require a rabbi's information about an aspect of purity taboos.


title: Pharisees

text: The commitment to relate religion to daily life through the law has led some (notably, Saint Paul and Martin Luther) to infer that the Pharisees were more legalistic than other sects in the Second Temple Era. The authors of the Gospels present Jesus as speaking harshly against some Pharisees (Josephus does claim that the Pharisees were the "strictest" observers of the law). Yet, as Neusner has observed, Pharisaism was but one of many "Judaisms" in its day, and its legal interpretation are what set it apart from the other sects of Judaism.


title: Pharisees

text: The Mishna in the beginning of Avot and (in more detail) Maimonides in his Introduction to records a chain of tradition () from Moses at Mount Sinai down to R' Ashi, redactor of the Talmud and last of the Amoraim. This chain of tradition includes the interpretation of unclear statements in the Bible (e.g. that the "fruit of a beautiful tree" refers to a citron as opposed to any other fruit), the methods of textual exegesis (the disagreements recorded in the Mishna and Talmud generally focus on methods of exegesis), and Laws with Mosaic authority that cannot be derived from the Biblical text (these include measurements (e.g. what amount of a non-kosher food must one eat to be liable), the amount and order of the scrolls to be placed in the phylacteries, etc.).


title: Pharisees

text: The Pharisees were also innovators in that they enacted specific laws as they saw necessary according to the needs of the time. These included prohibitions to prevent an infringement of a biblical prohibition (e.g. one does not take a Lulav on Shabbat "Lest one carry it in the public domain") called , among others. The commandment to read the (Book of Esther) on Purim and to light the Menorah on Hanukkah are Rabbinic innovations. Much of the legal system is based on "what the sages constructed via logical reasoning and from established practice". Also, the blessings before meals and the wording of the Amidah. These are known as Takanot. The Pharisees based their authority to innovate on the verses: "...according to the word they tell you... according to all they instruct you. According to the law they instruct you and according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left" (Deuteronomy 17:10–11) (see "Encyclopedia Talmudit" entry "Divrei Soferim").


title: Pharisees

text: In an interesting twist, Abraham Geiger posits that the Sadducees were the more hidebound adherents to an ancient Halacha whereas the Pharisees were more willing to develop Halacha as the times required. See however, Bernard Revel's "Karaite Halacha" which rejects many of Geiger's proofs.


title: Pharisees

text: Just as important as (if not more important than) any particular law was the value the rabbis placed on legal study and debate. The sages of the Talmud believed that when they taught the Oral Torah to their students, they were imitating Moses, who taught the law to the children of Israel. Moreover, the rabbis believed that "the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions." Thus, in debating and disagreeing over the meaning of the Torah or how best to put it into practice, no rabbi felt that he (or his opponent) was rejecting God or threatening Judaism; on the contrary, it was precisely through such arguments that the rabbis imitated and honored God.


title: Pharisees

text: One sign of the Pharisaic emphasis on debate and differences of opinion is that the Mishnah and Talmud mark different generations of scholars in terms of different pairs of contending schools. In the first century, for example, the two major Pharisaic schools were those of Hillel and Shammai. After Hillel died in 20 CE, Shammai assumed the office of president of the Sanhedrin until he died in 30 CE. Followers of these two sages dominated scholarly debate over the following decades. Although the Talmud records the arguments and positions of the school of Shammai, the teachings of the school of Hillel were ultimately taken as authoritative.


title: Pharisees

text: Following the Jewish–Roman wars, revolutionaries like the Zealots had been crushed by the Romans, and had little credibility (the last Zealots died at Masada in 73 CE). Similarly, the Sadducees, whose teachings were closely connected to the Temple, disappeared with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Essenes too disappeared, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the concerns of the times, perhaps because they were sacked by the Romans at Qumran.


title: Pharisees

text: Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remained. Their vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives was a position meaningful to the majority of Jews. Such teachings extended beyond ritual practices. According to the classic midrash in "Avot D'Rabbi Nathan" (4:5):


title: Pharisees

text: Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governed Judea through a Procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish Patriarch and levied the Fiscus Judaicus. Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Pharisee, was appointed the first Patriarch (the Hebrew word, Nasi, also means prince, or president), and he reestablished the Sanhedrin at Yavneh (see the related Council of Jamnia) under Pharisee control. Instead of giving tithes to the priests and sacrificing offerings at the (now-destroyed) Temple, the rabbis instructed Jews to give charity. Moreover, they argued that all Jews should study in local synagogues, because Torah is "the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob" (Deuteronomy 33:4).


title: Pharisees

text: After the destruction of the First Temple, Jews believed that God would forgive them and enable them to rebuild the Temple an event that actually occurred within three generations. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews wondered whether this would happen again. When the Emperor Hadrian threatened to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city dedicated to Jupiter, in 132, Aelia Capitolina, some of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin supported a rebellion led by Simon Bar Kosiba (later known as Bar Kokhba), who established a short-lived independent state that was conquered by the Romans in 135. With this defeat, Jews' hopes that the Temple would be rebuilt were crushed. Nonetheless, belief in a Third Temple remains a cornerstone of Jewish belief.


title: Pharisees

text: Romans forbade Jews to enter Jerusalem (except for the day of Tisha B'Av), and forbade any plan to rebuild the Temple. Instead, it took over the Province of Judea directly, renaming it Syria Palaestina, and renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina. Romans did eventually reconstitute the Sanhedrin under the leadership of Judah haNasi (who claimed to be a descendant of King David). They conferred the title of "Nasi" as hereditary, and Judah's sons served both as Patriarch and as heads of the Sanhedrin.


title: Pharisees

text: According to historian Shaye Cohen, by the time three generations had passed after the destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews concluded that the Temple would not be rebuilt during their lives, nor in the foreseeable future. Jews were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions:


title: Pharisees

text: Regardless of the importance they gave to the Temple, and despite their support of Bar Koseba's revolt, the Pharisees' vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews. Their responses would constitute Rabbinic Judaism.


title: Pharisees

text: After the destruction of the Second Temple, these sectarian divisions ended. The Rabbis avoided the term "Pharisee," perhaps because it was a term more often used by non-Pharisees, but also because the term was explicitly sectarian. The Rabbis claimed leadership over all Jews, and added to the Amidah the , a prayer which in part exclaims, "Praised are You O Lord, who breaks enemies and defeats the wicked," and which is understood as a rejection of sectarians and sectarianism. This shift by no means resolved conflicts over the interpretation of the Torah; rather, it relocated debates between sects to debates within Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisaic commitment to scholarly debate as a value in and of itself, rather than merely a byproduct of sectarianism, emerged as a defining feature of Rabbinic Judaism.


title: Pharisees

text: Thus, as the Pharisees argued that all Israel should act as priests, the Rabbis argued that all Israel should act as rabbis: "The rabbis furthermore want to transform the entire Jewish community into an academy where the whole Torah is studied and kept ... redemption depends on the "rabbinization" of all Israel, that is, upon the attainment of all Jewry of a full and complete embodiment of revelation or Torah, thus achieving a perfect replica of heaven."


title: Pharisees

text: The Rabbinic era itself is divided into two periods. The first period was that of the Tannaim (from the Aramaic word for "repeat;" the Aramaic root TNY is equivalent to the Hebrew root SNY, which is the basis for "Mishnah." Thus, Tannaim are "Mishnah teachers"), the sages who repeated and thus passed down the Oral Torah. During this period rabbis finalized the canonization of the Tanakh, and in 200 Judah haNasi edited together Tannaitic judgements and traditions into the Mishnah, considered by the rabbis to be the definitive expression of the Oral Torah (although some of the sages mentioned in the Mishnah are Pharisees who lived prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, or prior to the Bar Kozeba Revolt, most of the sages mentioned lived after the revolt).


title: Pharisees

text: The second period is that of the "Amoraim" (from the Aramaic word for "speaker") rabbis and their students who continued to debate legal matters and discuss the meaning of the books of the Bible. In Palestine, these discussions occurred at important academies at Tiberias, Caesarea, and Sepphoris. In Babylonia, these discussions largely occurred at important academies that had been established at Nehardea, Pumpeditha and Sura. This tradition of study and debate reached its fullest expression in the development of the Talmudim, elaborations of the Mishnah and records of Rabbinic debates, stories, and judgements, compiled around 400 in Palestine and around 500 in Babylon.


title: Pharisees

text: Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged as normative Judaism and in fact many today refer to Rabbinic Judaism simply as "Judaism." Jacob Neusner, however, states that the Amoraim had no ultimate power in their communities. They lived at a time when Jews were subjects of either the Roman or Iranian (Parthian and Persian) empires. These empires left the day-to-day governance in the hands of the Jewish authorities: in Roman Palestine, through the hereditary office of Patriarch (simultaneously the head of the Sanhedrin); in Babylonia, through the hereditary office of the "Reish Galuta", the "Head of the Exile" or "Exilarch" (who ratified the appointment of the heads of Rabbinical academies.) According to Professor Neusner:


title: Pharisees

text: In Neusner's view, the rabbinic project, as acted out in the Talmud, reflected not the world as it was but the world as rabbis dreamed it should be.


title: Pharisees

text: According to S. Baron however, there existed "a general willingness of the people to follow its self imposed Rabbinic rulership". Although the Rabbis lacked authority to impose capital punishment "Flagellation and heavy fines, combined with an extensive system of excommunication were more than enough to uphold the authority of the courts." In fact, the Rabbis took over more and more power from the Reish Galuta until eventually R' Ashi assumed the title Rabbana, heretofore assumed by the exilarch, and appeared together with two other Rabbis as an official delegation "at the gate of King Yazdegard's court." The Amorah (and Tanna) Rav was a personal friend of the last Parthian king Artabenus and Shmuel was close to Shapur I, King of Persia. Thus, the Rabbis had significant means of "coercion" and the people seem to have followed the Rabbinic rulership.


title: Pharisees

text: The Pharisees appear in the New Testament, engaging in conflicts between themselves and John the Baptist and with Jesus, and because Nicodemus the Pharisee (John 3:1) with Joseph of Arimathea entombed Jesus' body at great personal risk. Gamaliel, the highly respected rabbi and, according to Christianity, defender of the apostles, was also a Pharisee, and according to some Christian traditions secretly converted to Christianity.


title: Pharisees

text: There are several references in the New Testament to Paul the Apostle being a Pharisee before converting to Christianity, and other members of the Pharisee sect are known from Acts 15:5 to have become Christian believers. It was some members of his group who argued that gentile converts must be circumcised and obliged to follow the Mosaic law, leading to a dispute within the early Church addressed at the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, in 50 CE.


title: Pharisees

text: The New Testament, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, presents especially the leadership of the Pharisees as obsessed with man-made rules (especially concerning purity) whereas Jesus is more concerned with God's love; the Pharisees scorn sinners whereas Jesus seeks them out. (The Gospel of John, which is the only gospel where Nicodemus is mentioned, particularly portrays the sect as divided and willing to debate.) Because of the New Testament's frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers (see also Woes of the Pharisees and Legalism (theology)), the word "pharisee" (and its derivatives: "pharisaical", etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit. Jews today typically find this insulting and some consider the use of the word to be anti-Semitic.


title: Pharisees

text: Hyam Maccoby speculated that Jesus was himself a Pharisee and that his arguments with Pharisees is a sign of inclusion rather than fundamental conflict (disputation being the dominant narrative mode employed in the Talmud as a search for truth, and not necessarily a sign of opposition).


title: Pharisees

text: Examples of disputed passages include the story of Jesus declaring the sins of a paralytic man forgiven and the Pharisees calling the action blasphemy. In the story, Jesus counters the accusation that he does not have the power to forgive sins by pronouncing forgiveness of sins and then healing the man. The account of the Paralytic Man and Jesus's performance of miracles on the Sabbath are often interpreted as oppositional and at times antagonistic to that of the Pharisees' teachings.