Hereof, who were the Pharisees and what did they believe?
The Pharisees asserted that God could and should be worshipped even away from the Temple and outside Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, worship consisted not in bloody sacrifices—the practice of the Temple priests—but in prayer and in the study of God's law.
Likewise, what is the biblical definition of a Pharisee? Their name comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic parush or parushi, which means "one who is separated." It may refer to their separation from Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity or from irreligious Jews. As Josephus noted, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.
Similarly one may ask, how did Jesus describe the Pharisees?
Jesus portrays the Pharisees as impatient with outward, ritual observance of minutiae which made them look acceptable and virtuous outwardly but left the inner person unreformed. See also Letter and spirit of the law.
What did the Pharisees believe that the Sadducees did not?
According to the Christian Acts of the Apostles: The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, whereas the Pharisees did. In Acts, Paul chose this point of division to gain the protection of the Pharisees. The Sadducees also rejected the notion of spirits or angels, whereas the Pharisees acknowledged them.
