Their leaders had even counselled the
fanatical defenders of Jerusalem to open the gates to the enemy;
for this service they were treated with the highest honour by Herod.
He made it part of his general policy to favour the Pharisees
(as also the sect of the Essenes, insignificant though it was),
it being his purpose to restrict the national life again within
those purely ecclesiastical channels of activity which it had
abandoned since the Maccabaean wars. However reckless his conduct
in other respects, he was always scrupulously careful to avoid
wounding religious susceptibilities (Antiquities, xiv. 16, 3).
But although the Pharisees might be quite pleased that the
high-priesthood and the kingship were no longer united in one
and the same person, and that interest in the law again overshadowed
interest in politics, the populace for their part could never
forgive Herod for overthrowing the old dynasty. That he himself,
at least in religious profession, was a Jew did not improve his
position, but rather made it worse. It was not easy for him to
stifle the national feeling after it had once been revived among
the Jews; they could not forget the recent past, and objected to
being thrust back into the time when foreign domination was endured
by them as a matter of course.
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