Pharisees. The Pharisees were a social movement and a school of thought in the Holy Land 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. 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. Another conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization and those who resisted it. A third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Second Temple with its rites and services, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic Laws. A fourth point of conflict, specifically religious, involved different interpretations of the Torah and how to apply it to current Jewish life, with Sadducees recognizing only the Written Torah and rejecting doctrines such as the Oral Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and the resurrection of the dead. 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. Josephus claimed that Pharisees received the full support and goodwill of the common people, 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. The phrase common people in Josephus' writings suggests that most Jews were just Jewish people, distinguishing them from the main liturgical groups. Outside Jewish history and literature, Pharisees have been made notable by references in the New Testament to conflicts with John the Baptist and with Jesus. There are also several references in the New Testament to the Apostle Paul being a Pharisee. The relationship between Early Christianity and the Pharisees depended on the individual; while numerous nameless Pharisees were portrayed as hostile, New Testament writings make mention of several Pharisees, including Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and Gamaliel, who are sympathetic to Jesus and Christians. 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 in a description of the four schools of thought, or four sects, into which he divided the Jews in the 1st century CE. Other sects emerged at this time, such as the Early Christians in Jerusalem and the Therapeutae in Egypt. 2 Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, focuses 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 was likely written by a Pharisee or someone sympathetic toward Pharisees, as it includes several theological innovations: propitiatory prayer for the dead, judgment day, intercession of saints and merits of the martyrs. 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. However, none of the Rabbinic sources include identifiable eyewitness accounts of the Pharisees and their teachings. 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.