were doing on the Sabbath. The Law of Moses described the Sabbath as a day of rest from work. It celebrated God’s resting from his acts of creation and his liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 20:8–11; Deuteronomy 5:15). But the law never clearly defined what constituted “work.” For the Pharisees, that was a question to be settled with great care. From sources outside the New Testament, we learn that the Pharisees began as a movement opposed to what they saw as corrupt leadership in the