As to their numbers, the only figure we have is the ‘over 6,000’ mentioned in Antiquities 17.42 as refusing to take the oath to Caesar. But this figure, coming most likely to Josephus from Nicolas of Damascus, and referring to an event which took place in Jerusalem in the latter years of Herod’s reign (roughly 10 BC), can scarcely be used to give an accurate assessment of the number of Pharisees in Jerusalem, let alone in the country as a whole, let alone spread across Judaism in the Diaspora, half a century later—especially when that half-century had contained at least two major revolts which
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