Owen M. Fiss

Right.

If we step into the arena to play partisan politics, we lose the ability to clearly analyze the structural mechanisms these scholars are actually trying to expose.

Exactly.

We have to stay objective to see how the engine works.

The religious center of gravity was gone.

The religion was facing total extinction.

And the group that stepped into this vacuum to save it was a sect of scholars known as the Pharisees, who would eventually evolve into the rabbis as we know them today.

Right.