Matthew 22:35 - Clarke's commentary and critical notes on the Bible

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, A lawyer - Νομικος, a teacher of the law. What is called lawyer, in the common translation, conveys a wrong idea to most readers: my old MS. renders the word in the same way I have done. These teachers of the law were the same as the scribes, or what Dr. Wotton calls letter-men, whom he supposes to be the same as the Karaites, a sect of the Jews who rejected all the traditions of the elders, and admitted nothing but the written word. See Wotton's Mishna, vol. i. p. 78. These are allowed to have kept more closely to the spiritual meaning of the law and prophets than the Pharisees did; and hence the question proposed by the lawyer, (Mark, Mark 12:28, calls him one of the scribes), or Karaite, was of a more spiritual or refined nature than any of the preceding.