to allow it practical implication over received methods; via the Positive-Historical Zecharias Frankel, who did not deny Wissenschaft a role, but only in deference to tradition, and opposed analysis of the Pentateuch; and up to Abraham Geiger, who rejected any limitations on objective research or its application. He is considered the founding father of Reform Judaism. Geiger wrote that at seventeen already, he discerned that the late Tannaim and the Amoraim imposed a subjective interpretation on the Oral Torah, attempting to diffuse its revolutionary potential by linking it to the biblical text. Believing that Judaism became stale and had to be radically transformed if it were to survive modernity, he found little use in the legal procedures of halakha, arguing that hardline rabbis often demonstrated they will not accept major innovations anyway. His venture into higher criticism led him to regard the Pentateuch as reflecting power struggles between the Pharisees on one hand, and the Saducees who had their own pre-Mishnaic halakha. Having concluded the belief in an unbroken tradition back to Sinai or a divinely dictated Torah could not be maintained, he began to articulate a theology of progressive revelation, presenting the Pharisees as reformers who revolutionized the Saducee-dominated religion. His other model were the Prophets, whose morals and ethics were to him the only true, permanent core of Judaism. He was not alone: Solomon Formstecher argued that Revelation was God's influence on human psyche, rather than encapsulated in law; Aaron Bernstein was apparently the first to deny inherent sanctity to any text when he wrote in 1844 that, "The Pentateuch is not a chronicle of God's revelation, it is a testimony to the inspiration His consciousness had on our forebears." Many others shared similar convictions. In 1837, Geiger hosted a conference of like-minded young rabbis in Wiesbaden. He told the assembled that the "Talmud must go". In 1841, the Hamburg Temple issued a second edition of its prayerbook, the first Reform liturgy since its predecessor of 1818. Orthodox response was weak and quickly defeated. Most rabbinic posts in Germany were now manned by university graduates susceptible to rationalistic ideas, which also permeated liberal Protestantism led by such figures as Leberecht Uhlich. They formed the backbone of the nascent Reform rabbinate. Geiger intervened in the Second Hamburg Temple controversy not just to defend the prayerbook against the Orthodox, but also to denounce it, stating the time of mainly aesthetic