Excursus: The Pharisees

We saw towards the start of this series, that the Gospels, and Matthew and Luke especially, have Jesus turn towards teaching in parables when opposition to him begins to increase. It’s no surprise then that opposition to Jesus has been in the background of all the parables we’ve looked at so far in this section of the series on Luke. Namely, this opposition has come in the form of the Pharisees. Their opposition to his welcome of and table-fellowship with ‘tax-collectors and sinners’ was the context for the Parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and the Wasteful Son and his Dutiful Brother. The Pharisees were similarly listening in on the Parable of the Unjust Steward. And, next time, we’ll be looking at the Parable of the Tax-Collector and the Pharisee. So Pharisees are everywhere in this section of Luke. But who were they? Was their portrayal in the New Testament accurate? And what put them at odds with Jesus?

As I was preparing my post on the Tax-Collector and the Pharisee, I realized that the Pharisees required far more attention than was feasible within a post. And so today’s post will be an excursus from the main series looking at who these religious leaders were, what they believed, and why they worked as the archetypal opponent of Jesus’ message.

Pharisees in the Gospels

In the Gospels, the Pharisees are generally presented as the foil for Jesus, his teaching, and ministry. As such, they are portrayed less as individual people or even as a party, than they are an archetype of a certain religious way of being, which is set in opposition to Jesus’ (Levine & Witherington 491; Just 678).* This archetype is of a joyless rule-follower, the kind of person who expected to ace every test — and looked down on anyone who didn’t (Levine). There is often also a layer of hypocrisy to the portrayal, with their focus on minor details blinding them to the big picture, and especially to the impacts of their expectations on others.

Most of us have personal experience with this type of person (and if we’re honest, in certain times and places, we’ve likely been that type of person), especially in religious contexts. So the portrayal became archetypal for a reason. Whether or not this archetype accurately reflects who the Pharisees were remains to be seen.

Origins

The Pharisees were one of the major religious parties in first-century Judea. They likely emerged when Judea was under the domination of the Hellenistic (i.e., Greek-speaking) Seleucid Empire (312-140s BCE), but grew in importance, influence, and, by many accounts, popularity through the Hasmonean period (140s-37 BCE).^

While the Gospels portray them as elitist, they were at least originally a middle class movement that sought a middle way between complete assimilation into Greek culture and the religious separatism advocated by more radical groups (such as, later, the Essenes). Pharisaism was also democratic, in the sense that unlike groups such as the Levites or Priests, the Pharisees were not hereditary: any man could become a Pharisee, if he had the means, interest, and skills.

By Jesus’ time, the Pharisees battled for influence with several Jewish social, political, and religious parties. Others included the zealots, who sought the violent overthrow of foreign domination, Essenes and other radical separatists, and the Sadducees, who were associated with the priestly upper classes and advocated appeasement of Rome. But after the devastation of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-74 CE), which included the razing of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, everything changed: the zealots and separatists were largely eradicated and the Sadducees rendered irrelevant, so to a significant extent, the Pharisees were the only viable source of religious leadership left within Judaism. This lack of alternatives and the focus of their piety on Law-observance situated them nicely to become the dominant voice in Judaism’s transformation following the destruction of the Temple. As such, Pharisaism is often seen as the direct ancestor of the rabbinic Judaism that emerged in Late Antiquity and which remains the canonical expression of Judaism today.

Pharisaic Beliefs and Practices

More than anything, the Pharisees were known for their scrupulous attention to detail and the sincerity of their devotion (Gonzalez 212; Capon): If there was joy in the Torah, they were going to squeeze every last drop out of it that they could. In practice, this often meant ‘building a fence’ around the Law, going above-and-beyond what it actually said so that, if and when they slipped up, they wouldn’t break the Law itself (Capon). These expansions of the Law were known as ‘the traditions of the fathers,’ and became a core feature of Pharisaic practice. (This is corroborated by both the New Testament (e.g., Matthew 15.2, etc.) and Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 18.12.)

One of the major areas in which their scrupulousness showed itself was in their relationship to food. Not only did they keep levitical purity laws and tithes, but they even avoided contact with potentially impure food prepared by those who were less scrupulous. (Schiffman cites several rabbinic texts about this: t. Avod. Zar. 3.10; b. Ber. 47b; b. Git. 61a). It is even thought that this separation in table fellowship was the source of their name, which is derived from the Hebrew/Aramaic root prsh, ‘separate’.

It seems this division between the Pharisees and the general Jewish public (referred to as ‘the people of the land’), with their comparative laxity of Torah observance, became a marked feature of Pharisaism’s self-understanding. They even often prayed in gratitude for their observance over and against that of others. For example, one prayer attributed to a Pharisee in the Talmud reads:

I give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, that you have set my portion with those who sit in the study hall, and that you have not given me my portion among those who sit idly on street corners. … I rise early to pursue matters of Torah, and they rise early to pursue frivolous matters. … I toil and receive a reward, and they toil and do not receive a reward … I run to the life of the World-to-Come and they run to the pit of destruction (Berakhot 28b)

The similarities between this prayer and the Pharisee’s prayer in the Parable of the Tax-Collector and the Pharisee are striking. It seems this idea of gratitude for not being like other people was a normal part of Pharisees’ piety. But, despite this separation from the masses, the Pharisees believed their observance was not just for themselves. In fact, they believed that that by going so far above-and-beyond in their practice, their excess could cover over the sins of the general public and thereby save and redeem the whole nation (Levine; Levine & Witherington 495). One rabbinic text captures this belief well:

I am able to exempt the whole world from judgment from the day that I was born until now, and were Eliezer, my son, to be with me [we could exempt it] from the day of creation of the world to the present time, and were Jotham the son of Uzziah with us, [we could exempt it] from the creation of the world to its final end. (Sukkah 45b)

The traditions of the fathers included not only expansions on the Law — and the belief in their efficacy at saving all Israel from judgment — but also beliefs such as final judgment, resurrection of the dead, and human freedom. They also accepted a broad understanding of the Scriptures, which included the Prophets and Writings as canonical, unlike the Sadducees, who held only the Law to be authoritative and who rejected the resurrection of the dead. Such ideas were controversial in first-century Judaism but would become normative for both rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

The Pharisees and Jesus

All of this shows some areas of convergence, but also difference between the Pharisees and Jesus. It’s a bit ironic that the Pharisees are viewed as Jesus’ arch-nemeses, because, of all the parties of first century Judaism, Jesus bears the greatest similarity to them! He shares their acceptance of the Prophets and Writings as Scripture; he likewise joins them in believing in freedom, judgment and the resurrection of the dead. More fundamentally, he shares their conviction that ritual alone is not enough to be right with God.

But just as today some of the greatest internet flame wars can be between those who have the most in common, so too do we see that here. While both the Pharisees and Jesus upheld the importance of the Law, Jesus’ did not follow the Pharisees’ traditions about it: Where they built fences around the Law, he radicalized it, trying to get beyond the letter of the law to the spirit behind it. At times this meant that his observance was less strict, such as his willingness to glean grain and heal on the Sabbath (Matthew 12.1-12; Luke 14.1-5), or his disciples’ different practices around ritual washing (Matthew 15.2). But at other times, his observance was far more strict, such as when he pushes back the prohibition against murder to include hatred, and adultery to include lust (Matthew 5.21-30). Indeed, he stated that, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5.20) — an idea that would have no doubt absolutely floored his audience!

But even more important than the differences in how they interpreted and applied the law for themselves was how they applied it to others. The whole idea of using the Law as a way of dividing people into insiders and outsiders, and looking down on people for their laxer observance, was anathema to Jesus. Jesus was all about gathering together, not separating. This is the heart of the Pharisees’ rejection of Jesus’ table-fellowship with ‘sinners’. For Jesus, there were no purity tests, just joy in being together.

If this was the cause of the Pharisees’ antagonism towards Jesus, his own antagonism towards them was the flip-side of his. He saw them as judgmental and self-satisfied. Moreover, while there can be great joy and benefit in living a disciplined life, it also opens people up to the hypocrisy of caring more about certain pet issues than the broader concerns (e.g., Matthew 23.23), or enjoying the prestige of being seen to be devout (e.g., Matthew 23.4-7). It’s less the Pharisees’ teachings that make them “whitewashed tombs, which look good on the outside, but inside are full of all kinds of filth” (Matthew 23.27), than the attitude that could often accompany it.

Summary and Conclusions

The Pharisees were an important religious party in first-century Judaism who have had a lasting impact on Jewish faith and practice. While there were many areas of agreement between the Pharisees and Jesus, the two took very different approaches to the Law, its application, purpose, and its use within society.

Judged positively, we might see the Pharisees as forbears of Christian monasticism. For monastics too separated themselves from everyday people to focus on living out their faith in accordance with strict rules of life; and, at least in certain times and places, they too shared a belief that their above-and-beyond faithfulness could be applied for the benefit of the larger community of faith.

In a lot of ways, the Pharisees represented the best of what religion can inspire. But, just like with Christian monastics, it could easily slip into the rigid judgmentalism, sectarianism, and hypocrisy that is the worst of what religion can inspire.

And again, Jesus wasn’t really about religion anyway. He was suspicious of attempts to codify rightness and wrongness and control others’ behaviours, and rejected any and all kinds of purity culture. He saw God’s Kingdom as doing something new and very different from everyday religion, indiscriminately pulling in all kinds of people, and judging people only by positive impact their life has had on the world around them.

So then, the Pharisees were far from evil people, but they were a natural foil for Jesus’ approach to life and faith. And while the Gospels frame their beliefs, attitudes, and practices in a negative way, they don’t misrepresent them either. The Pharisees cared about ritual purity as a prerequisite for table-fellowship; they cared about traditions that went far beyond the Law itself; they used these to categorize people between adherent and non-adherent; and thanked God they were among the former.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.

^ Where no source is mentioned, in this post you can assume the source is Lawrence H. Schiffman’s excellent article in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, on which this post is heavily dependent.