Clergy and Educators

The Pharisees

Pharisee: 1. one of an ancient Jewish sect distinguished by their strict observance of traditional and written law, and by their pretension to superior sanctity; 2. a person of Pharisaic spirit or disposition; self-righteous person; a formalist; a hypocrite.
                                       Oxford English Dictionary

The Pharisees at the time of Jesus were, for the most part, lay religious teachers and leaders of great learning, highly respected for their knowledge and meticulous observance of the law. But as the OED clearly demon-strates, the New Testament representation of the Pharisees, tainted by a supersessionistic denigration of Torah, has caused negative nuances -- "pretension to superior sanctity," self-righteousness, formalism, hypocrisy -- to dominate our understanding of these people. After two thousand years, the caricature of
the Pharisees as the Gospel heavies is at last being transformed into a more realistic portrait.

The name "Pharisees" derives from a Hebrew word meaning "Separatists," but there is no consensus among scholars on precisely what or who it was the Pharisees were separated from: from the Gentiles, from irreligious Jews who acted like Greeks, from sources of ritual impurity, or from something else. Scholars do agree
that the Pharisees of Jesus' day were a purity sect. Motivated by the injunction in Torah to be "a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. 19:6), the Pharisees aspired to separate the sacred from the profane. They wanted to imbue all the people of Israel with the spirit
of holiness, to inspire every Jew to live in a state of such moral and ritual purity that he would be fit to carry out sacrifices in the Temple. To this end ceremonies that were part of the Temple cult were carried into the home, most especially in the practice of treating the table as if it were the holy altar and striving to fulfill all the demands of that altar.

The Pharisees also claimed the authority to interpret the law, which they did in order to clarify it, to make it more applicable to the society of their day, and to uncover its true meaning. In an attempt to undermine the power and authority of the priestly aristocracy who controlled and administered the Temple cult, the Pharisees promoted synagogue worship as an equally valid way of drawing near to God. In this way they were instrumental in the democratization of religion: What had previously been the exclusive domain of the priests was appropriated by the people -- by people, in fact, like Jesus of Nazareth.

Many of the scholars who are devoting themselves to a reappraisal of the Pharisees like to point out the similar-ities between Jesus and the Pharisees: Jesus used the same methods to teach that the Pharisees did and he taught many of the same things that they did, Jesus and the Pharisees shared certain doctrines (e.g., the resur-rection) and forms of piety, and both Jesus and the Pharisees addressed God as "Father." The vituperative portrayal of the Pharisees in the Gospels is explained as the result of the churches' reading the conflicts of a later time between themselves and the rabbinic descendants of the Pharisees back into the time of Jesus.

While there is truth in these arguments, at the same time they are probably an oversimplification of the actual reality. The Pharisees of Jesus' day, as we have already seen, were concerned to keep the law scrupulously in accord with their own interpretation of Torah. In so doing they believed that they were being faithful to
their obligations as "sons of the covenant" and were, therefore, "righteous." (Their fellow Jews would also have considered them righteous, and for the same reason.) It follows that anyone who ignored their interpretation, called it into question, or interpreted and practiced the law in a different way was not "righteous" and would be viewed by some, if not all, of the Pharisees as a threat to their identity as faithful members of the covenant.

The Gospels give us a consistent picture of a Jesus
who disregarded at least some of the purity laws that governed social contact. The importance of what was at stake for the Pharisees in regard to Jesus' actions should not be ignored, but it needs to be interpreted in the proper context. Jesus' behavior would have constituted a challenge to the Pharisees' sense of what righteous-ness was and what it required. They would therefore have perceived him as breaking or even abandoning the covenant and defying the will of God. Little wonder that some of the Pharisees were hostile to Jesus.

Jesus' opposition to some, if not all, of the Pharisees should be understood in the same context. Since he
saw himself as having been sent to the lost sheep of
the entire house of Israel (Matthew 15:24), Jesus would probably have viewed the Pharisees' conviction that they alone were loyal to God's covenant and law as
a dangerous "factionalism" that erected unnecessary boundaries among God's people and put limits on God's grace and love. Though we may understand the funda-mental error Jesus identified in Pharisaic convictions, Christians dare not condemn the Pharisees for thinking themselves the sole possessors of the truth about God.

The Pharisees have been saddled with a two-thousand-year-old reputation for obsessive legalism, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy that they do not deserve. For their critical, even hostile, attitude toward Jesus and his opposition to them they deserve our understanding. And for their sincere efforts to make the worship of God accessible to all the people and to inspire their fellow Jews to holiness the Pharisees deserve our respect.

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