Rhea

The threads about liberal/fundy christians and finding a True Christian� got me thinking.

While you may not be able to identify a true christian, according to the bible, it seems there ARE instructions on how to identify a Real Pharisee�

Can y'all help me out with this? I'm totally serious here.

My limited knowledge offers as a start:

Pharisees are undesirable because:
- they distract from real goodness,
- they misrepresent which path to follow,
- they tend to be downright oppressive in browbeating their ideas onto others,

Pharisees are identified by:
- relentlessly asserting the "proper" interpretation of their scripture (pit bull),
- loudly proclaiming how good/pious they are and how observant/strict they are,
- loudly proclaiming how bad others are,
- being strident in the application of consequences/punishment for breaches of the scripture.




In what other ways are Pharisees harmful and/or identified - according to the Bible?

Vinnie

Pharisees were actually cool dudes. Christians had problems with some Pharisees in the early and later church and villified them. In no way can the slanderous reports and generalizations from Christians who tended to view Pharisees as enemies be trusted.

Its funny how many Christians today say, "you are like a Pharisee" or something not realizing what they are saying. its discrimination//racist behavior. Imagine if I said you are such a nigger or spic or white trash or gook or chink or used any other other generally avoided degrading language (fag, dike etc).

Its the same thing and its a despicable practive on the part of all hatefilled people who engage in such behavior. If they didn't have blind faith i nthe bible they might actually stop and thing about their usage.

Vinnie

Rhea

hunh.

Wasn't expecting that.


Well, thank you.
So, didn't Jesus decry them, though?

Vinnie

I added to my post and went even further.

The HJ probably had run ins and disagreements with Pharisees and many other brands of Jews when he lived. All we know is that we cannot trust the Christian slandering of Pharisees as they appear. Whatever happened happened. We can't reconstruct any of Jesus' experiences//run ins with Pharisees. If we reconstructed the specifics of both outlooks (Jesus' vs Pharisees) we might be able to note some areas where conflict would have arisen. Such an undertaking is beyond the scope of Jesus research at the present time however.

Vinnie

Vinnie

That looks liek some Christian cells look into the historical mirror in an effort to reconstruct the Pharisee and end up seeing nothing more than their own reflection....

Vinnie

Amos

. . . they go to church?

It's really fun to be a pharisee and we all must speak with earnesty at some point in our life. But does that mean we have to be a pharisee forever?

Rhea

...and thereby inspire this post...


I am quite adrift as I felt it was clear that the "cristians" ascribe to Jesus a distaste of Pharisees. But you say that the bible can't be relied upon. Well, I agree with you on that...

However, there is some merit (it seems) in exploring what those early christians wrote, because today's christians seem to use that test as a means of... playing out their own reflection.


Well, well, well,. It seems this thread is destined for completely unexpected directions. I'll have to do more listening than questioning at this point...

Toto

Hyam Maccoby thinks that the portrait of Jesus in the Bible describes a Pharisee (he's very big on Pharisees, because he sees them as the most enlightened faction of Judaism at the time.) See here and The Pharisee Jesus. ("Jesus, the book argues, was not only friendly to the Pharisees, but was actually a member of their movement. Evidence is brought from the rabbinic writings to show a strong affinity between Jesus and the Pharisees.")

So identifying a True Pharisee (tm) is about as likely as finding a True Christian (tm).

Amos

You must remember that after salvation religion must be left behind or there can be no freeedom from the Law so as to be set free from the convictin of sin . . . etc.

Hence, Jesus had two choices: either he stones the pharisees to death or they stone him to death (metaphorically speaking, of course). In other words, you can't be a saved sinner for long or chances are that you will die as a saved sinner . . . but die nonetheless.

sharon45

In the NT, the Jewish religious leaders at the time were only written to appear as though they were vain, ignorant, and foolish. But in fact, even as written inside the NT's obvious slant against them,( to instead falsely promote jesus), jesus is the one who is really shown as vain, ignorant, and foolish.

The leaders were doing about what they were suppose to do, and jesus wasn't going to play along because he clearly wasn't at all of who he thought/acted as he was. The leaders understood this and a lot of the crowds jesus spoke to did as well, but they look as hateful bullies in the NT'sview, so they are made to not be taken too serious against the NT's obvious chosen 'hero'.