graymouser

I've got a two-pronged question here for those who specialize in NT history:

1. What is known of the practices, beliefs, and ideas of the Pharisees, Saduccees, and other Jewish sects at the time of the alleged events of the Gospels? Clearly, I mean information outside of the Gospels.

2. To what degree is the Gospel portrait of Jews, particularly Pharisees, a misrepresentation, and what do you think this implies about the Gospels?

I recall reading that the misrepresentation is quite deep. I'm curious what those here think of the issue.

-Wayne

Vinnie

Sorry for the "refer a reader" response but just to point out, volume three of Meier's A Marginal Jew series is entitled "Companions and Competitors" and addresses all these issues in considerable depth.


My site has an aside on Christian treatment of "Pharisee" here:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/melpassion.html

Vinnie

Kilgore Trout

Well for one thing, unlike jesus, they knew the Torah. They understood that no real prophet of god would teach against the laws of the Torah. Jesus overturned Torah laws, and according to the Torah, god said to kill anybody who did things like that. So it was not surprising that he was killed.

Al Kafirun

When I started reading a good layman-directed explanation of the Torah, I laughed out loud at how the NT treats the Pharisee. These men dedicated their lives to studying these rich myths and then the NT portrays them as half-wits.

If you want to know the mind-set of the Pharisee, read Josephus, read the Talmud, READ THE OT!

Amaleq13

It is my understanding that the early (eg 1st century) practices were essentially recreated from memory (and/or oral traditions) following the destruction/dispersal associated with the war and subsequent disturbances. I don't recall exactly when this "recreation" is thought to have taken place but I don't think the trail can be followed very far. On the other hand, I believe some confirmation of the accuracy of this recreation attempt has been found with the discovery of Ethiopian Jews who appear to have been continuing ancient practices. They are considered by some to represent a kind of "lost world" of ancient Judaism that has continued uninterrupted by the Roman destruction and dispersal.

Keeping in mind the first reply, Hyam Maccoby (The Mythmaker) argues that the portrayal of the Pharisees in the Gospels is entirely false. He attributes this to the fact that the Sadducees had gone extinct following the destruction of the Temple so the only Jews the Gospel authors really knew were Pharisees. He argues that a more historically accurate depiction would consistently describe the Sadducees as opposing Jesus (in an effort to maintain the status quo i.e. their Rome-provided power base) while the Pharisees would have either accepted his teachings as consistent with their own beliefs or remained "cautiously optimistic" about his messianic potential. Maccoby sees nothing in the teachings of Jesus that is inconsistent with the possibility that he was, himself, a Pharisee.

spin

As some source material

1. Josephus mentions the Pharisees as a group twice with descriptions, once in AJ, once in JW.
2. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus by Joachim Jeremias
3. Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society, AJ Saldarini (Edinburgh: Clark, 1988)
4. some information can still be gleaned from the gospels from the assumptions they make about the Pharisees, such as Mt 23:15, which talks of Diaspora Pharisees proselytising.

mrmoderate

The three major Jewish factions at the time Jesus lived as a man were the Pharissees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. There were also some radical fringe groups like the Zealot factions who believed in armed resistance and give anti-Jewish a whole new flavor after the destruction of the Temple. This was a turbulent time for the Jewish faith having recently come out of the Hellinizing period of Greek rule and the Jewish rebellion that resulted in many non-Jews converting to Judaism to keep from being persecuted by the Jews. One such product of these converts were the Herods who ruled over Galilee.

The Pharisees were a small but powerful group that emerged from the Maccabean revolution. They were regarded as the "seperated ones" who were to instill the law over Jews as they interpreted it from scripture and the traditions of the Talmud which is an ever changing book of interpretations of Jewish law.

The Pharisees became the faction that oversaw the money that was to be tithed to the Temple and enforced very strict versions of Hebrew Testament laws on the people. Jesus disputed the way the Pharisees interpreted these laws by citing Hebrew Testament writings that showed that they were being misinterpreted for the sake of the Pharisees having more control over the Jewish people.

In Jesus's time the Pharisees had the most control over the Sanhedrin. These are the primary antagonists of Jesus and are who are mostly referred to as "the Jews" in Gospel writings.

The Sadducees were a group who opposed much of the beliefs of the Pharisees. The Sadducees taught only from the Torah and did not follow prophetic or messianic beliefs. This group is considered the religious faction of the wealthy and did support the Pharisees in their attempts to rid the world of Jesus. Since the Sadducees were not messianic they had no reason to oppose Jesus other than how Jesus affected their basic welfare. If for no other reason, both the Pharisees and the Sadducees saw Jesus as a threat to their power and mostly to their income. The Sadducees also held seats in the Sanhedrin.

The Essenes were more like the Monks of Christianity. This was a very strict order that preserved the Hebrew Testament Laws in writings. The Essenes are considered a most probable source of the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Zealots are another issue all together. This is a group that was looking for the coming of a warriour messiah that would lead them in battle against the Romans. These are the Jews who holed themselves up at Masada and held off the Romans for several years.

These are also the sect of Jews who would sneak into towns and execute other Jews who did not follow their beliefs to violently defeat the Romans. This is by far the worst proponent of Jews killing Jews in the beginning times of the New Testament.

There were many other splinter factions of the time. Keeping in mind that Judaism was still reeling from the Greek Hellinization and the Maccabean revolt that put the Jews back into power. Add in the Roman takeover of the land and you have a mix of some pretty bizarre interpretations of Judaism being practiced in these terbulant times.

There were several claimed messiahs personalities that were put down and executed prior to Jesus coming onto the scene. These claimed messiahs were all Zealot in nature and immediately drew the attention of the Romans who these Zealots opposed. Jesus on the other hand was not a threat to Rome so there was a need for those who Jesus opposed, the Pharisees, to have Jesus put down. That did not work out well for any Jewish faction in power at the time.

Amaleq13

mrmoderate,


Could you provide the source(s) for your claims, please? All my quotes come from Hyam Maccoby's book The Mythmaker. I tend to assume a Talmudic scholar knows what he is talking about when he claims that the portrayal of the Pharisees/Sadducees in the Christian Bible is faulty but I'm always interested in opposing claims given an equally legitimate source.

"...the Pharisees, far from being rigid and inflexible in applying religious laws, were noted (as the first-century historian Josephus points out, and as is amply confirmed in the Pharisee law books) for the leniency of their legal rulings, and for the humanity and flexibility with which they sought to adapt the law of the Bible to changing conditions and improved moral conceptions." (p19)

"...the Pharisees were held in high repute throughout the Roman and Parthian empires as a dedicated group who upheld religious ideals in the face of tyranny, supported leniency and mercy in the application of laws, and championed the rights of the poor against the oppression of the rich."(pg6)

"For the Pharisees, on the other hand, the priests and the Temple had only a secondary importance. They regarded the priests not as leaders or spiritual guides, but merely as ceremonial functionaries, who had the job of keeping the Temple sacrifices going and administering the maintenance of the Temple generally."(p23)

For this one, I would be interested in the specific NT passages.

"They [Pharisees] wished to free the Jews from the stranglehold of the priesthood not only in order to return to the old prophetic ideal of lay leadership, but also in order to return the priesthood to its proper biblical role as a guild of ceremonial officials, rather than a centre of political power." (p25)

"...the High Priest was not a Pharisee, but a Sadducee, and the Sadducees were bitterly opposed to the Pharisees."(p8)

"...we see on two occasions cited in Acts that the High Priest was outvoted by the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin; on both occasions, the Pharisees were opposing an attempt to persecute the followers of Jesus..."(p10)

"The most powerful group regarded as heretical by the Pharisees was that of the Sadducees..."(p22)

"The whole picture of Jesus at loggerheads with the Pharisees is the creation of a period some time after Jesus' death, when the Christian Church was in conflict with the Pharisees because of its claim to have superseded Judaism."(p29)

mrmoderate

I use several references for my research of the times of Jesus. Aside from keeping up with newly found or newly translated archaeology findings I also try to use a diversity of material that has the least amount of bias. I would not consider a book titled "The Mythmaker" writen by someone who has a particular bias in his faith simply because I would need to question that persons motives for writing that kind of book.

Examples of my text books are Nelson's Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Revell Bible Dictionary.

I am certain that Mr. Maccoby is accurate in that he is citing sources that are also written with a very biased point of view.

Well, I suppose that is all in how we see things. I wrote that the Pharisees reinterpreted the laws to suit their own needs and Mr. Maccoby interprets this as reinterpreting the law to adapt to current conditions.

I once had a Phillipine customer that had fled the Philipines around the time of the Marcos human rights atrocities. When I asked if they would consider going back now that Marcos was ousted they replied "no, we did very well under Marcos and had to flee the country because of the problems the lower class caused by ousting Marcos".

If the Pharisees were such tolerant, flexible people; why were there so many other factions and why did so many Jews freely oppose them to follow Jesus?

This referred to my comment that Jesus quoted biblical passages to rebuke the Pharisees for altering the Law to suit their needs.

Jesus's general attitude toward the Law;

Matthew:17-20 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the las, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

When questioned by the Pharisees about the disciples picking some heads of grain and eating them on the Sabbath Jesus replied in Matthew 12:3-8 "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread - which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

Again Jesus teaches the Pharisees that what they condemn is indeed not law when the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus why his disciples did not wash their hands before they ate. Jesus answers in Matthew 15:3-11 "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, "Honor your father and mother" and " anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, "whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

"These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men."

Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him "unclean", but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean".

This contradicts the remarks that the Pharisees adjusted the Law to meet the needs of the circumstances.

This is true in that the Sadducees were the ones who tried to restore and maintain the Law in it's original context and not adjust it like the Pharisees were doing.
These decisions were made strictly on the basis of the Pharisees not being able to prove their case and the fact that there were so many followers of Jesus who would have rioted if the apostles were unjustly condemned. These are very logically executed legal moves.
This is true. The Pharisees changed the Law which the Sadducees were opposed to. The Sadducees worked hard to retain the original nature of the Torah while the Pharisees adjusted the Law to suit their needs. Also, the Sadducees were not messianic and so disregarded all of the writings of the prophets that the Pharisees used so much to control the masses.

This is the only thing that those who oppose Christianity can come up with because there are no original documents yet found from this time period. Now, ask yourself why would these things be created and by whom? The Romans were still persecuting Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah as well as Christians alike. During this time period Christians and Jews are pretty much in the same boat, so who would make up this scenario and why? The Romans certainly didn't come up with this one because they were still pagans who really didn't think much one way or the other about what the Jews or the Christians, who they felt were mostly another Jewish sect that were converting other races to their cult.

Amaleq13

You might want to try reading the book before rendering judgment.

I would be more interested in their sources.

His citations for Pharisee thought appear to be Pharisee texts as well as Josephus. You don't consider the Gospels to contain a biased point of view?

Maccoby says they were flexible in that they expected and allowed for debate with regard to the Oral Torah. The existence of other factions says nothing about the flexibility of the Pharisees. At the very least, I would expect those who lacked flexibility to be uninterested in joining them. Maccoby claims the Essenes were less flexible in dealing with the Sadducees and the associated corruption of the priesthood to the point of isolating themselves.

You are continuing to assume true what is under discussion (ie that the Pharisees would have opposed Jesus). I know of no reliable evidence that "many Jews" chose to follow Jesus.

Maccoby considers this passage as evidence that Jesus was first and foremost Jewish and not intent on creating a new religion. I don't see the relevance to the current discussion.

Maccoby acknowledges that the Pharisees certainly agreed that it was unlawful to pluck corn on the sabbath but he goes on to point out that Mark's version of the story ends with a Pharisee maxim:

"The sabbath is made for the sake of man and not man for the sabbath."

The Pharisees used this maxim to argue that this particular law could be ignored given circumstances where human life was endangered. Maccoby argues that the appeal Jesus makes to the story of David clearly relies on this interpretation and only makes sense if a similar element of danger for Jesus and his followers has been removed from the story.

Why would this be removed?

"The answer is: for the same reason that the element of emergency has been removed from the whole of the Gospels, which portray Judaea and Galilee as peaceful areas under benign Roman rule, instead of what they were in historical reality at this time, areas of bitter unrest and constant rebellion against the savage oppression of the Romans and the depredations of the tax-farmers (or publicans). If the sense of emergency had been retained in the story, not only would it have to be revealed that Jesus was not flouting Pharisee law but also that he was a hunted man, wanted by Herod and the Romans, and in rebellion against them." (p42)

I can't find Maccoby directly discussing this passage except to note that contrasting the "word of God" and "tradition" was typical of Sadducees and would, "...nullify all the reforms by which the Pharisees had made scriptural law less severe."(p214)

One of the examples I found most compelling in support of Maccoby's contention is a comparison of Mark 12:28-34 against Matthew's rewrite of the story at 22:34-40.

"In this second version of the story, the friendliness of the exchange has been obliterated. The Pharisee questioner is not motivated by admiration, as in the first version ('noted how well he answered'), but merely wishes to 'test' Jesus, i.e. try to catch him out. In the first version, the Pharisee questioner is given a lengthy reply to Jesus, praising him and adding a remark of his own about the superiority of love to sacrifices, and to this Jesus replies with courteous respect, saying that his questioner is 'not far from the kingdom of God'. All this is omitted in the second version, which is just one more story about an envious Pharisee being silenced by the superior wisdom of Jesus." (p30)

Maccoby goes on to note that Jesus' identification of the two verses from the Hebrew Bible as the greatest of the commandments "was an established part of Pharisee thinking".

How do you make this agree with your first quote where Jesus declares nothing in the Law should be changed?

"They [Pharisees] wished to free the Jews from the stranglehold of the priesthood not only in order to return to the old prophetic ideal of lay leadership, but also in order to return the priesthood to its proper biblical role as a guild of ceremonial officials, rather than a centre of political power." (p25)

I don't see any contradiction. The former depicts the Pharisees as flexible in some of their legal interpretations while the latter depicts their opposition to what they considered a corruption of the position of the priesthood.

That would appear to be entirely consistent with Maccoby's argument that the Sadducees were the true opponents of Jesus.

On the contrary, Acts 5 depicts Gamaliel as opposing condemning the followers of Jesus not for the reasons you claim but because they might be right and opposing them would constitute opposing God! As I mentioned before, Maccoby considers Acts to provide the most honest portrayal of how Pharisees and Sadducees really would have responded to Jesus. The latter would have opposed him as a clear threat to the status quo while the former would either support him or, as with Gamaliel, remain cautiously optimistic but essentially neutral.

You are mistaken if you characterize Maccoby as one of those "who oppose Christianity". If anything, I find that he tends to take too much of the Gospels as historically reliable without sufficient justification.

The quote to which this reply was directed appears to me to answer these questions:

"The whole picture of Jesus at loggerheads with the Pharisees is the creation of a period some time after Jesus' death, when the Christian Church was in conflict with the Pharisees because of its claim to have superseded Judaism."(p29, emphasis added)

Maccoby's argument is that the Sadducees were the primary opponents of Jesus and early Christianity because of the political nature of the movement. It is clear that the authors of the Gospels had the political implications of their story well in mind with their glossing over of Roman involvement and culpability. It is Maccoby's contention that this extended to eliminating, to a large extent, the political nature of the Jesus' activities.

He points to Paul's persecution of the early Christians as supportive evidence. This could only have taken place under the direction of the High Priest, a Sadducee, and as the result of a perceived political threat. Note the comparisons Gamaliel is depicted as making in Acts 5 when discussing this "Jesus movement". They are all political messianic contenders. Despite my concerns about what I consider to be Maccoby's lack of skepticism regarding Gospel historicity, I find the inclusion of this statement attributed to Gamaliel very compelling.

Why would a Christian author portray Gamaliel as comparing Jesus to Theudas and Judas the Galilean?