I’m not sure when I first learned about the Pharisees, but for a long time, I have lived in fear of focusing on cleaning the outisde of my cup while neglecting the cleaning of my cup’s inside. [Matthew 23:25-26 and Luke 11:39] I’ll talk more about this later, but for now, suffice it to say that Jesus did not like hypocrites/
The Pharisees are exemplary of hypocrites, and they are described as men who worshipped for show. I pray each Sunday that I will not be a person whose purpose in worship is that of impressing others, rather than that of worshiping God.
I am currently researching ways to pray, and in that study, I am reading Anne Lamott’s book about prayer: Help, Thanks, Wow. Lamott begins her book with words that I believe are about the need to avoid hypocrisy in religion:
“I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.
“Help. Thanks. Wow.
“You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word ‘prayer.’ It’s certainly not what TV Christians mean. It’s certainly not what TV Christians mean. It’s not for display purposes, like plastic sushi or neon. Prayer is private, even when we pray with others.” Lamott, pg. 1.
Today, I’ll seek to understand something about the history of the Pharisees, these religious men who prayed for display,
Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, also known as Christ in the Home of Simon the Pharisee, is a painting by Peter Paul Rubens. It was painted c. 1618–1620, and is in The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
Notice that Mary Magdalene is kissing Jesus’s feet.
2. Origin and history [of the Pharisees] From the Encyclopedia of the Bible
“The roots of the Pharisees can be traced to the “Hasidim” of the 2nd cent.—those “pious men” of Israel whose loyalty to their covenant relationship with Yahweh impelled them to resist the increasing pressure toward Hellenization. The Maccabean uprising (167 b.c. and succeeding years) against the mad policies of Antiochus Epiphanes found the Hasidim in full support of the resistance. But with the rededication of the Temple in 164 b.c. and the achievement of religious freedom in 162 b.c., the Hasidim, who were concerned primarily with the religious and not the political life of the country, became increasingly separate from the political intrigues of the Hasmoneans. [The word ‘Pharisee’ is translated as having something to do with being separate.] Among the many sects spawned by the Hasidim was that of the Pharisees, and indeed they, perhaps more than any of the other sects, may be regarded as the direct continuation of Hasidism into the NT period. The earliest historical reference to the Pharisees is found in Josephus (Jos. Antiq. XIII. v. 9), who introduces them along with the Sadducees and Essenes as representatives of differing doctrinal viewpoints held at the time his narrative describes (about 145 b.c.).”…
Pharisees Were Antagonists to Jesus
“In the gospels the Pharisees appear often as the chief antagonists of Jesus. They are portrayed as the religious ‘experts’ of the day who took it upon themselves to scrutinize and ultimately to condemn the words and works of Jesus. A number of times they are linked with the Sadducees (e.g., Matt 16:1) and even with the Herodians (e.g., Matt 22:15f.; Mark 3:6; 12:13) with whom they were by no means in agreement, but with whom they were able to unite against Jesus (Matt 22:34). These passages doubtless reflect the place that the Pharisees held in the governing body of the Sanhedrin. Indeed, the considerable influence of the Pharisees apparently made it expedient for the politically more powerful Sadducees to respect and on occasion to yield to the opinion of the Pharisees. According to Josephus, the Sadducees repeatedly had to submit, albeit unwillingly, to the dictates of the Pharisees “since otherwise the masses would not tolerate them” (Jos. Antiq. XVIII. i. 4; cf. the Sanhedrin’s acceptance of Gamaliel’s recommendation in Acts 5:34ff.).
The Pharisees Were Largely Middle Class
3. Composition and organization. By way of contrast with the Sadducees, who were drawn almost exclusively from the aristocracy, the Pharisees largely were members of the middle class. They tended to be the businessmen—the merchants and the tradesmen of their day—and this apparently accounts for the large amount of Talmudic material given over to the intricacies of commercialism. These were men earnestly concerned with following after the law and who had thus separated themselves from the great mass of the populace—the so-called “people of the land” (am ha-aretz)—by their strict adherence to the minutia of their legal tradition. The average Pharisee had no formal education in the interpretation of the law and accordingly had recourse to the professional scholar, the scribe (of which class the majority were Pharisees), in legal matters. Although the vast majority of the Pharisees were thus bourgeois laymen there appear to have been a number of Priests and Levites who were also Pharisees. They were a relatively small number within their own ranks, but they were nonetheless committed to Pharisaic ideals, seeing in them a means to raise the purity of the laity to a level approximating that of the priesthood (idealistically conceived).
The Pharisees, like other separatist groups (e.g. the Essenes), were organized into distinct and closed communities. The haburah, “community,” referred to in the Talmudic materials is prob. a Pharisaic community, and the haber, “companion” or member of the community, a Pharisee. Apparently several of these holy communities existed in the environs of Jerusalem, where their concentration heightened their effectiveness. Admission into these communities was strictly regulated. A candidate must first agree to take upon himself obedience to all the detailed legislation of the Pharisaic tradition, involving tithing and esp. ceremonial and dietary purity. He then entered a period of probation (the length of which was, according to differing viewpoints, either one month or one year) during which he was carefully observed with respect to his vow of obedience. Successful completion of this probation entitled the candidate to full membership in the community.
Each community was organized under the leadership of a scribe, who served as a professional authority in the interpretation of the law, and prob. had other officers as well. The communities not only provided opportunity for mutual scrutiny and mutual encouragement, but also had regularly scheduled meetings for worship (usually on the eve of the Sabbath). Study of the Torah and a communal meal were also a part of these gatherings. The pseudepigraphon known as the Psalms of Solomon is a document that was used in Pharisaic communities and quite possibly used liturgically in their worship services. It would have provided not only a strong anti-Sadducean polemic, and thus a reminder of the reason for the existence of the community, but also would have voiced the hopes of the Pharisaic community. The outreach and impact of the Pharisees was, of course, not limited to these closed communities. Through the activities of the synagogue, which served as the arm of the Pharisees, esp. in the teaching of Torah and in the administration of public charity, Pharisaism influenced a large segment of the populace, many of whom inclined toward the views of the Pharisees without taking upon themselves full membership in the community.
“The closed communities of the Pharisees are thus parallel and closely related to the Essene separatist groups, known today particularly from the Damascus Document, and also, to a lesser extent, known through the Qumran Manual of Discipline. Without identifying the Pharisees and the Essenes, it may be readily admitted that they had much in common, in goals and methodologies as well as in the common milieu that constituted the motivating force of both movements. …
The Pharisees Were Interpreters of the Law
“For the Pharisees, the oral law came to be revered so highly that it was said to go back to Moses himself and to have been transmitted over the centuries orally, paralleling the written law that also derived from him.
“Josephus refers several times to the expertise “in the interpretation of the Law for which the Pharisees had become known” (e.g., Jos. Life, 38). Of the various sects they were regarded as “the most accurate interpreters of the laws” (Jos. War II. viii. 14) and also were known for their austerity of life (Jos. Antiq. XIII. i. 3). Josephus further specifies that it was exactly this obsession with “regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses” (Jos. Antiq. XIII. x. 6) that constituted the breach between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. With this may be compared the NT reference to the Pharisaic prepossession with the “tradition of the elders” or the “tradition of men” (cf. Matt 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-23; cf. Jos. Antiq. XIII. xvi. 2). The NT abounds with allusions to the scrupulous concern of the Pharisees with the minutia of their legalism: the tithing of herbs (Matt 23:23; Luke 11:42); the wearing of conspicuous phylacteries and tassels (Matt 23:5); the careful observance of ritual purity (e.g., Mark 7:1ff.); frequent fastings (Matt 9:14); distinctions in oaths (23:16ff.), etc.
“The Mishnah offers even more striking illustration of this precise definition of the law. …
“Under the direction of their scribes, the Pharisees tended to proliferate Halacha. This concern for every jot and tittle of performance might give the impression that the Pharisees were excessively rigid and intolerant. That they were rigorists there can be no doubt, but it is interesting to note that in their interpretation of the written Torah they often were more liberal than the literalist Sadducees. Moreover, even among themselves there was room for disagreement. In the last decades of the 1st cent. b.c. there sprang up two rival schools of interpretation among the Pharisees. The one, led by Shammai, was stringent and unbendingly conservative; the other, led by Hillel, was liberally inclined and willing to “reconcile” the laws with the actual situations of life. The rivalry between these two schools is permanently recorded in the Mishnah where frequently the differing views are contrasted. In the gospels certain questions put to Jesus by the Pharisees seem to have as their background, if not their actual motive, disputes between these two schools of interpretation (e.g., divorce, Matt 19:3ff.). Jewish scholars often liken Jesus to Hillel and argue that in many respects he could be regarded as a disciple of Hillel. Nonetheless, on at least one point—that regarding grounds for divorce (Matt 19:9)—Jesus agreed with Shammai against Hillel. Hillel indeed anticipated Jesus’ summary of the law in his own negative formulation of the Golden Rule: “What you would not have done to thyself do not to another; that is the whole law, the rest is commentary” (BT Shabbath 31a). In the decades prior to the catastrophe of a.d. 70 it seems that the harsher attitude of the Shammaites tended to prevail among the Pharisees generally. …’
Jesus and the Pharisees
5. Jesus and the Pharisees. If the Pharisees of Jesus’ day adhered at all to what has been sketched above as the essentials of Pharisaism, how are we to account for the scathing denunciations they received from the lips of Jesus? Taken at face value Matthew 23:13-39 presents anything but an attractive picture of the Pharisees. Jesus accused them of hypocrisy and pretentiousness, and pronounced upon them a succession of woes (seven in all) culminating in the terrible, climactic exclamation: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (23:33). It is a tragedy that from this ch. in Matthew the word “Pharisee” has come to mean popularly a self-righteous, hypocritical prig. Unfortunately not even Christian scholarship was able over the centuries to rid itself of an unfair bias against the Pharisees. Some of this failure was, no doubt, due to an all too common anti-semitism, but much was the result of neglecting the rabbinic lit. (the Mishnah, the Tosefta, etc.) as valid historical sources. That lit.—if it was considered at all—was regarded as contradicting the picture of Pharisaism in the primary sources, Josephus and the NT. If the rabbinic sources contradicted the NT, it was argued, so much the worse for the rabbinic sources. It was never considered, however, that the contradiction might be only an apparent one and not a real one.” Encyclopedia of the Bible
Jesus at the Feast of Simon the Pharisee
Painting by Ruben
A Sinful Woman Forgiven
From Matthew 23
36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus[j] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.’ 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ 41 ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii,[k] and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ 43 Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus[l] said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ 44 Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ 48 Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ 50 And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’
Matthew 7:36-48
Jesus Denounces Scribes and Pharisees
23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,[a] and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students.[b] 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.[c] 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.[d] 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell[e] as yourselves.
16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” 19 How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21 and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22 and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.
23 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
Jesus to the Pharisee on Cleaning the Inside of the Cup
Discover more from Jacki Kellum
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.