Let’s Be Fair to the Pharisees

What is a Pharisee? A bad guy, right?

If our Sunday School lessons were correct, then a Pharisee must be a hypocrite, a self-righteous, ostentatious, inhumane villain that is too busy being religious to be nice. It would make them blind, ignorant fools with made-up authority that they used to invent new laws and throw out old ones.

If Jesus movies are any indication, Pharisees had long scraggly beards, beady eyes, long crooked noses, pointy hats, wrung their hands together and wore black all the time. We are often taught that it was the Pharisees that conspired together to put Christ to death.

If these ideas haven’t been stated explicitly, they have been implied. The Pharisees have been the villains and scapegoats in church sermons throughout the centuries. Not only that, it is commonly intimated that the Jews today are exactly like the old-time Pharisees. Were they really that bad?

We misunderstand the Pharisees for a number of reasons.

The Gospels only mention conflicts

Imagine if someone from another culture and time were to attempt to write your biography, and the only information they had to work with was your family photo album. They would determine that you were constantly on vacation and never went to work or school. That’s because people don’t usually take pictures unless something out of the ordinary is happening.

A similar phenomenon occurs in the Gospels. Out of the years of Yeshua’s life on earth, only a few select stories are related about him. All we have are the most interesting and exciting things to have happened in that period of time. Conflict is interesting and exciting, so naturally we are presented with a disproportionate amount of it.

If Yeshua was invited to spend the Sabbath in a Pharisee’s home, and he offered an insightful commentary on the Torah, and everyone had a nice time and went home smiling, they didn’t write it down. It just wouldn’t have been notable enough to the people who recorded the Gospels.

It is therefore easy for us to make the mistake of generalizing the events in the Gospels, and considering them all to be typical events, when they were in fact written down because they were atypical. This leads people falsely to believe that Yeshua and they Pharisees to be bitter enemies, when they had run-ins once in a while.

Confusing Pharisees with Sadducees

It is not uncommon for people to confuse the Pharisees with the Sadducees. This problem is readily visible in Jesus movies, where they are often lumped together into one evil big-bearded group.

But in reality, the Pharisees and Sadducees were polar opposites in many ways. For example, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, angels and demons, and in a personal Messiah. The Sadducees did not believe in any of these things.

The Sadducees are known even in extra-biblical sources to have been corrupt sell-outs to Rome. Sadducees comprised much of the priesthood. Caiaphas was a Sadducee. It was the Sadducees, not the Pharisees, that condemned Yeshua in a kangaroo court. It was they who delivered Yeshua into the hands of the Romans.

The Pharisees may have had their problems, but it was the Sadducees that were the true villains in the Gospels, and it is a serious historical error to confuse these two very different groups.

Ignoring pro-Pharisee passages

The erroneous concept that Pharisees are all evil is so ingrained that people often completely ignore or dismiss passages that present Pharisees in a positive light.

For example, it was the Pharisees who attempted to save Yeshua’s life by warning him to flee when Herod sought to kill him (Luke 13:31). The Pharisees commonly invited him to eat in their homes, which was no small honor.

Yeshua was speaking to the Pharisees when he told the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, after they criticized his outreach to sinners (Luke 15:2-3). In the parable of the lost sheep, the lost sheep represents prostitutes, tax collectors and similar type of sinners among the common folk. The clear implication is that the Pharisees are among the sheep that did not stray, whom he calls, “righteous persons who need no repentance,” (v. 7).

In the parable of the prodigal son, the older brother is jealous of the attention the younger receives when he repents. This older brother undoubtedly refers to the Pharisees. Notice what the father says about this older brother: “Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours,” (Luke 15:31).

A similar comparison is made in Yeshua’s statement, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” (Mark 2:16-17, cf. also Matthew 9:11-13). If those who are sick are the non-Pharisee “tax collectors and sinners,” then who are the healthy and the righteous to whom he refers?

John 9:16 indicates there were different opinions about him among the Pharisees, some rejecting him and some accepting him. We might also mention notable Pharisees among the believers, including Nicodemus, who admitted that Yeshua came from God (John 3:2), and stood up for him in front of other leaders (John 7:50-52). Gamaliel similarly stood up for the believers in the Council (Acts 5:34-39).

It appears that there were many believers among the Pharisees who retained their identity with the Pharisees after they became believers (Acts 15:5). This even included Paul (Acts 23:6, 26:5, Philippians 3:5).

Misunderstanding Jewish polemical style

Sometimes the conflicts that Yeshua had with the Pharisees and others are blown out of proportion because the Gospels do not give us a broad perspective on the political and religious climate. We sometimes come away with the perspective that Yeshua vs. the Jewish establishment was the only argument occurring at the time. But in reality, Yeshua was one voice among many who were arguing in heated and harsh terms. Consider this debate between a Sadducee and Pharisee recorded in the Gemara:

A sectarian said to Gebiha b. Pesisa, ‘Woe to you, ye wicked, who maintain that the dead will revive; if even the living die, shall the dead live!’ He replied, ‘Woe to you, ye wicked, who maintain that the dead will not revive: if what was not,[now] lives, – surely what has lived, will live again!’ ‘Thou hast called me wicked,’ said he, ‘If I stood up I could kick thee and strip thee of thy hump! ‘If thou couldst do that,’ he retorted, ‘thou wouldst be called a great doctor, and command large fees.’ (b. Sanhedrin 91a)

Testing a Messiah candidate is a good thing

We often find in the Gospels cases where Pharisees approach Yeshua in an effort to “test” or “trap” him. The Pharisees’ behavior is sometimes interpreted to mean that they were unfaithful, blinded to the truth and even conspiring together to do evil, a perspective that is influenced by historical anti-Semitism.

But is it really a bad thing that the Pharisees tried to test Yeshua? He was claiming to be the messiah! If someone made such a claim to you, would you want to test them, or would you blindly take their word for it? Testing someone who makes serious claims to be sent from God is the only right thing to do, especially if you are the spiritual leader of a community. The fact that the Pharisees tested Yeshua is evidence that they took him seriously, and were responsible leaders among the Jewish people. It is to their credit.

One who claims to be the messiah should expect to be challenged on that point, and should not be intimidated. And remarkably, we find that Yeshua passed their tests with flying colors, often leaving them with nothing left to say.

Our best friends are our worst enemies

Religious communities are unique in that the more similar two groups are, the more likely they are to fight, and the more heated the fighting will be.

A notorious fellow once came into a congregation that I attended, and he began to distribute literature to congregants criticizing the leadership, accusing them of false teaching. When he was taken aside by the elders, they asked him: “Who is closer to the truth, we or the people at the Lutheran church down the street?” “You are,” he admitted. “Then why don’t you go the Lutherans!?” they responded.

Even the relationship between the two early Pharisaic groups (the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai) became so strained at one point that it led to bloodshed.

We must see the arguments between Yeshua and the Pharisees as an in-house argument. He vociferously criticized them precisely because they were the good guys; they should have known better.

A Wicked Generation

None of this is meant to say that the Pharisees were without their problems. There were some Pharisees who were hypocritical. There were some that were arrogant or ostentatious. There were some who hated without cause, and some who managed to be inwardly corrupt while maintaining an outward appearance of godliness.

The Talmud itself catalogues the “plagues of the Pharisees” which bring destruction upon the world (see b. Sotah 22b), describing those with hypocrisy, false humility and self-righteous attitudes.

But the problem with the recipients of Yeshua’s criticism was not that they were Pharisees. In fact, had they actually carried out their own teachings, they could not have been accused of hypocrisy, as Yeshua said, “therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them,” (Matthew 23:3).

The generation prior to the destruction of the Temple was known for corruption. The Talmud (b. Yoma 9b) explains that even though people were stringent in their observance, the Temple was destroyed because of the sin of baseless hatred.

It was important to understand that the specific generation that saw Yeshua was uniquely corrupt. After the Temple was destroyed, Judaism went through many changes and improvements. Although the rabbis and sages that inherited the stewardship of the vineyard of Israel were the heirs of the first century Pharisees, the message of the Temple’s destruction was not lost on them. The primary goal of Orthodox Judaism since that time has been to promote true repentance and pure-hearted devotion to God. The Judaism that exists today cannot be characterized with the same faults that existed in the days of the Pharisees.

Everyone, whether they are Jewish or not, would do well to heed the warnings and admonishments that Yeshua spoke. However, Yeshua’s condemnation was primarily aimed at that particular generation. He repeatedly used the term “this generation” in his criticism. If we generalize his accusations to apply to all Jewish people everywhere throughout all time, then we twist his words and put anti-Semitism in his mouth, Heaven forbid. Ironically, we would then be committing the same sins of self-righteousness and baseless hatred that plagued that generation.

The Greatest Commandment

Our Master was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” We read about this in Matthew 22, beginning in verse 34:

But when the Pharisees heard that Yeshua had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

In Mark 12:29 we learn that he began his quote by saying the Shema:

Yeshua answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

When we hear the conversation over the “greatest commandment,” we must hear it in the context of first century Judaism. Often in Rabbinic literature the topic is discussed: what is the k’lal gadol in the Torah? K’lal gadol means greatest governing principle.

Christians sometimes point to this passage to show how Yeshua’ teachings were different from Judaism. Sometimes it is brought out to show that Yeshua replaced the Torah with a new law of love. However, due to the lack of cultural context, they miss the meaning of this passage.

First of all, Yeshua’s teaching fits squarely within mainstream Judaism. The Shema, including the commandment to love God is considered Judaism’s central declaration. And as for the commandment to love one another?

Ben Azai said “This is the book of the generations of man,” (Bereishit 5:1) That is the great principle in the Torah. Rabbi Akiva said “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Vayikra 19:18) This is even a greater principle. Hence you must not say, Since I have been put to shame, let my neighbor be put to shame. R. Tanhuma said, if you do so, know whom you put to shame, for “in the likeness of God he made him.” (B’reshit Rabbah 24:7)

In the Talmud, we read:

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.” (Shabbat 31a)

Rashi comments on this statement of Hillel, connecting love of neighbor with love of God.

“Your fellow and your fathers fellow you should not abandon” (Proverbs 27:10) The verse in Proverbs as well as this statement of Hillel is referring to the Holy One, so do not abandon His words, for you find it despicable when your friend abandons your words. Or another explanation is that it is referring specifically to your friend and Hillel enjoins him not to rob, steal, commit adultery and other mitzvot that are similar.

A later commentator, Rabbi Isaiah Halevy Horowitz explained Rashi’s interpretation of this passage:

In truth one who reads carefully will find that most of the commandments depend on loving one’s friend as one’s self. The Mitzvahs of Tzedaka, tithing, leaving the gleanings of the field, good faith in business, the prohibition against taking interest, and many others.

Similarly, all the qualities of mercy, forgiveness, forbearance, compassion, giving one the benefit of the doubt, not standing idly by the blood of your kinsman, distancing one’s self from gossip and slander, distancing one’s self from frivolous clowning, jealousy, hatred, or, checking ones anger, and not seeking honors as well as thousands of other qualities all hinge on whether a person truly is loving of ones friend as himself.

Even that which has nothing to do with his friend like the prohibitions against eating forbidden foods, leavened bread on Passover, anyone who loved his neighbor would fulfill these commandments even moreso. For if he loves his friend as he loves himself how much more would he love the Holy One who is compassionate without expectation, a true compassion for He is the Master of the world and everything is in His hand, may He be blessed. See, “Being loving to your neighbor” is what causes “Being loving to God…

So we find that our Master Yeshua fits squarely into the context of mainstream Judaism throughout the centuries in choosing these commandments as the greatest. As for the second issue, that of him negating the rest of Torah by selecting these two, the answer has already become obvious.

We can no more assume that Yeshua was abolishing the Torah with these statements than Hillel, Rashi, or Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz. Instead, he teaches that the Torah depends on these things. If he was not interested in teaching people how to live out the Torah, then it would be irrelevant that the Torah depends on these commandments.

But what is love, really? How do we know that what we do to God or to others is really loving? Is love a feeling, an emotion, something that we think about? Is it sentimentality, romance, infatuation, admiration, adoration, affection?

How can we know what Deuteronomy 6:5 means when it says “love God”? Let’s look at the context.

• In the previous chapter it says, “but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Deuteronomy 5:10)
• In the next chapter it says, “Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;” (Deuteronomy 7:9)
• A few chapters later it says, “You shall therefore love the LORD your God, and always keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments.” (Deuteronomy 11:1)

But is this what our Master meant in quoting this verse?

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. (John 14:15)

He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him. (John 14:21)

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:10)

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:2-3)

And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it. (2 John 1:6)

Obviously, to love God means to walk in obedience to His commandments.

Therefore, it does not make sense to interpret Yeshua’s statement that we should “love God” and “love your neighbor” to mean that we need not keep the commandments. Biblical love is obedience, not merely niceness or affection.

The Test of a Prophet

The most bottom-line argument for a Torah-teaching Yeshua is based on Deuteronomy 13. If Yeshua is the Messiah, then he should be able to pass the Torah’s test of a true prophet with flying colors.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 NASB, emphasis mine.)

The passage speaks of a prophet who may truly be able to perform a miraculous sign. This teaches us that the ability to perform miracles alone does not establish the authenticity of a prophet. The test of a true prophet is not only that his prophecy is true, but also that he instructs Israel to obey the commandments in the Torah of Moses. If a supposed prophet instructed Israel that they need not or must not obey a commandment in the Torah of Moses, then he would be a false prophet. The punishment for false prophecy is death (note: at the hands of a court; it is not a vigilante system as some people assume).

What This Means About Yeshua

The implication for followers of Yeshua is obvious. If Yeshua taught his followers to disregard any detail of the Torah of Moses, then he would qualify as a false prophet (Heaven forbid!) and would be liable to the death penalty. By no means would he qualify as Messiah.

However, we do not find it to be the case at all that Yeshua disregarded the Torah or instructed his followers to do so. Instead, his message is a message of repentance above all else, calling people to begin to obey the commandments fully and with a sincere heart.

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law [i.e. Torah] or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law [i.e. Torah] until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19 NASB)

In the strangest of maneuvers, commentators have managed to interpret the word “fulfill” to mean exactly the same thing as “abolish,” making his statement mean absolutely nothing. One must understand the term “fulfill” in a Hebraic context: to fulfill a commandment means to carry it out, to uphold it. This is what the Messiah did, and this is what he taught his followers to do as well.

What Are People Supposed To Think?

Now imagine for a moment that you are a faithful, observant Jewish person who loved God and wished to carry out his will. You were presented with the possibility that a certain man might be the Messiah. You learn these things about him:

1. He performed miracles
2. He taught people that they need not carry out the commandments in the Torah

Would you need more details to know whether or not he is the true Messiah? No, it is obvious already that he does not qualify. That’s it, end of story. And that’s the way it is for many faithful Jewish people who reject the possibility that Yeshua is the Messiah, because this is exactly what they have heard about him.

In fact, if one were to entertain the possibilty that such a person was a true prophet, then he or she would have already committed a sin, for it says, “You shall not listen to the words of that prophet.” Denouncing such a prophet is the only godly thing to do.

Some Jewish people see Deuteronomy 13 as a prophecy itself. God suggested that he may at some future time send such a false prophet for the purpose of testing the faithfulness of his people. Some Jewish people see “Jesus” as the fulfillment of such a prophecy, that God sent him just for that purpose.

And it’s no wonder they think that. Yeshua has been slandered and made out to be a wicked person, from people who claim to be his followers! It’s time we set the record straight and let the world know who the true Yeshua is: the greatest prophet who has ever lived, the Messiah sent from God, whose message was repentance, obedience to the Torah and acceptance of the authority of the Kingdom of Heaven.