Legacy and Evolution After the Temple

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Pharisees We've all heard the name Rembered for their opposition to Jesus of Nazareth during his teachings in Judea two thousand years ago Educated men. challenged him on his beliefs Today, the Pharisees divide opinion. positively portrayed in Judaism. negatively for so long in Christianity But who actually were these people How much power and influence did they have in ancient Judea What did they believe in And did they really have next to nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host And this is the story of the Pharisees Our guest is Dr. Helen Bond, prorofessor of Christian Origins at Edinburgh University and the host of the podcast Biblical Time Machine Heelen It's been too long, greatreat to have you back on the show. Thank you, Tristan. it's great to be here. And talk about the Pharisees and they are much more than just These portrayed villains in the New Testament Yeah, that is the trouble actually. The two groups of people who are interested in them are Jews and Christians, and we'll come onto this, but we've got very little evidence about the Pharisees. And the problem is that Jews tend to see them as everything that's good. They're the precursors of rabbinic Judaism. They're the good guys of antiquity Christians because they've had such a bad press in the New Testament, particularly the gospels, tend to see them as everything that's bad. Luther didn't like them in the Reformation and they kind of they't they're sort of the poster boy for everything that's wrong with Judaism at the time of Jesus. So it's really difficult to sort of steer your way between these two poles. And also from what you're saying, is it quite difficult to get a sense of who the Pharisees really were, A they still quite a mysterious group? Very, very mysterious. The difficulty is because there's so little evidence, people just fill in the gaps. So you know Christians say, o, well, you know, they must have been bad guys. And you know, rather than just looking at where do we get the evidence, what do we know about them? So yeah, it's very difficult shhall we start with the name, Pharisee first of all? What do we know about that again, I could just say nothing. We could leave it at that. And that might actually be a good thing because the name might mean nothing at all. You know, we sort of always go straight into this. What does a name mean This I think is a good example of where the gap filling goes in. So it's possible that it comes from the Hebrew parish or Aramaic parish And it might mean separated ones.'s I mean, if you look at a dictionary, that's what you'll see. it means separated ones. And then the question is who did they separate from? You know, wereere they separate from the people, separate from the priests, you know, separate from the political establishment? And of course Christians have tended to kind of read them as o, you know, they were aloof, they were distant they kept their distance from the ordinary people But there's no evidence for that at all. Another interpretation of their name might mean something to do with interpreters or something like that And I think if you're going to go with an interpretation of the name, that's probably the most likely because everything we know about them suggests that they did have a body of biblical material and that they were very, very keen on interpreting it So You've already kind of highlighted that mysterious nature of this group So if we are to try and piece together a bit more about them all, for those who have studied the Pharisees and are trying to understand more about who these people really were, what types of sources do you have available Well, the most fulsome sources are the Gspels. They actually are mentioned more times in the Gspels than anywhere else in ancient literature. I think there's something like one hundred ten references So you know, they're all over the place, but they're very, very negative Then an interesting one actually, is Josephus, a first century historian He mentions them and it's even possible at the end in one of his books, he wrote an autobiography towards the end of his life And he may even be suggesting that he was a Pharisee. That's a possible interpretation. But the rest of his writings don't support that because he' actually he hardly says anything about them and he's really not particularly positive about them. So Maybe he changed his mind at the end or maybe we're just reading that passage wrong. Because there are some m figures who are strong links with the Phares aren't? mean I think Paul the apostle is don't know if says he's a Pharisee or not. He does, he does. and he says it in his own letter. In theory, Paul is a great source because he is our only example of a Pharisee who writes anything and or at least whose work has come down to us. He says in his letter to the Philippians that he's as to the law he says a Pharisee. So again, it sort of suggests that Pharisees are particularly interested in the law, particularly interested in interpretation of biblical material The trouble is, we know nothing else from his letters about. What did it mean to him to be a Pharisee? Is he still a Pharisee? evenven if he's a follower of Christ? I mean, can you only be one or the other? Maybe not, mayaybe he's still considered himself Pharisee, but it's not clear from his letters the Pharisees seemed to have been interested in or they believed in resurrection. and they were looking for a Messiah of Israel. And both of those aspects, I suppose you find in Paul's letters. And is that the main context in which we see the Pharisees? We'll delve more into this later in the chat, but in the surviving Gospels Is it in a contest against Jesus because they are not convinced that he is the Messianic figure that they are expecting? No, not really. There's a little bit of that. There's a little bit of discussion about, you Jesus' background. Is he Davidic, that kind of thing. But mainly, they are portrayed as Jesus's opponents, but mainly it's on issues to do with interpretation of the law particularly to do with purity issues. So it's to do with Who do you eat with? marriage regulations, washing of hands, tithing, all of these things. And it does seem that purity is a particular concern the Pharisees. And purity was a big deal in first century Judaism anyway. It's actually important in a lot of ancient religions, but for Jews, purity is a little bit like holiness And holiness is the state in which you need to be to enter into the temple, to come in contact with God. And one interpretation of the Pharisees that I think is probably quite likely is that they were interested in sort of living out the whole of their lives in a state of purity, not just going to the temple, but you know wherever they were, they were sort of ready to meet God And it might be that these things connected with purity were particular concerns of theirs. And you also mentioned the word tithing there in that answer, is that the idea of paying a certain amount of money for Pay for worship It's a percentage of your produce. So you know, in an agricultural world, people are sort of giving ten percent of their you whatever they produce and then they keep the rest of it. But it's all to do with sort of know the right way to sit down and eat meals with people, the right way to fulfill your obligations as a first century Jews Well We'll dve into all of that in more detail as time goes on. But I must also ask about archeology. Can archaeology help us at all, Helen when exploring the story of the Pharisees. Well, people have thought because they seem to be particularly linked with purity I mean there's been a huge amount of archaeology done in Galilee and Judea as well over the last few decades. and people have found things to do with purity. So for example, they've found Th these ritual baths called Mikva. And the thing with purity is that lots of things can make you impure. So lots of very normal bodily things. So for a woman to menstruate or to have a baby, you're impure. For anybody to touch a corpse or a person with leprosy or a skin disease So it's very easy to become impure And that doesn't matter most of the time. It's only if you're interested in going to the temple that, you know, you have to be pure. But in order to become pure, what you do is you go into one of these ritual baths, they're sort of fairly small, like little cisterns, you go down one side, you come up the other And you wait a certain amount of time and you're pure So these have been found all over Galilee and Judea, along with stone vessels. Again, this is to do with purity because pottery can become impure. So if a menstruating woman touches a pot it becomes impure and has to be smashed, but stone vessels don't. So if you get cups and bowls made out of stone, they can be reused. And the stones sort of the limestone around Judea is actually very thin and, you know you're able to make it into quite nice and things like that. So archaeologists have found these things to do with purity and they've suggested Maybe these are links to Pharisees. Are these Phariseaic homes? Are they people who are influenced by the Pharisees? The problem is that there's just so much of it. Josepha says that there were six thousand Pharisees, which actually is a tiny percentage I mean, we don't know whether he's anywhere near, you know, ancient numbers are just kind of plucked from anywhere, but it does suggest that he thinks that they're not massive in terms of numbers. So Maybe those reflect some kind of Phariseaic influence, or I think possibly more likely, it's just that a lot of people were interested in purity one thing that may well be linked to the Pharisees is these little things, little boxes called tehyilin or phylactteries. Now these are little boxes that have little bits of the scriptures in them And the Pharisees seem to have worn them against their skin. hide to them and the gospels mention them. So despite the sort of negativity of the gospels, it's likely that these were actually worn by Pharisees, maybe almost like amulets or they sort of have protective qualities to have, you know, the words of the law against your body So you've got purity But the interpretation of Jewish law is that another key factor, another key belief of the Pharisees? Yeah, they seem to have had their own particular ways of interpretation. They also have what are variously referred to as the traditions of the elders Now some people say that this is an oral law. The problem is there's no evidence that the Pharisees actually had an oral law Much later on in Rabbinic times, the rabbis have an oral law And it depends whether we think and we may come onto this, whether we think there's a connection between the Pharisees and the later rabbis They certainly have their own bodies of scripture alongside the scripture that everybody else is using whether it's written down or oral, we don't know for sure. But this does seem to be an important aspect of what they're doing. They have their own interpretations And in fact, the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls P call them the seekers after smooth things or the interpreters of smooth things. And again, it's that idea of sort of interpretation, reading passages in particular ways that seems to be a characteristic of the Pharisees. B oral beliefs do we mean like they're passed down word and mouth from generation to generation Yeah ye, yeah, exactly. And in an oral society, you know this would be less strange than it maybe sounds to us. know ten, fifteen percent of people can read. So most people, particularly if they're not educated as the vast majority of people are going to be, may well have preferred an oral tradition rather than words written in a text And the other big thing that seems very important Resurrection. This was a big deal to the Pharisees. Well, yes. I mean one good thing about Josephus and he does mention the Pharisees a few times and he gives a little sort of pocket description of the Pharisees in comparison to the Sadducees who are this sort of aristocratic priestly sect connected with the temple. and another group called the Essenes, who are the ones who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls probably. Now he loves the Essenes, he goes into great detail about Essenes, doesn't like the Sadducees much and doesn't like the Pharisees all that much either. and just gives very, very kind of brief account of them. But one of the things he says is that they believe that everybody has a soul and that there's a resurrection Now resurrection seems to have been an idea that came into Jewish belief in about the second century BCE probablyro after the Macabean crisis and the uprising there where Jews shook off their Syrian leaders and established Jewish home rule. And I think the reason for that is a lot of people were martyred. know peopleeople were going out to fight for their religious beliefs getting killed And then where does that leave you? know whyy are you going do that? So the idea of there is something after death seems to have come in in the second century and Pharisees were major believers in this, whether it was sort of them who came up with the idea or whether they're just kind of propagating it seems to be uncertain. But certainly resurrection generally seems to be a very popular idea in the first century, and it's particularly connected with the end of time You know, at the end of time, there's going to be a general resurrection. Pharisees are going to be there. Myy that it was so The emergence of that belief harkony backed up the second century BC against the Seleuted Empire, the Hellenistic Kingdom and the Macabbeean revolt Do you think that could intertwine with the origins of the whole movement of the Pharisees? Do we think their origins stretch that far back Yes, I think that's exactly when they are most likely to have emerged. I mean someome people push their origins even further back. I mean, there's no evidence for that whatsoever. The first evidence we have for the Pharisees is in the late second century BCE. and I think the most likely time for the emergence of many of these and different sects within Judaism is the Hasmenian takeover The thing about the Hasmanans is that they're kings, but they're also high priests. And so they're combining religious and political power in one person. And this was unheard of until now. and some people don't care, some people are happy people find this really too much and you know they're against this. and I think it's at this period just as in a way they get a certain stability and home rule is established. You get all this sort of you know, squabbling and infighting about who has the right idea for Israel? What's the way that we should organize ourselves? So the Hasminines, they're the dynasty, should we say that comes to power after they throw off the Sleucids, they are the rulers who takeake over Judea and independent Judea after victory in the Macabbeen Revolt Yes, exactly. They are the Maccabees actually. Maccabe is just it's a nickname. Their family name is Asimeneus, so they become the Hasmoneean dynasty. And the Pharisees, they really thrive at that time, do we think? Maybe not so much thriving. We're dependent on Josephus for this. They're strangely sort of absent from the books of Macabees, but Josephus tells us and it has a legendary sound to it. So's one of the greatest Macabe Kings was John Hicanus. So we're right at the end of the second century BCE here And Josephus says that one day John Hicanas has this dinner party and he invites the Pharisees and he says to them, Ohh, I'm trying to be so pious. know let me know if I'm doing anything wrong. And all the Pharisees just sort say, Oh no, you're great, you're great, you're doing well. And one of them then, this sort of cantankorous troublemaker called Eza, gets up and says, Well, actually there is something you could do. You could stop being high priest because your mother was a prisoner of war under the Sleucids. And so you may be illegitimate. I mean, he doesn't spell it out, but this is what he's saying And so, you know, Johnny Keaines is very upset and he says, this is what you all think? And they say, No, no, no no, no thenen some sadducees, this high priestly lot, the priests from the temple start to stir things up and say, A, they do all think that And the way you can find that out is ask them what punishment they want to give Eleieza. If they're lenient, then they agree with him. If they're harsh, then they don't. And Josephus kind of also says that Pharisees tend to be quite lenient in punishments. And so because of their leniency, they suggest justre sort of whipping Eliieza. And so John Hicanus thinks, ah, they're all in it And so he then moves over to the Sadducees and he sort of ingratiates himself with them The Pharisees and the Saducees do seem to have some kind of political influence at this time. So there they are under the sons of John Hycaneus. The Sadducees are sort of the ones in power, I suppose, and the Pharisees are out of it. But there's lots and lots of sort of upheaval under Alexander Janaeus, who's the son of John Hyicaneus. And it gets to such a state that Alexander Janeus has eight hundred opponents crucified whilst he and his concubines are feasting in the middle of it We're not told specifically that these are Pharisees, but the implication seems to be that they are And according to Josephus, on his deathbed, Alexander Janeus says to his wife who actually succeeds him as Queen Salomay Alexandra, he says to her If I were you I would just, you throw in you a lot with the Pharisees because there's so much trouble, just listen to the Pharisees And so that's what she does. So Josephus is not particularly positive about that. He says, you know, she was the ruler, but the Pharisees ruled her. and it wasn't a great reign because of that This whole sort of thing is very strange. I mean, obviously it's got a legendary sound to it. What does Josephus know about anybody's deathbed does seem perhaps to sort of reflect some sort of movement that the Pharisees were perhaps more influential earlier on under the Hasmanans and then out of favour and then maybe they came back. towards the end Generally speaking, they don't have much real political power. It's more a case of influence over people, I think Do we get a sense B to W were more likely to become Pharisees. Are they more kind of high ranking figures or do we have any idea of the background of people who did become Pharisees? Not really. I mean, we do have a few references to them, you know in the New Testament and Josephus's. A few also in Rbbinic literature, some of the pre seventy rabbis might be Pharisees. we don't know for sure Most people think that they're not priests. so you know the priests are doing their own thing in the temple and these are probably lay people, so not priests, but they're wanting to kind of extend that purity into everyday life probably more common in urban situations. So although we do find know elements to do with purity in rural places, probably Jerusalem was their main sort of base, even in the gospels when Pharisees come, quite often they come from Jerusalem And they may well have been all sorts of different social orders. I mean, I imagine that they're not from the very lowest you know, you have people like ul we hear of people like Gamalial, maybe Nicodemus in John's gospel, and both of those have they've left sort of remains in the historical record too. So they're probably more likely to be people with a bit of education, but you know in kind of making it up here. Not entirely, but you know, we don't have anything really solid to go on No, and it harkens back to what we were saying earlier, you know, how mysterious these people are and I appreciate I'm pushing I'm prodding. Well sometimes it's good to know, you know that we don't know. and a lot of what you might read in, you know, if you go to an encyclopedia, there'll be a little authoritative entry on what the Pharisees were like, what they thought, who they were, but it's good to know that most of the time this is sort of conjecture six thousand Josephus says only six thousand dods Pharisees in total. Yeah. I mean again The probleblem is we don't know how many people were in Judea Half a million, a million. two million, but even on a fairly conservative estimate, they're a small percentage of the population It's just the difficulties of then if I was to ask, how powerful and how prominent do you think, how popular do think the Pharisees were by the time we get to the birth of Jesus, the time of Jesus, and the time that the Romans are entering onto the stage in Judea too Well, I think the thing is you need to sort of distinguish between actual power and influence. So I think earlier on in sort of Hasmanian times, they might have been periods when they had a certain amount of power. I think certainly, by the time of Herod, they're a little bit there, but Josephus really says very little about them in the time of Herod. You know, they're not making the headlines And I think that continues under the rule of his sons and then direct Roman rule of Judea itself But I think they have a certain amount of influence. I think people think that they have popular ideas. They are the innovators. You know For us reading the New Testament, it sounds a little bit like you know, they're these rigid legalists and you wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. But I think in their context, they're thought of as being the ones with the big ideas, they're sort of the ones who are With the moment, you know talking about resurrection, looking for a Messiah figure, there're talking about, you know, purity is clearly something that a lot of people are interested in And so I think they probably have quite a lot of influence and respect from people too and timeline wise so Seleucid and Hasmineans then Herodians then the Romans. That's how you should be thinking. That's the kind of timelineang O time This is a really interesting point to highlight here, Helen, how some two thousand years ago in Judea in that region, There are a lot of people who believed that there would be this messianic figure arriving And then were there quite a few people who claimed to be this Messiah figure at the time. So giving us the context in which the story of the Pharisees and Jesus is in Probably at the time, Jesus isn't the only one who has these claims coming forwards. Yes, exactly. And I mean we don't know what Jesus himself claimed. Did he claim to be in the Messiah? Certainly some of his followers quite quickly say that he is the Messiah. and it's presumably the same with these other figures. So John the Baptist is well known. He's there just a little bit before Jesus. At the death of Herod the Great in four BCE, we get lots of Kingly pretenders, you know, are they Messiah type figures, all kinds of people sort of that the whole place erupts into disarray And then as you go after Jesus into the rest of the first century, increasing numbers of these figures who sort of appear, one appears in Samaria, and he says, I'm going to lead you up this sacred mountain and we'll find certain things that Moses buried there and then God will sort of intervene And many more. There's one called Theudas, one called the Egyptian. sometometimes they sort of lead their people out to the wilderness and one of them leads the people to the Mount of Olives and he says, you know, at my signal, the whole of Jerusalem will fall. We don't get to know what happens because the Roman governor sends in the troops and gets rid of them too quickly. But there's a kind of a whole list of these people, particularly As we move towards the Jewish revolt against Rome in ' sixty six Even during the revolt actually, there are Messiah type figures because the revolt was a civil war as much as anything else. So you know various factions have their own leader and some of these seem to have been sort of Messiah type figures. So yeah, and I think it's not helped by the fact that there's all sorts of different ideas about what is the Messiah going to be like? So it's such a broad brief that a lot of people are going to fit into this It's interesting think whether the Pharisees between themselves would have had debates around that at the same time, know kind of Well, which one is more like the one that we're expecting, almost, if you know what I mean. Yeah, well, I mean, it's slightly later than our period, but in one hundred and thirty five, there's the Barobar rebellion in Judea. and the Pharisees did actually hail him as a Messiah or at least you know the rabbis who are possibly linked with the Pharisees from earlier on. And I think one of the things too that we need to realize is that when we look at the gospels and there's all of this kind of wrangling over what does this mean? what does that mean? and intense debate? I think that's probably like what you know the Pharisees themselves were doing. you know, they are debating often quite heatedly about what does this passage mean? What does that one mean? Is this person the Messiah? Can we get behind him? You know, there's all of this debate going on and that's quite normal in this sort of easastern Mediterranean society. The problem is when it gets written down in a gospel and it's also negative as we have it now, that we tend to think that there He sort of narrow minded bigots. In fact, I mean, people have even suggested whether Jesus himself was a Pharisee because of his interest in the law, interpretation, that kind of thing, Messiaship, resurrection, you know, he's sort of ticking all the boxes, really. smallm boxes, though they might be I don't think most people would think that, you know Jesus seems sort of socially very different to the Pharisees, but there are links Just before we get into that whole key story of the Pharisees in the New Testament, I'd like to ask about potential struggles between the Pharisees and those other key sects, those groups that you mentioned already, the Sadducees and the Essenes, for instance Can we imagine rooms full of these different sex and like them having struggles like trying to dictate policy as it is, like in Judea around the time of Jesus and before then? Well, I don't think they have much say in policy. Certainly not. I mean, maybe under the Hasmaneans, you know way back when they do seem to have some level of power. And I think they can influence the Hasmanian ruler. And so that's where they're really getting their way. Once you get into the sort of you know, Herodian and Roman period, then you know, the guy in charge is the guy in charge. He's going to have a council of advisors Certainly under Roman rule at the time of Jesus, know the high priest is going to summon his advisors, the other sort of priestly Saddcean people sort of because they're sort of temple priests. But he might invite one or two Pharisees One big question at this point is whether there was a fixed Jerusalem council An older view is that it was. and people get some sort of evidence for that in the book of Acts, where Paul is actually being tried before this council and in that story, it's made up of Pharisees and sadducees. And so he puts them both at loggerheads by saying, it's because I believe in the resurrection that I've been brought here. And so of course, I mean, it all sounds very Monty Python. inststead of being sort of against him Suddenly they all start to fight each other People nowadays think probably there was no fixed council like that where you know you have leading Pharisees, you have leading Sadducees and they're all sort of debating and coming up with sort of policy. This is a period where it's strong men making the decisions and they might have a council of advisers now and then, but largely they're doing their own thing Is that council that you highlighted there? Is that what's commonly referred to as the Sanhedrin? Yes, yes. I think nowadays people would say there might have been San Hedrins, you know, councils summoned now and then when it was necessary or useful, but the idea that there was a fixed body of people and that you were a Sanhedrin member and that you had Osight over Jerusalem seems not really to be backed up, certainly not by Josephus and not by most of the evidence. I'm so glad you've mentioned all that, Helen, because my next question was going to be like any sense of how cooperative the Pharisees would have been with the Romans, especially if it's a time when their influence probably is waning where it's the time of the strong men of the governors and so on when the Romans come in and say, we want this. C you use your influence to make this happen not. I mean, there might be some aristocratic Pharisees who are, you know, amongst the elite of Jerusalem. But I think if anybody, if any of these sects is going to have any kind of sway with the Romans It's the Sadducees, the temple aristocratic priesthood because it's really, I mean the Romans are out in Caesarea on the seaside, you know, they're just leaving the high priest really to get on with it And the people he's going to rely on are fellow Saducees. So they're the ones who are going to have influence at all with the Romans, but I think probably for that very reason, the people who are going to have influence with the people, the ordinary people are the Pharisees because they're not tainted by collaboration, association with the Romans And so Caiaphast, the high priest in the Gspel was Helen. He's not a Pharisee, he is a Sadducee. We don't know for sure, but the chances are very high. I mean we don't know that all high priests were Sadducees, but I think it's very likely that they were. Certainly, this is the group that they're most likely to have had with, we certainly don't hear of any Pharisaic hyp priests Well Helen, let's explore some of the kind of key episodes between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gspels. First and foremost Do you think groups of Pharisees would have heard about Jesus and his ministry if he is someone who, you know, starts out very much in the countryside, outside of the big cities. Yeah, I think they would have done at some point. And he's actually not that far from some big cities. You know, the city of Cephris is only four or five miles away from Nazareth. There's Tiberius on the Lake of Galilee. Jesus doesn't go to these big cities, but if the gospels are right and that large crowds are coming out to him probablyrob some of these people from cities are hearing about it. And I think it's very likely that the Pharisees would have been interested in Jesus, you know, not necessarily in a negative way to start with, but you know, oh, here's a holy man. you know he's got some ideas about text let's go and hear what he has to say and you know robust debates as would have been common. I think where you have to be much more careful with the gospels is this idea that the Pharisees were out to get him from the start. Certainly in Mark's gospel and repeated in the others, really early on, we're told the Pharisees and the Herodians met together to talk about kill him. This is in chapter three. So you know, really early on, as if they hear him, they oppose him, they don't like him and they just want to kill him And I think you have to be very careful about that. But I think the idea that the Pharisees came and they chatted and they know debated things with him. This is what they did, this is what they were interested in. This is probably what Jesus is also interested in, you know, debating the meaning of scripture I think where you need to be careful though is that when you're looking at the gospels, it's during Jesus' ministry that he has these robust debates with Pharisees When he goes to Jerusalem and when he's arrested and passed over to Pilate That is exclusively by the high priests and the sort of the priestly aristocracy, the establishment in Jerusalem. So maybe the scribes elders of the people, but the Pharisees are not part of that. The mistake is to say that it's the Pharisees who are the chief advocates of his death, it's not that. So I didn't realize that, that stark difference there Yeah, exactly. And the even worst thing to say is that know the Jews are passing Jesus over. It's one particular group, the highigh priestly establishment, whose job it is really to make sure that that everything is running smoothly, that there's no troublemakers doing things in the temple. So you can see why they may have been worried by Jesus, particularly after the cleansing of the temple, whatever that involved. But no, although Jesus continues his debates with Pharisees in Jerusalem, there's no indication at the end that they have anything to do with is em death, apart from a very small reference in Matthew actually, where they ask the Romans to put a guard on the tomb because Jesus has said he'll rise again and they want this guard to make sure that nothing happens. I also found that the mention of the debates really interesting. It sounds ret pretty intellectual, pretty dare say open as well, if it's not just the Highborns debating all the time I didn't realize just how big theological debate was amongst the Pharisees and how w thousand years ago in Judea, theological debates were common between Pharisees and other people with different views on the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and so on Yeah. I mean, I think it's debate amongst people who are setting themselves up as teachers. So know Pharisees and people like Jesus, whether' average sort of wife in Capernaium or you know, a farmer in Nazareth is too bothered about things is more difficult to say. But I mean, I think because, you know, there's prractice of Jewish ancestral beliefs depends so much on how how texts are interpreted, how interpretations are passed down, you know ancestral custom. There's so many different ways of living out a Jewish life in the first century that I'm sure, you know, even amongst people in rural areas, there's some level of debate about What are we doing? What should we do on the Sabbath? What should we not do? What are we allowed to do? You know there's so many areas that are open to discussion. So can we explore a couple of key debates that Jesus does have with Pharisees early in his ministry? Are there particular episodes that stand out? One of the things he debates quite often is what you can do on the Sabbath. what's allowable. And I imagine this is a debate that lots of people are having. You know what can you do? The gospels, of course tell these stories in a way that makes the Pharisee sound very narrow minded. You know They say you can't heal someone, for example, the man with the withered hand, whatever exactly is wrong with that Jesus heals him on the Sabbath and the Pharisees are very upset about this presumably from their point of view, guys had this affliction for a while it would be perfectly possible to heal him the next day. But you know, the gospels sort of make out that the Pharisees are everything that's negative compared to Jesus, whereas in historical reality I'm sure there was much more openness to proper debate rather than just this hostility. And in what ways would you say that Actually you can see some clear similarities between the teachings, the beliefs of the Pharisees and what Jesus was preaching in his ministry. Yeah, I mean, the topics they talk about, so you know, what can you do on the Sabbath? If you sort of Take a step back and just think, what are the debates? They're similar things. What can you do on the Sabbath Who can you eat with? So presumably because of the Phariseaic interest in purity and you know not keeping themselves sort of away from defilement, they're very interested in table fellowship. What can you eat? Wh can you eat with? And they seem to criticize Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, they say. I mean, we don't know who these sinners were wereere they really sinners or were they just people who according to Pharisaic understandings were not keeping the law in the same way that the Pharisees were But again, you know, it's these debates over who can you eat with that are important there tithing purity, should you wash your hands? I mean, there's a very convoluted debate between Jesus and the Pharisees on washing your hands before meals. And you know who knows what the background to this is. But it seems quite possible that certainly some of the Pharisees are washing their hands because again, this is sort of to do with purity. Jesus and his disciples aren't and they're sort of asking him about that or fasting, again, the Pharisees seem to fast a couple of days. Jesus' disciples don't fast. and so they' you know again, they're interested. what's going on? Why are you not doing this? We think this is a proper interpretation of the law. Why are you not doing it? You know, you're talking about the kingdom of God is about to arrive. Why are you not living a pure life, being ready for it So you can think of all kinds of positive reasons why they're entering into these debates with a fellow teacher rather than just, you know, instantly thinking Oh. We don't like this guy. we're going to try and get rid of him It's interesting trying to picture a Pharisee entering the debating ring with Jesus, not from a point of wanting to utterly condemn and destroy his arguments, but rather from a place of intrigue, quite frankly. Yeah. well, I'm sure that was the case. you know, originally when these stories were first passed around, you know in the time of historical Jesus, people are just interested. And these great crowds that come to hear Jesus, they've all got brains of their own. you know, someome of them are thinking, wow, this is a great others are thinking, not so sure about this. You know, there's a variety spectrum of opinion and the Pharisees are the ones who, you know have a level of education. they know their texts, they can come and kind of talk to Jesus and debate really try to understand. And I think some of this too, undoubtedly, has been affected by later debates between pr followers and you know the local synagogues as very slowly, very gradually and at different times in different places. the followers of Jesus start to become something different Jews. So I'm sure it's been enhanced by all of that, later debates, later antagonism, that's probably largely why the Pharisees come over so negatively. So Helen, let's move on from the time of Jesus. and the Pharisees remain prominent in Judea or they remain a sect in Judea, Do we know much about what happens to the next? The old fashioned view was that the Pharisees just continued as the rabbis who sort of emerged after the destruction of the temple as the sort of you know leaders of certain branches of Judaism. So you get Rbbinic literature being written at this time, the Mishnna, about two hundred CE, the Talmuds, Jerusalem and the Babylonian talalaments written sort of a few centuries later. So the traditional idea was that Pharisees just continued. They morphed into the rabbis 's been questioned quite a lot recently. Some people would say, o, you can't make any connection at all. I would go for something more moderate. I mean, I think some of this phharisaic interest and the interest in the laws. And also this whole idea about purity and how you extend temple purity is actually something that's very relevant once the temple has gone. you know, how do you sort of make up for the lack of a temple Now that we no longer have a temple, do we sort of have holiness in our own lives? Holiness in the synagogues, perhaps, holiness in our own gatherings. And a lot of the things that the rabbis talk about are things that seem to be discussed by Pharisees, again to do with purity, to do with tithhing to do with the temple actually, even though it's been destroyed, table fellowship, lots of things like that. J really how do you live out a Jewish life? This is what they're asking. In this sort of second, third, fourth century period, we're now completely under Roman domination. We've got no temple How do you live out this life? And I think a lot of Pharisaic ideas sort of come into this period, but probably bound up by other Esesssenes, the Dead Sea Scrolls guys, other people priestly ideas. they're all sort of in this mix because certainly it's a very different situation to the one that was the case in the time of Jesus and the destruction of temples, that's by the Romans at the high point of the great Jewish revolt. And so could it be that with the removal of that big central temple building the importance, the influence of Jewish teachers like Pharisees could well have increased as people flocked more and more towards those particular more educated individuals, I guess. Yeah, I think that's possibly true because I mean, in a way, the high priests, the sort aristocratic priesthoods have lost their power base, they've lost the temple They've lost their whole sort of know rationale really. There are many, many, many priests within Jewish society, load, so many priests that they had to be on a rotor system at the Jerusalem temple. So I would think it's unlikely that there weren't some sort of priestly involvement in this sort of restructuring of Judaism after the fall of the temple. But I mean, this was a massive thing. It had happened before, of course. The first temple had fallen to the Babylonians. This is the second time it's happened and people sort of learnnt lessons from before. But really I think this you know, Jews found themselves in a very different world now. And so Pharisees, I think were one of the groups that helped people to sort of come to terms with this but not the only one And hening back to the beginning As time goes on, the name Pharisee has a good association for Jews, but very negative one. Christians Helen, how quickly do you think this kind of B pololarism of the word Pharisee, it emerges in the world Yeah, I mean, I think very soon. I mean, already in the gospels, you, they are really just standing there for this kind of legalistic way of reading things. Matthew's gospel is one of the worst. Matthew twenty three is this terrible a whole chapter where Jesus is saying, you know, woe to you scribes and Pharisees Hypocrites, he says. So you know, already by then, Pharisees has become this kind of this negative term amongst Christ followers. I mean the ironic thing is that you a lot of these people reading Matthew's gospel will still consider themselves Jews, but you know already Pharisees is sort of the name of opposition. But particularly by the time you get to the Reformation, you know, that's so many things kind of came in at the Reformation. the idea that Luther's understanding of Judaism as a really legalistic religion I think is founded quite a large extent on this phharisaic stereotype and caricature that you have in the gospels. they're legalists, they're interested in only sort of following the rules and they're not interested in mercy and justice and things like this. So certainly by the time that you get the Reformations, Pharisee is epitomizing what's wrong with Jewish faith So Helen, how should we view the Pharisees today? I think strip them back to what we actually know about them, which is they were a group within first century Judaism. if that's sort of the area you're interested in that perhaps had a certain amount of power beforehand, but they're very much a group of people who are interested in interpreting the law They've got a lot of popularity with the people. They're creative, they're innovators, they're advocating things that a lot of other people are interested in, purity, resurrection, Messiahs They're perhaps seen as the people less tainted by Roman involvement, but most people, you know, most people like a Pharisee. They're the good guys And I think it wouldn't do us any harm to think of them like that Last but certainly not least, you do have a podcast with another very good friend of the show which covers Everything Bible related. It is cool. Tell us about this Yes, well, this is with the great Lloyd Lulln Jones, who I know has been on your podcast a lot professor in ancient history at Cardiff and it's called our podcast is called Biblical Time Machine. And yeah, we have guests, we do everything to do with Bible, Hebrew Bible as well as Christian Bible, everything in between. If it's gotot Bible somewhere along the line, we're interested. It's a great podcast, glad to get that mentioning at the end and it just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show, Heven Thank you, it's the great Well there you go. there was the wonderful prorofessor Helen Bond talking about the Pharisees and what we actually know about these figures who lived at the time of Jesus of Nazareth some two thousand years ago. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now if you like more episodes similar to this, well you're in luck because we have a few past episodes with Helen in the archive, including ones on John the Baptist, which also features Dr. Joan Taylor and another on Pontius Pilate. Who was this Roman figure that famously washed his hands after sentencing Jesus Death Chris In those two episodes, we will put links to them in the show notes