352
PHAEISEES
PHARISEES
cratic spirit Avhich developed national Judaism into a Church, with a world-consciousness equal to that of Rome and a spiritual unity not inferior to that of Greece. (5) The Pharisees were also missionary, and made many converts {Ant. XX. ii.-iv. ; BJ 11. xix. 2 ; Mt 23''^). Hillel said : ' Love men and lead them to the Law' (Aboth i. 2) ; and the international Synagogue, inspired from Jeru- salem, compassed sea and land in making prose- lytes. The Sadducees had no such interest. This I'liarisaic propaganda, however, when it met the successful missions of the Christians, ceased making converts, condemned the translation of the LXX, and buried itself in the Talmud. (6) The Pharisees ditt'ered from the Sadducees by the wide distance between the Synagogue, the centre of the one party, and the Temple, the stronghold of the other. The Temple was waning in influence. Jesus refers little to it, and when it disappeared the religion of the Jews went on without a break. The Pharisees even presci'ibed rules for the priestly Sadducees in the Temple [Ant. Xlll. x. 5), and had their prayers introduced alongside the sacrifices. In fact, the Temple services were regarded as meritorious be- cause done in obedience to the legal teachings of the Pharisees (cf. Kohler, art. ' Pharisees ' in JE). Some Pharisees seem in theory to have even abandoned the Temple worship (cf. Enoch SQ^s- « OO'-^, Ps-Sol 10« 17'^). (7) The Pharisees formed a fraternity with peculiar vows, which separated them from the heathen, the common people, and the Sadducees. The great majority of Jews were Pharisees in belief, but oidy about 6000 or 700L) were members of the brotherhood. Edersheim compares them with the Jesuits in the Roman Church {Sketches of Jew. Soc. Life, ch. xiv. ). They married, however, and their fellowship included the families of mem- bers. On entering tlie order, they took two vows in the presence of three witnesses, one to tithe everything eaten, bought, or sold ; the other not to be guest of the 'nm-huTirez, and to observe all cere- monial purification. They were the true Israel, 'the saints' ; their opponents were 'the ungodly,' ' the profane ' (cf. Lk 18^ Ps-Sol 14^ 17'«). (8) The Pha-ri^egs were the religious power in Palestine in the time of Clirist. They represented the authority of the Scrii)tures in home, school, synagogue, courts of law, and daily life. John almost identities tliem with 'the Jews' (I's 2^\ Though an outgrowth of the school of the Scribes, they eclipsed their teachers. They were in business, and their goods were legal tender everywhere. They were united, zealous, dogmatic, patriotic, stood for the i>eo])le against rulers and hierarchs, preached the keeping of the Law and the coming world of blessedness as reward of obedience, and were everywhere active in moulding Jewish life according to their prin- ciples. In opposition to Sadducees and common men, tlie Pharisees developed a new conception of piety ; it was something that could be- learned, and they were its teachers. The wise men were tlie good, and took the place of both prophet and priest. Hillel said : ' The uneducated fears no sin ' ; but ' he M'ho acquires knowledge has attained eternal life' {Aboth ii. 6, 8). All this made the Pharisees more and more proud, formal, and uncharitable. They despised the common people ( Jn 7"") ; they had reached the climax of their power in the time of Jesus ; and, half-feared, half-hated, they were declining in spiritual influence.
3. Pharisaic environment of Jesus. — Pharisaic Judaism in the time of Christ included the best, as well as the worst, of the people. The Jewish saints in the NT, the parents of the Baptist and of our Lord, Simeon, Anna, and others, Hillel too, and (Tamahel and Jochanan ben Sakkai, were noble types of Pharisaic Jews. Galilee especially was the home of the more earnest Pharisaic piety, with
its severe living and strong Messianic hope. Here tlie Zealots appeared, and the outbreaks against Rome had their seat ; and here Jesus gi'ew up and began His ministry in an atmosphere of Pharisaic devotion. He did not denounce all Pharisees, or the Pharisaic Judaism amid which He grew up ; since it stood for the whole transmitted religion of Israel, — for that salvation which was of the Jews. He stood nearer the Synagogue than the Temple, and in some respects presented His teach- ing in the line of the Pharisees. The Rabbis taught their disciples to honour the Scriptures, to seek first after heaven and its righteousness {Ant. XVI. ii. 4, V. 4, vi. 8), to look past the pre.sent legal life to a future A\'orld of grace and glory, to make proselytes, to have l)aptisms and holy suppers in their brotherhood, to pray, to fast and give alms — these three were ' the chief pillars of the Jewish religion ' (Bousset, Rclig. Judenthums, p. 159). All these things Jesus favoured also, and they passed, with many others, from the Synagogue into the Church. But Jesus was not a Pharisee. He rebuked them for their anti-scrijitural traditions, as He did the Sadducees for ignorance of the word of God (Mk 7*). Neither was He a heretic; the Pliarisees did not put Him out of the synagogue, though He was called a Samaritan and possessed of a devil. He preached from the common ground of the Scriptures ; and, just because the Pharisees held in theory so much that was true. He castigated the more their formalism and insincerity. But, while opposing Pharisaic superstition. He did not favour the agnosticism and rationalism of the Sad- ducees. From the heart of Divine revelation, illuminated by the Holy Spirit and in the full consciousness of Hiinseff as Son of God, in and through and above all the Scriptures, He pro- claimed the everlasting truth of the gospel, setting aside everything in Pharisaic teaching and life that was inconsistent with it.