Jesus Was a Pharisee (Really. He Was.)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
Luke 13:31

Why were the Pharisees warning Jesus?

Weren’t they his enemies?

Like everyone else in my generation and like almost everyone who went to Sunday School and grew up in the church, I learned early on that the Pharisees were the bad guys. They were self-righteous and hypocritical, obsessed with observing the letter of the Law, yet utterly tone-deaf to its spirit. They were rich and powerful, and they colluded with the Romans in opposing and eventually killing Jesus. They were ritually clean, yet morally corrupt.

And I learned in seminary that they were the perfect foil for preaching. Every narrative needs a good villain, and the Pharisees were the perfect villains for almost any preaching topic. 

It was perfect, with the slight problem that it was wrong.

The Pharisees were reformers.

They had a three-fold belief that God was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with John 3:16 will see the parallelism of construction. And beyond the similarity of form, the substance of the first and third points is basically identical. Each speaks of God as a loving father and each points toward eternal life. The difference is in the way. The Pharisees believed that following Torah was the way: John’s Gospel sees the way as believing in Jesus as the Christ.

The three-fold belief of the Pharisees gives rise to the animating question of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” If the way to fellowship with God now and forever is found in following Torah (the way), what does it mean to follow Torah? What specifically must I do? And the answer is the same in each of the three Gospels: love God and love your neighbor.

Every three years on the second Sunday in Lent, the Lectionary has us reading about how some Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod was after him. And after cycling through that text a couple of times I began to wonder. Why were the Pharisees warning Jesus? Weren’t they his enemies?

Two possibilities presented themselves in my mind. The first was mildly unsettling, given everything I had learned up until that point. What if the Pharisees and Jesus were not such bitter enemies?

There are many occasions where he judges them harshly. At one point he tells his followers to listen to what the Pharisees say, because “they sit on Moses’ seat,” but be careful not to imitate what they do. On the other hand, there are also instances in which they invite him to dine with them. Some are attracted to Jesus and believe that he is the Messiah, and the Book of Acts records occasions on which the Pharisees protect early Christians.

The second possibility was even more unsettling. What if Jesus himself was a Pharisee?

If you grew up, as I did, with the image of Pharisees as self-righteous hypocrites, it may be hard not to reject that idea out of hand. 

But think about it.

We know that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and we know that the Synagogue was a Pharisaic institution. Jesus and the disciples are in the Synagogue a lot.

We know that the Pharisees believed in the two-fold concept of the Law as written and oral. The written law was understood to be eternal, but the oral law had to be reinterpreted for each generation. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus first declares that he has not come “to abolish the law or the prophets.” On the contrary he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Then he seems to contradict that by launching into a series of teachings in which he says first, “You have heard it said,” followed by a commandment, and then, “but I say to you,” followed by a new teaching. It only makes sense when we recognize that in the first statement he is reciting the written law, and in the second statement he is giving a new oral interpretation.

Finally, we know that Jesus was called rabbi. And we know that rabbinic Judaism grew out of the Pharisaic movement. As one of my rabbi friends said, “If he was a rabbi, then he was a Pharisee.”

The Pharisees gave birth to two great religions, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, the only form of Judaism to emerge from the ancient world. They gave us the animating question for the synoptic gospels and the belief structure for the fourth gospel. They also gave us a model for Bible study and for the focus on scripture as part of the worship service.

Clearly, Jesus did have many arguments with the Pharisees as individuals or in groups. And he criticized the movement as a whole. But those disputes and disagreements should be understood as internal to the Pharisaic movement itself, just as Christians disagree with other Christians and sometimes criticize Christianity as a whole.

And Jesus was not the only Pharisee looking critically at the movement. His scathing criticism in Matthew 23 are mirrored almost exactly in a passage in the Talmud which records a description of seven different types of Pharisaic behavior, only the last of which is an example of the high standards of belief and practice to which they were called.

1. The “Shoulder Pharisee,” who wore his good deeds on his shoulder.
2. The “Wait a Little Pharisee,” who always put off doing good deeds until a later time.
3. The “Bruised Pharisee,” who shut his eyes to avoid seeing a woman and was bruised from stumbling and falling.
4. The “Humpbacked Pharisee,” bent double by false humility.
5. The “Ever Reckoning Pharisee,” who was always counting up his good deeds.
6. The “Fearful Pharisee,” always quaking in fear of God’s wrath.
7. And finally, the “God-loving Pharisee,” who lived with faith and charity, whose deeds matched his professed beliefs.

Whether or not one believes that Jesus was a Pharisee, how we view the Pharisees is very important for modern Christians. 

Apart from the basic idea that historical accuracy matters, a reassessment of our attitude toward the Pharisees is critical for two reasons.

First, when we can see more clearly the Jewish context of Jesus’ life and ministry, we can better understand his teachings. We can see him as a rabbi advocating for his people against an occupying empire, rather than as a religious iconoclast rebelling against religious traditionalists. His religious and political views both come into sharper focus when can see him in his Jewish context.

The second point is also of great practical importance. Many Christians do not understand that modern Judaism, across the spectrum from the Orthodox to Reform and even Reconstructionist, all have their roots in the Pharisaic movement. When Christians slander the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they are also implicitly criticizing modern Judaism. This is oddly ironic, since both Christianity and modern Judaism share a common beginning in the Pharisaic movement. Although the irony may be amusing, the practical result is that the historic Christian slander of the Pharisees has contributed to anti-Semitism.

A more accurate historical appreciation of the Pharisees can give us a clearer understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry and open the way to a more helpful relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

*An earlier version of this post was published on February 16, 2019.

Biblical Literalism Is Unbiblical

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:17-18

Last week I participated in a United Methodist clergy discussion group which began with a question about sexual orientation and the Bible and very soon devolved into an argument about biblical literalism. 

Historically, United Methodists have not been biblical literalists. But you would have never guessed that from the discussion.

Which brings us to the Zen question of the day: does biblical literalism cause homophobia, or does homophobia cause biblical literalism? Do folks embrace biblical literalism in order to support their homophobia or is it the other way around?

Either way, they are deeply intertwined. And the literalism does broad damage beyond the issues of LGBTQ inclusion or exclusion. 

Once upon a time I rejected biblical literalism because, as Paul said, “when I became an adult I put away childish things.” Literalism seemed irrational, and I wanted to see myself as a rational, thinking person. One of the things I always cherished about Methodism was our oft-repeated statement that “when we go to church we don’t leave our minds at the door.”

But the biggest problem with biblical literalism is not that it is irrational; the biggest problem is that it is unbiblical. As John Dominic Cross emphatically states, “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

Beyond the mistake of trying to reduce symbolic religious language to a narrow and stunted literalism, there is another issue built into the structure of the biblical witness itself.

Early in the passage we know as “The Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus tells his disciples that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And then he says that not one letter, or even the stroke of a letter of the law, will be lost. The Torah, the written word of God is eternal. It will always exist and it will exist in the form in which it was originally given to Moses.

That might seem like a strong affirmation of the literal meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, but just a few verses later Jesus launches into a series of teachings all of which begin the same way: “You have heard it said,” Jesus recalls, “but I say to you . . .” In those declarations, Jesus rejects whole chapters of the Torah in favor of a new teaching.

Jesus is not contradicting himself. He is doing what authoritative Rabbis  are supposed to do. ("He teaches as one having authority")

Jesus believed in the twofold law, the written and the oral.

He believed that the written law had been given to Moses at Sinai, and he believed that law could not be changed even in the smallest detail. But in each generation the great teachers had the responsibility of reinterpreting the oral law for that generation. 

The oral law was not fixed; it was fluid. The authority for reinterpretation came from Moses himself and that ongoing process was part of the tradition from the time that Moses first received the Law.

The oral law, which was equal in authority to the written law, was an attempt to capture the spirit of the Law. Each generation built on the traditions of the elders who had preceded them. In that sense, the law tended to evolve.

When we try to read the Bible literally, we are using a process that Jesus rejected and we are missing the opportunity to understand its meaning in fresh ways for our generation. We would do well to remember that as we debate those verses that relate to same sex relationships. 

Our understanding is supposed to evolve.

Don't Call Them Pharisees

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.
Luke 7:36

In the many debates online or in person about the inclusion or exclusion of LGBTQ persons in the United Methodist Church, two things are almost certain. 

First, someone on the traditionalist side of the debate will accuse those in favor of inclusion of not accepting the authority of the Bible. And then someone on the inclusion side will accuse the traditionalists of being Pharisees.

It is almost a ritual.

When those arguing for inclusion say that the traditionalists are Pharisees, they are invoking a slur that has gone unchecked for centuries.

But the traditionalists are more like Sadducees than Pharisees. We often speak of the two groups together, but the Sadducees and Pharisees were very different. 

Like everyone else in my generation and like almost everyone who went to Sunday School and grew up in the church, I learned early on that the Pharisees were the bad guys. They were self-righteous and hypocritical, obsessed with observing the letter of the Law, yet utterly tone-deaf to its spirit. They were rich and powerful, and they colluded with the Romans in opposing and eventually killing Jesus. They were ritually clean, yet morally corrupt.

And I learned in seminary that they were the perfect foil for preaching. Every narrative needs a good villain, and the Pharisees were the perfect villains for almost any preaching topic. 

It was perfect, with the slight problem that it was wrong.

The Pharisees were reformers.

They had a three-fold belief that God was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).

The three-fold belief of the Pharisees gives rise to the animating question of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” If the way to fellowship with God now and forever is found in following Torah (the way), what does it mean to follow Torah? What specifically must I do? And the answer is the same in each of the three Gospels: love God and love your neighbor.

The Pharisees were not literalists, they believed in a two-fold understanding of the Law as both written and oral. The written Law was unchanging, but the oral Law was reinterpreted by each generation of Rabbis. The Pharisees gave us the Synagogue, and the rabbinate, and they gave rise to both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

The Sadducees were in many ways the tradionalists of their day. 

They rejected the Oral Law because they were literalists. They believed that the written word should not be interpreted; it should simply be obeyed. 

The Sadducees were judgmental because they had no openness to the future. They were not waiting for the Messiah and they did not expect a Messiah because they did not believe that God would do something new.

Seventy-five years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick began his Christmas Eve sermon by saying, “We think this evening about the Sadducees.” He called them “the unloveliest people in the New Testament.” The sermon was titled, “Recovering Our Angels,” and he attributed the Sadducees’ miserable behavior and attitude to the fact that they did not believe in angels.

The angels that Fosdick referenced were not winged creatures in the sky. They were the messengers of God that come to us in myriad ways and incarnations, to inspire and comfort and sustain us.

Now, perhaps more than ever, we need our angels to lead us into the future.

Jesus Was a Pharisee (Seriously. He Was)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 
"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
Luke 13:31

A few years ago at our New England United Methodist Annual Conference we were debating an issue related to how the church treats LGBTQ persons. One of my colleagues, arguing for inclusion, characterized those on the other side of the debate as “modern day Pharisees.” It was, I thought, an unfair comparison, and I quickly made my way to a microphone to respond.

“That’s unfair,” I said, when the presiding bishop called on me.

“It’s unfair to the Pharisees.”

There was a smattering of laughter, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was serious. I admit it was a snarky comment. And it was unkind. Not what Jesus would have said in that circumstance, although it seems possible he might have said something similar in one of his many discussions and disputations with disciples and others.

Like everyone else in my generation and like almost everyone who went to Sunday School and grew up in the church, I learned early on that the Pharisees were the bad guys. They were self-righteous and hypocritical, obsessed with observing the letter of the Law, yet utterly tone-deaf to its spirit. They were rich and powerful, and they colluded with the Romans in opposing and eventually killing Jesus. They were ritually clean, yet morally corrupt.

And I learned in seminary that they were the perfect foil for preaching. Every narrative needs a good villain, and the Pharisees were the perfect villains for almost any preaching topic. 

It was perfect, with the slight problem that it was wrong.

The Pharisees were reformers.

They had a three-fold belief that God was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with John 3:16 will see the parallelism of construction. And beyond the similarity of form, the substance of the first and third points is basically identical. Each speaks of God as a loving father and each points toward eternal life. The difference is in the way. The Pharisees believed that following Torah was the way: John’s Gospel sees the way as believing in Jesus as the Christ.

The three-fold belief of the Pharisees gives rise to the animating question of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” If the way to fellowship with God now and forever is found in following Torah (the way), what does it mean to follow Torah? What specifically must I do? And the answer is the same in each of the three Gospels: love God and love your neighbor.

Every three years on the second Sunday in Lent, the Lectionary has us reading about how some Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod was after him. And after cycling through that text a couple of times I began to wonder. Why were the Pharisees warning Jesus? Weren’t they his enemies?

Two possibilities presented themselves in my mind. The first was mildly unsettling, given everything I had learned up until that point. What if the Pharisees and Jesus were not such bitter enemies?

There are many occasions where he judges them harshly. At one point he tells his followers to listen to what the Pharisees say, because “they sit on Moses’ seat,” but be careful not to imitate what they do. On the other hand, there are also instances in which they invite him to dine with them. Some are attracted to Jesus and believe that he is the Messiah, and the Book of Acts records occasions on which the Pharisees protect early Christians.

The second possibility was even more unsettling. What if Jesus himself was a Pharisee?

If you grew up, as I did, with the image of Pharisees as self-righteous hypocrites, it may be hard not to reject that idea out of hand. 

But think about it.

We know that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and we know that the Synagogue was a Pharisaic institution. Jesus and the disciples are in the Synagogue a lot.

We know that the Pharisees believed in the two-fold concept of the Law as written and oral. The written law was understood to be eternal, but the oral law had to be reinterpreted for each generation. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus first declares that he has not come “to abolish the law or the prophets.” On the contrary he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Then he seems to contradict that by launching into a series of teachings in which he says first, “You have heard it said,” followed by a commandment, and then, “but I say to you,” followed by a new teaching. It only makes sense when we recognize that in the first statement he is reciting the written law, and in the second statement he is giving a new oral interpretation.

Finally, we know that Jesus was called rabbi. And we know that rabbinic Judaism grew out of the Pharisaic movement. As one of my rabbi friends said, “If he was a rabbi, then he was a Pharisee.”

The Pharisees gave birth to two great religions, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, the only form of Judaism to emerge from the ancient world. They gave us the animating question for the synoptic gospels and the belief structure for the fourth gospel. They also gave us a model for Bible study and for the focus on scripture as part of the worship service.

Clearly, Jesus did have many arguments with the Pharisees as individuals or in groups. And he criticized the movement as a whole. But those disputes and disagreements should be understood as internal to the Pharisaic movement itself, just as Christians disagree with other Christians and sometimes criticize Christianity as a whole.

And Jesus was not the only Pharisee looking critically at the movement. His scathing criticism in Matthew 23 are mirrored almost exactly in a passage in the Talmud which records a description of seven different types of Pharisaic behavior, only the last of which is an example of the high standards of belief and practice to which they were called.

1. The “Shoulder Pharisee,” who wore his good deeds on his shoulder.
2. The “Wait a Little Pharisee,” who always put off doing good deeds until a later time.
3. The “Bruised Pharisee,” who shut his eyes to avoid seeing a woman and was bruised from stumbling and falling.
4. The “Humpbacked Pharisee,” bent double by false humility.
5. The “Ever Reckoning Pharisee,” who was always counting up his good deeds.
6. The “Fearful Pharisee,” always quaking in fear of God’s wrath.
7. And finally, the “God-loving Pharisee,” who lived with faith and charity, whose deeds matched his professed beliefs.

Whether or not one believes that Jesus was a Pharisee, how we view the Pharisees is very important for modern Christians. 

Apart from the basic idea that historical accuracy matters, a reassessment of our attitude toward the Pharisees is critical for two reasons.

First, when we can see more clearly the Jewish context of Jesus’ life and ministry, we can better understand his teachings. We can see him as a rabbi advocating for his people against an occupying empire, rather than as a religious iconoclast rebelling against religious traditionalists. His religious and political views both come into sharper focus when can see him in his Jewish context.

The second point is also of great practical importance. Many Christians do not understand that modern Judaism, across the spectrum from the Orthodox to Reform and even Reconstructionist, all have their roots in the Pharisaic movement. When Christians slander the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they are also implicitly criticizing modern Judaism. This is oddly ironic, since both Christianity and modern Judaism share a common beginning in the Pharisaic movement. Although the irony may be amusing, the practical result is that the historic Christian slander of the Pharisees has contributed to anti-Semitism.

A more accurate historical appreciation of the Pharisees can give us a clearer understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry and open the way to a more helpful relationship between Christianity and Judaism.