Category Archives: Judaica

Parts I, II, III, IV, and V in this series covered the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisess in nineteen parallel pericopes between the three synoptic gospels primarily, with one pericope included from the Gospel of John. Now I’d like to look at how the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisees has been, intentionally or unintentionally, misunderstood throughout the ages.

First, it is important to understand that the Gospel of Matthew was and is by far the most popular gospel of the four. It received pride of place in Patristic citation from the second century onward. In later established lectionary pericopes as well, much more of Matthew was read during more of the year than was the case with the other gospels. Therefore, even aside from concerns of compositional theory, the Gospel of Matthew appears to have been effectively The Gospel, with the others contributing secondarily. So, even though our focus in the previous contributions to this series was on Matthew as the earliest gospel according to the Griesbach Hypothesis of the compositional history of the synoptic gospels, that perspective of “Matthew first” is upheld in the de facto status of Matthew as the preferred gospel throughout Church history.

Secondly, it is likewise important to understand the disruption of Judean society caused by the Great Revolt of 66-74 and the subsequent severance of proper comprehension of the picture of the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew. After the Great Revolt, the old societal structures and institutions were all overturned: the chief-priestly families and other aristocracy were obliterated by the rebels, and those surviving the subsequent Roman onslaught were faced with a society which had no need of them after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The surviving Pharisees and others worked at constructing a new societal structure, under more direct oversight from both the Romans and the rabbis. The societal context depicted in the gospels was no longer existent, and relatively quickly faded from memory, with readers culturally further distant losing the original understanding of the context even more quickly, as they had perhaps never had a good grasp on it at all in the first place. The depiction in Matthew of a dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees, one rooted in different bases for halakhic argumentation but still a generally workable relationship, and the function of the rhetoric in the gospel as part of that argumentation, was all lost. Indeed, as we have seen from the earlier parts of this series, the argumentation was already unimporant to both Luke and Mark in their presentations to gentile audiences. This lack of both interest and comprehension led to statements in Matthew being taken not as part of a rhetorical strategy in argument, but as bald fact, particularly Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 23. But Matthew 23 simply cannot be taken in isolation as a freestanding critique of all scribes and Pharisees in every particular (that is, of the Pharisaic program of halakhic rulings and the personal failings noted of individual unnamed scribes and Pharisees) as it has been and, in some quarters, still is. It is only correctly understood when viewed in the context of the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees depicted throughout the earlier chapters of Matthew, and particularly only in the view of Jesus’ different focus in admitting the Word of the Lord found amidst the prophetic texts in determining his halakhic rulings. It is only from within Jesus’ own halakhic program that the critique of the Pharisaic halakhic program is properly comprehended. Thus the foundation for the charges of hypocrisy lie within those debates, the subtext of which is determining the will of God in ordinary life. Jesus’ emphasis is on fostering a moral interiority rooted in God’s mercy toward and love for man in addition to maintaining ritual purity; this is the source of the charge for hypocrisy among the Pharisees: their halakhic program is found by Jesus to be only inconsistently guided by the example of the same Divine mercy and love for man, and thus the Pharisees only hypocritically claim to consistently reveal the will of God to man. With the loss of understanding this context, Christian commentators very early on thereby considered the Pharisees to have been one and all personally hypocritical and gulty of the personal failings described in Matthew 23. Thence, whether knowing or not that the Pharisees were the source of Rabbinic Judaism, this charge of empty hypocrisy was transferred to all Judaism. And that mistaken perspective was (surprisingly, to a thoughtful and sympathetic reader) maintained throughout the ages until only the last generation.

Continue reading “The Gospels on the Pharisees VI”

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15.) Mt 22.15-22 / Lk 20.20-26 / Mk 12.13-17
Taxes to Caesar. Mt presents, at this point, the Pharisees now planning to “entangle [Jesus] in his talk” (22.15), sending some of their own disciples and some Herodians to do so. Lk has the instigators as scribes and chief priests, following from the previous pericope in Lk. Mk retains the Pharisees and Herodians of Mt. It’s interesting that the Herodians appear in Mt only here, involved in a question with overtly political ramifications, while they are utterly absent throughout the rest of Mt. In Mk they appear here, and also in 3.6, curiously, at the end of the incident of Jesus’ healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath (see my note 6, above). However, in this case, the outcome in all three parallels is relatively positive: wonder/amazement on the part of hearers at Jesus’ skillful answer, even despite his explicitly calling them hypocrites in Mt, and with this evaluation of them imputed to him by the narrator in Lk and Mk.

16.) Mt 22.34-40 / Lk 10.25-28 / Mk 12.28-34
The Great Commandment. The shortest account is that of Mt, a simple question and answer without commentary on the part of Jesus or his interlocutor. Lk’s account poses a different question (“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 10.25), and the entire pericope is displaced relative to its position in Mt and Mk. Indeed, the pericope in Lk appears to be a different incident, as the initial question differs, and it is then followed by another question from Jesus, and the scribe then answers with the OT quotations, to which answer Jesus gives an approving response. Mk appears to conflate Mt and Lk, particularly so as to keep the approval of Jesus at the end, though in a different formulation (cf Lk 10.28 and Mk 12.34). Mt and Mk both begin with the scribe’s question (a lawyer from among the Pharisees in Mt, one of the scribes in Mk) which is then answered by Jesus. Mt ends the pericope there, while Mk includes a recapitulating affirmation from the scribe, whose positive response is then in turn affirmed by Jesus. An interesting change in perspective is discernible between Mt and Mk. In Mt, Jesus proclaims “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (22.40). However, this becomes in Mk part of the scribe’s affirmation “[This pair of laws] is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (12.33). There is a whiff of supersession of the sacrificial system in Mk that is entirely absent from Mt, likely to be attributed to the later, more Gentile context of the audience of Mk.

17.) Mt 22.41-46 / Lk 20.41-44 / Mk 12.35-37
The Question about the Son of David. Here we find some interesting narrative tricks in process amongst the three parallel pericopes. First comes Mt, a pericope immediately following upon the “Great Commandment” pericope described above. The audience is still the Pharisees. In Lk, however, with the displacement of the “Great Commandment” pericope, at the end of the dispute with the Sadducees over the resurrection (not covered in these notes: see Mt 22.23-33; Lk 20.27-40; Mk 12.18-27), Lk inserts a response from the scribes (20.40), following with the “Son of David” pericope in verse 41: “But he said to them…,” thus addressing this pericope to the scribes. Mk, on the other hand, inserted a clean break between the “Great Commandment” pericope and the “Son of David” pericope with 12.34b: “And after that no one dared to ask him any question.” A similar statement occurs at Lk 20.40, and at Mt 22.46. It appears that Lk placed his statement at 20.40 because that is the end of the last pericope in his set in which Jesus is asked a question, as the case is in Mk. Both appear to have found the placement of Mt’s similar statement awkward, as it follows the end of a pericope in which Jesus asks the question. Interesting, too, are the different audiences. In Mt, it is still the Pharisees around whom he asks, and they then answer, followed by Jesus making an objection through a Scriptural citation, an interesting and classically rabbinic practice. This is altered, however, in Lk, who has Jesus ask the scribes, “How can they say…?” (20.41), and Mk follows this format in having Jesus question the crowd “How can the scribes say…?” (12.35). In both, he continues with the same Scriptural citation as an objection, but the argumentation is no longer preserved, the questions having become merely rhetorical. Again, Mt appears more authentic and earlier than Lk and Mk.

18.) Mt 23.1-39 / Lk 20.45-47, etc / Mk 12.37b-40
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” This entire chapter of Mt 23 is devoted to a fascinating list of apparent halakhic rulings of the Pharisees (and those scribes following their lead) with which Jesus vehemently disagrees. As Pickup notes (p. 102), in Mt Jesus addresses the “crowds and his disciples” in that order, which Lk turns into “in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples” (20.45), following with a drastically shortened account of Mt’s pericope, which Lucan abbreviation is then followed by Mk. The halakhic disagreements are displaced by Lk into Lk 11.37-54, where they likewise are presented in a different order, in the narrative setting of dinner at a Pharisee’s house, with the remnants of some halakhic argumentation on handwashing (see my note 9, above). It appeas that Lk wanted to keep the particularly halakhic distraction to a minimum, so he relegated only the more interesting rhetoric in Jesus’ argumentation into the earlier context of Lk 11, keeping the nearly unrecognizable remnants of Mt’s detailed halakhic objections and argumentation in one place. The fragment of this discourse left in place in Lk 20.45-47 and Mk 12.37b-40 is likewise simply a warning about the scribes, not the scribes and Pharisees as in Mt, apparently wishing to focus on the scribes as the official teachers of the law, rather than those responsible for the content of that instruction, which would have been the Pharisees. In addition, Mt 23.37-39, the climactic conclusion of this chapter in Mt, is completely displaced to another context in Lk (13.34-35), again demonstrating a fondness for the arrangement of Jesus’ sayings into discrete gnomic utterances more in keeping with Gentile conceptions of proper rhetoric for a philosopher, rather than the halakhic argumentation of a Judean teacher of the law. But this passage in Mt is tied to its immediately preceding context by the words “prophet” and “blood”, in addition to being the climactic point of this chapter, a hair’s breadth away from explicitly prophesying Jesus’ soon forthcoming death. Such is completely out of place in Lk.

Regarding the very difficult Mt 23.2-3, Pickup says (p. 106):

Is is possible to understand Jesus to be saying that the people should follow the scribes and Pharisees’ teaching of the Scriptures, but just not their behavior or the halakha of their oral traditions? I believe that it is, since this is exactly what we have seen throughout our analysis of Matthew’s gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ objection to the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees was not that their teaching of Scripture per se was wrong, but that their application of it failed to adequately fulfill the principles of the Law. Their level of righteousness (i.e., righteous behavior) was what was inadequate (5:20), not what the people heard from them regarding what Scripture said. Jesus objected to the actions of the scribes and Pharisees. Angry epithets, lustful looks at women, bills of divorcement, vows made in vain, acts of personal vengeance, and unloving behavior all failed to measure up to the moral principles of Scripture that the scribes and Pharisees themselves taught. Thus, Matthew’s Jesus says in the present discourse, “…Do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (v. 3).

That is really the only sensible reading in context. Likewise, such a proclamation and such a diatribe would have sealed anyone’s fate: telling the people at large, through popularity with whom the Pharisees gained all their influence in wider affairs, to ignore the Pharisees’ halakhic program would’ve been perceived as a direct attack on their foundational support among the people, mentioned by all sources. And while the Pharisees are not depicted as involved in the arrest, trial, sentencing and execution of Jesus, this may be taken as their response to such confrontational speeches on the part of Jesus: they neither came to his defense nor did they attempt to ameliorate the sentence.

It also seems to me that this chapter Mt 23 would have been most shocking in its indictment of Pharisaic rulings for another reason. The objections are coming not through argumentation, as in Mt 15, but by fiat, from a man who speaks and acts with authority—heavenly authority some believed, but not all. This, I think, would have frightened not a few hearers, and rightly so. It is exactly this confrontation between the prophetic and the professional that is depicted, in various clarities, throughout the gospels.

19.) Mt 26.6-13 / Lk 7.36-50 / Mk 14.3-9 / Jn 12.1-8
In a rather rare case, this particular pericope, The Anointing by the Woman, is present in all four gospels in parallel forms, though there are differences. Mt and Mk are nearly identical, with John close to them, while Lk’s version is so different and so displaced (the other three gospels all place this even late in Jesus’ life, explicitly six days before the crucifixion in Jn, while Lk places it years earlier) as to perhaps indicate a separate incident. In any case, it is only in Lk’s version that there is mention of a Pharisee, Jesus’ host, named Simon. Interestingly, both Mt and Mk also have the host as Simon, but call him a leper (Mt 6.6; Mk 14.3) and place the event in Bethany. Jn places it in Bethany as well, (2.1-2) but in the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, who is the woman who anoints Jesus. The Pharisees Simon in Lk appears to be concerned with the ritual purity status of the woman who is touching Jesus (7.39). Though it is not explicitly stated, and Lk is not as careful with such details as is Mt, the concern of Simon appears to be transmission of uncleanness from the sinful woman to Jesus (perhaps exacerbated through the presence of the liquid medium of her tears and the ointment?). As mention of Pharisees and this theme of uncleanness is lacking in the other parallels, which thereby do appear to reflect a different situation being depicted, there is no further elaboration on the presence of the Pharisees in the parallels.

This concludes the set of parallel pericopes in which Pharisees are mentioned in at least one of the gospels. This was an intersting little project. After a bit more research, I’ll be presenting some information related to the above on how different passages in the gospels have been misread regarding the Pharisees. One thing, I think, is clear from the above: the Gospel according to Matthew preserves a more accurate record of first century proto-halakhic dispute than do either Luke or Mark, both of which show a clear tendency towards altering passages for the benefit of their Gentile audiences. The way that pericopes found in Matthew were edited, being shortened or rearranged or scattered in Luke and Mark, leads to the inescapable conclusion that Matthew was the earliest Gospel and Luke and Mark used it as a source. For an author like Matthew (for lack of any better name) with such sensitivity to the traditions of first century Judean halakhic dispute, there is no way that he would treat Mark and Luke (for it would require knowledge of both) as a kind of halakhic treasury (which they certainly aren’t) to pull random bits of phrases and arguments together and construct whole perfect examples of halakhic argumentation out of them, placing them in the mouth of Jesus. Rather it is more sensible to see the original whole arguments abbreviated by Luke and Mark as later alterations for later, different audiences with later, different interests.

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9.) Mt 15.1-20 / Lk 11.37-54 / Mk 7.1-23
In Mt the issue is ritual handwashing prior to a meal, something that concerned some Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem, and is undoubtedly related to the later-attested Rabbinic practice (see Mishnah tractate Yadayim, passim). This would have been a basic issue that apparently would presumably prevent table fellowship between Jesus and his disciples on one side, and the Pharisees and scribes on the other. Jesus’ argument is fascinating. Adducing a presumably Pharisaic and scribal halakhic example regarding vows to the Temple (“Qorban”) and positing a situation in which it would actually break commandments in the Torah rather than preserve them, he follows with a quotation from Isaiah 29.13, a prophetic condemnation of similar behavior. This is then followed by a stunning pronouncement which appears to be related to the Isaiah quotation: what comes from the heart defiles. In Lk the argumentation is completely gone, and the pericope is combined with a Lucan version of the some of the woes of Mt 23. Mk, however, follows Mt more closely, though still not presenting the argumentation in full. Indeed, it appears that in his concern for parenthetical explanation of Jewish customs for his Gentile readers (vv 3-4, 11) and application to their situation (particularly in the parenthesis in v 19: “Thus he declared all foods clean” — patently not the issue in Mt), Mk has taken the pericope in a different direction altogether, one foreign to the argumentation in Mt.

10.) Mt 16.1-4 / Lke 11.16, 29; 12.54-56 / Mk 8.11-13
As noted above in #8, Lk and Mk have harmonized Mt 12.38-42 and Mt 16.1-4, which is most apparent in Mk 8.11 and Lk 11.16 noting that the questioning was in order “to test him,” which is lacking in the parallel in Mt 12.38. Also to be noted is the weather observation saying in Lk 12.54-56, which originates in an appropriate fuller context in Mt 16.1-4.

11.) Mt 16.5-12 / Lk 12.1 / Mk 8.14-21
Lk excerpts only the very beginning of the Matthean pericope on the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, but identifies this leaven as the hypocrisy of the Pharisees alone, rather than the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees as in Mt. (The single excerpt is then followed by a Lucan version of Mt 10.26-33, interestingly implying persecution from the quarter of the Pharisees, though this would’ve been in actuality unlikely due to their position as influential intellectually, but lacking official power as a body themselves.) The version in Mk moves the focus, as elsewhere, to the miracles of the multiplication of loaves on two separate occasions, altogether neglecting to inform the reader what this leaven represents. An interesting change is that of “the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” in Mt 16.6 to “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” in Mk 8.15. It is perhaps this unusual alteration in Mk that led to omitting the identification of the leaven. What role would the Pharisees and Herod have in common? Certainly not teaching. Mk probably should be taken, however, to understand the leaven as “hypocrisy” with Lk 12.1, contra Mt 6.12.

12.) Mt 19.3-12 / Lk 16.18 / Mk 10.2-12
In both Mt and Mk, it is the Pharisees asking Jesus about divorce, but there is a crucial difference in the two accounts. Mt has the question posed “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (19.3). Mk has it “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” (10.2). Mt’s question will explain why Jesus’ ruling in 16.9 includes the proviso for adultery as the only legitimate reason for divorce. The unqualified question in Mk leads to an unqualified ban on divorce. Lk and Mk have no parallels to the concluding section of this pericope in Mt regarding not marrying as “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” vv 10-12. Such imagery could be construed as distasteful to a Gentile audience, if aversion to circumcision is any guide. Lk and Mk might then simply have avoided presenting this odd saying to their predominantly Gentile audiences.

13.) Mt 21.23-27 / Lk 20.1-8 / Mk 11.27-33
In Mt we find “the chief priests and the elders of the people” (21.23) questioning the source of Jesus’ authority, while in Lk it is “the chief priests and the scribes with the elders” (20.1) and in Mk it is “the chief priests and the scribes and the elders” (11.27). Again, Lk inserts scribes and Mk follows suit, connoting the group against Jesus to be composed of all the rulership of the nation as well as the instructors, while Mt leaves the latter out of this particular episode. Lk and Mt both foster the impression of widespread official opposition to Jesus from the beginning of his teaching, while Mt presents a picture over the course of the gospel of a deteriorating relationship between Jesus and the other parties: Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, et al.

14.) Mt 21.33-46 / Lk 20.9-19 / Mk 12.1-12
This is the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. The three versions are substantially parallel, though Lk omits the removal of the kingdom in Mt 21.43, and Mk omits both that and the following verse regarding being broken on the stone (Mt 21.44; Lk 20.18). The parties who recognize themselves depicted unflatteringly in the parable are “the chief priests and the Pharisees” in Mt 21.45, and “the scribes and the chief priests” in Lk 20.19. In Mk it is simply “they” (12.12), referring back to “the chief priests and the scribes and the elders” of 11.27.

(to be continued)

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6.) Matthew 12.9-14 / Luke 6.6-11 / Mark 3.1-6
Pickup on Mt 12.9-14:

Jesus’ words presume a knowledge of Pharisaic practice—specifically, that they would have granted an exception to the Sabbath restriction in the case of a trapped animal. Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of inconsistency in their application of the Torah. More than that, he sees is as an inconsistency that fails to give proper place to the humanitarian requirements of the Law” (p. 91).

Several differences are apparent in this set of parallel pericopes. First, in Mt it is Pharisees who ask Jesus the question on the legality of healing on the Sabbath, and Jesus answers with a question, using a classic qal va-homer (a fortiori) analogy to establish that saving an animal is permitted, thus so is healing a man. In Lk and Mk, however, Jesus asks a slightly different question, skips the halakhic analogy, and heals the man in a confrontational manner. Both Lk and Mk also present the Pharisees (and scribes in Lk) as already antagonistic, just looking for an excuse to accuse Jesus. On the other hand, in Mt there is no such narrative setup, and their (the Pharisees of 12.3) animosity comes only after he has healed the man, once he is perceived to have committed an offense. So again we see, in Lk’s and Mk’s reuse of the material, Mt’s halakhic argumentation stripped out and the pericope transformed into one focusing on how a good act can paradoxically offend some pre-antagonistic viewers (did they need any excuse?), not too surprisingly. The communication between Jesus and the Pharisees, him addressing them with their own manner of argumentation, according to their own form, is important to understand. His use of such forms of halakhic argumentation indicates that it was not restricted to the Pharisees, precursors to the Rabbis, alone, but was also, as we also know from some allusive examples at Qumran, a form of argumentation that was in general circulation among first century Judeans. Eliminating the level of understanding and rapport changes the depiction of the relationship from that of two parties speaking the same language in the same cultural and intellectual context (as the original situation patently was) to that of haughty superiority on one side and craven antagonism on the other. Matthew therefore presents a picture more in line with reality than either Luke or Mark.

7.) Matthew 12.24 / Mark 3.22
In this case we find Mt depicting the speakers as Pharisees, while Mk has “scribes…from Jerusalem” speaking. Pickup (pp 94-95) notes that the scribes are more often depicted in discussion with Jesus in Mk, while in Mt, the Pharisees predominate. Pickup says (p. 95), “Clearly, the author of Matthew believed that while not every Pharisee was a scribe, certain scribes in Mark’s gospel were in fact Pharisees and these Pharisaic scribes in Mark’s gospel were in fact Pharisees and these Pharisees tended to be the ones who objected to Jesus as a teacher of the Law.” Yet there is another way to view the evidence. With the Griesbach Hypothesis, we have Lk between Mt and Mk, and the evidence viewed in this order shows that Lk introduced the scribes into many of the pericopes, where they were either retained or not by Mk, with no apparent pattern. Lk perhaps differentiated the Pharisees in Mt simply for the reason of increasing the impression of organized opposition to Jesus from Judean leadership. The scribes, however, do not get off easy in Mt. Note the repeated refrain in Mt 23: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

8.) Matthew 12.38 (par 16.1-2a, 4) / Lk 11.16, 29-32 / Mk 8.11-12
Here in Mt, scribes and Pharisees seek a sign (at Mt 16.1 is is “the Pharisees and Sadducees”), while Lk has “some” and “others” in a crowd asking (11.14-16), and Mk has simply “the Pharisees” (8.11) arriving and promptly arguing. Note the change: a respectful request in Mt 12.38 (“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you”) is harmonized with Mt 16.1 (“And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven”) in first Lk and then Mk. In both, again, Jesus’ initial rapport with the Pharisees and scribes is obscured by this practice of Lk, sustained by Mk, in presenting the Pharisees and Judean leadership as irrationally hostile to Jesus from the beginning. Mt presents a picture of deteriorating relations, which is much more believable, likely, and thereby almost certainly earlier.

(to be continued)

As I mentioned a few days ago in the first post in this series, I’m looking at the Gospel parallels dealing with Pharisees noted in the Martin Pickup (“Matthew and Mark’s Pharisees”) and Amy-Jill Levine (“Luke’s Pharisees”) articles in the volume In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton, approaching them with the Griesbach Hypothesis in mind, which takes Matthew as the earliest written Gospel, then Luke which used Matthew, then Mark, which used both. By the end of this first installment of my notes, I think it’s safe to say that taking the Griesbach Hypothesis as a starting point doesn’t overturn any of the results presented by Pickup and Levine in their discussions. In some cases, though, it may shed some more light on proto-halakhic disputation current in the first century, and how writers for Gentile audiences, not understanding the importance of the details, would summarize these for their audiences more interested in and familiar with the gnomic sayings of a Philosopher than the halakhic disputations of a Rabbi. Yet the latter is certainly to be expected the earlier we go, and is found in Matthew in spades. Likewise the depiction of the Pharisees in Matthew is a nuanced one, sometimes depicting hostility on one or the other side, but one that also recognizes them as what might be called the “directing partner” in a relationship with the actual rulers and officials in charge of the national ethnic law, or Jewish religious law, halakhah as we might say today.

These notes are personal reflections, taken off the top of my head, directions for further thought and investigation, making no claim to anything more than being notes posted on a blog. I trust others will find some things in them of interest, however. We shall see. The best benefit is to be had in actually reading In Quest of the Historical Pharisees. References to Pickup or Levine with a page number in the notes below refer to the page numbers in that volume. So let us proceed.

1.) Matthew 5.1-7.29: First Discourse/Sermon on the Mount (Pickup 99-102)
In Mt 5.17-48 Jesus “juxtaposes his own teaching about the Torah with that of the scribes and Pharisees” (Pickup 99). Six examples are given by Jesus in which the instruction/practice of the scribes and Pharisees are deemed insufficient, which “result in an inadequate level of righteousness (v. 20)” (Pickup 101). A suggestion to explain the breaking up of this discourse into the scatterd and incomplete fragments as found in Luke and Mark is the likely need for too many parenthetical explanations (as in Mk 7.3 and 11 especially) for so much of the discourse for their audiences. Excerpting from it the more gnomic and Gentile-friendly bits, avoiding the actual disputations of nascent halakhah in Matthew, explains the results. As the discourse stands, particularly Mt 5.17-48, where the patterns of halakhic disputation are plainly recognizable, it is much easier to understand this to have been the original context of the scattered parallels in Luke and Mark (namely the Beatitudes in Mt 5.3-12 and Lk 6.20-23; Mt 5.13 = Mk 9.49, Lk 14.34-35; Mt 5.15 = Mk 4.21, Lk 8.16; Mt 5.17-18 = Lk 16.16-17; Mt 5.23-24 = Mk 11.25; Mt 5.25-26 = Lk 12.57-59; Mt 5.30 = Mk 9.43; Mt 5.32 = Lk 16.18; Mt 5.38-42 = Lk 6.29-30; Mt 5.43-48 = Lk 6.27-28, 32-36). Clearly these pithy Dominical sayings are stripped from a context in Matthew to which they are manifestly better fitted, where they are linked together by topic and vocabulary, and where they are organized as proto-halakhic disputations of a format recognizable in later Rabbinic writings.

2.) Matthew 9.1-8 / Luke 5.17-26 / Mark 2.1-2: Healing the Paralytic
Mt and Mk both indicate that “some of the scribes” found Jesus’ words blasphemous, while Lk notes it was “the scribes and the Pharisees” in keeping with Luke’s setting of the scene: “One day . . . Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting near by (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem)…” (Lk 5.17). Mt doesn’t mention a crowd initially, though one is implied by the scribes of 9.3; the crowd is only mentioned at the end of the pericope in Mt 9.8. Mk has “many were gathered together” (2.2) indicating a mixed crowd rather than one of exclusively scribes/law-teachers and Pharisees, as Lk may be read to imply. The delightful detail of letting the man on the pallet down through the roof (Mk 2.4, Lk 5.19) is some added color, though it appears to make their feat of lowering the man the indicator of their faith, rather than the mere fact of their having brought him. An explanation of the “blasphemy” is found in Lk 5.21 and Mk 2.7, which explanation was unnecessary in Mt, and presumably originally, as well: “Who can forgive sins but God?” The emphasis in Lk appears to be on Jesus’ extra-local fame and ability to draw interested parties, including particularly those responsible for religious education. Taking Mt as the earliest and Lk as next, we see emphasizing the crowd moved up front in Lk and an emphasis on that component of the crowd which had come from afar, law-teachers (later “scribes”) and Pharisees, which gives a certain great philosopher-like impression of Jesus. Likewise the “fear” of the crowd in Mt 9.8 is entirely striking but appropriate, the crowd having just witnessed what appeared to be a delegation of Divine power to a man. This is softened to amazement in Lk and Mk, with the delegation removed. Indeed, the point of the pericope in Mt is that of the delegation, but in Lk and Mr the healing is emphasized, and the important point of delegated forgiveness is not as strongly (if at all) pointed to. Lk in fact sets it up as a healing story at 5.17.

3.) Mt 9.9-13 / Lk 5.27-32 / Mk 2.14-17: The Calling of Matthew/Levi
In Mt only Pharisees ask the question, while in both Lk (“Pharisees and their scribes”) and Mk (the odd “scribes of the Pharisees”), scribes are involved. Seeing that in both Mk and Lk the scribes are somehow attached to the Pharisees, whether in being themselves Pharisees or so controlled by them that they are effectively Pharisees, we find corroboration of the image presented throughout the Gospels — the Pharisees were the “directing partners” of the scribes.

4.) Mt 9.14-17 / Lk 5.33-39 / Mk 2.18-22: On Fasting
Mt has the question asked by “the disciples of John” (9.14) Lk has a generic “they” (5.33), likely pointing back to the same “Pharisees and their scribes” in the previous pericope, but followed by their awkward reference to themselves in the third person! Mk likewise has unspecified “people” asking (2.18), though awkwardly introducing the pericope with the mention of the disciples of John and the Pharisees to be currently fasting (based on Mt’s present tense in 9.14?). However, if the Pharisees’ disciples (and presumably also the Pharisees themselves) were fasting, why were they at this banquet? Lk has the question become “fast and offer prayers.” Again, Mt has the better antecedent, with disciples of John simply asking “Why do we and the Pharisees fast…?” (9.14). As in #2 above, we see a softening of Mt’s original for the sake of diaspora Jews and Gentiles: fasting is not, as for Mt, equated with mourning (Mt 9.15), but in Lk becomes associated with prayer and thus is presented as a religious function of some sort (Lk 5.34). Lk also shows some expansion in the patch of new cloth being torn from a new garment (Lk 5.36), and in v. 39, the statement on old wine’s superiority, which rather defeats the purpose of the pericope, or at least distracts from its point on appropriate timing for fasting.

5.) Mt 12.1-8 / Lk 6.1-5 / Mk 2.23-28: Plucking Grain on a Sabbath
Both Lk and Mk importantly fail to note what excused the disciples’ “harvest” — “his disciples were hungry” (Mt 12.1). Only in Mt is there a coherent presentation of the disputation. The Hosea 6.6 quotation is not extraneous, but integral, explaining both the principle at play in the David incident first, and secondly the disciples’ situation. Secondly, the “priests in the temple” section (vv 5-6) is tied to the “priests” in v. 4, followed by a link with the word “temple” in vv 5 and 6. So we have the entire pericope bound together in a classic word chain: hungry-hungry, priests-priests, temple-temple, sabbath-sabbath, which sabbath likewise links back to verse 1. In both Lk and Mk, the gnomic “Son of man is lord of the sabbath” is rendered cryptic without the disputation from which it came, although Mk does include a rather generic summary of its intended point (2.27). The full context lies only in Mt. The Pharisees are depicted as objecting in all three Gospels. Pickup puts it well on this pericope:

The first argument makes the point that the Sabbath restriction cannot be understood to mean that every kind of work is prohibited on that day, for it was obvious that God did not intend the suspension of the priestly sacrificial duties on the Sabbath. The quotation (again) of Hosea 6:6 complements the prior argument, for if sacrifice is not forbidden on the Sabbath, and yet mercy (ελεος) is more important to God than sacrifice, then deeds of mercy on the Sabbath could not be forbidden. This type of qal v’homer argumentation fully comports with the thrust of Jesus’ halakhic argumentation in Mark. (Pickup 91)

I would say, of course, that Mark’s summary doesn’t do justice to the original argument as presented in Matthew, which itself comports fully with a proto-rabbinic environment of halakhic disputation, just what is expected in first century Galilee and Judea.

[to be continued]

I recently read and posted briefly on In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (Baylor Univ Press, 2007). It’s a pithy book, a thoroughly thought-provoking one that deserves revisiting in more depth. In a short series of posts I intend to revisit precisely those issues which, in my reading, struck my contemplation like a bell, leaving it ringing ever since.

The first interest is something I mentioned in my earlier post, investigating how following the Griesbach Hypothesis minority approach to the Synoptic Problem (mentioned in passing, as we’ll see below, by both Martin Pickup in his chapter “Matthew’s and Mark’s Pharisees” and by Amy-Jill Levine in her chapter “Luke’s Pharisees”) would lead to perhaps slightly different conclusions regarding attitudes discernible through differences between the Evangelists’ mention of the Pharisees and others. Pickup and Levine both, of course, utilized the majority approach to the Synoptic Problem in their investigations, what is most often referred to as the Two-Source Hypothesis.

For those readers unfamiliar with what is commonly called the Synoptic Problem, in a nutshell it refers to the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are quite similar in wording and order of pericopes, and the relationship in the origins of each one to the other. The Griesbach Hypothesis, also called the Two Gospel Hypothesis, posits that Matthew was written first, then Luke was written using Matthew, and then Mark written last using both Matthew and Luke. (This is the explanation to which I myself hold.) The Two-Source Hypothesis is more complicated. It posits that Mark was written first, and that there was a further written body of shared tradition available to both Matthew and Luke (labeled Q, from the German Quelle, source), that also available to Matthew and Luke were a set of traditions peculiar to themselves (referred to as M and L respectively when it is proposed that these sources were written documents and not just oral tradition), but that Matthew and Luke did not use one another’s Gospels. An excellent site which describes all the variations suggested as solutions to the Synoptic Problem is that of Stephen Carlson, who provides a system of didactically very helpful graphics showing the relationships between the Gospels in the various hypotheses, The Synoptic Problem Website.

So, the issue here in exegesis of any text represented in one of the Synoptic Gospels must be intimately related to the hypothesis preferred by the exegete to explain the relationships between the Gospels. In this way, a saying that is present in one Gospel in one form, and in another Gospel in a slightly different form, will be explained differently according to the relationship suggested by the preferred solution to the Synoptic Problem. When we posit Mark as the beginning, and then evaluate Matthew and Luke according to how they have “changed” what Mark said, one will suggest different alterations and motivations than what would be said in positing Matthew as the beginning, seeing how Luke adapted his writing, and how Mark made use of both in the end. So I thought it would be fun to apply this latter method, based on the Griesbach Two Gospel Hypothesis, and see how differently the data regarding the mention of Pharisees in the Synoptic Gospels will look. I’m thinking particularly that it might clear up a bit of what’s going on with the Pharisees in Luke, which Amy-Jill Levine showed was rather difficult to pin down in following the Two Source Hypothesis.

Following the series of posts describing this alternate investigation of the data relating to the Pharisees, I then intend to take a look at how the Gospels have been and are still regularly misread regarding the Pharisees. With the information found in the chapters of In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, it is not only possible, but imperative to correct those misreadings. We find, in taking account of this new picture of the Pharisees, that they are still criticized in the Gospels, but not in general for what has been attributed to them in the past, for a kind of rigid, loveless, legalistic religious hypocrisy that is familiar to every religious tradition. Rather, their problem lay elsewhere, I would suggest in a kind of cynical pragmatism tied to the maintenance of their popularity with and power over the populace.

In any case, stay tuned for the coming installments. I have to write them first!