Hello my friends!

I hope you are all having a wonderful last few weeks of February. I can't believe spring will be here soon.

As a pastor, one of the most common things I will hear fellow Christians call someone when they think they are a hypocrite is a “Pharisee.”

I have done this plenty of times in my own life as well. Yet, ever since my time in seminary and the more I spend time with scripture and converse with my Jewish friends, the more I am convinced that we Christians need to stop using the name “Pharisee” as being synonymous with “hypocrite.” So in this newsletter, I'd like to think with you about a few reasons why I have come to think this way.

But first, here are some resources that have me thinking this week.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER:

​-A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles by Matthew Thiessen.

New Testament scholar Matthew Thiessen was kind enough to send me his book. In it, he offers a contextually compelling picture, placing Paul clearly within first-century Judaism, not opposed to it. He argues for a more historically plausible reading of Paul. Paul did not reject Judaism or the Jewish law but believed he was living in the last days, when Israel's Messiah would deliver the nations from sin and death. Paul saw himself as an envoy to the nations, desiring to introduce them to the Messiah and his life-giving, life-transforming Spirit.

​-The BEMA Podcast​

If you are looking for a deeper dive into a better understanding of how ancient Israel would have understood the Hebrew Bible, and a deeper understanding of scripture as a whole, I'd encourage you to give the first few episodes of the BEMA project a try. I think you might find it illuminating.

Okay, onto today's content:

​
​Why We Christians Need To Stop Calling People “Pharisees.”

Pharisees were a sect of Judaism that became active around the middle of the second century. There were several other Jewish sects at that time as well, including the Sadducees, the Zealots, and the Essenes. Each sect had their own distinct identity, which were marked by theological, political, and social differences.

The entire Jewish community at that time was dealing with many internal conflicts due to all that was happening within the world around them. Not only were they dealing with the Roman occupation and the increase of Hellenistic influence in both culture and religion, but since their return to the promise land from Babylonian exile in 539 BCE, they were also wrestling with the question of authority. You see, they were only allowed to have priests as authorities among them and not a king, thanks to the occupying empire. Naturally, this brought about deep questions within the Jewish community over who was the rightful priestly authority and interpreter of God’s law.

This question of authority was paramount. With the Babylonian exile only several generations behind them, they believed one of the major reasons Israel went into exile was because Israel had broken God's law, so they wanted to ensure that they and their future generations wouldn't suffer the same fate. So how they interpreted God's law and carried it out became of utmost concern. This is why we get the sense in the New Testament of a hyper preoccupation with the letter of God's law.

This question of authority also manifested itself theologically and scripturally. The Pharisees held the Torah as well as the Psalms, the prophets, and the oral tradition as authoritative in their theology and religious practices. While the Sadducees only saw the Torah as authoritative. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and the Sadducees did not.

The word “Pharisee” is derived from the Greek word Pharisaios (Φαρισαῖος), which means “set apart.” This may have had something to do with their movement being set apart from Gentiles or less religious Jews, or even certain observances of ritual purity rites. It also may have had political connotations, akin to “separatists” to distinguish themselves from the elite Sadducees.

The Sadducees were among the wealthy ruling elites of society and were not very popular with the common people. The historian Josephus, who was also a Pharisee himself according to many historians, he indicates that the Pharisees received the backing of the common people and were eclectic, popular, and more democratic than their Sadducee opponents. He also recorded that Pharisees' influence over the common people was so great that anything they said against the king or the high priests was believed.

Given the Pharisees influence and good relationship with the common people, it makes sense as to why they would be the religious sect Jesus had the most conversations and debates with, because among the common people is where Jesus was always found as well.

After the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD, only the Pharisees and the Jesus movement remained as the dominate movements within greater Judaism. This is probably one of the main reasons as to why their presence and the tension between them and the disciples are so prominent within the New Testament. Both movements were wrestling over similar questions of authority and they often wrestled with each other.

So why do we use their name as being synonymous with “hypocrite?”

I think this has a lot to do with ignoring the broader context and bigger picture of who the Pharisees were in the time of Jesus. I also think it stems from only focusing on the negative encounters Jesus had with them in the gospels without taking into account the positive portrayals in the New Testament as well.

Instead of seeing them as a sect of Jews who were trying to understand their identity and remain faithful to God in such a complex and volatile world, we hear Jesus' criticism of them, not as a Jewish teacher debating with other Jewish teachers, but as enemies of one another. So we then use their name against our own enemies, which seems to contradict Jesus' own call to us to "love your enemies."

We also seem to neglect how Jesus praised the faithfulness of Pharisees and pointed to them as an example to aim for and even surpass: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:20).

We also seem to neglect that Jesus had Pharisees as disciples, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, both of whom even assisted in burying Jesus. We tend to overlook Gamaliel, the highly respected rabbi and defender of the apostles in Acts 5:38-39 who was also a Pharisee. Even the Apostle Paul, the most prolific writer of the New Testament, refers to himself as a Pharisee several times in his writings.

So when we use this term as a catch-all word for “hypocrite” we not only reduce an entire religious sect with a rich and complex history as if they were all “hypocrites,” but we also ignore the Pharisees' contribution to Christianity and its historic ties to modern day Judaism. When used as a derogatory way by us Christians, we can not only come off as ignorant of our own religious history but we can even come off as anti-Semitic towards our Jewish siblings by essentially condemning their forebears.

Were some Pharisees hypocrites? Most certainly, but can you name one religious group that doesn't have hypocrites?

Reducing an entire religious group to mean “hypocrite” because of a few hypocrites is just untruthful and slanderous. It would be akin to saying all Christians are political extremists or all Muslims are political extremists based on the actions of a few political extremists who happen to be part of those religious groups.

To get even more specific, using Pharisee as a synonym for hypocrite would be like calling someone the name of another Christian sect, like "Baptist" or a "Methodist" as if every person in that sect was a hypocrite.

At the heart of all this, what changed my whole perspective on Pharisees is when I saw them as people created in the image of the God I claimed to worship, which is how I strive to see all people. If I saw these people whom I didn't even know personally as my enemies, people who were written about centuries ago, all while ignoring any positive portrayal my sacred text told me about them, am I not just setting myself up to do the exact same thing to others around me here and now? Especially those who I believe oppose me? That's just not the kind of Christian I want to be.

I want to end with a parable from Jesus that I think is very relevant to this topic, called "The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector" from Luke 18:9-14.

It goes like this:

"To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Now, you want to know the irony of this parable is? So many of us Christians hear it today and immediately think, "thank God I'm not like that Pharisee," which is to do exactly what the parable is telling us not to do. We become "confident of our own righteousness" and look down on the Pharisee.

In light of all this, I just think it would be most helpful if we Christians found other ways to speak about religious hypocrisy. Perhaps just using the word “hypocrisy” would be the most fitting and accurate alternative. We also have ample examples to choose from in our own religion, all the way from the crusaders, to the inquisitions, to the Puritans, to the Ku Klux Klan, to Christian fundamentalism, to Christofacism. If we just take an honest look at Christianity, we are going to find examples of religious hypocrisy far more fitting than an any ancient religious sect in the second century.