Steve Mason
1
Pharisaic Dominance
STEVE MASON
Pharisaic Dominance Before 70 C.E. And the Gospels’ Hypocrisy Charge
I offer the following paper as a contribution to the discussion of two distinct but related
questions. First: Were the Pharisees the dominant party in Palestinan Judaism before the
destruction of the Temple? And second: Did Jesus of Nazareth engage in controversy with
them? My thesis is that both questions should be answered in the affirmative and, further, that it
was precisely the status of the Pharisees as the dominant
party that makes intelligible Jesus' charge of hypocrisy.
My procedure will be to consider: first, the problem of the sources; second, briefly, the
evidence of Josephus; and third, a crucial saying of Jesus (Mt. 23:2-3).
I. THE PROBLEM OF THE SOURCES
Most scholars, most of the time, have believed that the Pharisees exercised the prevailing
religious influence in pre-70 Palestine. Even in the classic confrontation between Abraham
Geiger and Julius Wellhausen, who flatly disagreed on the quality
and aims of Pharisaic religion, the degree of Pharisaic influence was not in dispute. Wellhausen
saw the Pharisees as "nothing but Jews in the superlative, the true Israel",1) and Geiger agreed
that they were "the kernel of the people".2)
Such descriptions, which abound in the secondary literature, are based on the fact that all
three of the pertinent source groups -- namely: the works of Josephus, the rabbinic writngs, and
the Gospels -- either explicitly state or strongly imply that the Pharisees had the allegiance of the
masses. Because of the unanimity of both Jewish and Christian sources on this point, such
diverse scholars as E. Schurer and A. Schlatter on the one hand, and H. Graetz, K. Kohler, and
G. Alon, on the other, never doubted the fact that, in L. Finkelstein's words, Pharisaism before 70
was "practically synonymous with Judaism".3)
Rudolph Meyer, then, was expressing the view of a small minority when he wrote for the
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament:
... we must insist that, apart from the few years of Salome Alexandra and a
more or less insignificant minority in the council between 67 B.C. and 70 A.D.
Pharisaism did not shape Palestinian Judaism at any time during this period.4)
Meyer's skepticism was based on two factors: first, a growing body of archeological and literary
evidence for a variety of religious groups in pre-70 Palestine, and second, the fact that all three
of our documentary source groups, although they do agree about Pharisaic predominance, were
only written around or after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Since it is clear that at least
some Pharisees came to play a decisive role in the reconstruction of Judaism after 70, one must
Steve Mason
2
Pharisaic Dominance
ask whether our post-70 sources have not all read this later situation back into their accounts of
pre-70 Judaism.
In the cases of the Gospels and the rabbinic literature, motives for blurring the distinction
between pre-70 and post-70 realities are not hard to find. The earliest rabbinic writings, which
appeared only in the third century, reflect the ways in which a post-Pharisaic Judaism responded
to the catastrophes of 70 and 135. And the sheer time lag separating the tannaitic literature from
pre-70 Judaism is enough to prevent any assumption of a direct link between the two. As for the
Gospels, the material they present has been manipulated to a large degree by both the Church's
general concerns and the particular vision of each evangelist. Many of the passages that purport
to show Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees bear the clear marks of the Church's own struggle
with Judaism and of its mission to the Gentiles. One must reckon with the possibility, therefore,
that the suggestions of Pharisaic hegemony in rabbinic literature and in the Gospels derive
wholly from the post-70 concerns of those documents.
But what about our third body of evidence, the works of Josephus? Josephus is the only one
of our authors whose personal acquaintance with Pharisaism before 70 is beyond doubt, so his
evidence is crucial. Writing soon after the destruction of the Temple, in the 70's to 90's of the
first century, he plainly states that the Pharisees "have the support of the populace" (plethos; Ant.
13:298) and that both ritual and social life operate according to their principles (18:15).
Moreover, he describes this as the situation that already obtained under the Hasmoneans John
Hyrcanus, Alexander Janneus, and Alexandra Salome, under Herod the Great, and at the
outbreak of the revolt in the mid-60's. According to Josephus, Pharisaic predominance has been
a longstanding fact of Jewish life.
But did Josephus, like the rabbis and the Gospel writers, have some discernible motive for
reading the Pharisees' post-70 influence back into his account of events before 70? Did he
consciously rewrite two hundred years of Jewish history so as to give the Pharisees of his
narrative a degree of influence that they had not enjoyed in fact? An increasingly popular
theory, launched by M. Smith and sponsored by J. Neusner, holds that he did.5)
Smith's 1956 essay drew on many kinds of evidence to demonstrate both the pervasive
hellenization and the sectarian plurality of first-century Palestinian Judaism.6) In view of the
well-attested variety of religious options among pre-70 Jews,
Smith asked how the notion that they had embraced a "normative", Pharisaic Judaism could ever
have gained credence. Much of the blame for this distortion he laid at the feet of Josephus,
because of that writer's frequent statements in Antiquities about
the Pharisees' great public influence (13:298,400ff.; 18:15,17).7)
If these statements are not simple reflections of fact, how are they to be explained? Smith
found the key in Ant. 13:400ff.8) This passage9) tells how a dying Hasmonean king Alexander
Janneus advised his wife Alexandra that, on her accession to the throne, she should yield some
power to the Pharisees. This group, Janneus had learned through experience, exercised enough
control over the masses that they could help their friends and injure their enemies (13:401f.).
Smith's point was that although the story of Queen Alexandra's succession and deference to the
Pharisees was already in the Jewish War (1:106-112), written some fifteen years earlier,10)
Steve Mason
3
Pharisaic Dominance
Antiquities' explicit reflections on Pharisaic power do not appear in that earlier account. He
found in Antiquities, therefore, a new argument on Josephus's part, to the effect that Palestine
cannot
be ruled without Pharisaic support.11)
To whom could such a plea have been addressed? Smith proposed:
It is almost impossible not to see in such a rewriting of history a bid to the Roman
government. That government must have been faced [after the fall of Jerusalem] with
the problem: Which group of Jews shall we support?.... To this question Josephus is
volunteering an answer: The Pharisees, he says again and again, have by far the greatest
influence with the people. Any government which secures their support is accepted; any
government which alienates them has trouble.12)
According to Smith, then, Antiquities' emphasis on Pharisaic predominance reflects only the
group's post-70 situation, which Josephus read back into earlier history. Aware of the rising
fortunes of the Pharisees in his homeland, Josephus wanted to ingratiate himself with these new
power-brokers by becoming their advocate in Rome; hence his "rewriting of history" to their
greater glory.13) In the Life, which he wrote as an appendix to the Pharisees, he even went so
far as to claim that he was himself a Pharisee -- all in the service of his new promotion campaign.
According to Smith, the truth about the Pharisees is more accurately reflected in the "school
passages" of War and Antiquities:14) they were only one among many philosophical schools that
flourished in Palestine before 70.15)
In a 1972 article, J. Neusner set out both to substantiate and to publicize Smith's hypothesis,
which had until then elicited meagre response.16) Like Smith, he believes that the image of the
Pharisees in Antiquities-Life has been "strikingly revised" in their favour.17) Josephus, he says,
now wants to tell the Romans "that the country cannot be ruled without [the Pharisees']
cooperation".18) Under Neusner's sponsorship, Smith's interpretation of Josephus on the
Pharisees has gained impressive support.
If Smith, Neusner, and their many supporters are correct about Josephus's motives in writing
Antiquities-Life, then our third body of evidence about Pharisaic influence before 70 is also
neutralized. In the following brief discussion, however, I propose to consider the four passages
in Antiquities-Life in which Josephus describes Pharisaic influence, in order to show that these
cannot plausibly be read as commendations of the
Pharisees to the Roman authorities.
II. JOSEPHUS ON THE POWER OF THE PHARISEES
The first passage is the famous story of the rift between the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus and
the Pharisees (13:288-298).
Now it is clear that Josephus regards Hyrcanus as something of a hero. In both War and
Antiquities he portrays the thirty-one year tenure of this high priest as the apogee of the
Steve Mason
4
Pharisaic Dominance
Hasmonean dynasty. He claims that God blessed Hyrcanus in unique ways, even granting him
the gift of prophecy, but that after this leader's death, the dynasty began its long downward
spiral. Josephus traces his own pedigree to Hasmonean roots and boasts
about the connection. It can hardly be coincidence that he names his oldest son after his hero.
What are we to make, then, of Josephus's introduction to the story at hand? He says:
As for Hyrcanus, his own success and that of his sons aroused jealousy among the Jews;
the Pharisees, who are one of the Jewish schools, as we have explained above, were
especially hostile toward him. Their power with the populace is such that, even when
they speak against a king and a high priest they are immediately credited!
In spite of the best efforts of the source critics, this introduction cannot be attributed to anyone
but Josephus himself because it is filled with his characteristic themes and vocabulary. But
careful analysis shows that Josephus's introduction is much more anti-Pharisaic than the story
itself warrants. The traditional story shows a certain Eleazar, who is not identified as a Pharisee,
demanding that Hyrcanus relinquish the high priesthood. All of the Pharisees, we are told,
express indignation at the man's outburst. Nevertheless, a conniving Sadducee manages to
convince Hyrcanus that the Pharisees
supported Eleazar's view, so the high priest forsakes the Pharisees in favour of the Sadducees.
That Josephus could take over such a story, which is favourable to both Hasmoneans and
Pharisees, and misrepresent it by supplying a sharply anti-Pharisaic introduction, indicates his
own hostility toward the group.
In the second passage, Ant. 13:400-432, Josephus describes the reign of Queen Alexandra
Salome, which he sees as the virtual end of the Hasmonean dynasty. And it is no coincidence, he
claims, that the Queen's catastrophic reign was closely tied to the Pharisees. The plot, in brief, is
this. Alexander Janneus, the Queen's husband, had run into massive opposition from the Jewish
people, apparently led by the Pharisees. In the end, he killed tens of thousands of his own people
in order to quell the popular rebellion. So he advises his wife, when he lays dying, to court the
Pharisees and to give them a large role in the government:
for they had the complete confidence of the masses when they spoke harshly of any
person, even when they did so out of envy (13:400).
Notice again Josephus's accusation that the Pharisees are motivated by envy and that they are
able to cause trouble for leaders. Alexandra's policy, however, unlike that of her
Hasmonean predecessors, will be one of submission rather than confrontation. She will conduct
an experiment in pragmatic politics. The reader's question is: Does the experiment work?
Josephus does not leave his interpretation of the matter in any doubt. He claims, first, that the
Pharisees were unprincipled power-mongers -- that once given the power they craved, they went
around the country proclaiming what a just king they had lost in Alexander Janneus. Second,
once in power, the Pharisees practically took over domestic affairs and began to slaughter their
aristocratic enemies "like cattle". The vividness of this portrayal of a Pharisaic terror is new in
Ant. as is the space devoted to the cause of the Pharisees' victims, who had always been loyal to
Steve Mason
5
Pharisaic Dominance
the Hasmonean house. Finally, Josephus closes the story with a lengthy personal reflection, in
which he openly denounces Alexandra for fraternizing with the Pharisees in order to sustain her
own power. He describes the Pharisees as those "who were hostile to her family" and claims that
the Hasmoneans ultimately lost their dynasteia because of her concessions to the Pharisees. The
reader can only infer that Alexandra's policy of cultivating the Pharisees was an unqualified
disaster. Although this passage is the cornerstone of the Smith-Neusner hypothesis, one is hard
pressed to see how the Romans would be induced to entrust any sort of power to the Pharisees
after reading it.
The third passage (17:41-45) describes the activities of the Pharisees during the reign of
Herod the Great. While describing the court intrigues that bedeviled Herod, especially the
conspiracy led by his sister-in-law and by his son Antipater, Josephus introduces the Pharisees:
There was also a segment of Jews that prided itself greatly on its extremely precise
observance of the ancestral heritage and pretended to observe laws with which the deity
was pleased. By them the female faction [clique] was directed. Called Pharisees, these
men were eminently capable of predictions for the king's benefit and yet, evidently, they
rose up to combat and injure him.
Once again, the anti-Pharisaic tone is clear and, once again, the passage cannot be attributed to
Josephus's sources or to any other writer. Josephus openly charges the Pharisees with abbetting
those who sought to destroy the king, with refusing an oath of loyalty, and even with
manufacturing false predictions for their patrons. Given that Herod was well remembered in
Rome, Josephus has chosen an extraordinary way of commending the Pharisees to the Romans.
The consistent thread in all of these stories is that the Pharisees are jealous of those in power and
cause trouble for them.
Josephus's final description of Pharisaic power comes in the Life (189-198), where he is
defending his short-lived career as Galilean general during the revolt against Rome. First, he
introduces the eminent Pharisee Simon ben Gamaliel, who was the leader of a movement to oust
Josephus from his command. This Simon, Josephus alleges, had no solid evidence against him
but nevertheless tried to remove him without so much as a fair hearing. When he did not
succeed at first, because the high priest was a fair man, Simon resorted to bribing the high priest
and other officials, so that they finally agreed to his request.
Josephus makes all of these accusations against Simon while at the same time conceding the
man's fame and high standing with the Pharisees.
To effect Josephus's removal, the Jerusalem authorities sent a four-man delegation to the
Galilee. Of the four men, three were Pharisees. And Josephus portrays this group, which was
sent to retrieve him dead or alive, as deceitful, slanderous, sacrilegious, and violent. One of the
Pharisaic envoys he describes as "depraved and mischievous".
So Josephus's consistent tendency in Antiquities-Life is, as Smith and Neusner correctly
observed, to acknowledge the Pharisees' influence with the masses. But this acknowledgement
cannot possibly be interpreted as an endorsement, since he raises the issue of Pharisaic influence
only in order to lament their great power.
Steve Mason
6
Pharisaic Dominance
Our conclusion about Josephus's motives as a writer also has implications for the historical
question of Pharisaic dominance in pre-70 Palestine. For the only reason ever suggested by
scholars as to why Josephus would have invented the notion of Pharisaic influence is that offered
by Smith and Neusner. But since it is now clear that Josephus had no intention of commending
the Pharisees to the Romans in Antiquities and that his purpose was not to ingratiate himself with
the post-war representatives of that party, one is hard pressed to see why he would have invented
the idea of Pharisaic influence. He has the consistent tendency, throughout War, Ant., and Life,
to describe the great fame and popularity of the Pharisees and then immediately to attack their
reputation with some story about their unscrupulous behaviour (War 1:110-114; Ant. 13:288298;
400-432; Ant. 17:41-45; Life 189-198). But this ongoing polemic against Pharisaic influence
would be unnecessary -- indeed, it would make no sense -- if the Pharisees had not in fact been
the predominant party in pre-70 Palestine.
Three further considerations should be noted. First, the popular influence of the Pharisees is
presupposed by Josephus's stories about John Hyrcanus and about Alexander Janneus; yet those
stories must have originated in pre-Josephan Jewish
tradition. They are not exclusively his creation. Second, Josephus's assumption of Pharisaic
prominence is so deeply embedded in his thinking that it comes through even in his most
incidental remarks about the group, whether in War, Ant., or Life, so it cannot be explained as a
superficial deceit intended for the readers of Ant. Third, several of his statements about
Pharisaic power have an internal logic that precludes a post-70 association. For example, when
he explains that the Pharisees' beliefs in fate and the afterlife endear them to the masses, whereas
the Essenes devote themselves to a monastic life and the Sadducees have a small aristocratic
following, it is difficult to explain these remarks in light of the post-70 reconstruction, when the
Essenes and Sadducees had virtually disappeared and Pharisaic leadership was a given.
One is driven to the conclusion, then, that Josephus's remarks about the Pharisees' power with
the masses derive from his first-hand acquaintance with conditions in Palestine before and during
the revolt and not from any elaborate ploy on his part. Even if the Pharisees were only 6,000
strong, as he suggests, they seem to have exercised the religious leadership among the people, as
most scholars have always believed. And if that historical conclusion is correct, then Josephus
has enabled us to refine our treatment of the other sources on the Pharisees.
III. THE GOSPELS' HYPOCRISY CHARGE
Consider an example from the Gospels, Jesus' remark in Matthew 23:2-3, which introduces
his famous tirade against the Pharisees. He is alleged to say there:
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses, so do and observe whatever they
might tell you; but do not emulate their actions, for they say but do not perform.
Steve Mason
7
Pharisaic Dominance
This statement explicitly affirms Pharisaic primacy in legal interpretation, while at the same time
levelling a classic charge of hypocrisy against the group: they only say but do not perform.
The authenticity of this saying, which only appears in Mt, has long been doubted. Many of
the criteria proffered for rejecting it, however, beg the question of Jesus' relationship to the
Pharisees. Ever since Bultmann's observations on the demonstrable tendencies of the synoptic
tradition (a) to identify Jesus' opponents as Pharisees when they were not so identified in the
sources, (b) to read its own controversies with Judaism back into Jesus' life, and (c) to transform
simple stories into conflict stories, there has been a growing inclination among scholars to
attribute all of the controversy stories and sayings to the Church. P. Winter expresses the end
result of this thinking when he denies that any of Jesus' conflicts with the Pharisees reported in
the Gospels can be traced to Jesus himself. Although Winter succeeds in demonstrating the
Christian manipulation of Mark's controversy stories, however, he fails to show how the
hypocrisy charge of Mt 23:2-3 could have emerged from the Church's conflicts or even served
the Church's purpose.
More specific objections to the authenticity of Mt 23:2-3 depend in part on whether one sees
the first Gospel as ultimately a Jewish-Christian work (Bacon, Davies, Stendahl, Cope, and now
Brooks) or as ultimately Gentile in outlook (Clark, Trilling,
Strecker). The saying, then, is either attributed to the Jewish-Christian author's own community
or to the Gentile redactor's Jewish-Christian sources. Either way, it is seldom traced back to
Jesus.
First, the saying often suffers from a certain "guilt by association" (Bultmann, Davies,
Hultgren, Neusner); for in much of the special material in Mt 23 it is clearly the risen Jesus who
is speaking. For example, in verses 8-10, it can only be a Christian prophet speaking for Jesus
who disallows the titles of "teacher" and "leader" for members of the community on the ground
that they have one teacher and leader, who is Christ. Only the risen Jesus could say to the Jews,
in verse 34, "I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill
and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town...." And
Jesus' notice about the desolation
of the Temple in verse 38 is rightly taken as an indicator of Matthew's post-70 perspective.
Since Jesus' opening statement in Mt 23 functions as an introduction to all of this late material,
its authenticity is often doubted by association. Verses 2-3, however, might come from any
number of sources, including Q, and must be examined on their internal merits.
Second, some critics assume that the late appearance of the saying -- only in the Matthean
redaction of the 80's or 90's -- militates against its authenticity (M. Albertz, M. J. Cook, P.
Winter). But this assumption rests on the persistent fallacy that authentic logia can be found
only in the earliest written strata of the tradition, a supposition rendered absurd by modern use of
the Gospel of Thomas.
The most serious objection to the authenticity of Mt 23:2-3, in my judgement, is W. D.
Davies' argument that, since the Pharisees only began to hold sway over Judaism after the
destruction of the Temple, Mt's assertion that the Pharisees "sit on Moses' seat" must be an
allusion to the rabbis of Yavneh (cf. also Cope, Hultgren, and Neusner). But if I have correctly
Steve Mason
8
Pharisaic Dominance
analyzed Josephus, this negative criterion is invalid, for the Pharisees already dominated pre-70
Judaism. The authenticity of the logion, is, therefore, an open question.
Are there positive criteria by which one might argue its authenticity? I offer the following
lines of evidence.
Most commentators agree that the saying stands in marked tension with the rest of Mt's
Gospel, for four reasons. First, Gaston, van Tilborg and others have shown that, in his editorial
work, Mt uses the label "Pharisee" unintelligently. He does not know who the Pharisees are, but
combines them, implausibly, with Sadducees, scribes, and chief priests, in order to present Jesus'
opponents as the undifferentiated leadership of Israel. But our logion makes a specific and
plausible claim about the Pharisees and therefore does not fit with Mt's indiscriminate practice.
Second, Mt's opposition to the Pharisees is notorious and has been the object of several recent
monographs. They appear as snakes, a brood of vipers destined for hell. But the logion in
question openly commends the Pharisees. This is a glaring inconsistency.
Third, the saying explicitly endorses Pharisaic teaching. But elsewhere in Mt it is precisely
"what the Pharisees say" that is objectionable. So, for example, Mt explains the "leaven", of
which the disciples should beware, as the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In Mt 15, he
takes over and develops Mk's characterization of Pharisaic tradition as contrary to the Law; he
dwells on Mark's charge that Pharisaic teaching nullifies the word of God and adds the claim that
the Pharisees are "plants which the Father has not planted", who will end up in the pit. He calls
the Pharisees blind guides. The "blind guide" description is clearly Matthean and also turns up
in Mt 23, where again the Pharisees' teaching is condemned. So how can our logion innocently
support the teaching of the Pharisees?
Finally, the logion declares that the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, but elsewhere in Mt's Gospel
that seat is most emphatically reserved -- for Jesus himself! As the new Moses, Jesus escapes the
slaughter of the innocents, is called out of Egypt by God, and brings a new Torah on the mount
of revelation. Hultgren remarks: "What is most characteristic about the conflict stories in Mt is
that they portray Jesus as interpreter of the Law for the Church." We have already seen that Mt
disallows his community any other teacher but Christ. Yet the speaker of our logion accepts the
Pharisees as legitimate teachers. These four observations seem to prevent the attribution of the
logion to Mt's editorial hand.
Remarkably, some recent commentators perceive the tension between Mt 23:2-3 and Mt's
general portrayal but still insist on its Matthean character and therefore use it to qualify Mt's
general opposition to Pharisaic teaching (Cope, Garland, Mohrlang, Brooks). We should rather
conclude, with Strecker and Trilling, that the inner logic of the logion reveals it to be both preMatthean and contrary to his own viewpoint.
To explain why Mt adopted the logion, one need not assume, with Strecker, Trilling, and
Hummel, that he fully recognized its alien character but nevertheless adopted it for some tactical
reason -- for example, to show that it was not the Church who took the first step in breaking with
the synagogue. Rather, the point of the saying, as Westerholm notes, lies in its second half; the
Steve Mason
9
Pharisaic Dominance
recognition of Pharisaic authority is quite incidental to the forthright charge of Pharisaic
hypocrisy. And that accusation was probably sufficient cause for Mt to adopt the saying as an
appropriate introduction to Mt 23, which is devoted to decrying Pharisaic hypocrisy. That Mt
was not always sensitive to the inner logic of his various pericopae is well known -- recall, for
example, his story about Jesus simultaneously riding two donkeys into Jerusalem, in supposed
fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9.
If the saying is pre-Matthean, however, one faces the further difficulty of positing a setting for
it in the conflicts between the Church, even a Jewish Church, and the synagogue; for in those
conflicts too it was precisely what was said -- by both sides -- that fuelled the controversy. But
the accusation of Pharisaic hypocrisy -- as distinct from ideological disputes about Torah,
Messiah, and responsibility for Jesus' death – is an intramural accusation, which finds close
parallels in Josephus, the rabbis, and perhaps the Dead Sea Scrolls. The speaker, therefore,
stands wholly within Judaism and does not reveal any of the anti-Pharisaic sneering that
characterizes Mark, John, and Matthew himself.
Inasmuch as the logion endorses the Pharisees' authority on the ground that they represent
Moses, it also reflects the speaker's implicit acceptance of Moses' authority. But the naivete of
this submission to Moses is difficult to locate in Christianity after Paul. Although an insistence
on Torah observance is arguably part of Matthew's redactional agenda (G. Barth) -- for he
derides those Christians who "relax the least of these commandments" -- Mt's studied polemic on
this point lacks the artless acceptance of Moses implied in this saying.
On the other hand, a setting in Jesus' life seems plausible. It is widely agreed that Jesus must
have advocated Torah piety, for his disciples would eventually relax covenant obligations and
endorse a Torah-free mission to the Gentiles only after strong initial opposition and intense
debate. Moreover, a logion about the inviolability of the Law turns up in Luke 16:17, where it is
most unwelcome, and also in a Q passage Jesus demands careful attention to tithing. A minimal
conclusion would seem to be that we have in Mt 23:2-3 a logion stemming either from the
earliest period of Palestinian Jewish Christianity or from Jesus himself. I submit, however, that it
is difficult to credit such a blanket affirmation of Pharisaic exegesis to any Christian, no matter
how "Jewish", so that Jesus is the likely speaker. He and John the Baptist were the only eligible
non-Christians whose sayings survived in the Christian tradition.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
To summarize: notwithstanding legitimate scholarly suspicion about the motives of our
sources on the Pharisees, the evidence of Josephus seems to require that this group did exercise
the dominant religious influence in pre-70 Palestinian Judaism. And this conclusion removes the
chief historical objection to the authenticity of Mt 23:2-3, in which Jesus both endorses the
Pharisaic system and yet accuses the Pharisees in general of hypocrisy. Since the later Church
tended to construe Pharisaic and Jewish hypocrisy in quite a different sense -- namely, as arising
from some inherent deficiency in the system itself -- one can hardly attribute the saying to
anyone other Jesus.
Steve Mason
10
Pharisaic Dominance
In conclusion, I should like to venture the suggestion that the mere fact of Pharisaic
dominance before 70 may be the key to understanding Jesus' hypocrisy charge. For it is an
observable phenomenon that leaders and policy-makers invariably attract the charge of hypocrisy
from disaffected groups. Since the accusation results from a perceived dissonance between one's
avowed principles and one's actions, only those who advocate principles -- politicians and
preachers -- make themselves eligible for the label of hypocrite. Witness the frequency of this
charge on the lips of opposition members in Western parliaments. The charge itself, of course,
says nothing about the policy in question; if anything, it implies an indirect affirmation of the
policy.
Unless Jesus was wholly free of ressentiment, it is antecedently probable that he, as a firstcentury Palestinian Jew, joined others in denouncing the apparent hypocrisy of the policymakers, without thereby questioning the legitimacy of their role as scriptural exegetes. This
authentic hypocrisy charge was naturally misconstrued by groups within the Church, in view of
their more substantive conflicts with Judaism, and was reborn as an outright rejection of
Pharisaic teaching.
Steve Mason
11
Pharisaic Dominance
1. Wellhausen, 17.
2. Geiger, Geschichte, 93.
3. Finkelstein, Pharisees, I. 3, 80.
4. Meyer, Farisai~ow, TDNT, 31.
5. M. Smith, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century", in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. M.
Davis (New York: JTSA/Harper & Brothers, 1956), esp. 74ff., and Neusner, "Josephus's
Pharisees", in Ex Orbe Religionum: Studia Geo Widengren (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 224-253.
The hypothesis has attracted impressive support from, for example: S.J.D. Cohen, Josephus in
Galilee and Rome: his Vita and his Development as a Historian (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979), 273ff.;
J. Blenkinsopp, "Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus", JJS 25 (1974), 256 n.80; and R.A. Wild,
"The Encounter Between Pharisaic and Christian Judaism: Some Early Gospel Evidence", NovT
27 (1985), 110f. L.I. Levine, "On the Political Involvement of the Pharisees under Herod and the
Procurators", Cathedra 8 (1978), 12-28 [Hebrew], has attempted to publicize the theory for a
Hebrew-speaking audience but also to qualify it, by showing that some individual Pharisees had
great political power before and during the revolt. The editors of the new Sch rer -- G. Vermes,
F. Millar, and M. Black, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh:
T.&T. Clark, 1979), II, 389 n.20 -- claim to agree with Smith but cite him in support of the view
that he rejects, viz., that the Pharisees "represented not a sectarian viewpoint but the main
outlook of Judaism", 389 (cf. 402).
6. Smith, 71-73. He adduces evidence for various baptist sects, including the Essenes, and for
the activity of many magicians.
7. Smith, 74ff.
8. Smith, 76.
9. Josephus dates Antiquities at 20:267, where he defines "the present day" as the thirteenth
year of Domitian's reign and the fifty-sixth year of his own life. Since Josephus was born in the
year of Caligula's accession, both of these data put the Antiquities at AD 93/94.
10. The terminus a quo is the dedication of the Temple of Peace in AD 75 (Dio Cassius 66:15),
mentioned in War 7:158. The terminus ad quem is the death of Vespasian in 79 (cf. Life 359361).
11. Smith, 76.
12. Ibid.
13. Rasp had also viewed Antiquities' portrayal of Pharisaicpower as a peace offering to
Josephus's erstwhile compatriots. Unlike Smith, however, Rasp thought that the Pharisees really
Steve Mason
12
Pharisaic Dominance
had been powerful before 70 but that Josephus had obscured this fact in War. Nor did Rasp think
that the Romans were in a quandary about whom they should endorse as leaders in Palestine.
14. I.e., War 2:119-166: Ant. 13:171-173; 18:11-25.
15. Smith, 79f. He goes on to adduce parallels between the Pharisees and the Greek
philosophical schools.
16. "Josephus's Pharisees", 224f.
17. Ibid., 238.
18. Ibid.