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pharisees Summary and Overview

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pharisees in Easton's Bible Dictionary

separatists (Heb. persahin, from parash, "to separate"). They were probably the successors of the Assideans (i.e., the "pious"), a party that originated in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes in revolt against his heathenizing policy. The first mention of them is in a description by Josephus of the three sects or schools into which the Jews were divided (B.C. 145). The other two sects were the Essenes and the Sadducees. In the time of our Lord they were the popular party (John 7:48). They were extremely accurate and minute in all matters appertaining to the law of Moses (Matt. 9:14; 23:15; Luke 11:39; 18:12). Paul, when brought before the council of Jerusalem, professed himself a Pharisee (Acts 23:6-8; 26:4, 5). There was much that was sound in their creed, yet their system of religion was a form and nothing more. Theirs was a very lax morality (Matt. 5:20; 15:4, 8; 23:3, 14, 23, 25; John 8:7). On the first notice of them in the New Testament (Matt. 3:7), they are ranked by our Lord with the Sadducees as a "generation of vipers." They were noted for their self-righteousness and their pride (Matt. 9:11; Luke 7:39; 18:11, 12). They were frequently rebuked by our Lord (Matt. 12:39; 16:1-4). From the very beginning of his ministry the Pharisees showed themselves bitter and persistent enemies of our Lord. They could not bear his doctrines, and they sought by every means to destroy his influence among the people.

pharisees in Smith's Bible Dictionary

a religious party or school among the Jews at the time of Christ, so called from perishin, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew word perushim, "separated." The chief sects among the Jews were the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes, who may be described respectively as the Formalists, the Freethinkers and the Puritans. A knowledge of the opinions and practices of the Pharisees at the time of Christ is of great importance for entering deeply into the genius of the Christian religion. A cursory perusal of the Gospels is sufficient to show that Christ's teaching was in some respects thoroughly antagonistic to theirs. He denounced them in the bitterest language; see #Mt 15:7,8; 23:5,13,14,15,23; Mr 7:6; Lu 11:42-44| and compare #Mr 7:1-5; 11:29; 12:19,20; Lu 6:28,37-42| To understand the Pharisees is by contrast an aid toward understanding the spirit of uncorrupted Christianity. 1. The fundamental principle all of the of the Pharisees, common to them with all orthodox modern Jews, is that by the side of the written law regarded as a summary of the principles and general laws of the Hebrew people there was on oral law to complete and to explain the written law, given to Moses on Mount Sinai and transmitted by him by word of mouth. The first portion of the Talmud, called the Mishna or "second law," contains this oral law. It is a digest of the Jewish traditions and a compendium of the whole ritual law, and it came at length to be esteemed far above the sacred text. 2. While it was the aim of Jesus to call men to the law of God itself as the supreme guide of life, the Pharisees, upon the Pretence of maintaining it intact, multiplied minute precepts and distinctions to such an extent that the whole life of the Israelite was hemmed in and burdened on every side by instructions so numerous and trifling that the law was almost if not wholly lost sight of. These "traditions" as they were called, had long been gradually accumulating. Of the trifling character of these regulations innumerable instances are to be found in the Mishna. Such were their washings before they could eat bread, and the special minuteness with which the forms of this washing were prescribed; their bathing when they returned from the market; their washing of cups, pots, brazen vessels, etc.; their fastings twice in the week, #Lu 18:12| were their tithing; #Mt 23:23| and such, finally, were those minute and vexatious extensions of the law of the Sabbath, which must have converted God's gracious ordinance of the Sabbath's rest into a burden and a pain. #Mt 12:1-13; Mr 3:1-6; Lu 18:10-17| 3. It was a leading aim of the Redeemer to teach men that true piety consisted not in forms, but in substance, not in outward observances, but in an inward spirit. The whole system of Pharisaic piety led to exactly opposite conclusions. The lowliness of piety was, according to the teaching of Jesus, an inseparable concomitant of its reality; but the Pharisees sought mainly to attract the attention and to excite the admiration of men. #Mt 6:2,6,16; 23:5,6; Lu 14:7| Indeed the whole spirit of their religion was summed up not in confession of sin and in humility, but in a proud self righteousness at variance with any true conception of man's relation to either God or his fellow creatures. 4. With all their pretences to piety they were in reality avaricious, sensual and dissolute. #Mt 23:25; Joh 13:7| They looked with contempt upon every nation but their own. #Lu 10:29| Finally, instead of endeavoring to fulfill the great end of the dispensation whose truths they professed to teach, and thus bringing men to the Hope of Israel, they devoted their energies to making converts to their own narrow views, who with all the zeal of proselytes were more exclusive and more bitterly opposed to the truth than they were themselves. #Mt 22:15| 5. The Pharisees at an early day secured the popular favor and thereby acquired considerable political influence. This influence was greatly increased by the extension of the Pharisees over the whole land and the majority which they obtained in the Sanhedrin. Their number reached more than six thousand under the Herods. Many of them must have suffered death for political agitation. In the time of Christ they were divided doctrinally into several schools, among which those of Hillel and Shammai were most noted. --McClintock and Strong. 6. One of the fundamental doctrines of the Pharisees was a belief in a future state. They appear to have believed in a resurrection of the dead, very much in the same sense: as the early Christians. They also believed in "a divine Providence acting side by side with the free will of man." --Schaff. 7. It is proper to add that it would be a great mistake to suppose that the Pharisees were wealthy and luxurious much more that they had degenerated into the vices which were imputed to some of the Roman popes and cardinals during the two hundred years preceding the Reformation. Josephus compared the Pharisees to the sect of the Stoics. He says that they lived frugally, in no respect giving in to luxury. We are not to suppose that there were not many individuals among them who were upright and pure, for there were such men as Nicodemus, Gamaliel, Joseph of Arimathea and Paul.

pharisees in Schaff's Bible Dictionary

THE PHARISEES (from a Hebrew word meaning separated), formed one of the most conspicuous and powerful sects or parties among the Jews in the time of our Lord. The name does not occur before the N.T. period, and the origin of the sect is somewhat obscure. It is probable, however, that the Pharisees were simply a continuation or development of the Assideans ("the pious") in the time of the Maccabees. 1 Mace. 2:42; 7:13; 2 Mace. 14:6. Under the foreign rule, and more especially under the Syrian government, which left no means unemployed - even resorting to violence - in order to effect an amalgamation of the different nationalities under its sway, it was natural that there should rise among the Jews a party which opposed this influence and labored to preserve the national integrity. The Pharisees were this party, and much of their influence with the people was no doubt due to their political position. On the accession of Herod, 6000 Pharisees refused to take the oath of allegiance, but were "put down with a strong hand;" and, again, it was the Pharisees who originated and organized that desperate resistance to the Romans which finally led to the dispersion of the whole nation. In a constitution, however, like that of the Hebrew theocracy, a political party must always be a religious sect at the same time, and with the Pharisees their political position was a simple consequence of their religious standpoint. As they were national in politics, they were orthodox in religion; and in opposition to the two other sects, the Sadducees and the Essenes, they stood among the people as the true expounders of the Law. In the time of our Lord, however, their orthodoxy had degenerated into mere formalism. The principal points of difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees were the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and a future reward or punishment; the doctrine of a divine Providence acting side by side with the free will of man; and the doctrine of an oral tradition descending from Moses and involving the same authority as the written Law, - all of which doctrines the Pharisees accepted, while the Sadducees rejected them. It was, however, more especially the last-mentioned doctrine which gave the Pharisees their peculiar character, and which caused our Lord to denounce them so often and so severely. Teaching that God had given to Moses, on Mount Sinai, an oral explanation with respect to the proper application of the written Law, and commanded him to transmit this explanation by word of mouth, the Pharisees ended by placing the oral explanation above the written commandment, the tradition above the Law. Entangled in the minute and subtle application of the Law, they missed its spirit; and though to the very last there were found noble characters among them, such as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, Gamaliel, and others, self-conceit, arrogance, and hypocrisy became the general characteristics of the sect. They were exceedingly particular in refraining from anything which had not been duly tithed, but they forgot to pay that tithe which is most necessary of all, and which consists in meekness and mercy. Matt 23:23; Luke 18:12. They were exceedingly particular in avoiding anything which the Law declared unclean, but they forgot to acquire that cleanness which is the most important of all, and which consists in the purity of the heart. Matt 16:11. And while they themselves degenerated into empty formalists, they troubled the conscience of the people by the absurd importance they ascribed to the most futile questions, such as what material the wick of the Sabbath-lamp was to be made of, whether or not it was permitted to eat an egg laid on a Sabbath-day, etc. Hence we understand how they could at the same time be the true bearers of Judaism in politics and in religion, and yet be punished by our Lord by the severest denunciations.

pharisees in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

From perishin Aramaic, perashim, "separated." To which Paul alludes, Romans 1:1; Galatians 1:15, "separated unto the gospel of God"; once "separated" unto legal self righteousness. In contrast to "mingling" with Grecian and other heathen customs, which Antiochus Epiphanes partially effected, breaking down the barrier of God's law which separated Israel from pagandom, however refined. The Pharisees were successors of the Assideans or Chasidim, i.e. godly men "voluntarily devoted unto the law." On the return from Babylon the Jews became more exclusive than ever. In Antiochus' time this narrowness became intensified in opposition to the rationalistic compromises of many. The Sadducees succeeded to the latter, the Pharisees to the former (1 Maccabees 1:13-15; 1 Maccabees 1:41-49; 1 Maccabees 1:62-63; 1 Maccabees 2:42; 1 Maccabees 7:13-17; 2 Maccabees 14:6-38). They "resolved fully not to eat any unclean thing, choosing rather to die that they might not be defiled: and profame the holy covenant." in opposition to the Hellenizing faction. So the beginning of the Pharisees was patriotism and faithfulness to the covenant. Jesus, the meek and loving One, so wholly free from harsh judgments, denounces with unusual severity their hypocrisy as a class. (Matthew 15:7-8; Matthew 23:5; Matthew 23:13-33), their ostentatious phylacteries and hems, their real love of preeminence; their pretended long prayers, while covetously defrauding the widow. They by their "traditions" made God's word of none effect; opposed bitterly the Lord Jesus, compassed His death, provoking Him to some "hasty words" (apostomatizein) which they might catch at and accuse Him; and hired Judas to betray Him; "strained out gnats, while swallowing camels" (image from filtrating wine); painfully punctilious about legal trifles and casuistries, while reckless of truth, righteousness, and the fear of God; cleansing the exterior man while full of iniquity within, like "whited sepulchres" (Mark 7:6-13; Luke 11:42-44; Luke 11:53-54; Luke 16:14-15); lading men with grievous burdens, while themselves not touching them with one of their fingers. (See CORBAN.) Paul's remembrance of his former bondage as a rigid Pharisee produced that reaction in his mind, upon his embracing the gospel, that led to his uncompromising maintenance, under the Spirit of God, of Christian liberty and justification by faith only, in opposition to the yoke of ceremonialism and the righteousness which is of the law (Galatians 4; 5). The Mishna or "second law," the first portion of the Talmud, is a digest of Jewish traditions and ritual, put in writing by rabbi Jehudah the Holy in the second century. The Gemara is a "supplement," or commentary on it; it is twofold, that of Jerusalem not later than the first half of the fourth century, and that of Babylon A.D. 500. The Mishna has six divisions (on seeds, feasts, women's marriage, etc., decreases and compacts, holy things, clean and unclean), and an introduction on blessings. Hillel and Shammai were leaders of two schools of the Pharisees, differing on slight points; the Mishna refers to both (living before Christ) and to Hillel's grandson, Paul's' teacher, Gamaliel. An undesigned coincidence confirming genuineness is the fact that throughout the Gospels hostility to Christianity shows itself mainly from the Pharisees; but throughout Acts from the Sadducees. Doubtless because after Christ's resurrection the resurrection of the dead was a leading doctrine of Christians, which it was not before (Mark 9:10; Acts 1:22; Acts 2:32; Acts 4:10; Acts 5:31; Acts 10:40). The Pharisees therefore regarded Christians in this as their allies against the Sadducees, and so the less opposed Christianity (John 11:57; John 18:3; Acts 4:1; Acts 5:17; Acts 23:6-9). The Mishna lays down the fundamental principle of the Pharisees. "Moses received the oral law from Sinai, and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and these to the prophets, and these to the men of the great synagogue" (Pirke Aboth ("The Sayings of the [Jewish] Fathers"), 1). The absence of directions for prayer, and of mention of a future life, in the Pentateuch probably gave a pretext for the figment of a traditional oral law. The great synagogue said, "make a fence for the law," i.e. carry the prohibitions beyond the written law to protect men from temptations to sin; so Exodus 23:19 was by oral law made further to mean that no flesh was to be mixed with milk for food. The oral law defined the time before which in the evening a Jew must repeat the Shema, i.e. "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord," etc. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9.) So it defines the kind of wick and oil to be used for lighting the lamps which every Jew must burn on the Sabbath eve. An egg laid on a festival may be eaten according to the school of Shammai, but not according to that of Hillel; for Jehovah says in Exodus 16:5, "on the sixth day they shall prepare that which, they bring in," therefore one must not prepare for the Sabbath on a feast day nor for a feast day on the Sabbath. An egg laid on a feast following the Sabbath was "prepared" the day before, and so involves a breach of the Sabbath (!); and though all feasts do not immediately follow the Sabbath yet "as a fence to the law" an egg laid on any feast must not be eaten. Contrast Micah 6:8. A member of the society of Pharisees was called chaber; those not members were called "the people of the land"; compare John 7:49, "this people who knoweth not the law are cursed"; also the Pharisee standing and praying with himself, self righteous and despising the publican (Luke 18:9-14). Isaiah (Isaiah 65:5) foretells their characteristic formalism, pride of sanctimony, and hypocritical exclusiveness (Judges 1:18). Their scrupulous tithing (Matthew 23:23; Luke 18:12) was based on the Mishna, "he who undertakes to be trustworthy (a pharisaic phrase) tithes whatever he eats, sells, buys, and does not eat and drink with the people of the land." The produce (tithes) reserved for the Levites and priests was "holy," and for anyone. else to eat it was deadly sin. So the Pharisee took all pains to know that his purchases had been duly tithed, and therefore shrank from "eating with" (Matthew 9:11) those whose food might not be so. The treatise Cholin in the Mishna lays down a regulation as to "clean and unclean" (Leviticus 20:25; Leviticus 22:4-7; Numbers 19:20) which severs the Jews socially from other peoples; "anything slaughtered by a pagan is unfit to be eaten, like the carcass of an animal that died of itself, and pollutes him who carries it." An orthodox Jew still may not eat meat of any animal unless killed by a Jewish butcher; the latter searches for a blemish, and attaches to the approved a leaden seal stamped kashar, "lawful." (Disraeli, Genius. of Judaism.) The Mishna abounds in precepts illustrating Colossians 2:21, "touch not, taste not, handle not" (contrast Matthew 15:11). Also it (6:480) has a separate treatise on washing of hands (Yadayim). Translated Mark 7:8, "except they wash their hands with the fist" (pugmee); the Mishna ordaining to pour water over the dosed hands raised so that it should flow down to the elbows, and then over the arms so as to flow over the fingers. Jesus, to confute the notion of its having moral value, did not wash before eating (Luke 11:37-40). Josephus (Ant. 18:1, section 3, 13:10, section 5) says the Pharisees lived frugally, like the Stoics, and hence had so much weight with the multitude that if they said aught against the king or the high-priest it was immediately believed, whereas the Sadducees could gain only the rich. The defect in the Pharisees which Christ stigmatized by the parable of the two debtors was not immorality but want of love, from unconsciousness of forgiveness or of the need of it. Christ recognizes Simon's superiority to the woman in the relative amounts of sin needing forgiveness, but shows both were on a level in inability to cancel their sin as a debt. Had he realized this, he would not have thought Jesus no prophet for suffering her to touch Him with her kisses of adoring love for His forgiveness of her, realized by her (Luke 7:36-50; Luke 15:2). Tradition set aside moral duties, as a child's to his parents by" Corban"; a debtor's to his creditors by the Mishna treatise, Avodah Zarah (1:1) which forbade payment to a pagan three days before any pagan festival; a man's duty of humanity to his fellow man by the Avodah Zarah (2:1) which forbids a Hebrew midwife assisting a pagan mother in childbirth (contrast Leviticus 19:18; Luke 10:27-29). Juvenal (14:102-104) alleges a Jew would not show the road or a spring to a traveler of a different creed. Josephus (B.J. 2:8, section 14; 3:8, section 5; Ant. 18:1, section 3) says: "the Pharisees say that the soul of good men only passes over into another body, while the soul of bad men is chastised by eternal punishment." Compare Matthew 14:2; John 9:2, "who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" compare John 9:34, "thou wast altogether born in sins." The rabbis believed in the pre-existence of souls. The Jews' question merely took for granted that some sin had caused the blindness, without defining whose sin, "this man" or (as that is out of the question) "his parents." Paul: regarded the Pharisees as holding our view of the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:6-8). The phrase "the world to come" (Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; compare Isaiah 65:17-22; Isaiah 26:19) often occurs in the Mishna (Avoth, 2:7; 4:16): this world may be likened to a courtyard in comparison of the world to come, therefore prepare thyself in the antechamber that thou mayest enter into the dining room"; "those born are doomed to die, the dead to live, and the quick to be judged," etc. (3:16) But the actions to be so judged were in reference to the ceremonial points as much as the moral duties. The Essenes apparently recognized Providence as overruling everything (Matthew 6:25-34; Matthew 10:29-30). The Sadducees, the wealthy aristocrats, originally in political and practical dealings with the Syrians relied more on worldly prudence, the Pharisees more insisted on considerations of legal righteousness, leaving events to God. The Pharisees were notorious for proselytizing zeal (Matthew 23:15), and seem to have been the first who regularly organized missions for conversions (compare Josephus, Ant. 20:2, section 3): The synagogues in the various cities of the world, as well as of Judaea, were thus by the proselytizing spirit of the Pharisees imbued with a thirst for inquiry, and were prepared for the gospel ministered by the apostles, and especially Paul, a Hebrew in race, a Pharisee by training, a Greek in language, and a Roman citizen in birth and privilege. In many respects their doctrine was right, so that Christ desires conformity to their precepts as from "Moses' seat," but not to their practice (Matthew 23:2-3). But while pressing the letter of the law they ignored the spirit (Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 5:27; Matthew 5:38; Matthew 5:31-32). Among even the Pharisees some accepted the truth, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and John 12:42 and Acts 15:5.