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The Pharisees became a recognizable group on the landscape of Jewish culture in the second century BC, making their presence felt throughout the New Testament era. The Pharisees were a highly identifiable group during the time of Jesus given their distinguished leaders, distinctive habits of living, and regular meeting. A person became a Pharisee not by family heritage as did the clergy of Israel or by being born into a wealthy, aristocratic family like the Sadducees but by pledging to lead a pure life that conformed to the many rules of the
group. Pharisees attended regular meetings during which they were provided additional opportunities to learn as well as to encourage and police the all-important lifestyle choices required of their members. Leadership and education were provided by the scribes (or teachers of the law), who were considered the best Scripture scholars of the day. In addition to attending the meeting, the Pharisees took the lead in the community as rabbis or authorized teachers in the synagogues.
A general rule that assured that orthodoxy would be maintained was that only those whom the scribes had authorized to teach were perceived as worthy interpreters of Scripture.
Three components of the theology of the Pharisees are important to understand in observing their interaction with Jesus and their influence on other New Testament writings. (1) Their source to theology was not limited to the writing Scriptures but was also based on the traditional interpretation and extensions of the written Scriptures that were passed down orally by authorized teachers within Judaism. (2) Moral uprightness received prominence in their teaching, given their goal to create a righteous community that might properly receive the coming Messiah. In particular, we see this in their careful monitoring of behavior on the Sabbath. (3) The Pharisees paid particular attention to the topic of the spirit world and life after death, identifying the roles of angels and demons, championing the immortality of the soul, and advocating for the bodily resurrection.
Clearly there were those among the Pharisees who came to know Jesus as their Savior, including prominent figures like Nicodemus and Saul (John 3:1; Acts 23:6). But in almost all other instances, we meet the Pharisees as people who found Jesus’s lifestyle and teachings to be problematic. At base they saw Jesus functioning as an authorized teacher without having the approval of one of their authorized teachers (Matt 21:23; Mark 1:21-22; 2:6-10). The Pharisees also saw Jesus’s free association and welcoming demeanor with public sinners to be at cross-purpose with their group’s agenda of lifting the morality of the Israelites (Matt 9:11; Luke 7:36-39; 15:1-2). END OF PART 1
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