The Pharisees

By Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine

A multidisciplinary appraisal of the Pharisees: who they were, what they taught, and how they’ve been understood and depicted throughout history

For centuries, Pharisees have been well known but little understood—due at least in part to their outsized role in the Christian imagination arising from select negative stereotypes based in part on the Gospels. Yet historians see Pharisees as respected teachers and forward-thinking innovators who helped make the Jewish tradition more adaptable to changing circumstances and more egalitarian in practice. Seeking to bridge this gap, the contributors to this volume provide a multidisciplinary appraisal of who the Pharisees actually were, what they believed and taught, and how they have been depicted throughout history. 

The topics explored within this authoritative resource include:

• the origins of the Pharisees
• the meaning of the name “Pharisee”
• Pharisaic leniency, relative to the temple priesthood, in judicial matters
• Pharisaic concerns for the Jewish laity
• Pharisaic purity practices and why they became popular
• the varying depictions of Pharisaic practices and beliefs in the New Testament
• Jesus’s relationship to the Pharisees
• the apostle Paul and his situation within the Pharisaic tradition
• the question of continuity between the Pharisaic tradition and Rabbinic Judaism
• the reception history of the Pharisees, including among the rabbis, the church fathers, Rashi, Maimonides, Luther, and Calvin
• the failures of past scholarship to deal justly with the Pharisees
• the representations, both positive and negative, of the Pharisees in art, film, passion plays, and Christian educational resources
• how Christian leaders can and should address the Pharisees in sermons and in Bible studies

Following the exploration of these and other topics by a team of internationally renowned scholars, this volume concludes with an address by Pope Francis on correcting the negative stereotypes of Pharisees that have led to antisemitic prejudices and finding resources that “will positively contribute to the relationship between Jews and Christians, in view of an ever more profound and fraternal dialogue.”

Contributors: 

Luca Angelelli, Harold W. Attridge, Vasile Babota, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Philip A. Cunningham, Deborah Forger, Paula Fredriksen, Yair Furstenburg, Massimo Grilli, Susannah Heschel, Angela La Delfa, Amy-Jill Levine, Hermut Löhr, Steve Mason, Eric M. Meyers, Craig E. Morrison, Vered Noam, Henry Pattarumadathil, Adele Reinhartz, Jens Schröter, Joseph Sievers, Matthias Skeb, Abraham Skorka, Günter Stemberger, Christian Stückl, Adela Yarbro Collins, and Randall Zachman.

Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award for Best Book on the New Testament (2023)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781467462822

Book preview

Prelude

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

1

INTERPRETING THE NAME PHARISEE

Craig E. Morrison

Juliet, musing on the balcony about her Romeo, asks, What’s in a name? With Shakespearean pithiness, she utters a concern that has occupied philosophers and now linguists for centuries. What is the relationship between a name and the object or person it identifies? Juliet wonders how the name Montague, had she known it before their two pilgrim hands did touch, would have prejudiced their holy palmers’ kiss.¹ So too the name Pharisee has taken on certain prejudices before we meet them in the gospels, and what’s in their name—its etymology—has sometimes served that prejudice.

In the United States, there have recently been a number of political difficulties regarding what is called Blackface. As a Canadian, I knew what Blackface was, but I was mostly unaware of how deeply offensive it is to African Americans, including the descendants of those escaped slaves who came from the United States to the region of Niagara Falls where I grew up. Among these escapees arriving in Canada was Josiah Henson, upon whose life Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is based. As a child, I remember seeing white performers in Blackface on American TV programs. I now recognize, through education and in particular by listening to the voices of African Americans, that this Blackface was a disgraceful caricature of an entire people, designed to ridicule the Other. Some white performers, or students, who dressed in Blackface may not have intended to be offensive or to ridicule African or African American people. They were unaware of the import of their actions. Others knew and did not care.

This same kind of caricature happens to the Pharisees in biblical scholarship and perhaps most often in preaching; just like white people performing in Blackface, sometimes Christians are unaware of the caricature that they sketch for this Jewish group. Even more pernicious, some scholarly linguistic commentary can be adduced regarding the etymology of the name Pharisee that lends a scent of objective analysis to this caricature.

This article reviews the question of the meaning of the name Pharisee, presents some of the etymologies that appear in the lexicons and other literature, and then traces the current trajectory of the field with suggestions for the future.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF A NAME

The question Shakespeare set in poetry about the meaning of a name was by Wittgenstein set in prose: it is inaccurate to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name.² So, is the etymology of the name Pharisee a heuristically useful question for discovering the group’s origins and identity in antiquity? Or is it just another example of the etymological fallacy—as Philip Durkin of the Oxford English Dictionary notes, the very word etymology, from etumon, true, demonstrates the fallacy. Today the use of etymology to arrive at the meaning of a word runs counter to the modern stress on the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign.³ Why then in many Bible dictionaries is the name Pharisee often followed by a remark about its meaning based upon its etymology, and why then is that etymological meaning applied to the historical Pharisees to explain their behavior in the gospels?

John Lyons describes onomastics, or the study of names, as the etymology of institutionalized names of persons and places in various languages.⁴ The modern discussion often begins with John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic. Mill demonstrates that a proper name has no meaning: a name has denotation (referential status) but not connotation (lexical meaning).⁵ Words that become names retain their history, inasmuch as it can be known, but their original lexical meaning is normally lost: Thus, Stella is the girl next door and not the Latin name for a star, when she is referred to.⁶

Lyons treats names as a unique lexical feature of language: The relation which holds between a proper name and its bearer is very different from the relation which holds between a common noun and its denotata.⁷ Names have two primary functions in language, referential and vocative, as in the name Stella. As to whether names have a sense, Lyons writes: What is probably the most widely accepted philosophical view nowadays is that they may have reference, but not sense, and that they cannot be used predicatively purely as names.⁸ Thus, Mrs. and Mr. Baker may know nothing about cooking; their last name is purely referential and does not predicate anything about their cooking skills. John Searle, with whom Lyons is in dialogue, is more decisive: A proper name predicates nothing and consequently does not have a sense.⁹ Lyons gives the example, He is no Cicero, a predicative expression. The name itself remains without a sense, that is, without a meaning, as in the names Stella or Mr. Baker. One wonders then why there has been so much focus on the etymological meaning of the name Pharisee.

A name like Cicero, however, can develop a descriptive backing when certain characteristics are linked to it.¹⁰ In the same way, the name Pharisee has taken on a descriptive backing as illustrated by the title of Larry Osborne’s 2012 book, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith.¹¹ While the book is addressed to Christians, the chapter titles—Pride, Exclusivity, Legalism, Idolizing the Past, and The Quest for Uniformity—illustrate well the descriptive backing of the name Pharisee in much Christian imagination. On the first page Osborne mentions the ancient Pharisees, thus conflating the image of the Pharisees he presents in his book with the historical Pharisees. Moving beyond this descriptive backing will take a great deal of effort.

After a lengthy review of the question of the meaning of proper names, Lyons concludes: Enough has been said perhaps to show that the questions whether names belong to a language or not and whether they have a meaning or not do not admit of a simple and universally valid answer.¹² These insights entered biblical studies through James Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language and Biblical Words for Time.¹³ In unraveling specious arguments for the meaning of a word, Barr refers to the dubious etymological swamp.¹⁴ He concludes: The neglect of the semantics of actual usage, and its replacement by theoretical argument, by logicistic grammar, or by etymologizing, is a sure sign of linguistic irresponsibility in this type of discussion.¹⁵ Barr gives the example of English nice, which derives from Latin nescius meaning ignorant. But this etymology is no guide at all to the sense of this common word.¹⁶ At times, the etymologizing of the name Pharisee to arrive at the historical Pharisees has illustrated the linguistic irresponsibility that Barr laments.

THE LEXICONS

Often the first place scholars go for the meaning of the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or Latin word Pharisee is a lexicon. Today, few scholars would consult Nathan ben Yehiel’s Sefer Aruk (ca. 1100), though his first synonym for parush is parud, to separate, and then he links parush to the word prisha. In 1523, Sanctes Pagninus wrote the Enchiridion expositionis vocabulorum Haruch, which was the first Hebrew/Aramaic dictionary to appear in print. For the qal verbal form he knows most of the meanings that appear in our modern dictionaries, including separare, manifestare, and explanare. Aegidius Gutbier’s Lexicon Syriacum (1667) lists the glosses separavit, distinxit, definivit, and he glosses the noun prisha with the name Pharisee.¹⁷

Jacob Levy first published his Chaldäisches Wörterbuch in 1867. His dictionaries were criticized by some of his contemporaries as being linguistically unsound. They questioned especially Levy’s etymological explanations.¹⁸ In his 1924 edition, the lexical forms from the root prš run five pages. Basic glosses for the Hebrew qal stem are "absondern, trennen, sich absondern, sich entfernen," and in the piel stem he glosses with "erklären and deutlich machen." For the Aramaic root Levy adds the glosses for the peal stem "scheiden" and for the pael stem, "erklären, unterscheiden." He has an entry for the passive participle parush that he glosses "abgesondert, sich fernhaltend. Importantly, Levy gives a separate gloss for Pharisee, after which he offers a comment based upon the etymology: a sect of those separated, to follow a strict observance of the Mosaic Law, separated from the licentious [zügellosen] and inferior people [niedrigen Menschen]."¹⁹

Marcus Jastrow published his A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature between 1886 and 1903. He put the title Pharisee under the Hebrew entry parush. He has three groups of glosses: (1) seceder; (2) discreet, abstemious, saintly, pure; and (3) Pharisee. He adds a comment on "Parush; Pharisee: a strict observer of the Mosaic Law and the Rabbinical regulations."²⁰ While it is unfortunate that he does not list Pharisee as a separate entry for a name, it is helpful that his comment is not based upon a supposed etymological meaning, but upon his understanding of how the name Pharisee is used in the literature, and he provides examples of its usage. Perhaps he was aware of the criticism Levy’s etymological arguments received.

For many Christian readers of Aramaic, the first contact with the lexeme prisha, Pharisee, is Robert Payne Smith’s monumental work, Thesaurus Syriacus. The entry for the root prš runs eleven large pages.²¹ Payne Smith locates the name Pharisee under the passive participle of prš that he glosses separatus, segregatus, singularis, extraordinarius, specialis, distinctus. He continues with a separate entry for prisha, still under the passive participle. Thus, he viewed the word as a name, though he separated it from the general meanings of the passive participle. Like Levy, whose dictionary he may have consulted, he offers a comment after his gloss that is in part derived from etymology: Pharisee, following a holy life and austere ways, separated from others.²² The much shorter English edition by his daughter, Jessie Payne Smith, makes significant improvements. The name Pharisee (prisha) is no longer glossed among the verbal forms of the passive participle. It receives a separate entry with two glosses: Pharisee and noble. She catalogues it as a name without reference to the etymology or its morphology.²³

Carl Brockelmann published the first edition of his Lexicon Syriacum in 1895. In his 1928 edition he gives a separate entry for the term pryšyʾ, for which he offers a single gloss Pharisees, without an etymological derivation. His approach is confirmed under the word prisha where he suggests several glosses:²⁴

1. diversus (different, distinct)

2. nobilis (well known, renowned)

3. praestans (excellent, superior)

4. manifeste , perspicue (evident, clear)

5. Pharisaeus (Pharisee)

Brockelmann does not appeal to an etymological meaning for the name Pharisee.

The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker Lexicon glosses Pharisees with the separated ones, separatists and cites A. I. Baumgarten’s article (discussed below) but also notes that the etymology could mean specifiers and then adds, the party of accurate and specific observance of the law.²⁵ Though this entry still appeals to an etymology, it provides more than one etymology so that readers learn of the debate. The Latin Dictionary by Lewis and Short glosses Phărĭsaeus as the Latin of Greek Pharisaios, and reads a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish sect of that name.²⁶

ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND BIBLE DICTIONARIES

The 1902 Encyclopaedia Biblica, a Christian work, reads: The meaning of the name Pharisee is perfectly clear.²⁷ This remark can be compared with the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica (1971–1982): The meaning of the word ‘Pharisee’ is uncertain.²⁸ In general Jewish scholars tend to underscore the uncertainty and complexity of the etymological meaning of the name Pharisee, whereas Christian scholars tend to be more certain of its etymological meaning and its application to the historical Pharisees. The Dictionnaire de la Bible (1865) provides an etymological meaning: the name Pharisee "derives from parash, to distinguish, to separate, to explain and to some it means interpreters, explainers (of the law).²⁹ Then Bost, the author of this entry, rejects the notion of explainers (without presenting any evidence) and argues that the explainers were the scribes not the Pharisees. He goes on to explain separated: But when God’s work has grown, human pride and hypocrisy exploit it too often, dishonor it or replace it, and those who were in the origin of pious men, appear later in history as Pharisees, putting all their efforts to be distinguished from others."³⁰ Bost’s interpretation of the historical Pharisees derives from his understanding of the etymology of the name.

The 1952 Harper’s Bible Dictionary provides the etymology of Pharisee at the threshold of the entry: "from Heb. pārūsh ‘separated,’ but it expands neither on the significance of this etymology nor on how the meaning separated" might explain the historical Pharisees.³¹ Such comments in a widely used volume such as a Bible dictionary leave the reader to imagine how the supposed etymological meaning, separated, should be applied to the Pharisees when they appear in the literature.

Matthew Black’s entry Pharisees in the 1962 Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible does not appeal immediately to etymology. He begins with an assessment of how Pharisees appear as characters in the literature: An influential party among the Jews during intertestamental and NT times.³² Only after a description of the historical sources does he come to the etymology, so that an etymological meaning is not at the threshold of the entry and thus it is not the first, and perhaps only, statement a person reads. Black insists, "The derivation of the name Pharisee is obscure. A common form of explanation derives the word from Hebrew parash (Aramaic perash), meaning ‘ "one who is separate [parush, perish], but separate from what (or whom) is not clear.’ ³³ He suggests three possible groups: (1) separated from the priestly interpreters of the law; (2) separated from the partisans of Judas Maccabeus in 163 BCE; or (3) separated from the unclean, the people of the land" (ʿam haʾarets). Black informs his readers, No single theory can be said to hold the field to the exclusion of any other.³⁴

Black’s entry significantly muddies the water. No longer should Christian readers assume that a particular etymology can apply to the Pharisees. Black is followed by Anthony Saldarini in the 1992 entry in Anchor Bible Dictionary,³⁵ although the same Saldarini in the 1996 Harper Collins Bible Dictionary is more certain: It may mean ‘separate ones’ in Hebrew, referring to their observance of ritual purity and tithing, or, less likely, ‘the interpreters,’ referring to their unique interpretations of biblical law.³⁶ Saldarini does not make explicit on what basis he prefers separate ones over interpreters. Eckhard J. Schnabel, in The New Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary (2009), does not acknowledge the difficulty with ascertaining the meaning of Pharisee. Instead, he presents the two common suggestions: the separated ones and the explainers. He considers the former sense to be the more plausible one,³⁷ without explanation. Like his predecessors, Schnabel underscores that it cannot be determined from whom or what the Pharisees were separated, but his entry is not an improvement on Black’s more cautious presentation of the question. The Lexham Bible Dictionary by B. T. Johnson, an electronic Logos product, appeals to the common etymology: "The origin of the term ‘Pharisee’ comes from the Aramaic word פרשׁ (prš), which means ‘to separate,’ ‘divide,’ or ‘distinguish.’ "³⁸ Short dictionary entries can mislead their readers with a less than complete understanding of the complexity of this term.

The 2016 Dictionary Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum informs its readers that Pharisee can mean separated (absondern) but it can also mean to pronounce clearly (deutlich aussprechen), and it notes that the choice depends on how one sees the Pharisees: outsiders labeled them separatists while insiders called them interpreters.³⁹ The dictionary offers a lengthy discussion, and the entry does not put an etymological meaning at its threshold.

Thus, the lexicons, encyclopedias, and dictionaries are tending to move away from etymological meanings to providing the simple gloss Pharisee for pryšʾ without comment. In some lexicons, the entry for Pharisee is no longer placed among the glosses for the passive participle of the root prš but as a separate entry for this name with a single gloss, Pharisee, without comment. There has been a gradual shift from certainty about the meaning of Pharisee to less certainty, although Matthew Black’s careful insights in 1962 have not received the attention they deserve. There are still entries that risk the etymological fallacy or swim in Barr’s dubious etymological swamp.

THE SCHOLARLY DISCUSSION

Heinrich Graetz, in his 1891 Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, interprets the Pharisee to mean Bibelerklärer.⁴⁰ Then in his revised English edition, he writes, "The Pharisees received that name from the fact of their explaining the Scriptures in a particular manner, and deriving new laws from this new interpretation.⁴¹ He is followed by Rudolf Leszynsky: It does not mean only to explain, but to explain exactly, but the explanation, not the fulfillment of the law, remains primary."⁴²

Ramsden Balmforth expands on the etymology of Pharisee as separatist: They separated themselves from ordinary folk into brotherhoods—Pharisee means Separatist—and they refused to dine anywhere save at the houses of the brotherhood.⁴³ He is followed by R. T. Herford: The Pherushim as a class marked the actual line of separation, and that is clearly what their name implies.⁴⁴ He goes on to explain that the name can be taken in two ways: And this will explain why the name Pharisee, pharūsh, is used in a two-fold sense, either as denoting those who held a particular theory of the interpretation of Torah, or as denoting those who practised certain forms of abstinence in regard to food and the like.⁴⁵ Herford knows the possible meaning explainers, but he limits his etymology to the idea of separated in these two ways: interpretation of Torah and abstinence.

Leo Baeck was elected to the presidency of the council created to represent the Jewish community of Germany in 1933. After Kristallnacht, Baeck remained in Germany despite many invitations to emigrate.⁴⁶ In January 1943, he was deported to Theresienstadt, but he survived. The first line of his 1934 Die Pharisäer states: The word ‘Pharisee’ is, since ancient times, well known and often referred to but little understood.⁴⁷ He notes that the etymology can mean separated or isolated, but the meaning separated is just the beginning of the problem; thus, he anticipated Matthew Black’s comments by over thirty years. Baeck defines the name Pharisee as saintliness: die Heiligkeit der Exklusivität. This is the proper meaning in its historical context: "If the quality referred to by the word Perushim is thus used to denote the quality of ‘holiness,’ it falls into a definite historical context.⁴⁸ Baeck’s idea is derived from Leviticus 20:26: You shall be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy. I have separated⁴⁹ you from the nations to be mine." Following Leviticus Rabbah, Baeck understands that just as God is holy (parush, separated) so his people should be equally holy (parushin, separated):

The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: "Go and say to Israel: My children! As I am separate (parush) so be you separate (parushin); as I am holy, so be you holy."⁵⁰

Baeck links the notion of separation to saintliness and to community: It will possibly become clear if we assume that within Palestine, the domain of saintliness, Jerusalem was considered a narrower, more circumscribed domain of ‘saintliness’ or ‘separation,’ and that the ‘community’ of Jerusalem was accordingly considered the ‘holy community’ in this narrower sense. This is in accord with the meaning of the term ‘the saints’ as used in the New Testament.⁵¹

Baeck gives the term Pharisee a refreshing descriptive backing that has gone relatively unheard among scholars, as most Christians would probably not refer to our saints as remarkable Pharisees, given the current descriptive backing of the term Pharisee in the Christian mind. But this is how Baeck understands the term. His book is critically important for anyone, scholar or preacher, who mentions the Pharisees.

Louis Finkelstein argues that the name Pharisee developed for certain members of the synagogue who, because they were focused on purity, earned the name Separatists. Then, perhaps responding to how the meaning of the word separatist could be interpreted, he notes: This was not intended in any derogatory sense; it implied merely separation from impurity and defilement.⁵² In 1939, Wendell S. Reilly, in an article titled Our Lord and The Pharisees, wrote, The name Pharisee, given them by outsiders, means ‘separated.’ The Pharisees stood for the maintenance of complete separation of the Jews from the rest of the world, by an intense adhesion to the Jewish religion, laws, and customs.⁵³ On the basis of this etymology he writes: Their aloofness from all that was not Jewish developed into a hatred of other peoples.⁵⁴ Reilly collapses Pharisee with Jew and then uses the etymology of the name to describe the Pharisees as hating others.

Ellis Rivkin, in Defining the Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources (1969), questioned the etymological approach: The definition [of Pharisee], having been secured via the word, is then freely used to determine its meaning in other texts. Is such a procedure legitimate?⁵⁵ After a detailed study of the Tannaitic texts he offers the following description: The Pharisees were a scholar class dedicated to the supremacy of the twofold Law, the Written and the Unwritten.⁵⁶ This description is derived from the use of the word Pharisees in Tannaitic texts and does not reference etymology. In Jacob Neusner’s magisterial 1971 work, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, I could not find a comment on the etymology of the name.⁵⁷ This is a move forward.

In a 1983 article titled The Name of the Pharisees, A. I. Baumgarten offers three glosses based upon the etymology of the name: ‘to state,’ or ‘decide explicitly,’ or ‘to specify.’ Later, he notes, the word took on the meaning to interpret and that pyrwš means interpretation or commentary.⁵⁸ He goes on to show that prš in the qal can mean to specify in biblical and rabbinic Hebrew. He suggests the title perushim, which he glosses those who specify, was the original meaning of the name, although he adds that the meaning separated is also possible.⁵⁹ Perhaps Baumgarten’s most important contribution is his remark that the original meaning of the name of the group may remain beyond our knowledge.⁶⁰

In 1989 David Goodblatt wrote an extensive article on the Pharisees and never refers to the etymology of the name.⁶¹ In his 1995 article The Jewish Context of the New Testament, George W. E. Nickelsburg describes the Pharisees with no reference to the etymology.⁶² Similarly, in 2007 Jack Lightstone reviews the three most often cited passages in the Mishnah and Tosefta Tractate Yadayim on the Pharisees with no reference to etymology.⁶³ Thus, the trajectory of the research is from a certainty about the etymological meaning and its application, to uncertainty about its meaning, to ignoring the etymological approach altogether.

BIBLICAL COMMENTARIES

The interpretation of the term Pharisee in biblical commentaries can be broadly categorized under four headings:

1. Commentaries that present a full discussion of the etymological meaning of Pharisee, note the uncertainty of its meaning, and suggest possible glosses.

2. Commentaries that offer a short remark on its etymological meaning, usually separated.

3. Commentaries that presume the etymological meaning separated and interpret the New Testament Pharisees on this basis.

4. Commentaries that make no comment on the etymology of the name.

The following are representative examples.

Taylor, in his 1966 commentary on Mark, offering a thorough investigation of the meaning of Pharisee, states, the derivation of the name is obscure, and suggests several interpretations.⁶⁴ Ulrich Luz acknowledges that writing something about the Pharisees today is quite difficult, because the state of the discussion is extraordinarily controversial. The problems begin already with the name…. However, we know for certain neither what this term [Pharisee] means nor whether the Pharisees used it to refer to themselves.⁶⁵ In the 2017 Jewish Annotated New Testament, the footnotes and other excursuses offer no comment on the etymology of the name Pharisees. The reader is referred to the fuller discussion in two essays in the second part of the volume. In the first of these essays, Daniel R. Schwartz opts for the etymological meaning to specify,⁶⁶ and the second, by Lawrence Schiffman, prefers the etymology separatists.⁶⁷ These two articles introduce the reader to the current debate.

François Bovon offers a short remark on the Pharisees: The commentaries readily point out the etymology (though uncertain) of the word ‘Pharisee,’ which means ‘one who sets oneself apart,’ ‘one who separates,’ ‘one who removes oneself.’ ⁶⁸ Though he acknowledges the uncertainty, his etymological remarks do not reflect the wide range of etymological meanings, and the possible meaning explainer is ignored. James D. G. Dunn writes that separated ones is the Pharisees’ defining characteristic.⁶⁹ John Kilgallen, in his Twenty Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, writes, ‘Pharisee’ means one who is ‘separate’; fundamentally, what the Pharisee is separate from is sin, or disobedience to the Law of Moses and its authoritative subsequent traditions.⁷⁰ Thus, he answers the question (separated from what or whom?) that Matthew Black rightly left open. Joseph Fitzmyer considers that "The Greek name Pharisaioi is probably a transcription of Aramaic Pĕrīšāyê, ‘separated ones,’ undoubtedly used of them by others who differed with them. It may have expressed a certain aloofness and avoidance of dealings with other Jews less observant of the Torah.⁷¹ These interpretations can collapse a less-than-certain etymology of the word Pharisee into the historical Pharisees in the gospels. Fitzmyer’s interpretation of separated as aloof fails to acknowledge the uncertainty of the etymology. Leon Morris, in his commentary on Matthew, writes: The Pharisees were a religious party who delighted to derive their name from a word meaning ‘separated.’ … The result was that the Pharisees tended to see themselves as a cut above other people.⁷² Some commentators just presuppose the separatist meaning with the sense aloof" as in the 1997 commentary by Mateos and Camacho, Il Vangelo di Marco. In their interpretation of the three conflict stories in Mark 2:1–17, they argue that Jesus was creating a universal community that the Pharisees rejected because it destroyed their exclusivity and canceled their privileges.⁷³ Thus, the etymological meaning separated becomes exclusive and privileged.

Finally, Raymond Brown, in his monumental commentary on the Gospel of John, makes no mention of an etymology for the name Pharisee. Brown, who studied Semitics under William F. Albright at Johns Hopkins, certainly recognized the possible etymological meanings for the term. In an explanatory note on John 1:24, where the word Pharisee appears for the first time, no etymology is provided.⁷⁴ In John 3:1 (Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus), where we could expect an etymological remark, again none is provided.⁷⁵ Already in 1966 Brown was pointing the way forward for future exegetes, though his approach to the word Pharisee has not been followed.

ONE MEANING FOR THE ROOT PRŠ IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The various verbal and nominal forms of the root prš in Syriac often appear in religious contexts, such as the Syriac word pūrāšā (distinction, explanation) in the OT Peshitta. This word appears in a title in the Codex Ambrosianus (Milan), the oldest complete Peshitta manuscript of the Old Testament, at Lev 10:20–11:1: pūrāš meklātā, the distinction of foods.⁷⁶ This title (written in red) does not appear in the passage for which it serves as a heading, thus suggesting a specific insertion into the Bible to indicate the theme of the verses that follow. These titles may come from both Jewish and Christian hands, and the proper translation for this title should be "the religious distinction of foods." The nominal form puršānā normally refers to an offering to God. Nouns derived from the root prš, including Pharisee, regularly appear in religious contexts.

The root prš is used in the New Testament with the sense to set apart for a particular mission. It appears with this sense in Luke 10:1 in the Peshitta and in the Old Syriac version to translate the verb ἀναδείκνυμι (to show, reveal).⁷⁷

After this the Lord appointed (ἀνέδειξεν, peraš) seventy[-two] others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

The Syriac reading in Luke 10:1 lends a particular shade of meaning to peraš for interpreting the name Pharisee: to set apart for a particular religious mission. In Rom 1:1 Paul writes that he has been set apart (ἀφορίζω, etpreš) for the gospel. Jewett and Kotansky wonder if the use of this term to describe Paul’s apostolic calling may have been influenced by Paul’s Pharisaic background, because the word ‘Pharisee’ itself appears to come from the same Hebrew root, פרושׁ (‘to separate’). (I would gloss this word in Rom 1:1 as in Luke 10:1: to separate for a particular religious mission.) They note, While it does not seem likely that Paul intended a wordplay on this theme, the choice of this term remains noteworthy.⁷⁸ For a Greek reader the wordplay is lost, but it resounds in the ears of an Aramaic Christian speaker. The use of the root prš in Rom 1:1 and Luke 10:1 suggests another interpretation for the Pharisees in the context of the New Testament: a Pharisee is a person set apart (like Paul) for a particular religious mission.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

As Juliet recognized four centuries ago, there is nothing more to the name Pharisee than a reference to a person or a community. Etymological arguments risk the etymological fallacy and produce a variety of choices: separated, clarifiers, explainers, seceders, and so forth. We see in the dictionaries from the twentieth century that scholars have gradually recognized that the etymological meaning of Pharisee is at best unclear and that the proper gloss for Aramaic parisha is simply Pharisee with no further comment. Though the name Pharisee had an original lexical meaning, today that meaning is lost. The often-repeated interpretation separated begs the question, separated from what or from whom?

Scholars who write Bible dictionary entries for Pharisees should be particularly sensitive to this debate, since a wide range of readers will consult their entries as a ready reference. Brief remarks about the etymological meaning of the term Pharisee, such as separated ones, should be avoided, especially at the beginning of the entry, because they can lead readers to an imaginative description of Pharisaical separation that results in disparaging descriptors such as aloof or privileged.

The literature at present shows a clear trajectory toward ignoring the etymological arguments altogether and simply considering how the name is used in particular texts and genres and by different authors. The approach coincides with the tendency in Aramaic lexicography in general that considers particular corpora of ancient works, exemplified by Michael Sokoloff’s recent Aramaic lexicons.⁷⁹ Thus we can describe the Pharisees in New Testament literature, Tannaitic Literature, and later rabbinic literature, and these descriptions may differ significantly from one another. In the meantime, old ways of thinking—the often repeated descriptive backing of the name Pharisee based upon its supposed etymology—should be discarded. Juliet managed to vanquish her prejudices about the name of her beloved Romeo, surnamed Montague. She had the right idea.

1. Anthony J. Lewis, Response to Prejudice in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘King Lear,’ The English Journal 61 (1972): 488–94.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation, 3rd ed., trans. Gertrude E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), §40.

3. Philip Durkin, Etymology, in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. Keith Brown et al., 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 4:260.

4. John Lyons, Semantics, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1:221.

5. By learning what things it is a name of, we do not learn the meaning of the name. John S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (London: John W. Parker, 1843), 45.

6. Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe (London: University College Press, 1998), xi.

7. Lyons, Semantics, 1:216.

8. Lyons, Semantics, 1:219.

9. John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press), 163.

10. Lyons borrows from Searle the notion of the descriptive backing of a name: "There are considerable problems attaching to the formalization of this notion of the descriptive backing of names. In particular, it is unclear what should count as the essential characteristics of the individual to which a name refers." Lyons, Semantics, 1:220–21 (italics added).

11. Larry Osborne, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).

12. Lyons, Semantics, 1:223.

13. James Barr, Biblical Words for Time (London: SCM Press, 1969); James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).

14. Barr, Semantics, 76.

15. Barr, Semantics, 100.

16. Barr, Semantics, 107.

17. Aegidius Gutbier, Lexicon Syriacum, continens omnes N. T. Syriaci dictiones et particulas (Hamburg: Typis & impensis autoris, 1667), s.vv. "prš, prīšā."

18. Shimeon Brisman, History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2000), 3:105.

19. Jacob Levy, Chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Targumim und einen grossen Theil des rabbinischen Schriftthums, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1867–68), s.vv. "pāraš, pĕrîšāh," author’s translation.

20. Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Pardes, 1950), s.v. "pārûš."

21. Robert Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879–1901), s.v. "praš."

22. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, 3302, author’s translation.

23. Jessie Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903; repr., Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), s.v. "prīšā."

24. Carl Brockelmann, Lexicon Syriacum (Göttingen: W. Fr. Kaestner, 1928), s.v. "prīšā."

25. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), s.v. "pharisaios."

26. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879), s.v. "Phărĭsaeus."

27. J. D. Prince, Scribes and Pharisees, Encyclopaedia Biblica, ed. T. K. Cheyne and J. S. Black, 4 vols. (1899–1903), 3:4322.

28. M. Mansoor, Pharisees, EncJud 16:364.

29. Jean-Augustin Bost, Pharisiens, in Dictionnaire de la Bible, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie de Ch. Meyrueis, 1865), 685, author’s translation.

30. Bost, Pharisiens, 685, author’s translation.

31. Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Pharisees, in Harper’s Bible Dictionary (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 546–47.

32. Matthew Black, Pharisees, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George A. Buttrick (New York: Abingdon, 1962), 3:774.

33. Black, Pharisees, 3:776.

34. Black, Pharisees, 3:776.

35. Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, ABD 5:289–303.

36. Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, in HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 841.

37. Eckhard J. Schnabel, Pharisees, in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–9), 4:486.

38. Bradley T. Johnson, Pharisees, in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2016).

39. Günter Stemberger, Pharisäer, RAC 27:553–73.

40. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1853–1876), 2:83–84.

41. Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 6 vols., ed. and trans. Bella Löwy (London: David Nutt, 1891), 2:18.

42. Rudolf Leszynsky, Die Sadduzäer (Berlin: Mayer and Müller, 1912), 28, author’s translation.

43. Ramsden Balmforth, The New Testament in Light of Higher Criticism (London: Swan Sonnenschein; New York: E. P. Button, 1905), 48–49.

44. Robert Travers Herford, The Pharisees (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1924), 32.

45. Herford, The Pharisees, 24.

46. Leo Baeck, preface to the first edition (1947), The Pharisees and Other Essays (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), xxiii–xxv.

47. Leo Baeck, Die Pharisäer (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1934), 7, author’s translation.

48. Baeck, The Pharisees, 5.

49. MT: ואבדל; Targum Onqelos: ואפרישית.

50. Midrash Rabbah Leviticus, trans. J. Israelstam (chaps. 1–19) and Judah J. Slotki (chaps. 20–38) (London: Soncino, 1961), XXIV, 4–5.

51. Baeck, The Pharisees, 9.

52. Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1938), 1:76.

53. Wendell S. Reilly, Our Lord and the Pharisees, CBQ 1 (1939): 64.

54. Reilly, Our Lord and the Pharisees, 65.

55. Ellis Rivkin, Defining the Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources, HUCA 40 (1969): 207.

56. Rivkin, Defining the Pharisees, 247.

57. Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971).

58. Albert I. Baumgarten, The Name of the Pharisees, JBL 102 (1983): 418.

59. Baumgarten, The Name of the Pharisees, 422.

60. Baumgarten, The Name of the Pharisees, 428

61. David Goodblatt, The Place of the Pharisees in First-Century Judaism, JSJ 20 (1989): 12–30.

62. George W. E. Nickelsburg, The Jewish Context of the New Testament, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 8:27–42.

63. Jack N. Lightstone, The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents, in In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, ed. Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 255–95.

64. Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1966), 206.

65. Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 141–42.

66. The name ‘Pharisees’ probably derives from the Hebrew root p-r-sh (in the sense of ‘specify’), which refers to their striving to ‘be accurate’ about the law. Daniel R. Schwartz, Jewish Movements of the New Testament Period, in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 615–17.

67. "This designation most probably refers to their separation from ritually impure food and from the tables of the common people, later termed theʿam ha-ʾarets (‘people of the land’) in rabbinic sources, who were not scrupulous regarding the laws of levitical purity and tithes. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Pharisees," in Levine and Brettler, Jewish Annotated New Testament, 619.

68. François Bovon, Luke 2: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 9:51–19:27 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 548 n. 48.

69. James D. G. Dunn, Paul and the Torah: The Role and Function of the Law in the Theology of Paul the Apostle, in The New Perspective on Paul, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 462 n. 50.

70. John J. Kilgallen, Twenty Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, SubBi 32 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2008), 150.

71. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (I–IX), AB 28 (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 581.

72. Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 56–57.

73. Juan Mateos and Fernando Camacho, Il Vangelo di Marco: analisi linguistica e commento esegetico 1, trans. Bruno Pistocchi (Assisi: Cittadella, 1997), 227: Gli ambienti farisaici, basati sulla loro interpretazione della legge (scribi), censurano questa nuova realtà che distrugge l’esclusivismo di Israele e ne cancella il privilegio.

74. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (I–XII), AB 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 43–44.

75. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 129.

76. Craig E. Morrison, When Copyists Become Authors: The Headings in the Codex Ambrosianus (B.21 Inf.), in Studi di Storiografia Tradizione, Memoria e Modernità, ed. Alba Fedeli et al., Orientalia Ambrosiana 6 (Milano: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2019), 387.

77. The verb appears again in Acts 1:24 (ἀνάδειξον) where the Peshitta has the expected root ḥw’. A nominal form appears in Luke 1:80 (ἀναδείξεως), and the Peshitta and the Old Syriac (>Cureton) read tḥwyt’.

78. Robert Jewett and Roy D. Kotansky, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 102.

79. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002); Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990; 2nd ed., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Judean Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003).

Part 1

HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

2

IN SEARCH OF THE ORIGINS OF THE PHARISEES

Vasile Babota

No history of the Pharisees was written in antiquity. Nor have we any document written by a Pharisee, other than the letters of Paul. Contemporary literature offers only fragmentary records about them, but even there they are not the protagonists. Major sources that clearly speak about the Pharisees are Flavius Josephus’s works, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature.

Although the rabbis did incorporate older traditions, their texts are not histories. These texts also postdate the works of Flavius Josephus (37/38–ca. 100 CE) and the New Testament, sometimes by several centuries. Besides, these traditions, as most sources, are often tendentious.¹ Already Ellis Rivkin argued that the connection between the Hebrew perushim of rabbinic texts and the Greek Φαρισαῖοι (pharisaioi) of Josephus and the New Testament is itself complex.² Jacob Neusner, whose works redirected the search for Pharisaic origins, criticized earlier and contemporary scholars for using rabbinic literature as if everything was … historically factual.³ About his own 1971 three-volume work on the subject, Neusner wrote: "My Rabbinic Traditions … was to render obsolete nearly all historical scholarship on the Pharisees of the preceding two hundred years.⁴ Neusner claimed to have identified some fifty Pharisees by name, mostly from the first century CE. By contrast, a closer scrutiny of all ancient sources permitted Joseph Sievers to identify a mere dozen individual Pharisees," some of whom are questionable.⁵ Therefore, rabbinic texts need to be used cautiously when writing a history, especially for the Hasmonean period.

The New Testament mentions the Pharisee(s) close to one hundred times (mostly in the gospels and Acts), but this corpus reflects a mid- to late first-century-CE context. Josephus refers to Pharisee(s) some forty-five times (except in Against Apion); roughly half of these references pertain to the BCE period. In Jewish War 1.110 (before 79 CE) he introduces the Pharisees in the context of Hasmonean succession to power following the rule of Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE).⁶ By contrast, Ant. 13.171–173 (before 93/94 CE), introduces them as one of the three αἱρέσεις (i.e., parties, schools of thought) together with the Sadducees and Essenes.⁷ The implied context is the rule of the first Hasmonean high priest, Jonathan (152–143 BCE). However, only in Ant. 13.288–298 do the Pharisees appear on the stage in relation to Jonathan’s nephew, John Hyrcanus I (134–104 BCE). Any assessment of these references must reckon with the fact that Josephus claimed Hasmonean descent, had a high regard for Hyrcanus I (J.W. 1.68 // Ant. 13.299), and boasted to have practiced (for some time) the Pharisaic way of life (Life 1–12). So a certain bias in his works is to be expected.⁸

Following other scholars, Daniel R. Schwartz reiterated that for the BCE period the pro-Pharisaic Josephus made use of the works of Nicolaus of Damascus (born ca. 64 BCE), the court historian of King Herod the Great (40–4 BCE). Schwartz claims that some passages in Antiquities have been preserved more intact than in War because they reflect Nicolaus’s more negative view of the Pharisees (e.g., Ant. 13.288, 298, 401–402; 17.41–42).⁹ Questioning the extent to which Josephus’s sources can be established, their transmission and reliability, and Josephus’s own historical method, Steve Mason concluded that Josephus was not, and never claimed to be a Pharisee, that he displayed a marked and consistent antipathy toward the Pharisees, and that the accounts of the Pharisees—in which they are marginally represented—were at least shaped by Josephus.¹⁰ Anthony J. Saldarini adopted a compromise position: Josephus’ attitude toward the Pharisees is fundamentally consistent whether he is using Nicolaus or not. When compared, neither Antiquities nor War is more (or less) pro-Pharisaic than the other. Whether Josephus is pro- or anti-Pharisaic does not depend on his sources—Nicolaus or others—but on how he interprets them to fit his political agenda.¹¹

Because of the criticisms of Neusner and Stemberger on the use of rabbinic texts,¹² and in particular those of Mason on the use of Josephus’s works, interest has shifted to how Josephus and other sources portray the Pharisees and away from the question of their origins.¹³ My present aim is not to write a history of the origins of the Pharisees but to illuminate some methodological problems, address some questions, and in particular, show how 1 Maccabees can contribute to this discussion.

THE ORIGINS OF THE PHARISEES AND THE QUESTION OF THE HASIDIM

Antiquities 13.171–173 is perhaps the most cited passage in discussions about the origins of the Pharisees. Since Josephus introduces them in a narrative that deals with Jonathan, many scholars have held that the Pharisees emerged around 150 BCE.¹⁴ However, the introductory temporal formula Κατὰ δὲ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον … ἦσαν (and about that time … there were) is vague. Besides, Josephus has nothing to say about any of these αἱρέσεις down to Hyrcanus I. It seems that Josephus himself was not sure when or how the Pharisees appeared.

Other scholars have interpreted Ant. 13.171–173 to mean that the Pharisees predated Jonathan. Since the term Pharisee(s) is lacking in any pre-rabbinic account connected to the period before 150 BCE, some scholars have advanced the hypothesis that the Pharisees descended from the Hasidim (ʿΑσιδαῖοι, 1 Macc 2:42; 7:13; 2 Macc 14:6). Joseph Cohen argued that the Essenes also descended from the Hasidim.¹⁵ Almost forty years later, Ferd Prat concluded that, while the origin of the Essenes from the Hasidim is questionable, that of the Pharisees semble établie.¹⁶ More than fifty years later, Amand Michel and Jean Le Moyne defined the affiliation of the Pharisees with the Hasidim as fort plausible. Even though these authors admit that the origins of the Pharisees remain très obscures, like Prat, both Michel and Le Moyne place the emergence of the Pharisees under Hyrcanus I. They connect the Pharisees with the development of scribal classes, who were, in their view, deeply involved in the interpretation of the Torah and the evolution of oral tradition.¹⁷

The suggestion that the Pharisees descended from the Hasidim led some scholars to look for their origins much earlier than the second century BCE. Initially, Louis Finkelstein too claimed that the Order/Society of Pharisees descended from the Hasidim whose origins could be traced back to Ezra. By the time of Hyrcanus I, the Pharisees became a political party … prepared to take arms in defense of its rights.¹⁸ Subsequently, Finkelstein argued that the identification of the Pharisees with the Hasidim seems … unfounded and that the two were different groups.¹⁹ According to his revised theory, the Pharisees flourished at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the end, Finkelstein implied that it was the Hasidim who were one of the factions of the Pharisees.²⁰

John Kampen’s study has had a significant impact on the attempt to find connections between the Hasidim and the Pharisees. Kampen, who has shown that the meaning of Asidaioi is difficult to assess,²¹ hypothesized that the Hasidim were active in the third and second century BCE as temple scribes (cf. 1 Macc 7:12) and that the Pharisees therefore derived from Hasidean scribal circles.²²

All we can learn about the Hasidim is contained in several verses dated to roughly 100 BCE. Josephus does not mention them in his paraphrase of 1 Maccabees. The fact that 1 Macc 7:12–13 associates them with scribes cannot mean they represented all Judean scribes, or even all temple scribes. Perhaps the crucial question is why the Pharisees would have separated from this scribal movement. While a connection between Pharisees and the Hasidim should not be ruled out, it requires more solid argumentation.²³

THE ORIGINS OF THE PHARISEES AND THE QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES

A second methodological problem related to Ant. 13.171–173 concerns its introduction of the Pharisees together with the Sadducees and the Essenes. That connection prompted many scholars to search for the origins of the Pharisees in tandem with that of the Sadducees. Josephus does not, however, claim these αἱρέσεις originated at the same time. In Ant. 18.11, where he lists the Pharisees after the Essenes and the Sadducees, Josephus states that these existed from very ancient times. Earlier, in J.W. 2.161, he characterized the Pharisees as the first of the three αἱρέσεις. Josephus does not specify whether he meant the Pharisees emerged as the first or that they were more influential than the other two αἱρέσεις.

Using the Sadducees as a mirror against which to understand the origins of the Pharisees has led many scholars to another methodological flaw: to assume the antiquity not only of the Sadducees but also of the Pharisees. This is because many scholars have taken for granted that the Sadducees are to be identified with the Zadokites/sons of Zadok (bene tsadoq) of Ezek 40–48 who reportedly ran the temple affairs down to the second century BCE.²⁴ This premise led scholars to search for the origins of the Pharisees even in the fifth century BCE.²⁵

Alice Hunt has shown that there is no compelling evidence to justify the assumption that the sons of Zadok existed as an established priesthood in control of the temple after the exile.²⁶ Many redaction-critical studies concluded that the Zadokite passages in Ezek 40–48 are late additions.²⁷ The sons of Zadok appear also in Ezek 42:13 LXX, and elsewhere in Ben Sira (MS B) 51:12a–o and in seven of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), dated mostly to the early first century BCE. Additionally, the sons of Zadok have an ideological function in Ezekiel, whereas in the DSS they may even include nonpriests (e.g., CD-A III, 20–IV, 4; 4QDa 5 I, 16).²⁸

According to the Torah, which was likely the only authoritative Scripture for the Sadducees, the sons of Aaron are the only legitimate priests to serve at the temple. How would the Sadducees—who, unlike the Pharisees and the Essenes, reportedly did not believe in the resurrection (cf. J.W. 2.165; Ant. 18.12–19; Mark 12:18 par.)—have interpreted such texts as Ezekiel 37?

The attempt to associate the Sadducees with the Zadokites/sons of Zadok of Ezek 40–48 is undermined by the latter group’s identity. Therefore, connecting the search for the origins of the Pharisees to the history of the Sadducees is methodologically tenuous.

THE ORIGINS OF THE PHARISEES AND FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS’S WORKS

In J.W. 1.110 the Pharisees first appear in relation to the Hasmonean succession story anchored in 76 BCE. Josephus only writes that they joined Alexandra (Salome?), the widowed wife of king and high priest Jannaeus, to assist her in governing as queen. Josephus has more to say in his later parallel version. According to Ant. 13.400–404 (cf. 13.414), Jannaeus, on his deathbed, reportedly urged his wife to entrust significant power to the Pharisees and so try to appease them in the hope they would forgive his violence against them. The queen succeeds in obtaining the Pharisees’ support and installs her elder son Hyrcanus (II) as high priest (13.405–408). The Pharisees, in turn, insist that the queen take revenge against those who had persuaded Alexander to kill eight hundred men (13.408–410; cf. 13.380). Josephus explains that the Pharisees themselves participated in some of these executions and adds an important link: the Pharisees also ask the queen to restore their statutes (νόμιμα), which her father-in-law had abrogated (cf. 13.296; see also b. Sotah 22b).

This information concerns the last years of Hyrcanus I (Ant. 13.288–298), known in 1 Maccabees 16 as John (cf. Ant. 13.228). According to Josephus, during a banquet with the Pharisees, Eleazer, presumably one of them, asks Hyrcanus to give up the high priesthood on the pretext that his mother had been a captive (i.e., raped) under King Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes and content himself with ruling the people (Ant. 13.288–295). The outcome is Hyrcanus’s break with the Pharisees and his attachment to the Sadducees. This change prompted much popular hatred against Hyrcanus and his sons (13.296–298) to the point that they had to quiet a revolt (cf. Ant. 13.299 // J.W. 1.68; see also 1.67). A similar story is recorded in b. Qidd. 66a, but about Jannai (Jannaeus). Here, the Pharisees ask Jannaeus to give up the [high] priesthood to the seed of Aaron and keep to himself the royal crown.²⁹ Both stories end with the split between the Pharisees and the Hasmonean ruler.

Later, in Ant. 13.372–373, Josephus recounts how, during a Festival of Tabernacles, the crowd revolted against Jannaeus and pelted him with citrons and wands made of palm branches (cf. m. Sukkah 4:9). They accused him of being unworthy of the high priesthood because of his descent from captives. It could be that Jannaeus was charged for the same reason as his father Hyrcanus I. The sedition ended with Jannaeus slaughtering six thousand protesters (Ant. 13.373). Josephus also tells that there was then a six-year revolt against Jannaeus, during which he killed some fifty thousand Jews (Ant. 13.376 // J.W. 1.91). Some Jews asked the Seleucid king Demetrius III Eukerus (97–87 BCE) to protect them, which he did, probably in 88 BCE. Later, during a banquet, Jannaeus had some eight hundred of those Jews who defected to Demetrius crucified (Ant. 13.380 // J.W. 1.97).³⁰ As in Ant. 13.410, here too the identity of those crucified is not explicit. The sketchy parallel account in J.W. 1.90–98 provides a slightly different version of events.³¹

On the source-critical level, as Mason states, We should all agree that Josephus used sources—both oral and written—in some way or other for most of what lay beyond his personal knowledge.³² Mason, however, focuses more on Josephus’s historical method and rhetorical issues than on his sources.³³ Several scholars have suggested that Josephus used the Universal History of Nicolaus, which likely included an account of the Hasmonean period. At least since 14 BCE and until Herod’s death in 4 BCE, Nicolaus spent part of his career at Herod’s court, and Herod’s relations with both the Pharisees and the Hasmoneans were conflictual. The extent to which Josephus shaped his excerpts from Nicolaus or other source(s) cannot be recovered with certainty.³⁴ It is also possible that certain rabbis may have used Josephus’s works. In other cases a common source may better explain other parallel accounts.³⁵

On the redaction-critical level, Sievers demonstrated a potential problem with exactly those passages that have been used as evidence for the Pharisees’ second-century-BCE origin. In Ant. 12–13, Josephus paraphrases most of 1 Macc 1–13. He usually followed the order of 1 Maccabees and after 1 Macc 13:42 // Ant. 13.214 he drew on his own work in J.W. 1.50 // Ant. 13.215.³⁶ Sievers argues that Ant. 13.171–173 together with 13.288–298 may belong to a second edition of Antiquities. Both passages interrupt the Hasmonean story, and both ultimately refer to J.W. 2.119–166.³⁷ It would thus follow that, in the first edition, the Pharisees were only introduced in Ant. 13.401 // J.W. 1.110 in relation to Jannaeus’s death.³⁸

The fact that Josephus may have added both passages secondarily in Antiquities 13 does not make them historically worthless. While Ant. 13.171–173 has the appeal of being Josephus’s own introduction, analysis of Ant. 13.288–298 leads one to reason that certain elements derived from Nicolaus or from other sources. The problem that still persists is whether the latter passage applies to Hyrcanus I or to Jannaeus. Still, one can argue that the Pharisees were an active force at least since the early first century BCE.

THE ORIGINS OF THE PHARISEES AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Up to the 1950s, studies on the Pharisees were limited to Josephus’s works, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature. The discovery of the DSS has generated a contrasting impact, with some scholars even concluding from these texts the Pharisees originated at the time of the destruction of the first Temple.³⁹

Unlike 1 Maccabees, which is a propagandistic work for the Hasmonean high priesthood, the DSS were written for the Yahad (community) and are sectarian in character. Their accusatory language is closer to that of the Psalms of Solomon, which also criticize the Hasmoneans, the temple priests, and other groups. However,