Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

QUARTERLY REVIEW, WINTER 1984
90 B.c.E. (and not part of the Jewish or Protestant canon), much more
than a hundred years passed until the appearance of the initial Pauline
letters around C.E. 50. The usual Christian attitude has been that this
was a very sterile period in Judaism in which people had lost touch
with the soul of the Jewish religious tradition represented by the
Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Psalms. An empty legalism
dominated Jewish faith at this time and hence many Jews were
hungry for the new spiritual insights offered by the early church—so
ran the classic stereotype. As a result of a growing body of Christian
and Jewish scholarship on this historical period, we now know that
such a picture of a sterile, legalistic Judaism in the Second Temple
period, or what Christians sometimes term the "intertestamental
period," is far from accurate. True, some segments of Judaism had
fallen into such a state. But new creative Jewish groups emerged on
the scene to counter this regressive tendency. And it was these
innovative forms of Judaism that most directly influenced the
teaching of Jesus and the structures of early Christianity.
Among these new innovative groups the Pharisees were the most
prominent. The mention of the term "Pharisee" typically conjures up
among Christians images of fierce opposition to Jesus, of harsh
legalism, of shallow piety. The Pharisees seem to most churchpeople
to be representatives of everything Jesus condemned. This understanding
of the Pharisees, however, symbolizes the general ignorance
of Second Temple Judaism in the church. Fortunately an increasing
number of biblical scholars and historians have begun to question this
Christian bias.
The Pharisees sought to make the Torah come alive in every Jew by
adapting its commandments to changing life patterns in Judaism.
Contemporary research has shown that the Pharisees were no strangers
to the deepest meaning of the law. It now appears likely that Jesus
attacked only certain groups within the Pharisee movement, not the
movement as a whole. And even in these controversies their differences
did not obliterate the similarity of their basic position on what it meant
to be a religious person. In large measure Jesus' battle with "the
Pharisees" needs to be understood as an "in-house" struggle.
As with most scholarly questions about the ancient period, there is
far from full agreement among present-day researchers about all
aspects of the Pharisee movement. Hence some caution is necessary
in reaching conclusions about Pharisaism itself and its relationships to
Jesus and the early church. But running through the various
viewpoints are some trends which include the following.
28