Pharisees and Jesus

I want to begin where I began last week.

To call someone today a “Pharisee” is to accuse someone of hypocrisy or legalism or picayunishness or petty. “Pharisee” is an insult in our world, but importing our usage leads to common misreadings of the Gospels.

Such misreadings at times lead to anti-Semitism.

In the 1st Century, when Jesus used this term to ref…