Were the Rabbis Pharisees?
Nearly all book discussions of the Pharisees make abundant use of the rabbis (Mishnah, Talmuds, Tosefta) either to establish points being made or to confirm what one has otherwise concluded. At times someone will say, and I have myself said this more than a few times, “The rabbis are not equivalent to 1st Century Judaism,” only then to say, “But there are lines of continuity so this factual-claim may well approximate 1st Century practice.”
In Joseph Sievers and Amy Jill Levine, The Pharisees, there is more than observation and discussion of this very question: Are the Pharisees the rabbis, or Are the rabbis Pharisees? For some this is a question not worth asking but it’s a question that must be asked and answered so far as we can and it’s time we took it more seriously.
Example: in my seminary studies, but far more in my PhD years along with my early years of teaching, one of my favorite NT scholars was Joachim Jeremias. For him the rabbis = the Pharisees (more or less). Jeremias rooted his scholarship in Strack and Billerbeck’s famous multi-volume NT commentary on the basis of rabbinic writings, and Emil Schürer’s very well known multi-volume study did not adequately distinguish the two, and we were all off and running with the assumption that the Pharisees and the rabbis were more or less the same, with some developments in the rabbis. Some messianic Jews I read today make the same assumption, both for Jesus as well as for how they observe the Torah.
The assumption is at best tenuous and most undemonstrable. One should raise a red flag of tenuousness anytime one cites the rabbis to illustrate the 1st Century Pharisees.
Two articles in this book co-edited by Sievers and Levine take this subject up directly, one by the Austrian scholar Günter Stemberger and the other by the American scholar (and editor of a new edition of the Mishnah to be published this year) Shaye J.D. Cohen.
I give a brief on each so you can see the conclusions:
Stemberger
There is minimal evidence connecting Pharisees to rabbis. He establishes with nuance and respect of the evidence by looking at the themes of synagogue, Bible text and interpretation, and oral tradition. It was not clear until the 4th Century that rabbis and Christian authors began to make that connection tight.
But he wants to say there is continuity but just what that continuity is can no longer be discerned with clarity. Thus, the rabbis did not create a new system of religion; there is then great continuity; much of what was in continuity, however, can be assigned to “common Judaism” (he uses Sanders’ famous expression).
Here’s a bottom line: continuity that was reconfigured and transformed by the rabbis makes their connections less than clear.
Cohen
Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed it on to the men of the great assembly… Simeon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the great assembly… Antigonos of Sokho received [the Torah] from Simeon the Righteous… Yose b. Yoezer of Seredah and Yose b. Yohanan of Jerusalem received [it] from them….
So m. Avot 1.1-4 (trans. Neusner), and this continues all the way through 2.8, and here’s the issue: most assume these men were all Pharisees. No priests are mentioned. Nor are these men named as Pharisees. This chain is found elsewhere in the Mishnah without ever using “Pharisee.” Cohen says this is a “non-Pharisaic chain”!
Here is an actual Pharisee text in m. Yad. 4.6-8 (trans. Neusner):
Yad. 4:6 A. Say Sadducees:
B. “We complain against you, Pharisees,
C. “For you say, ‘Holy Scriptures impart uncleanness to hands, but the books of Homer do not impart uncleanness to hands.’”
D. Said Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, “And do we have against the Pharisees only this matter alone?
E. “Lo, they say, ‘The bones of an ass are clean, but the bones of Yohanan, high priest, are unclean.’”
F. They said to him, “According to their preciousness is their uncleanness.
G. “So that a man should not make the bones of his father and mother into spoons.”
H. He said to them, “So too Holy Scriptures: According to their preciousness is their uncleanness.
I. “But the books of Homer, which are not precious, do not impart uncleanness to hands.” 7 A. Say Sadducees:
B. “We complain against you, Pharisees.
C. “For you declare clean an unbroken stream of liquid.”
D. Say Pharisees, “We complain against you, Sadducees.
E. “For you declare clean a stream of water which, comes from a cemetery.”
F. Say Sadducees, “We complain against you, Pharisees.
G. “For you say, ‘My ox and my ass which do injury are liable, but my man-servant and my maidservant which do injury are clear.’
H. “Now if in respect to my ox and my ass, concerning which I am not obligated in respect to commandments, lo, I am liable for damage which they do, in respect to my manservant and my maidservant, concerning whom I am obligated in respect to commandments, logically should I [not] be liable for damage which they do?’”
I. They said to them, “No. If you have so stated concerning my ox and my ass, which are not possessed of intelligence, will you say so concerning my manservant and my maidservant, who are possessed of intelligence?
J. “For if I should anger him, he will go and light a fire in someone else’s stack of wheat, so that I am liable to pay restitution.” 8 A. Said a Galilean Min, “I complain against you, Pharisees.
B. “For you write the name of the ruler with the name of Moses in a writ of divorce.”
C. Say Pharisees, “We complain against you [singular], Galilean Min.
D. “For you [plural] write the name of the ruler with the name [of God] on the [same] page.
E. “And, moreover:
F. “For you write the name of the ruler above, and the name [of God] below.
G. “As it is said, And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go (Ex. 5:2).
H. “And when he was smitten, what did he say?
I. “The Lord is righteous (Ex. 9:27).”
Cohen: “Given the sizes of the Mishnah, the paucity of references to the Pharisees, and the frequency of other terms of rabbinic self-designation (“sages” 556x, “rabbi” 3267x), I conclude that the framers of the Mishnah and their sources possessed only minimal Pharisaic self-consciousness, if they possessed it at all.” #boom
The rabbis did not see themselves as Pharisees though they knew who there were; the term was not some Christian term of opprobrium but a term used by the Pharisees for Pharisees at the rough time of the NT.
At some period Jews did rediscover them, and he proposes this happened with their rediscovery of Josephus in Yosippon. Prior to then the Pharisees were long forgotten. They became more and more connected over time among Jews.
My conclusion: don’t equate rabbis with Pharisees; use the rabbis carefully and sparingly; and always make your connections tenuous. It may just be common Judaism.