THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIAVOL. IX Pages
665 and 666 - Pharisees
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The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906)
in the future shall
be accordingly” (“
In contradistinction to the
Sadducees, who were satisfied with the political life committed to their own
power as the ruling dynasty, the Pharisees represented the views and hopes of
the people. (Mainstream
doctrine and teaching) The same was the case with regard to the
belief(S)
in angels and demons. As Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus
indicate, the upper classes (Of the Sadducees) adhered
for a long time the biblical view concerning the soul and
the hereafter, caring little for the Angelology and Demonology of the Pharisees.
These used them, with the help of the MA’ASEH BERESHIT and MA’ASEH MERKABAH, (Talmudic writings) not only to amplify the Biblical account, (Read this as to enhance
and alter text) but (Also) to remove from the Bible anthropomorphisms (God speaking, God walking, God having hands, God sitting on
a throne etc) and similarly obnoxious verbiage
concerning the Deity (God personally visiting
Abraham, God bodily appearing to Moses) by referring them (These attributes
and events) to angelic and intermediary powers (for instance,
Gen. 1.26), and thereby to gradually sublimate and spiritualize the conception of God. (Converting
God into an invisible, impersonal, unknowable, unapproachable, and in post WWII
times -- an aloof Deity.)
So here we have a concrete statement that the so
called “liberal doctrines teaching” that have plagued denominational churches and in more recent
times Evangelicalism and Methodist-ism and even Fundamentalist church
concerning God’s so called anthropomorphic attributes spoken of the bible are
not liberal doctrine and teaching at all but are actually Pharisaic doctrines and teachings from the Mishnah and the
Babylonian Talmud that have been pawned off to
believers as “mainstream Christian Doctrine.”
In these false doctrines it is specifically stated that we are not created in God’s Image
and Likeness -- because God is a gaseous vapor with no shape or form – Rather
in their eyes He is an enlightening energy, or a cosmic consciousness. Note that these same teachings while
completely separating God from men; are also more or less the cornerstone of
New Age teaching in which people through wearing crystals and such things,
through meditation, chats and whatnot are able to tap into that cosmic
consciousness, that gaseous eternal energy and become empowered.
We strongly
believe that man was created in God’s image and likeness as it states in both
the Hebrew and Greek. We strongly believe that God is a person, a physical and
Spiritual being. We strongly believe that God has hands feet a body a head
fingers eyes a nose a mouth, He sits on a literal throne, He speaks, He moves,
He has concrete desires and purposes, that God had emotions He loves, He hates,
He gets angry, He has also concrete rules and laws that He judges men over
their obedience or lack thereof.
We also strongly
believe that God Himself visits men personally where it declares he has done so
in Scripture, and He has sent men and angels to intervene in the affairs of men
where Scripture so declares. We strongly
believe as revealed in scripture that God is a loving God and reveals Himself,
manifests himself to those that obey His words and commandments and seek
diligently after Him.
The Pharisees are furthermore described by Josephus as extremely virtuous and sober, and as despising luxuries; (Josephus said these things of “True Pharisees” not of the Pharisees of his day) and Ab. R. N. v. affirms that they led a life of privation. The
Ethics. |
ethics of the Pharisees is
based upon the principle “Be holy, as the Lord your God is holy” (Lev. xix. 2, Hebr.); that is, strive to imitate God (Sifra
and Tan., Kedoshim, 1; Mek.,
Shirah, 8; Sifra, Deut. 49:
comp. Matt. v. 48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect”). So “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is declared by them to he the principal Law (Shal. 30a: Ab. R. N., text B, xxvi. [ed.
Schechter, p. 53]: Sifra, Kedoshim,
4) and, in order to demonstrate its universality, to be based on the verse
declaring man to be made in the image of God (Gen. v. 1). “As He
makes the sun shine alike upon the good and the evil,” so does He extend His
fatherly love to all (Sbir ha-Shirim
Zuta, i.; Sifra, Num. 184, Deut. 31, 40). Heathenism is hated on
account of the moral depravity to which it leads (Sifra,
Num. 157), but the idolater who becomes an observer of the Law ranks with the
high priest (Sifra, Ahare
Mot. 13). It is a slanderous misrepresentation of the Pharisees to state that
they “divorced morality and religion,” when everywhere virtue, probity, and
benevolence are declared by them to be the essence of the Law (Mak. 23b—24a; Tosef., Peah, iv. 19; et d: see ETHICS).
Nothing could have been more loathsome to the genuine Pharisee than HYPOCRISY. “Whatever good man does he should do it for the glory of God” Sb. ii. 13: Ber. 17a). Nicodemus is blamed for having given of his wealth to the poor in an ostentatious manner (Ket. 66b). An evil action may be justified where the motive is a good one (Ber. 63a). Still, the very air of sanctity surrounding the life of the Pharisees often led to abuses. Alexander Annaeus warned his wife not against the Pharisees, his declared enemies, but against “the chameleon — or Hyena — like hypocrites who act like Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas” (Sotah 22b).
The
Charge |
An ancient baraita enumerates seven classes of Pharisees, of which
five consist of either eccentric fools or hypocrites: (1) “the Shoulder
Pharisee,” who wears, as it were, his good actions ostentatiously upon his
shoulder; (2) “the wait-a-little Pharisee,” who ever says, “Wait a little,
until I have performed the good act awaiting me”; (8) “the bruised Pharisee,”
who in order to avoid looking at a woman runs against the wall so as to bruise
himself and bleed; (4) “the pestle Pharisee,” who walks with head down like the
pestle in the mortar; (5) “the ever-reckoning Pharisee,” who says, “Let me know
what good I may do to counteract my neglect”; (6) “the God-fearing Pharisee,”
after the manner of Job; (7) ” the God-loving Pharisee,” after the manner of
Abraham (Yer. Ber. ix. 14b; Sotah 22b; Ab.R. N.. text A, xxxvii.; text B,
xlv. [ed. Schechter, pp. 55, 62]; the explanations in both Talmuds
vary greatly; see Chwolson, “Des Letzte
Passahmahl,” p. 116). R. Joshua b. Hananiah, at the beginning of the second century, calls
eccentric Pharisees “destroyers of the world” (Sotah
iii. 4); and the term “Pharisaic plagues” is frequently used by the leaders of
the time (Yer. Sotah iii. 19a).
It is such types of Pharisees
that Jesus had in view when hurling his scathing words of condemnation against
the Pharisees, whom be denounced as “hypocrites,” calling them “offspring of
vipers” (‘hyenas”; see ZEBU’IM); “whited sepulchers which outwardly appear beautiful, but
inwardly are full of dead men’s bones”; “blind guides,” “which stain out the
gnat and swallow the camel” (Matt. vi. 2—5, 16; xii. 34; xv. 14; xxiii.
24, 27, Greek). He himself tells his disciples to do as the Scribes and
“Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat [see ALMEMAR]
bid them do”; but he blames them for not acting in the right spirit, for
wearing large phylacteries and zizit, and for
pretentiousness in many other things (ib.
xxiii 2—7). Exactly so are hypocrites censured in the Midrash
(Pes. R. xxii. [ed. Friedmann, p. 111); wearing tefillin
and zizit, they harbor evil intentions in .their
breasts. Otherwise the Pharisees appear as friends of Jesus (Luke vii. 37,
xiii. 31) and of the early Christians (Acts v. 38, xxiii. 9; “
Only in regard to intercourse with the unclean and “unwashed” multitude, with the ‘am ha-arez, the publican, and the sinner, did Jesus differ widely from the Pharisees (Mark ii. 16; Luke v.30, vii. 39. xi. 38, xv. 2, xix. 7). In regard to the main doctrine he fully agreed with them, as the old version (Mark xii. 28—34) still has it. Owing, however, to the hostile attitude taken toward the Pharisaic schools by Pauline Christianity, especially in the time of the emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD Rabbi Johanan was apparently a Pharisee and here he was apparently trying to clear his order of the changes of Christ and lay it at the feet of one of the other rabbinical orders that he left for dead in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD), “Pharisees” was inserted in the Gospels wherever the high priests and Sadducees or Herodians were originally mentioned as the persecutors of Jesus (see NEW TESTAMENT), and a false impression, which still prevails in Christian circles and among all Christian writers, was created concerning the Pharisees.
It is difficult to state at
what time the Pharisees, as a party, arose. Josephus first mentions them in
connection with Jonathan, the successor of Judas Maccabeus (“
History
of |
(“
Amidst the bitter struggle
which ensued, the Pharisees appeared before
Pompey asking him to interfere and restore the old priesthood while
abolishing the royalty of the Hasmoneans altogether
(“
We note here that the Jewish Encyclopedia that has so
readily quoted Josephus as speaking of “the rising state of the Pharisees and
the falling star of the Sadducees failed to recount the story recorded by
Josephus as to exactly how the Pharisees illegally and divisively took the seat
of Moses that is the head seat of the Sanhedrin away from the Sadducees – that
is that they petitioned the widow of Alexander the Great –So that the got the
seat illegally according to their Talmudic law in their own words “from a Niddah” (A unclean gentile woman) .
Henceforth Jewish life was regulated by the teachings of the Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older, priestly tradition (Abot i. 1). Pharisaism (In particular the Pharisaism of Rabbi Johanan) shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future. True, it gave the Jewish religion a legalistic tendency and made “separatism” its chief characteristic; yet only thus were the pure monotheistic faith, the ethical ideal, and the intellectual and spiritual character of the Jew preserved in time midst of the downfall of the old world and the deluge of barbarism which swept over the medieval world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.
Elbogen. Die
Religionsanschauung der Pharisaer. Berlin1904; Geiger, Urschrift. Breslau
1857; Idem. Sadduceier und Pharisaer, in Jud. Zeit. 1863;
Schurer, Gesch. 3d ed.. ii. 380-419 (where list at the
whole literature is given); Welibausen, Die Pharisaer und Sadducaer, Gottlngen, 1874.