Meet the Apostle Paul—Part Two
I have been compiling my notes to preach on the life and letters of the Apostle Paul at Christ’s Community Church. I will be uploading some of them in preparation.
“Φαρισαῖος, ου, ὁ (Hebr. הַפְּרוּשִׁים=Aram. פְּרִישַׁיָּא, the latter in Gk. transcription Φαρισαῖοι. The Semitic words mean ‘the separated ones, separatists’.”[1]
The Apostle Paul stated, “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Phil 3:4b-6 NRSVue).
The Apostle Paul never tried to hide his “former life” as a devotee of the Jewish sect of the Pharisees. But who were they? Historians lament that we have very few ancient sources, which give any clue as to their formal membership, structure, etc.
Many of the documents Christian scholars once used to describe the Pharisees were written or compiled after 200 AD. (e.g., The Mishnah). E.P. Sanders rightly pointed out that to use these sources as accurately describing a first century movement is bad history!
What can we say?
The late Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner wrote, “…the Pharisees were a small group within Palestinian Judaism, a philosophical school with a particular set of beliefs and religious practices. They claimed the right to rule all the Jews by virtue of their possessing the “Oral Torah” of Moses, that is, the body of traditions not written in Scriptures, but revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai along with the written Torah. They referred to a list of masters extending back to Moses, whom they later called “our rabbi.” In their own setting, however, the Pharisees were much like any other Hellenistic philosophical school or sect.”[2]
As stated in an earlier post, three distinct Jewish[3] sects arose in Judea between 160-140 BC—the Sadducees, Essenes and Pharisees. Each had their own idea on how to respond to the successful Jewish “Maccabean” war of independence. The Pharisees were the most popular of the three with the people.
Pharisees believed that the entire Old Testament (Gen-Mal) was inspired and authoritative. They also seemed to believe that the oral “traditions” were equally authoritative. Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection following judgment day that would then usher in a new heavens and new earth with God and His “anointed one” ruling the world from Jerusalem. Many Pharisees seemed to have held to the validity of ongoing prophecy and spiritual gifts. Unlike the Sadducees who believed that humans had complete free will and the Essenes who were hard determinists, the Pharisees believed in both “predestination” and “free will” as a paradox.[4]
Obviously, the Apostle Paul held on to some of these beliefs as a Christian while others went up in ashes after his encounter with the risen Savior King on the Damascus Road (Acts 9). What else did the Pharisees believe and how does it help us understand the Pauline letters of the New Testament? Tune back in.
[1] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1049.
[2] Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, Second Edition. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 11.
[3] Remember that “Jewish” in the ancient world meant from “Judah” i.e., those who had returned from Babylonian exile who were members of the tribes of Judah or Benjamin. To paraphrase Jason Staples, “All Jews were Israelites but not all Israelites were Jews” but more on that later.
[4] See, Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Pharisees,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 205-2009).