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| Jesus talking to Pharisees. Image source. |
A few posts from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg which are worth reading (via):
Jesus and the Jews: Part One
Jesus and Beit Hillel (Part 2!)
Wrapping up Jesus
These posts explore the possibility that maybe Jesus was a Pharisee, who followed the ideas of Hillel, and when the bible talks about Jesus having disagreements with "the Pharisees" (which happens A LOT), it's about his disagreements with other Pharisees who followed the ideas of Shammai.
Let me give some background here about what I was taught about the Pharisees, when I was evangelical: The Pharisees were religious leaders who were really into following the exact rules, and they totally missed the point of why God gave us the rules. They totally missed that God wants us to love and care about people. Instead, they would make more and more rules, and work very hard to follow them, just to be sure that they were obeying God correctly.
In the modern evangelical church, if you call someone a Pharisee, it means they are being more strict about religious rules than you think they should be. For example, when I was growing up, girls were taught that we needed to be "modest", ie, we needed to wear clothes that boys would never interpret as sexy. (LOL have you met teenage boys?) My church taught this, but also looked disapprovingly on other conservative Christians who also taught modesty but added more specifics than we did. Those other, more fundamentalist Christians were measuring the exact length of girls' skirts, to make sure they met the "modesty" standards. We said that was "legalistic" and "like the Pharisees." We believed modesty was supposed to be more vibes-based, and shouldn't include extremely specific rules like that.
Looking back on it now, it's so ridiculous how each specific brand of conservative Christianity draws a line in some certain place to define the rules that Christians are supposed to live by, and declares that anyone who draws the line in a more permissive spot is rejecting God's law, while anyone who draws the line to be more strict is being too legalistic, like the Pharisees. We were like, "lol can you believe these senseless rules that these extreme fundamentalist Christians follow? They are completely different from the rules we follow, which are the correct rules given by the bible." Were they though?
When I was in the process of leaving evangelicalism, and I read a lot of ex-evangelical blogs, that's when I first heard that there's A LOT of anti-Semitism baked into evangelical Christianity. I had no idea before. A lot of very normal things you hear in church are anti-Semitic. Honestly, ex-evangelicals should be doing the work to unlearn that anti-Semitism- especially those of us who continue to be Christians. (Basically we believed something along the lines of "Jewish people were wrong about what their own scriptures meant [and Jews today continue to be wrong about that] and then Jesus came along and set them straight.") And the evangelical view of the Pharisees is one of the big examples of this anti-Semitism.
Evangelicals use the term "Pharisee" as a shorthand for "someone who is so fixated on rules that they miss the whole point." And the bible does portray them this way- honestly I would say the bible does portray them as this one-dimensional caricature, which is really not fair to them. The Pharisees were an actual serious group within Judaism back then. Jesus criticized them sometimes, but that doesn't mean their ideas were all bad. It *is* anti-Semitic for Christians to insult other Christians by saying "you're being like the Pharisees." (I've seen ex-evangelicals questioning the rules we were taught, and coming to the realization "oh my goodness, it was us evangelicals who were being like the Pharisees all along!" It's a good sentiment, but please leave the Pharisees out of it! See what I mean about how ex-evangelicals need to unlearn this anti-Semitism?)
And I'm aware that I titled this post "Maybe Jesus Was A Pharisee" and from an evangelical perspective, them's fightin' words. Like I'm saying "maybe Jesus was a heartless jerk who cared more about rules than people." Using "Pharisee" as a slur. No, I'm not saying that- what I mean (and what Rabbi Ruttenberg is saying) is, maybe Jesus was a member of this specific group of Jewish scholars who spent time discussing the nature of God and how we should live.
(Probably it's not just evangelicals who view Pharisees in this way. Probably there are other Christian groups which do too.)
Anyway, that's the background I wanted to give before discussing Rabbi Ruttenberg's blog posts. She presents the idea that maybe Jesus was a Pharisee, and the bible records the intracommunity debates that he had with other Pharisees. It's a good blog series, you should read it if you're really into the bible. It's especially good to get this historical background, from a Jewish perspective- this isn't something I had ever heard from Christians before.
I want to quote a few parts here which really stood out to me. There's this:
The Pharisees had Jesus’ back!
At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” (Luke 13:31)
I read that and I was like, oh wow. Ruttenberg reads this as the Pharisees trying to protect Jesus- wow, I totally never read it that way. I always read that verse as "some Pharisees, who were always criticizing Jesus and trying to tell him what to do, came and said 'get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you,' ugh how annoying, what is these guys' problem?" Ruttenberg says "The Pharisees had Jesus' back" and I'm like, oh wow, I totally never ever thought that when I read that verse.
But her reading is very reasonable, right? If you read this in a totally different context, like "[somebody] came and said to [somebody else], 'Get away from here, for [somebody] wants to kill you,'" probably you would read it as them being concerned and trying to be helpful by warning him.
It's just because it's Jesus and the Pharisees, and as evangelicals we always viewed the Pharisees in this way- that's why I always read this passage as an example of how the Pharisees were always causing trouble for Jesus and not believing in him like they were supposed to. It's mind-blowing to me to realize, just now, that that's not what this bible verse says at all.
Another example from Rabbi Ruttenberg's posts is about handwashing. She discusses how the followers of Hillel and the followers of Shammai had debates about the correct order of operations when mixing wine- do you wash your hands before or after? Going through and nitpicking the logic of whether or not the water residue on the cup makes your hands unclean, etc. And then she presents this passage about Jesus:
When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? (Luke 11:37-40)
A lil' bonus antisemitism thrown in for funsies, but you see that Jesus either doesn't wash, or doesn't wash first, and Jesus snarks at our Pharisee friend for worrying about external cooties. He very well could be harshing on the Beit Shammai position.
Wow! Okay, this is FASCINATING! The hand-washing thing was a real debate among the Pharisees back then. Maybe Jesus had experience thinking through the logic of how one should wash one's hands, and participating in debates about it, and that's where he's coming from here. I always read this passage completely differently, like he's an outsider looking at the Pharisees and mocking them for being so silly.
Is it a very simplistic and shallow "haha look at those weirdos over there"? Or is it "I know what they're talking about. I know it too well, because I am one of them"?
Is it like... like some conspiracy theory that I have never had any interest in, like "flat earth" for example? You tell me some people believe the earth is flat, and I'll be like "lollll do they not use GPS, or?" My feeling is that it's so obvious that it's wrong- I just mock them with a one-liner and move on, with no interest in actually understanding their thinking. That's how I always read Jesus' interactions with the Pharisees in the bible. Like they were just stereotypes who were so obviously wrong.
Or is it more like, say, my experiences with believing in biblical inerrancy? Yes, I used to be evangelical, I used to believe the bible is inerrant, and all the layers of logic and reasoning that go along with that belief. Occasionally an atheist would come along and say something like "the bible is full of contradictions!" or "the bible says pi is equal to 3, lololol" and none of that affected me because those are extremely shallow criticisms from people who don't know anything about what it actually means to believe the bible is inerrant.
But I know how it really is. How in the bible, God commands genocide, and if you truly believe in inerrancy, and you get really into apologetics, you have to become the kind of person who believes genocide is right sometimes. I know how that is; I've been there. And I know how it is when you finally have permission to believe "these bible stories didn't really happen" or "they believed that God commanded this, but they were wrong," and the joy and freedom you feel when you don't have to be that kind of person any more. (Thank you, Peter Enns.)
I know how it is, and when I criticize the idea of inerrancy, or even joke about it, it's not just some shallow drive-by mockery. I understand what it's like to think that way.
Was that how Jesus was, with the Pharisees? Ruttenberg makes the case that Jesus may have been a Pharisee from the school of Hillel, and he argued with the Pharisees who followed Shammai. Both groups would have known the ins and outs of each other's arguments, and understood and respected each other, even though they strongly disagreed on some things. When you view it this way, it puts those bible passages about Jesus and the Pharisees in a totally different light.
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