Doubting Conflict with Pharisees
Doubting Conflict with Pharisees
Some scholars attribute stories about Jesus’ conflicts with the Pharisees only to the imagination or experience of later Christians.2 Elsewhere some of the same scholars concede that disputes occurred, but “not necessarily between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees.”3 To this perspective we must make three concessions. A simple comparison of the extant Gospels will reveal that Matthew and especially John do at least sometimes intensify the specifically Pharisaic opposition in their narratives (e.g., Matt 3:7;4 Jn 1:24; 7:32, 45). At least sometimes, therefore, more general disputes were later assigned specifically to the Pharisees.
Nevertheless, we must qualify this concession; we should not assume on the basis of these few examples that every mention of Pharisees was added later (even Matthew and John do not do it all the time). It seems more likely instead that Matthew and John felt free to adapt these “opponents” based on the presence of Pharisees already in many of the accounts. Opposition, including Pharisaic opposition, appears already in Mark (Mk 2:16, 18, 24; 3:6; 7:1, 3, 5; 8:11, 15; 10:2; 12:13), and Jesus harshly criticizes the Pharisees in “Q” (Matt 23:6, 23-28//Lk 11:39-44). To argue that every layer of tradition must be misrepresenting Jesus values a theory about how Jesus “should” have acted, without any supporting documentary evidence, against all the documentary evidence we do have.
As a second concession, Pharisees probably were rare in Galilee. Josephus mentions the Pharisees primarily in Jerusalem in our sources, not in Galilee.5 Still, Josephus’ interest focuses on Jerusalem in any case,6 so we would not expect him to tell us as much about any individual Pharisees living in Galilee. One could thus argue that more Pharisees lived in Galilee than some of our sources suggest, though they presumably predominated in Jerusalem.7 Local elites, at least, presumably did have significant contact with Jerusalem.
Further, the Pharisees could be visitors from Jerusalem rather than local.8 Indeed, if Jesus was becoming well-enough known, Pharisees could have visited to evaluate and dialogue with him; Josephus reports such measures in his own case in Galilee.9 Moreover, keeping in mind that ancient biographers were more interested in anecdotes than in chronology, we can allow for the possibility that Jesus had some of these conflicts in Judea. We have every reason from Jesus’ context to believe the Gospels’ claim that Jesus, like most Galileans, did travel to Judea for festivals.10 (Nevertheless, this final objection by itself could account for only some of the stories.)11
A third caveat is that the Pharisees did not go around trying to kill or even arrest people who differed with their interpretation of the law — at least not in this period.12 Even in the Gospels, where some Pharisees “plotted” against Jesus, it is Jerusalem’s priestly leaders who get Jesus executed, and that within a few days of their decision.13 The Fourth Gospel, which most often combines “Pharisees” with (and perhaps occasionally substitutes them for) other groups elsewhere in the gospel tradition, also lays the blame for Jesus’ execution mostly on the priestly elite.14