A very telling encounter which Yeshua has with Pharisees in the Gospels which often gets either overlooked or ignored is in Matthew 9. It is immediately followed by an account of John the Baptist's disciples questioning a difference in practice between what John had taught them and Yeshua’s own practice.
The set up of the scenario runs from verse 9 to verse 11
“As Jesus passed by from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, “Follow me.” He got up and followed him. As he sat in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”(Matthew 9:9-11)
If this passage is approached from the assumption that Yeshua wasn’t a Pharisee but rather was opposed to the Pharisees, one thing should stand out as peculiar and demanding of an explanation: The very scrutiny of the Pharisees itself. At this point in the Gospel narrative Yeshua hadn’t made any sort of messianic claims. So they surely weren’t scrutinizing him on the basis of his potentially being the messiah. It’s also uncommon for Pharisees to be so preoccupied with scrutinizing members, teachers, or leaders from other sects such as the Sadducees, Boethusians, or Essenes. At least not in such a way as questioning why they do what they do. Pharisees generally accepted that these sects had different practices which they disagreed on. The Pharisees might have established Halacha to account for those differences. An example can be found in the Babylonian Talmud in Eruvin 68b:16 where there is discussion on the stipulations of the area which can be traversed on a sabbath day relative to one's own home if on the same street as a Gentile, Sadducee, or Boethusian. All this to demonstrate that it was uncommon for Pharisees to obsess over, follow, and meticulously scrutinize other sects of Judaism. They generally stuck to policing their own.
This makes their obsessive scrutiny of Yeshua’s actions and those of his disciples throughout the Gospels all the more peculiar if Yeshua wasn’t a Pharisee. But it makes perfect sense if Yeshua was a Pharisee. As one of their own, the Pharisees would have good reason for constantly observing the behavior and observance of Yeshua and his Disciples. Inquiring about observances they maybe aren’t as familiar with or didn’t understand, and challenging those which they understood to be incorrect or outright violations.
Understanding this, the close attention to detail Yeshua receives from the Pharisees actually serves as evidence in favor of his being a Pharisee rather than evidence against it.
Another question that the answer lends to this understanding is: why did they find it odd that Yeshua was dining with the undesirables?
One very popular understanding is based on a depiction of the Pharisees as pompous and morally superior self-righteous aristocrats who thought themselves too good to mingle and associate with the common folk.
This depiction of the Pharisees is one that comes from Hollywood of the late 20th century and it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Many who are old enough to remember the 90s and the two decades prior grew up seeing this very depiction in film productions such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Jesus of Nazareth (1977) which were both painfully popular even into the early 90s. Modern depictions of the Gospel narrative in the last 25 years have pretty much maintained this depiction with minor corrections such as can be seen in Productions like The Chosen Series but even with these corrections the attitude projected onto the Pharisees is still one of social elitism.
In reality, the social elites who most warrant being depicted in such a way were the Sadducees. To read more about the different sects of Judaism and where they fit into 1st-century Jewish society, please see The Sects Talk.
The Pharisees were very much the party of the people. Where the Sadducees were seen as the traitorous overseers appointed by Rome (their oppressors), the Pharisees had the ears of the common man. They were who the people looked to for spiritual leadership and guidance. Most Pharisees were tradesmen themselves. In fact, Hillel the Great, a Pharisee whose own philosophy would mirror that of Yeshua, was a carpenter. Yet another similarity the two share.
The fact remains, though, that the Pharisees did not dine with the average commoner. Not because they were social elitists. But because their observance of Torah law and the oral traditions were so fine-tuned and rigid, they only trusted that a meal hosted and prepared by another Pharisee would adhere to such standards. This is not elitism. This is a concern over personal observance. Most who are practicing Torah would not accept a dinner invitation from someone who is not observant and is unaware of the restrictions of biblically clean eating because even their vegetables might have been cooked with unclean meats as a flavoring agent. Especially in the American South east, where it is very popular to use pork products to flavor different vegetables.
Most parents also would not let their children spend extended hours at the home of someone else whose values are not in alignment with their own for fear of the influence that different values might have on their children. These are not elitisms. These are a form of protection, self-preservation, and maintaining consistency of personal standards.
To be sure, Yeshua’s dining with sinners and tax collectors was behavior which was not typical of Pharisees which makes sense of the scrutiny on the part of the Pharisees in this passage. The Talmud records the Pharisees attitude towards tax collectors specifically, placing tax collectors alongside “murderers and robbers” (b. Baba kamma 113a:19 and Nedarim 27b:9) Eating with a tax collector was, simply put, all but forbidden directly for a "chaver" (fellow Pharisee). The Pharisees had such distain for tax collectors that according to b. Bekhorot 31a if a chaver became a tax collector, even if he later resigned and repented, he would never again be allowed to be considered a chaver. (This ruling was eventually overturned).
If they viewed him as one of their own, they’d surely have had questions about this deviation from their own precedent. If Yeshua had been just another average Joe with a few followers, then him dining with sinners is of no particular interest to the Pharisees to begin with. Why would they care if some guy who is not of their own doesn't do things only the Pharisees "chaverim" are expected to do? But if he IS a fellow Pharisee, a chaver, well then the question makes total sense.
Yeshua’s answer to them in verse 12 offers a bit of insight as to how he saw the Pharisees.
“When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do.”(Matthew 9:12)
Yeshua contrasts the sinners he is dining with to the Pharisees by comparison of Sick vs Healthy. This stands in direct contradiction to the image of Pharisees portrayed in the above-mentioned films. This portrayed the Pharisees as entirely too full of themselves to learn and, in contrast, portrayed the common man as being more capable of grasping Jesus' teachings for lack of being so full of themselves. This portrayal again, deviates from the precedence set by Matthew's Gospel. According to Jesus, the Pharisees are “well” or in other words, “healthy”. The opposite of sick. Not needing ministering.
Yeshua doubles down on this comparison in verse 13.
“But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”(Matthew 9:13)
Yeshua here makes the same contrast between the Pharisees he is speaking to, who believed he should only dine with them, and the sinners he was currently dining with by a different comparison in which he is calling the Pharisees righteous.
The passage continues to hint at Yeshua’s affiliation with the Pharisees after this by citing Johns, the Baptist's own disciples in verse 14, who seemed to think the practice of Yeshua’s disciples should mirror their own and that of the Pharisees. A practice that John’s disciples had in common with Pharisees in spite of John’s possibly being an Essene.
“Then John’s disciples came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don’t fast?”(Matthew 9:14)
This scrutiny from John's Disciples should also give any reader pause. If only on the basis that even John the Baptist's Disciples believed The practice of Yeshua’s disciples should be in accordance with the observances of the Pharisees, and observing that not to be the case confused them. This suggests that the assumption of John's disciples was that Yeshua (and therefore his disciples also) was a Pharisee.
Based on the evidence of this passage, the notion of Yeshua being opposed to the Pharisees only creates more questions than answers and conflicts with much of what is known about how Pharisees interacted with the society around them.
These instances of scrutiny over differences in observance must be understood only as that and not accusations of violating any Torah law or even a longstanding tradition.
Such scrutiny only serves to prove that Yeshua was accepted as a Pharisee not only by the Pharisees but by John's disciples as well. Furthermore, Yeshua confirms this association in his own words by calling the Pharisees righteous in contrast to sinners and healthy in contrast to the sick.
Contrary to what has been depicted about this passage in media portrayals of the gospel narrative, This frame is the only one that consistently unifies this narrative from Matthew's gospel with what is known about pharisaic culture and behavior during the first century.
Kommentare