One of the most famous and well-known stories from the Gospels is the time when Yeshua “silenced” both Sadducee and Pharisee alike with his profound wisdom. Except that's not really what happened. The Sadducees were in fact silenced by the wisdom of Yeshua, but as we will see moving forward the Pharisees in this narrative were not silenced but rather granted a victory that was won for them by the wisdom of Yeshua.
The story is found in Matthew 22 and Mark 12. Due to the variance in details given between these two Gospels, we will use both of these accounts. The story really begins in Mark 12:13, a bit before the initial question, "what is the greatest commandment":
“Then they send some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Yeshua in order to trap Him with a word.”
I’ve placed emphasis on the word “some” here because this minor detail is monumentally important to understanding the relationship Yeshua has with the Pharisees. The Greek word in question is τις (Tis), which in this context does not refer to “some”, as in a small number in relation to a greater multitude sum, but rather, “some” as in certain particular persons from the Pharisees or even a particular school of thought. This is why it is such an important detail. Not only is it incorrect to think of Pharisees and Sadducees as monolithic sects, but it is also incorrect to think of the Pharisees as an independent sect without division among them. It was once thought that in the first century there were five major schools of thought among the Pharisees, but recent scholarship has found there were as many as seven major schools of thought among the Pharisee movement in the first century. This is all-important because the distinction of “some of the Pharisees'' or “certain of the Pharisees” appears numerous times in the Gospels and we may very well be able to determine which Pharasaic school they came from or which school they didn’t come from based on the nature of the dispute.
If we continue in Matthew and Mark we see that these certain Pharisees tried to trap Yeshua with an impossible-to-win question. If Yeshua agreed taxes should be paid then he appears as a supporter of Israel’s oppressors, but if he said he didn’t pay taxes then he appears as inciting rebellion against Rome. Essentially they are attempting to either make Yeshua an outcast of the community or a martyr who was forcefully removed from the community. Either way, he would be separated from the community he desired to teach and instruct.
To their surprise, he gave an answer that satisfied all aspects of the challenge. He drew attention to the idolatrous nature of the image on the coin which one should not desire to carry with them in the first place and continued to draw attention to the image in which man was made for the purposes of serving G-d via the commandments.
After this, Mark states that they left, and later on some Sadducees came to pose their own challenge to him. What is interesting here is that the Sadducees are the ones who came to challenge him after he was asked a question that could have had serious implications about his feelings towards the Roman government.
The Sadducees were, by and large, bought out by Rome. However, the question they posed to Yeshua had no implications on his loyalty to Rome or lack thereof. Instead, they focus their questioning on the afterlife and resurrection of the dead. The afterlife topic was a primary source of theological division and distinction between Pharisees and Sadducees. For the Pharisees, there was a wide range of literature useful for teaching which varied in degrees of authority. Naturally, the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) took precedence over all, but they accepted the rest of the Tanakh (the writings of the prophets, psalms, proverbs, etc) as well as other texts external to the modern “Bible” of today such as the Talmud, Mishnah, and Midrash. None of these external texts were in their completion or had been compiled into a single text until much later (approximately 2nd and 3rd century), but the writings and teachings clearly existed before their compilations. Within these texts were discussions on the oral Torah which is understood to have been instruction that was given at Sinai along with the Written Torah. It was believed and still is today, that this “oral Torah” was transmitted by word of mouth from teacher to student as it was from G-d to Moses, from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the 70 elders, etc. This transmission is also understood and stated within the Talmud (the collection of writings discussing the oral Torah).
For the Sadducees however, there were only the 5 books of Moses. They did not use the writings (book of psalms, proverbs, etc) or the prophets (book of Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). They were hyper-literalists. While the Pharisees believed in a physical resurrection and afterlife (due to their extensive literature and sacred literature), the Sadducees rejected the notion of a resurrection and afterlife based on its absence in the written Torah. One might be able to loosely connect the idea of a resurrection and afterlife from some obscure places in the written text of the Torah but nothing quite so plainly states that these elements are realities which caused a dispute that had been raging for years between these two sects. By the time of Yeshua, no Pharisee had been able to think of an answer that could skillfully silence the Sadducees’ argument. . Yeshua is seemingly the first in recorded history to accomplish this. His answer appealed to the declaration of G-d himself; G-d is the G-d of the living and not the dead. G-d stated “I am the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and not “I was the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, which in biblical Hebrew would be the appropriate way to make such a statement of self-reference relative to someone who was dead at that time. Yeshua had put an end to the debate about the resurrection and demonstrated that the Pharisees had been correct on this subject the whole time, and the Sadducees had blindly missed it within their own Torah.
The narrative continues:
But the Pharisees, when they heard that Yeshua had silenced the Sadducees, gathered together in one place and tested him, one of them, a lawyer, asked, ”Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” Matthew 22:34-36
Within the seven schools of Pharasaic thought mentioned earlier, each had a leading Rabbi with their own answer to this question and their answer determined which school they belonged to, and whether or not a student seeking a new teacher would choose to learn from that school or not. It should be no surprise that Yeshua was presented with this question as well, and the answer he gave is found in Mark 12:29-31;
Yeshua answered, “the first is, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai, Echad. Hear, O Israel, the L-rd our G-d, the L-rd is One. And you shall love Adonai your G-d with all your hearts, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Every Rabbi Agreed that first and foremost came loving G-d. Loving G-d was by far the greatest of all commandments. But what a rabbi would answer as secondary to that question is how you would distinguish which school of thought they followed. While there were seven major schools of thought, two of them were the most prominent. The first was Beit Shammai (school of Shammai) and the second was Beit Hillel (the school of Hillel). Both of these rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, were contemporaries with Jesus. Hillel however, died when Jesus was about 12 years old, while Shammai was alive and well during Jesus’ ministry. Within the Talmud there is a section that outlines three particular encounters that both Shammai and Hillel had with three gentiles. Ultimately, these gentiles ended up as converts under the school of Hillel due to favoring Hillel’s responses over Shammai’s. In these three stories, the differences, both in doctrine and nature, between Shammai and Hillel are on display and contrast one another. Shammai had a harsh and much more strict approach to gentiles and the application of Torah law whereas, Hillel demonstrated a much kinder attitude towards the curious (and sometimes mischievous) gentiles and also a much more forgiving and relaxed approach to Torah law.
Many of Hillel's teachings are in perfect harmony with Yeshua’s teachings given later in history. One of these harmonious teachings was in his answer to the question of the greatest commandment found within Mark and Matthew.
The Babylonian Talmud states:
There was another incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study. - Shabbat 31a:6
Hillel was known for teaching the spirit of the law while Shammai was known for teaching the letter of the law. The Pharisee who asked Yeshua the question in the first place was not trying to “stand up for his friend, the Sadducee”. Instead, this Pharisee, concluded Yeshua was also a Pharisee and wanted to ask an honest question to determine which of the seven schools of thought this impressive speaker belonged to. Did he even submit to any school of thought? This was not a challenge to confound Yeshua, but rather to learn more about him.
“To love one's neighbor as oneself” was Hillel's answer and Hillel even went so far as to say that loving one's neighbor was the totality of what Torah endeavors to teach. Shammai’s answer, on the other hand, was that the sabbath is the second most important command.
Yeshua answers the question with Hillel’s answer, “love your neighbor as yourself”, which was a blatant statement of self-identification. Without needing or giving additional clarification, Yeshua had just knowingly and publicly declared he agreed with the philosophy of Hillel. This, to anyone familiar with both the Gospels and the Talmud, should harken to Eruvin 13b:10 which states:
Ultimately, a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed: Both these and those are the words of the living G-d. However, the halakha [legal ruling] is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel.
Both the Talmud and The Gospels attest to Hillel’s philosophy is in favor with G-d.
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