Our culture has an inverted proportionality of critique. We protect those who are our own at all costs. It won’t take the discerning observer long to recall an occasion when the same party defending their own was attacking someone from the other party for a similar offense.
What comes to mind when you think of a Pharisee? A self-righteous finger-wagger? An arrogant rule follower?
Jesus was a Pharisee.
There were two major Jewish groups during Jesus’ time: the Pharisees and the Sadducees (a smaller number of Jews were part of the Essenes, a separatist group). The Pharisees and Sadducees both emerged after the Hasmonean dynasty (The Jewish rulers who gained independence after the Maccabean revolt (167-160 BC) were known as the Hasmoneans).
The Sadducees controlled the Temple and had political favor with the Romans. They accepted only the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and rejected oral tradition. They emphasized free will and denied the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees affirmed the written Torah, as well as the other books that are part of the Jewish canon today. They emphasized divine providence and believed in the resurrection of the dead.
Jesus, without a doubt, was a Pharisee. He agreed with the Pharisees that there was resurrection after death (see John 6, for instance). His understanding of marriage and divorce (Matt. 19:1-12; 22:23-33) aligned with the Pharisees as did his critique of the manner in which the Sadducees ran the Temple (Matt. 21:12-17).
Why, then, was Jesus’ harshest criticism directed at the Pharisees? There are more than twenty-five times in the gospels where Jesus directly criticizes Pharisees (for instance, see Matt. 23:16, 24; 23:5-7, 25, 33; Lk. 12:1). Meanwhile, there are only two times Jesus directly critiques the Sadducees (Matt. 16:1-12; Matt. 22:23-33) and a handful of times Jesus indirectly critiques the Sadducees (Matt. 21:12-17; Mk. 11:15-18; Lk. 19:45-48; Jn. 2:13-22).
The reason Jesus critiqued the Pharisees more harshly than any other group was because he was a Pharisee.
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