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6. conflict with the scribes and Pharisees Interpretation of the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees continues to be influenced by the standard older theological scheme of Christian origins. At the center of the parochial old religion of Judaism was the Law. As the precursors of the rabbis, the Pharisees were the authoritative teachers of the Law who emphasized scrupulous adherence to the minutiae of ritual observances and purity codes. In direct challenge to their legalism and restrictive casuistry, Jesus taught the Gospel of forgiveness, love, and responsive righteousness. Some interpretation even held that Jesus intentionally abrogated the Law in his disputes with the Pharisees in such matters as observance of the Sabbath. In the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust, both Christian and Jewish interpreters have been constrained to break through or mitigate this scheme, finding various ways to construct Judaism as less legalistic, the Pharisees as less of a straw man, and Jesus as a faithful Jew. Yet the influence of the old scheme persists in seeing Judaism as focused on “the politics of holiness,” the Pharisees as dedicated to the maintenance of purity, and Jesus as having intensified (rather than abrogated) the Law.1 Especially important in moving beyond the Pharisees of the old scheme have been critical analyses of the sources, principally Josephus’s histories, certain Qumran documents, the Gospels, and rabbinic references, that give very different pictures and at points even seem contradictory. None has been more important than the incisive analysis of rabbinic sources by Jacob Neusner, which has been particularly helpful to Christian interpreters of Jesus and the Gospels, who generally lack the training to work in rabbinic sources themselves. He has shown that the rabbinic traditions of the Pharisees are diverse and include layer upon layer of reshaping in the course of rabbinic debates.2 He has also shown that the Pharisees were not the only and may not have been the principal precursors of the rabbis. A hypothesis based on a supposed difference between Josephus’s accounts in the Jewish War and the Antiquities, however, turns out to have been diversionary. In the later work, it was argued, Josephus was making a case to the Romans that they should appoint the Pharisees to fill the vacuum in the administration of Judaism in ConfliCT WiTh The SCribeS and PhariSeeS 129 Palestine in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. This was a welcome hypothesis for interpreters of Jesus eager to lessen Jesus’s conflict with Judaism. It enabled them to attribute the most severe clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospel “controversy stories” to later development of the Gospel tradition by Jesus believers facing the (imminent) assumption of authority by the Pharisees. It turns out, however, that the Romans were not looking to appoint the Pharisees or any other figures as authorities over Judaism in Palestine.3 These analyses of sources and reconceptualizations, however, do not consider the political-economic-religious position and role of the Pharisees, which continue to be obscured by the synthetic construct of “Judaism.” Research on several subjects directly pertinent to their role, moreover, is further undermining standard old assumptions about “Judaism” and “the Torah/Law.” The PoSiTion and role of The SCribeS and PhariSeeS in The JUdean TemPle-STaTe Instead of continuing to imagine that the Pharisees were some sort of ill-defined “group” or “sect” in “Judaism” (or one of several “Judaisms”), it would be more appropriate to the historical situation to discern the position and role of the scribes and Pharisees in the Judean temple-state. Scholars devoted to “social scientific” interpretation have applied sociological models to ancient Judean society, particularly the historical sociology of Gerhard Lenski.4 This model, couched in terms of social stratification on the basis of study of modern industrial societies, does not appear to be generally applicable to Judea and other ancient Near Eastern societies or to the Roman Empire. As discussed in chapter 2, the sources for ancient Roman Palestine portray a deep division between the rulers, imperial and local, and the people they ruled and taxed. In one respect, however, some of the cross-cultural studies on which Lenski draws are adaptable for ancient Judea, and that is the relation between the priestly aristocracy of the Judean temple-state and the learned scribes who cultivated cultural traditions. Rather than apply a model, however, it may be more helpful to comb our sources for information that indicates the political-economic-religious position...

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