Jesus and the Pharisees through the Eyes of Two Modern Hebrew Writers: A Contrarian Perspective

As a response to the New Testament narrative in which the Pharisees are portrayed as Jesus’ foes, the modern Jewish discourse tends to stress the continuity between the historical Jesus and the Pharisees. In the current article, I discuss the surprising texts of two major twentieth-century Hebrew writers, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Pinchas Sadeh, who adopted the New Testament version of the story of Jesus, siding with him against the Pharisees. Discussing different aspects of this interesting transition, I claim that we should understand it as a part of these authors’ attempt to distinguish themselves from traditional, rabbinic Judaism.