Pharisees were Evangelicals
or Tearing the Old Adam in Two
Jesus comes to the Pharisees. Who are the Pharisees? They are us. Pharisees are the evangelicals. They are the faithful in Israel.
The Sadducees were the liberals, the zealots were the political activists and the Essenes were the dropouts, and Jesus doesn’t fool with them at all.
The evangelicals, the Bible believers, the people who have faith in God, who are waiting for the Covenant to be fulfilled, were the Pharisees. But just as in evangelicalism, some of the Pharisees were not regenerate. They were proud and legalistic and mean. But some of the Pharisees were good, humble believers. So Jesus comes and preaches and His converts come out of the Pharisees. The people who oppose Him also come out of the Pharisees…
What happens with Jesus’ ministry is that He divides them. Those who refuse to come into the New Covenant harden up. This hardening and separating process continues until AD70 when God finally brings a full judgment upon the wicked among the Pharisees.
You will run into the same thing in evangelicalism today. You will come across Lutherans for whom the whole touchstone of their religion is the Formula of Concord. They don’t know anything about the Bible. All they want to do is argue Lutheran doctrine. You will run into Calvinists who don’t want to talk about the Bible. They just want to argue the Westminster Confession. Everything comes out of that. It was all settled then. You’ll run into Fundamentalists who don’t want to talk about the Bible. Everything is settled in Scofield’s notes…
This same tendency to have the traditions of man become far more important than the Word of God is what is being dealt with in the New Testament. Not that human traditions are wrong. Many of these things reflect wisdom from the past. But they need to be kept in the right place in our hierarchy of priorities.
James Jordan in Lecture 48 of his indispensable Revelation series, available here.
December 4th, 2011 at 3:16 am
I’m not sure where you are getting these descriptions. First off the Essenes were the sect John the Baptist and James the Just came from, from not messing with them Jesus is portrayed as part of the Essene community having the kinds of issues with Pharisees that Essenes often did. The analogy might be something like Fundamentalists vs. Charismatics. In terms of “Sadducees were the liberals” if you mean by liberals mainline churches…. maybe. But there are class dimensions here as well and political dimensions. If you are OK with the distinction above make Sadducees Episcopalians.
And this analogy then kills the larger point.
December 4th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Thanks for visiting.
There’s no evidence for John being an Essene other than circumstantial. And there is just as much evidence for him not being an Essene. His father was a Temple priest, and the Essenes rejected Temple worship. But the solution of John and Jesus was to tear the Temple down and build a new one — out of people — not hide in the hills. The mentality is different.
There are also the issues of John’s diet and the location of his preaching. The biggest issue is his belief that Jesus was the Messiah. So his being an Essene is simply a conjecture. He is presented as a prophet of the people, like Elijah, and a final “Nazirite warrior,” not a member of a pietistic sect.
Also, it seems to me that much of this modern focus on the Essenes is an attempt to undermine the authority of the Scriptures in favour of gnostic teachings.
December 6th, 2011 at 2:19 am
Actually there is quite a bit of direct evidence. John shows up in multiple pieces of literature. He arguably may have a still active sect of followers (Mandaeans), that regardless have a mid 3rd century holy book about him. He show up in the Pseudo-Clementine literature which is at worst early 2nd century. I’ll do a quick link http://www.rosicrucian.org/publications/digest/digest2_2007/online%20digest/articles/07_jesus_feather.pdf
As far the reason for the focus on the Essenes. It is because people are looking to maintain some degree of historicity and early dating. If these events actually happened in Judea then they happened among real people. Talking about events as happening among “Jews” is like talking about a political event in America as being debated by “democracy believers” (I know where you are, I’m assuming the analogy will make sense). American political debate happens within parties or coalitions.
So if a book says “a proposal was brought to the floor of the legislature by democracy believers” to update that claim you either need to say:
a) The claim is false.
b) It came to either the house or the senate
c) If it was brought to the floor of the house it was brought by a committee chair or the speaker. If it was brought by the speaker it was party legislation… If it was brought by a committee chair either it was partisan or it had support of both party’s caucus….
John’s following while noticeable was not big enough to be an entire sect. So if he is not a Essene then what is he? If he really exists then he exists in a 1st century Judean political context and is a member of the parties that actually existed at the time. People like the Pope support the Essene theory not because they want to undermine the gospels but because they want to support them. To a great extent the alternative to an Essene John is a mythic John.
If John isn’t an Essene then the next thing is to look at the Baptizer myths that stretch all the way out of Persia. Some of the expressions like “fisher of men” are part of the Hani legend about a baptizer and ritual purity rites and…. Among Iranian Jews Joḫanan (Jonah but the similarity to John is pretty clear) is the form that rite takes. So is John a 1st century Jew doing 1st century stuff and belonging to 1st century political parties; or is John a Judiazation of an Persian myth existing outside of time or place? Mythic figures don’t belong to existent political parties, historical figures do.
December 6th, 2011 at 8:49 am
Thanks for the link! It’s a well-written article but the evidence it finds in Scripture is not only completely conjectural (filling in supposed gaps) but entirely fails to take into account the Old Testament patterns that John and Jesus were fulfilling. To assert that they were inspired or drawing upon a sect like the Essenes is to undermine their inspiration. Was Jesus well-taught because He was sent to an Essene school, or was He well-taught because He listened to the Scriptures at synagogue and had a soft heart towards God? The same kind of circumstantial argument could be used against the theory. When the source of His wisdom was under question, did anyone at all mention a possible Essene education (which, according to this article, might have been a common choice of schooling)? No, they didn’t.
Jordan’s point is that the Temple was still the centre of spiritual operations until Pentecost, regardless of the hard hearts of many of its leaders. Pentecost was the turning point — the harvester turned up with His winnowing fan, as John predicted.
I’m afraid any 2nd or 3rd century sources of traditions have to be read in the light of the Holy Scriptures. I believe John is certainly a historical figure, but an historical figure under the creative inspiration of the Spirit of God (Who was bringing a “new creation”) not the so-called inspiration of a sect who were not inspired to leave everything and wholeheartedly follow Jesus, the Lamb of God. If they were on the right track, that’s exactly what they would have done.