The Ancients - The Pharisees

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

The Pharisees are one of the most familiar names in the ancient world, but are they also one of the most misunderstood?Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Helen Bond to step back into first-century Judea, where the Pharisees were debating law, purity and resurrection under foreign rule. They look at how much power the Pharisees really had, their debates with Jesus in the Gospels, and how focussed they were on the idea of a 'messiah'.We're going on *TOUR* to Australia and New Zealand! - grab your tickets here.MOREJohn the BaptistListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPontius PilateListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. The Pharisees, we've all heard the name, remembered for their opposition to Jesus of Nazareth during his teachings in Judea 2,000 years ago, educated men who challenged him on his beliefs. Today, the Pharisees divide opinion, positively portrayed in Judaism, negatively for so long in Christianity. But who actually were these people? How much power and influence did they have in ancient Judea? What did they believe in? And did they really have next to nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth? Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the Pharisees. Our guest is Dr. Helen Bond, Professor of Christian Origins at Edinburgh University, and the host of the podcast, Biblical Time Machine.

Helen, it's been too long. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Tristan. It's great to be here. and talk about the Pharisees, and they are much more than just these portrayed villains in the New Testament. Yeah, that is the trouble, actually. The two groups of people who are interested in them are Jews and Christians, and we'll come onto this, but we've got very little evidence about the Pharisees. And the problem is that Jews tend to see them as everything that's good. They're the precursors of rabbinic Judaism. They're the good guys of antiquity. Christians, because they've had such a bad press, in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, tend to see them as everything that's bad. And Luther didn't like them in the Reformation. And they kind of, they're sort of the poster boy for everything that's wrong with Judaism at the time of Jesus. So it's really difficult to sort of steer

your way between these two poles. And also from what you were saying, is it quite difficult to get a sense of who the Pharisees really were? Are they still quite a mysterious group? Very, very mysterious. The difficulty is because of so little evidence, people just fill in the the gaps. So, you know, Christians say, oh, well, you know, they must have been bad guys. And, you know, rather than just looking at where do we get the evidence, what do we know about them. So, yeah, it's very difficult. Well, shall we start with the name, Pharisee, first of all? What do we know about that? Again, I could just say nothing. We could leave it at that. And that might actually be a good thing, because the name might mean nothing at all. You know, we sort of always go straight into this.

What does a name mean? And this, I think, is a good example of where the gap filling goes in. So it's possible that it comes from the Hebrew parish or Aramaic parish, and it might mean, separated ones. That's, I mean, if you look at a dictionary, that's what you'll see. It means separated ones. And then the question is, who did they separate from? You know, were they separate from the people, separate from the priest, you know, separate from the political establishment? And of course, Christians have tended to kind of read them as, oh, you know, They were aloof. They were distant. They kept their distance from the ordinary people. But there's no evidence for that at all. Another interpretation of their name might mean something to do with interpreters or something like that.

And I think if you're going to go with an interpretation of the name, that's probably the most likely because everything we know about them suggests that they did have a body of biblical material and that they were very, very keen on interpreting it. So you've already kind of highlighted that mysterious nature of this group. So if we are to try and piece together a bit more about them or for those who have studied the Pharisees and are trying to understand more about who these people really were, what types of sources do you have available? Well, the most fulsome sources are the Gospels. They actually are mentioned more times in the Gospels than anywhere else in ancient literature. I think there's something like 110 references. So, you know, they're all over the place, but they're very, very negative. Then an interesting one actually is Josephus, the first century historian. He mentions them. And it's even possible at the end in one of his books, he wrote an autobiography towards the end of his life. And he may even be suggesting that he's, he He was a Pharisee. That's a possible interpretation. But the rest of his writings don't support that because he's actually, he hardly says anything about them and he's really not particularly positive about them. So maybe he changed his mind at the end or maybe we're just reading that passage wrong. Because there are some name figures who are strongly linked with the Pharisees, aren't there? I mean, I think Paul the Apostle is, I don't know if he says he's a Pharisee or not.

He does, he does. And he says it in his own letter. So in theory, Paul is a great source because he He is our only example of a Pharisee who writes anything or at least whose work has come down to us. He says in his letter to the Philippians that he's, as to the law, he says, a Pharisee. So again, it sort of suggests that Pharisees are particularly interested in the law, particularly interested in interpretation of the biblical material. The trouble is, we know nothing else from his letters about. What did it mean to him to be a Pharisee? Is he still a Pharisee? even if he's a follower of Christ. I mean, can you only be one or the other? Maybe not. Maybe he still considered himself a Pharisee. But it's not clear from his letters. The Pharisees seem to have

been interested in, or they believed in resurrection, and they were looking for a Messiah of Israel. And both of those aspects, I suppose, you find in Paul's letters. And is that the main context in which we see the Pharisees? We'll delve more into this later in the chat, but in the surviving Gospels. Is it in contest against Jesus because they are not convinced that he is the messianic figure that they are expecting? No, not really. There's a little bit of that. There's a little bit of discussion about, you know, Jesus's background, is he Davidic, that kind of thing. But mainly, they are portrayed as Jesus's opponents, but mainly it's on issues to do with interpretation of the law, particularly to do with purity issues. So it's to do with who do you eat with?

marriage regulations, washing of hands, tithing, all of these things. And it does seem that purity is a particular concern for the Pharisees. And purity was a big deal in first century Judaism anyway. It's actually important in a lot of ancient religions. But for Jews, purity is a little bit like holiness. And holiness is the state in which you need to be to enter into the temple, to come in contact with God. And one interpretation of the Pharisees that I think is probably quite likely is that they were interested in sort of living out the whole of their lives in a state of purity, not just going to the temple, but wherever they were, they were sort of ready to meet God. And it might be that these things connected with purity were particular concerns of theirs.

And you also mentioned the word tithing there in that answer. Is that the idea of paying a certain amount of money for prayers, for worship? It's a percentage of your produce. So, you know, in an agricultural world, people are sort of giving 10% of their, you know, whatever they produce and then they keep the rest of it. But it's all to do with sort of, you know, the right way to sit down and eat meals with people, the right way to fulfil your obligations as a first century due. Well, we'll delve into all of that in more detail as time goes on. but I must also ask about archaeology. Can archaeology help us at all, Helen, when exploring the story of the Pharisees? Well, people have thought, because they seem to be particularly linked with purity, I mean, there's been a huge amount of archaeology done in Galilee and Judea as well over the last few decades. And people have found things to do with purity. So, for example, they've found these ritual baths called mikfa-a-ut.

And the thing with purity is that lots of things can make you impure. So lots of very normal bodily things. So for a woman to menstruate or to have a baby, you're impure. For anybody to touch a corpse or a person with leprosy or a skin disease. So it's very easy to become impure. And that doesn't matter most of the time. It's only if you're interested in going to the temple that you have to be pure. But in order to become pure, what you do is you go into one of these ritual baths, they're sort of fairly small like little cisterns. You go down one side, you come up the other. and you wait a certain amount of time and you're pure. So these have been found all over Galilee and Judea,

along with stone vessels. Again, this is to do with purity because pottery can become impure. So if a menstruating woman touches a pot, it becomes impure and has to be smashed. But stone vessels don't. So if you get cups and bowls made out of stone, they can be reused.

And the stones of the limestone around Judean, around Judea is actually very thin and able, you know, you're able to make it into quite nice pots and things like that. So archaeologists have found these things to do with purity, and they've suggested maybe these are links to Pharisees. Are these Pharisees are these Phariseic homes? Are they people who are influenced by the Pharisees? The problem is that there's just so much of it. Josepha says that there were 6,000 Pharisees, which actually is a tiny percentage. I mean, we don't know whether he's anywhere near, you know, ancient. numbers are just kind of plucked from anywhere. But it does suggest that he thinks that they're not

massive in terms of numbers. So maybe those reflect some kind of phariseic influence, or I think possibly more likely, it's just that a lot of people were interested in purity. One thing that may well be linked to the Pharisees is these little things, little boxes called tephilin or phylacteries. Now, these are little boxes that have little bits of the scriptures. in them. And the Pharisees seem to have worn them against their skin, sort of tied to them. And the Gospels mention them. So despite the sort of negativity of the Gospels, it's likely that these were actually worn by Pharisees, maybe almost like amulets or they sort of have protective qualities to have, you know, the words of the law against your body. So we've got purity,

but the interpretation of Jewish law, is that another key factor, another key belief of the Pharisees? Yeah, they seem to have had their own particular ways of interpretation. They also have what are variously referred to as the traditions of the elders. Now, some people say that this is an oral law. The problem is there's no evidence that the Pharisees actually had an oral law. Much later on in rabbinic times, the rabbis have an oral law, and it depends whether we think, and we may come on to this, whether we think there's a connection between the Pharisees and the later rabbis, they certainly have their own bodies of scripture alongside the scripture that everybody else is using. Whether it's written down or oral, we don't know for sure. But this does seem to be

an important aspect of what they're doing. They have their own interpretations. And in fact, the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls call them the seekers after smooth things or the interpreters of smooth things. And again, it's that idea of sort of interpretation, reading passages in particular ways that seems to be a characteristic of the Pharisees. And by oral beliefs, do we mean like their passed down word and mouth from generation to generation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And in an oral society, you know, this would be less strange than it maybe sounds to us, you know, 10, 15% of people can read. So most people, particularly if they're not educated, as the vast majority of people are going to be, may well have preferred an oral

tradition rather than words written in a text. And the other big thing that seems very important, resurrection, this was a big deal to the Pharisees? Well, yes, I mean, one good thing about Josephus, and he does mention the Pharisees a few times, and he gives a little sort of pocket description of the Pharisees in comparison to the Sadducees, who are this sort of aristocratic priestly sect connected with the temple, and another group called the Ascenes, who are the ones who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, Now, he loves the Ascenes. He goes into great detail about Ascenes, doesn't like the Sadducees much,

and doesn't like the Pharisees all that much either, and just gives very, very kind of brief account of them. But one of the things he says is that they believe that everybody has a soul and that there's a resurrection. Now, resurrection seems to have been an idea that came into Jewish belief in about the second century BCE, probably after the Maccabian crisis and the uprising there where Jews shook off their Syrian leaders and established Jewish home rule. And I think the reason for that is a lot of people were martyred. People were going out to fight for their religious beliefs, getting killed. And then where does that leave you? You know, why are you going to do that? So the idea of there is something after death seems to have come in in the second century. And Pharisees were major believers in this.

whether it was sort of them who came up with the idea or whether they're just kind of propagating it, seems to be uncertain. But certainly, resurrection generally seems to be a very popular idea in the first century. And it's particularly connected with the end of time. At the end of time, there's going to be a general resurrection and Pharisees are going to be there. By that also, the emergence of that belief, harkening back to the second century BC, against the Seleucid Empire, the Hellenistic Kingdom and the Maccabayan Revolt, Do you think that could intertwine with the origins of the whole movement of the Pharisees? Do we think their origins stretched that far back?

Yes, I think that's exactly when they are most likely to have emerged. I mean, some people push their origins even further back. I mean, there's no evidence for that whatsoever. The first evidence we have for the Pharisees is in the late second century BCE. And I think the most likely time for the emergence of many of these groups and different sects within Judaism is the Hasmanian takeover. The thing about the Hasmanians is that they're kings, but they're also high priests. And so they're combining religious and political power in one person. And this was unheard of until now. And some people don't care. Some people are happy.

Other people find this really too much and, you know, they're against this. And I think it's at this period, just as in a way they get a certain stability and home rule is established, that you get all this sort of squabbling and infighting about who has the right idea for Israel? What's the way that we should organise ourselves? So the Hasmanians, they're the dynasty, should we say, that comes to power after they threw off the Seleucids. They are the rulers who take over Judea, an independent Judea after victory in the Maccabeean revolt? Yes, exactly. They are the Maccabees, actually. Maccabee is just a, it's a nickname. Their family name is Asimeneas, so they become the Hasmanian dynasty. And the Pharisees, they really thrive at that time, do we think? Maybe not so much

thriving. We're dependent on Josephus for this. They're strangely sort of absent from the books of Maccabees, but Josephus tells us, and it has a legendary sound to it. So one of the greatest Maccabian kings was John Hicanus. So we're right at the end of the second century BCE here. And Josephus says that, One day John Hikinas has this dinner party and he invites the Pharisees and he says to them, oh, I'm trying to be so pious. You know, let me know if I'm doing anything wrong. And all the Pharisees just sort of say, oh, no, you're great, you're great, you're doing well. And one of them then, this sort of cantankerous troublemaker called Eliezer, gets up and says,

well, actually, there is something you could do. You could stop being high priest because your mother was a prisoner of war. the Seleucids. And so you may be illegitimate. I mean, he doesn't spell it out, but this is what he's saying. And so, you know, Johnny Keynes is very upset. And he says, this is what you all think. And they say, no, no, no, no, no. Then some sadducees, the sort of high priestly lot, the priests from the temple, start to stir things up and say, ah, they do all think that. And the way you can find that out is ask them what punishment they want to give Eliezer. If they're lenient, then they agree with him. If they're harsh, then they don't. And Joseph has kind of also says that Pharisees tend to be quite

lenient in punishments. And so because of their leniency, they suggest just sort of whipping Eliezer. And so John Hicanus thinks, ah, they're all in it. And so he then moves over to the Sadducees and he sort of ingratiates himself with them. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees do seem to have some kind of political influence at this time. So there they are under the sons of John Hicanus. The Sadducees are sort of the ones in power, I suppose, and the Pharisees are out of it. But there's lots and lots of upheaval under Alexander Gineas, who's a son of John Hicanus. And it gets to such a state that Alexander Geneas has 800 opponents crucified, whilst he and his concubines are feasting in the middle of it.

We're not told specifically that these are Pharisees, but the implication seems to be that they are. And according to Josephus, on his deathbed, Alexander Geney, says to his wife, who actually succeeds him as Queen Salome Alexander, he says to her, if I were you, I would just, you know, throw in you a lot with the Pharisees because there's so much trouble, just listen to the Pharisees. And so that's what she does. So Josephus is not particularly positive about that. He says, you know, she was the ruler, but the Pharisees ruled her. And it wasn't a great reign because of that. This whole sort of thing is very strange. I mean, obviously it's got a legendary sounds to it. What does Josephus know about anybody's deathbed? But it does seem perhaps to

reflect some sort of movement that the Pharisees were perhaps more influential earlier on under the Hasmanians and then out of favour and then maybe they came back towards the end. But generally speaking, they don't have much real political power. It's more a case of influence over people, I think. Do we get a sense of who were more likely to become Pharisees? Are they more kind of high-ranking figures, or do we have any idea of the backgrounds of people who did become Pharisees? Not really. I mean, we do have a few references to them, you know, in the New Testament and Josephus. A few also in rabbinic literature, some of the pre-70 rabbis might be Pharisees. We don't know for sure. But most people think that they're not

priests. So, you know, the priests are doing their own thing in the temple. And, you know, And these are probably lay people, so not priests, but they're wanting to kind of extend that temple purity into everyday life. They're probably more common in urban situations. So although we do find elements to do with purity in rural places, probably Jerusalem was their main sort of base. Even in the Gospels, when Pharisees come, quite often they come from Jerusalem. And they may well have been all sorts of different social orders. I mean, I imagine that they're not from the very lowest. You know, you have people like Paul. We hear of people like Gamaliel, maybe Nicodemus in John's Gospel, and both of those have, they've left sort of remains in the historical record,

too. So they're probably more likely to be people with a bit of education, but, you know, I'm kind of making it up here. Not entirely, but, you know, we don't have any sort of. We don't have any really solid to go on. No, and it harkens back to what we were saying earlier, you know, how mysterious these people are, and I appreciate I'm pushing, I'm prodding. Well, sometimes it's good to know, you know, that we don't know, and a lot of what you might read,

if you go to an encyclopedia, there'll be a little authoritative entry on what the Pharisees were like, what they thought, who they were. But it's good to know that most of the time this is sort of conjecture. 6,000, Joseph says, only 6,000 odds, Pharisees in total. Yeah, I mean, again, problem is we don't know how many people were there in Judea, half a million, a million, two million. But even on a fairly conservative estimate, there are a small percentage of the population. It's just the difficulties of then, if I was to ask, how powerful and how prominent do you think, how popular do you think the Pharisees were by the time we get to the birth of Jesus, the time of Jesus, and the time that the Romans are entering onto the stage in Judea, too. Well, I think the thing is you need to sort of distinguish between actual power and influence.

So I think earlier on in sort of Hasmanian times, they might have been periods when they had a certain amount of power. I think certainly, by the time of Herod, they're a little bit there, but Josephus really says very little about them in the time of Herod. You know, they're not making the headlines. And I think that continues under the rule of his sons and then direct Roman rule of Judea itself. But I think they have a certain amount of influence. I think people think that they have popular ideas. They are the innovators. For us reading the New Testament, it sounds a little bit like they're these rigid legalists

and you wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. But I think in their context, they're thought of as being the ones with the big ideas, the sort of the ones who are with the moment, you know, talking about resurrection, looking for a Messiah figure. They're talking about, you know, purity is clearly. something that a lot of people are interested in. And so I think they probably have quite a lot of influence and respect from people too. And timeline wise, so Seleucids, then Hasmanians, then Herodians, and then the Romans. That's how we should we think you. That's the kind of timeline. It keeps changing

all the time. Is this a really interesting point to highlight here, Helen, how some 2,000 years ago, in Judea in that region, there are a lot of people who believed that there would be this messianic figure arriving. And then, were there quite a few people who claimed to be this Messiah figure at the time? So giving us the context in which the story of the Pharisees and Jesus is in, probably at the time, Jesus isn't the only one who has these claims coming forwards? Yes, exactly. And I mean, we don't know what Jesus himself claimed. Did he claim to be the Messiah? Certainly some of his followers quite quickly say that he is the Messiah. And it's presumably the same with these other figures.

So, you know, John the Baptist is well known. He's there just a little bit. before Jesus. At the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE, we get lots of kingly pretenders. You know, are they Messiah-type figures, all kinds of people, sort of, you know, that the whole place erupts into disarray. And then as you go after Jesus into the rest of the first century, increasing numbers of these figures who sort of appear, one appears in Samaria, and he says, I'm going to lead you up this sacred mountain, and we'll find. certain things that Moses buried there and then God will sort of intervene. And many more, there's one called Fudus, one called the Egyptian. Sometimes they sort of lead their people out to

the wilderness and one of them leads the people to the Mount of Olives and he says, you know, at my signal, the whole of Jerusalem will fall. We don't get to know what happens because the Roman governor sends in the troops and gets rid of them too quickly. But there's a kind of a whole list of these people, particularly as we moved towards the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66, even during the revolt, actually, there are Messiah-type figures, because the revolt was a civil war as much as anything else. So, you know, various factions have their own leader, and some of these seem to have been sort of Messiah-type figures. So, yeah, and I think it's not helped by the fact that there's all sorts of different ideas about what is the Messiah going to be like. So it's

such a broad brief that a lot of people are going to fit into this. It's interesting to think whether the Pharisees between themselves would have had debates around that at the same time, you know, kind of, well, which one is more like the one that we're expecting, almost, if you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, there's slightly later than our period, but in 135, there's the Bar-Cobar rebellion in Judea, and the Pharisees did actually hail him as a Messiah, or at least the rabbis who are possibly linked with the Pharisees from earlier on. And I think one of the things, too, that we need to realize is that when we look at the Gospels and there's all of this kind of

wrangling over what does this mean, what does that mean, and intense debate, I think that's probably quite like what the Pharisees themselves were doing. They are debating, often quite heatedly about what does this passage mean? What does that one mean? Is this person the Messiah? Can we get behind him? You know, there's all of this debate going on and that's quite normal in this sort of Eastern Mediterranean society. The problem is when it gets written down in a gospel and it's also negative as we have it now that we tend to think that they're these sort of narrow-minded bigots. In fact, I mean, people have even suggested whether Jesus himself was a Pharisee, because of his interest in the law, interpretation, that kind of thing, Messiahship, resurrection,

you know, he's sort of ticking all the boxes, really. Small boxes, though, they might be. I don't think most people would think that, you know, Jesus seems sort of socially very different to the Pharisees, but there are links. Just before we get into that whole key story, the Pharisees in the New Testament, I'd like to ask about potential struggles between the Pharisees and those other key sects, those groups that you mentioned already, the Sadducees and the Aseans, for instance. Can we imagine rooms full of these different sects and them having struggles, like, trying to dictate policy as it is, like in Judea around the time of Jesus and before then? Well, I don't think they have much say in policy.

Certainly not. I mean, maybe under the Hasmanians, you know, way back when they do seem to have some level of power. And I think they can influence the Hasmanian ruler. And so that's, you know, where they're really getting their way. Once you get into the sort of, you know, Herodian and Roman period, then, you know, the guy in charge is the guy in charge. He's going to have a council of advisers, certainly under Roman rule at the time of Jesus. You know, the high priest is going to summon his advisors, the other sort of priestly Sadducean people, sort of because they're sort of temple priests. But he might invite one or two Pharisees.

one big question at this point is whether there was a fixed Jerusalem council. An older view is that it was. And people get some sort of evidence for that in the book of acts, where Paul is actually being tried before this council. And in that story, it's made up of Pharisees and Sadducees. And so he puts them both at loggerheads by saying, it's because I believe in the resurrection that I've been brought here. And so, of course, I mean, it all sounds very Monty Python.

And instead of being sort of against him, suddenly they all start to fight each other. But people nowadays think probably there was no fixed council like that where, you know, you have leading Pharisees, you have leading Sadducees, and they're all sort of debating and coming up with sort of policy. This is a period where it's strong men making the decisions and they might have a council of advisors now and then, but largely they're doing their own thing. Is that council that you highlighted there, is that what's commonly referred to as the Sanhedron? Yes, yes. I think nowadays people would say there might have been Sanhedrins, you know, councils summoned now and then when it was necessary or useful. But the idea that there was a fixed body of people and that you were a Sanhedrin member and that you had oversight over Jerusalem seems not really to be backed up, certainly not by Josephus and not by most of the evidence.

I'm so glad you've mentioned to about Helen because my next question was going to be. be like any sense of how cooperative the Pharisees would have been with the Romans, especially if it's a time when their influence probably is waning, where it's the time of the strong men of the governors and so on, when the Romans come in and say, we want this, can you use your influence to make this happen? Probably not. I mean, there might be some aristocratic Pharisees who are, you know, amongst the elite of Jerusalem. But I think if anybody, if any of these sects is going to have any kind of sway with the Romans, it's the Sadducees, the temple, aristocratic priesthood, because it's really, I mean, the Romans are out in Caesarea, on the seaside, you know, they're just leaving

the high priest, really, to get on with it. And the people he's going to rely on are fellow Sadducees. So they're the ones who are going to have influence at all with the Romans, but I think, probably for that very reason, the people who are going to have influence with the people, the ordinary people are the Pharisees, because they're not tainted by collaboration, association with the Romans. And so Caiaphas, the high priest in the gospel was Helen. He's not a Pharisee. He is a Sadducee. We don't know for sure, but the chances are very high. I mean, we don't know that all high priests were Sadducees, but I think it's very likely that they were. Certainly this is the group that they're most likely to have had links with. We certainly don't hear of any Phariseeic high priests.

Well, Helen, let's explore some of that kind of key episodes between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels. First and foremost, do you think groups of Pharisees would have heard about Jesus and his ministry if he is someone who, you know, starts out very much in the countryside, outside of the big cities? Yeah, I think they would have done at some point. And he's actually not that far from some big cities. You know, the city of Sephiris is only four or five miles away from Nazareth. there's Tiberius on the lake of Galilee. Jesus doesn't go to these big cities, but if the Gospels are right and that large crowds are coming out to him, then probably some of these people from cities are hearing about it. And I think it's very likely that the Pharisees would have been

interested in Jesus, you know, not necessarily in a negative way to start with, but, you know, oh, here's a holy man, you know, he's got some ideas about the text, let's go and hear what he has to say. And, you know, robust debate, as would have been common. I think, think where you have to be much more careful with the Gospels is this idea that the Pharisees were out to get him from the start, certainly in Mark's Gospel and repeated in the others, really early on, we're told the Pharisees and the Herodians met together to talk about how to kill him. This is in chapter three. So, you know, really early on, as if they hear him, they oppose him, they don't like him, and they just want to kill him. And I think you have to be very careful about

that. But I think the idea that the Pharisees came and they chatted and they, you know, debated things with him, this is what they did, this is what they were interested in. This is probably what Jesus is also interested in, you know, debating the meaning of scripture. I think where you need to be careful, though, is that when you're looking at the Gospels, it's during Jesus' ministry that he has these robust debates with Pharisees. When he goes to Jerusalem and when he's arrested and passed over to Pilate, that is exclusive. by the high priests and the sort of the priestly aristocracy, the establishment in Jerusalem. So maybe the scribes and elders of the people, but the Pharisees are not part of that.

The mistake is to say that it's the Pharisees who are the chief advocates of his death. It's not that. So I didn't realize that. That's a stark difference there. Yeah, exactly. And the even worst thing to say is that, you know, the Jews are passing Jesus over. It's one particular group, the high priestly establishment, whose job it is really to make sure that that everything is running smoothly, that there's no troublemakers doing things in the temple. So you can see why they may have been worried by Jesus, particularly after the cleansing of the temple, whatever that involved.

But no, although Jesus continues his debates with Pharisees in Jerusalem, there's no indication at the end that they have anything to do with his death. apart from a very small reference in Matthew, actually, where they ask the Romans to put a guard on the tomb because Jesus has said he'll rise again and they want this guard to make sure that nothing happens. I also found that the mention of the debates really interesting. It sounds pretty intellectual, pretty, dare I say, open as well if it's not just the high bonds debating all the time. I didn't realize just how big theological debate was amongst the Pharisees and how 2,000 years ago in Judea, theological debates were common between Pharisees and other people with different views on the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and so. Yeah, I mean, I think it's debate amongst people who are

setting themselves up as teachers. So, you know, Pharisees and people like Jesus, whether your average sort of wife in Copernium or, you know, a farmer in Nazareth is too bothered about things, is more difficult to say. But I mean, I think because, you know, there's, the practice of Jewish ancestral beliefs depend so much on how texts are interpreted, how interpretations are passed down, you know, ancestral custom. There's so many different ways of living out a Jewish life in the first century that I'm sure, you know, even amongst people in rural areas, there's some level of debate about what are we doing, what should we do on the Sabbath, what should we not do, what are we allowed to do, you know, there's so many areas that are open to discussion. So can we

explore a couple of key debates that Jesus does have with Pharisees early in his ministry. Are there particular episodes that stand out? One of the things he debates quite often is what you can do on the Sabbath, what's allowable? And I imagine this is a debate that lots of people are having. You know, what can you do? The Gospels, of course, tell these stories in a way that makes the Pharisees sound very narrow-minded. You know, they say you can't heal someone, for example, the man with the withered hand, whatever exactly is wrong with that. Jesus heals him on the Sabbath and the Pharisees are very upset about this. Presumably from their point of view, the guys had this affliction for a while. It would be perfectly possible to heal him the next day. But, you know, the Gospels sort of make

out that the Pharisees are everything that's negative compared to Jesus. Whereas in historical reality, I'm sure there was much more openness to proper debate rather than just this hostility. And in what ways would you say that actually you can see some clear similarities between the teachings, the beliefs of the Pharisees and what Jesus was preaching in his ministry? Yeah, I mean, the topics they talk about. So, you know, what can you do on the Sabbath? If you sort of take a step back and just think, what are the debate? There's similar things. What can you do on the Sabbath? Who can you eat with? So presumably because of the Phariseic interest in purity and, you know, not keeping themselves sort of away from defilement, they're very interested in. table fellowship, what can you eat, who can you eat with? And they seem to criticize Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, they say. I mean, we don't know who these sinners were. Were they really sinners? Or were they just people who, according to Phariseic understandings, were not keeping the law in the same way that the Pharisees were? But again, you know, it's these

debates over who can you eat with that are important there. Tithing, purity, should you wash your hands. I mean, there's a very convoluted debate between Jesus and the Pharisees on washing your hands before meals and, you know, who knows what the background to this is. But it seems quite possible that certainly some of the Pharisees are washing their hands because, again, this is sort of to do with temple purity. Jesus and his disciples aren't, and they're sort of asking him about that. Or fasting, again, the Pharisees seem to fast a couple of days. Jesus' disciples don't fast. And so they're, you know, again, they're interested. What's going on? Why are you not doing this? We think this is a proper interpretation of the law. Why are you not doing it? You know, you're talking about

the kingdom of God is about to arrive. Why are you not living a pure life, being ready for it? So you can think of all kinds of positive reasons why they're entering into these debates with a fellow teacher rather than just, you know, instantly thinking, oh, we don't like this guy. We're going to try and get rid of him. It's interesting trying to picture a Pharisee. entering the debating ring with Jesus, not from a point of wanting to utterly condemn and destroy his arguments, but rather from a place of intrigue, quite frankly. Yeah, well, I'm sure that was the case. Originally, when these stories were first passed around in the time of the historical Jesus,

people are just interested. And these great crowds that come to hear Jesus, they've all got brains of their own. Some of them are thinking, wow, this is great. Others are thinking, not so sure about this. There's a variety spectrum of opinion, and the Pharisees are the ones who, you know, have a level of education. They know their texts. They can come and kind of talk to Jesus and debate and really try to understand. And I think some of this too undoubtedly has been affected by later debates between Bryce followers and, you know, the local synagogues. As very slowly, very gradually and at different times in different places, the followers of Jesus start to become.

something different from Jews. So I'm sure it's been enhanced by all of that. Later debates, later antagonism, that's probably largely why the Pharisees come over so negatively. So Helen, let's move on from the time of Jesus. And the Pharisees remain prominent in Judea or they remain a sect in Judea. Do we know much about what happens to the next? The old-fashioned view was that the Pharisees just continued as the rabbis who's sort of emerged after the destruction of the temple as the sort of, you know, leaders of certain branches of Judaism. So you get rabbinic literature being written at this time, the Mishnah, about 200 C.E. The Talmuds, Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds written sort of a few centuries later.

So the traditional idea was that, you know, Pharisees just continued. They morphed into the rabbis. That's been questioned quite a lot recently. Some people would say, oh, you could. can't make any connection at all. I would go for something more moderate. I mean, I think some of this pharisaic interest and the interest in the laws, and also this whole idea about purity and how you extend temple purity is actually something that's very relevant once the temple has gone. How do you sort of make up for the lack of a temple? Now that we no longer have a temple, Do we sort of have holiness in our own lives? Holiness in the synagogues, perhaps.

Holiness in our own gatherings. And a lot of the things that the rabbis talk about are things that seem to be discussed by Pharisees, again, to do with purity, to do with tithing, to do with temple, actually, even though it's been destroyed, table fellowship, lots of things like that. Just really, how do you live out a Jewish life? This is what they're asking. in this sort of second, third, fourth century period. We're now completely under Roman domination.

We've got no temple. How do you live out this life? And I think a lot of barraeic ideas sort of come into this period, but probably bound up by other Essenes, the Dead Sea Scrolls guys, other people, priestly ideas. They're all sort of in this mix, because certainly it's a very different situation to the one that was the case in the time of Jesus.

And the destruction of temples, so that's by the Romans, the high point of the Great Jewish Revolt. And so could it be that with the removal of that big central temple building, the importance, the influence of Jewish teachers like Pharisees could well have increased as people flocked more and more towards those particular, more educated individuals, I guess. Yeah, I think that's possibly true because, I mean, in a way, the high priests, the sort of aristocratic priesthoods have lost their power base, they've lost the temple, they've lost their whole sort of, rationale, really. There are many, many, many, priests within Jewish society, loads, so many priests that they had to be on a rota system at the Jerusalem temple. So I would think it's unlikely that there weren't some sort of priestly involvement in this sort of restructuring of Judaism after the fall of the temple. But, I mean, this was a massive thing. It had happened before, of course. The first temple had

fallen to the Babylonians. This is the second time it's happened. And people sort of learned lessons from before. But really, I think this, you know, Jews found themselves in a very different worlds now. And so Pharisees, I think, were one of the groups that helped people to sort of come to terms with this, but not the only ones. And harkening back to the beginning, as time goes on, the name Pharisee, you know, he has a good association for Jews, but very negative one for Christians. Helen, how quickly do you think this kind of bipolarism of the word Pharisee it emerges in the world? Yeah, I mean, I think very soon, I mean, already in the Gospels, you know, they are really just standing there for this kind of legalistic way of reading things. Matthew's Gospel is one of the

works, Matthew 23, is this terrible, a whole chapter where Jesus is saying, you know, woe to use scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, he says. So, you know, already by then, Pharisees has become this kind of this negative term amongst Christ followers. I mean, the ironic thing is that, you know, a lot of these people reading Matthew's Gospel will still consider themselves Jews, but, you know, already Pharisees is sort of the name of opposition, but particularly by the time you get to the Reformation, you know, that's so many things kind of came in at the Reformation and the idea that, you know, Luther's understanding of Judaism as a really legalistic religion, I think, is founded to quite a large extent on this pharisaic stereotype and caricature that you have in the

Gospels, you know, they're legalists, they're interested in only sort of following the rules and they're not interested in mercy and justice and things like this. So certainly by the time that you get the Reformation's Pharisee is epitomizing what's wrong with Jewish faith. So Helen, how should we view the Pharisees today? I think strip them back to what we actually know about them, which is they were a group within first century Judaism, if that's sort of the area you're interested in, that perhaps had a certain amount of power beforehand, but they're very much a group of people who are interested in interpreting the law. They've got a lot of popularity with the people. They're creative, they're innovators. They're advocating things that a lot of other people are interested in.

Purity, resurrection, messires. They're perhaps seen as the people less tainted by Roman involvement. But most people, you know, most people like a Pharisee. They're the good guys. And I think it wouldn't do as harm to think of them like that. Last but certainly not least, you do have a podcast with another very good friend of the show which covers everything Bible-related. It is cool. Tell us about this. Yes.

Well, this is with the great Lloyd Luehlewellyn Jones, who I know has been on your podcast a lot, Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff. And it's called, our podcast is called Biblical Time Machine. And yeah, yeah, we have guests. We do everything to do with the Bible, Hebrew Bible as well as Christian Bible, everything in between. If it's got Bible, somewhere along the line, we're interested. It's a great podcast. Glad to get that mentioned in at the end. And it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show, Helen.

Thank you. It's been great. Well, there you go. There was the wonderful Professor Helen Bond talking about the Pharisees and what we actually know about these figures who lived at the time of Jesus of Nazareth some 2,000 years ago. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you'd like more episodes similar to this, well, you're in luck because we have a few past episodes with Helen in the archive, including ones on John the Baptist, which also features Dr. Joan Taylor, and another on Pontius Pilate. Who was this Roman figure that famously washed his hands after sentencing Jesus to death on

the cross? Those two episodes, we will put links to them in the show notes. meantime once again thank you so much for listening to this episode if you are enjoying the ancients then please make sure that you're following the show whether that's on spotify or wherever you gets your podcasts that really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well well we'd really appreciate that lastly don't forget you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week sign up at history hit.com slash subscribe that's all from me i'll see you in the next episode