Jesus the Pharisee

I have now completed the Jesus, The Gospels and the Coming of God course at Victoria University. Both of the essays I wrote have been graded, and the final exam was held last week.

My first essay, titled Jesus the Pharisee, was a study of the story from Mark 12:13-40 where Jesus is challenged by the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders of the temple. They ask him a bunch of curly questions, but Jesus duck and dives and delivers answers to their questions that astound the hearers.

For the first essay we were asked to select a story from the Gospel of Mark, and explain why Mark included it, and what he was trying to illustrate about Jesus. And so I chose this story. My initial reaction to the story was that Mark was showing how much smarter than the temple leaders Jesus was. But as I read commentaries and thought about this reaction further, it became apparent that Mark, the readers of Mark and the crowd at the temple that day concluded Jesus was not just smart, but one of them.

For example, I could concur that Richard Dawkins or Bishop Richard Randerson are smart, in that they can use knowledge and reason to baffle people and get one-up on them. But I wouldn't throw my hat in with them as my leaders. Sure, they can manipulate information and people well, but without commitment to a sense of philosophical integrity that I would affirm.


Jesus the Pharisee

In my essay, I argue that there were certain philosophical constraints within which Jesus knew he had to work - more than that, he had to affirm. As the Messiah to the Jewish people, his identity as Messiah, and peoples' ability to recognise him as such, relied heavily on what had already been revealed to them about God. It relied on what was already prophesied about the Messiah according to Jewish law and to the prophets. The Messiah was not only expected and mandated by the Torah to uphold the law and the prophets. He was expected to be the ultimate judge, that is the ultimate interpreter of the law and the prophets and its application to mankind. My argument is that Mark includes this passage, the disputation at the temple, to show that Jesus willingly operated within and submitted to the rule of the law and the prophets. But also to show he interpreted the law and the prophets in a way far superior to any peers at the time, and anyone after.

So where does the Jesus being a Pharisee bit come into this? Well, ultimately the Jews were split into the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Beyond that were the sects of the Zealots and the Essenes, and also the division between the Hillelites and the Shammaites - but all of these other sects operated within the parameters of Pharisaic belief. To be a Pharisee, rather than a Sadduccee, simply meant to honour both the law AND the prophets, and to emphasise the importance of honouring the law in one's daily life. The Sadducees, on the other hand, accepted only the first five books of the bible as authoritative (not the prophets), and were more concerned with the temple rituals than with living by Torah. So to say Jesus was a Pharisee - not just a Pharisee but the ultimate Pharisee - is to say he honoured the law and the prophets, and the application of Torah to daily life, and interpreted it better than anybody else.

Now unfortunately, despite the lucidity of my work, I was graded a B-!!! The tutor complained that I focused on a segment of teaching rather than a story. This was despite my statement in the essay that "its purpose in the Gospel of Mark is not the actual content of his teachings [but rather] Jesus’ willingness to engage with the disputation, and the authority that he demonstrates" and my reference to John Dominic Crossan; "To imagine that their purpose is to provide a set of eternal truths about how human life should be ordered is to ignore the larger narrative of which they are a part." The tutor also disputes my argument that Mark's intention in this passage is to place Jesus in the "Pharisee camp," as he puts it, but unfortunately doesn't explain why, and doesn't address why my arguments aren't satisfactory.

I wonder if this is because the Pharisees are so often thought of as the bad guys, so people like my tutor are highly resistant to think of the divine Jesus as "in the same camp". I had read about the way a negative portrayal of the Pharisees has become so embedded in the Christian tradition, but I hadn't thought I would have needed to tackle such a sociological issue in an essay on New Testament scholarship. Especially in a school so clearly influenced by N. T. Wright! Just because we ascribe Jesus the same label that people opposed to him also shared, doesn't mean we ascribe to him their negative characteristics - ie obsession with tradition and legalism at the expense of practical love to the poor and needy. How many of us willingly identify as Christian yet renounce the prolific excesses of much of the Western church? That doesn't mean we no longer identify as Christian.

To read my essay, in Word document form, click below:

Jesus the Pharisee