Psst: Jesus was a Pharisee

I'd say that the gospels tell us a lot more about the earliest groups of (proto-)"Christianity" than about Jesus as a historical person. Paul called himself a Pharisee…and he may be evidence of a Gentile-missionizing movement within Pharisaical Judaism. I'd say it was probably out of this movement that we get what we now call Christianity. It seems clear from the gospels that the Pharisees were some of the chief rivals of the earliest churches, yet they were also the most similar. Its probably because they had similar goals and similar target demographics (bring Gentiles into the fold of God's covenant with the Israelites in some fashion). That seemed to be Paul's primary mission, and the gospels show clear evidence of that same concern. Whether this has anything to do with Jesus himself is pretty speculative IMO…but, I tend to have a pretty radical skepticism about any historical Jesus scholarship.

Tom, maybe this analogy doesn't work, but let's try it on for a moment. 2000 years from now people will read arguments between yourself and a conservative Calvinist pro-USA Christian. The amount of argumentation would be huge, the vitriol at times intense, and it may even devolve into name calling and gross mis-characterizations. A reader so far removed from our present context could very justifiably think that the differences between you two are so stark that you must have been completely separate entities, with no real relation to one another. You couldn't possibly both be "Christians," let alone "evangelicals," while having such harsh disagreements. However, the two of you may in fact be friends, and work alongside one another in Christian ministry…despite your sincere ethical/theological/political differences. Might we be able to imagine a similar situation with early Christianities and their relationship(s) with the Pharisees, or even the larger realm of Judaism?

This is a great discussion about an important topic. One of the primary problems I see with pointing to differences between the Pharisees and Jesus is one of sources. When it comes to knowing who the Pharisees were and what they did/thought/taught, our sources are pretty darned sketchy. We have Josephus, who clearly tried to fashion the Pharisees into a type of Jewish equivalent of a Greek Philosophical school. We have some rabbinical material, which is extremely difficult to date and seems to think of the word "pharisee" quite differently than did Josephus or the NT writers. Then, we have the New Testament. I worry about how much we can trust their portrayal of the Pharisees as a monolithic and cohesive group (or perhaps our own tendency to read them that way in the gospels). The question of whether the disagreements are "inside" group discussions, or "outside/other" group discussions is very difficult to figure out…and seems to change depending on the gospel or text we're reading. Can we really say that all the Pharisees did X or thought Y? Do the gospel texts reflect actual social realities? Or, rather, are the gospel texts attempting to create social realities by drawing boundary lines that may not in fact exist in terms of real social practice? While I agree that recognizing differences are important, I worry about taking at face value the portrayals by texts that clearly have strong polemical and rhetorical goals. This is further compounded by how the "differences" between Jesus and the Pharisees have been used toward anti-Semitic ends for millenia. Again, I tend to have some pretty strong skepticism when it comes to some of these issues…a skepticism I know not all share.

Henry, indeed. With my historian hat on, I'd say that the gospels tell us a great deal about some early "Christian" groups (some from the first century, some later) and their thinking in terms of theology, christology, and sociology…or, at least what some leaders in various groups WANTED their fellow Christ believers to think/do/say/etc.With my faith hat on, I tend not to really think in terms of history. I'm more concerned with cosmology, and how that cosmology shapes the way I engage the cosmos. I still see Jesus as the divine son of God, and the tremendous power of his death and resurrection. But, I think of its cosmological significance moreso than historical. History provides a vehicle for talking about and understanding the cosmology, but its not necessarily something I stake my faith upon. If that makes sense.

Yeah, the hat metaphor does tend to artificially compartmentalize in often unproductive ways. Even so, as Henry pointed out, it is helpful for delineating the types of conversations (and conversations partners) one has.Tom, I think its worth saying that more and more historians play by different rules nowadays. They're asking much different questions, and have dramatically different philosophical groundings in their work. Empiricism plays a role, to be sure, but that is not the end nor the primary means by which one reaches their ends. Movements like New Historicism or the work done by postcolonial historians (such as Dipesh Chakrabarty or Gayatri Spivak) are examples of major shifts that have been happening in historical thinking/analysis in the past 20-30 years.