Pharisees

184:5.8And now they pre­sumed to for­mu­late three charges, with which to go be­fore Pi­late, on which no wit­nesses had been heard, and which were agreed upon while the ac­cused pris­oner was ab­sent. When this was done, three of the Phar­isees took their leave; they wanted to see Je­sus de­stroyed, but they would not for­mu­late charges against him with­out wit­nesses and in his ab­sence.

184:1.1An­nas, en­riched by the tem­ple rev­enues, his son-in-law the act­ing high priest, and with his re­la­tions to the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties, was in­deed the most pow­er­ful sin­gle in­di­vid­ual in all Jewry. He was a suave and politic plan­ner and plot­ter. He de­sired to di­rect the mat­ter of dis­pos­ing of Je­sus; he feared to trust such an im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing wholly to his brusque and ag­gres­sive son-in-law. An­nas wanted to make sure that the Mas­ter’s trial was kept in the hands of the Sad­ducees; he feared the pos­si­ble sym­pa­thy of some of the Phar­isees, see­ing that prac­ti­cally all of those mem­bers of the San­hedrin who had es­poused the cause of Je­sus were Phar­isees.

184:3.5Je­sus ap­peared be­fore this court clothed in his usual gar­ments and with his hands bound to­gether be­hind his back. The en­tire court was star­tled and some­what con­fused by his ma­jes­tic ap­pear­ance. Never had they gazed upon such a pris­oner nor wit­nessed such com­po­sure in a man on trial for his life.

135:9.4About three weeks af­ter Je­sus had left them, there ar­rived on the scene at Pella a new dep­u­ta­tion from the priests and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. They asked John di­rectly if he was Eli­jah or the prophet that Moses prom­ised; and when John said, “I am not,” they made bold to ask, “Are you the Mes­siah?” and John an­swered, “I am not.” Then said these men from Je­ru­sa­lem: “If you are not Eli­jah, nor the prophet, nor the Mes­siah, then why do you bap­tize the peo­ple and cre­ate all this stir?” And John replied: “It should be for those who have heard me and re­ceived my bap­tism to say who I am, but I de­clare to you that, while I bap­tize with wa­ter, there has been among us one who will re­turn to bap­tize you with the Holy Spirit.”

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

167:1.1There lived in Phil­a­del­phia a very wealthy and in­flu­en­tial Phar­isee who had ac­cepted the teach­ings of Ab­ner, and who in­vited Je­sus to his house Sab­bath morn­ing for break­fast. It was known that Je­sus was ex­pected in Phil­a­del­phia at this time; so a large num­ber of vis­i­tors, among them many Phar­isees, had come over from Je­ru­sa­lem and from else­where. Ac­cord­ingly, about forty of these lead­ing men and a few lawyers were bid­den to this break­fast, which had been ar­ranged in honor of the Mas­ter.

167:1.2As Je­sus lin­gered by the door, speak­ing with Ab­ner, and af­ter the host had seated him­self, there came into the room one of the lead­ing Phar­isees of Je­ru­sa­lem, a mem­ber of the San­hedrin, and as was his habit, he made straight for the seat of honor at the left of the host. But since this place had been re­served for the Mas­ter and that on the right for Ab­ner, the host beck­oned the Je­ru­sa­lem Phar­isee to sit four seats to the left, and this dig­ni­tary was much of­fended be­cause he did not re­ceive the seat of honor.

167:1.3Soon they were all seated and en­joy­ing the vis­it­ing among them­selves since the ma­jor­ity of those pres­ent were dis­ci­ples of Je­sus or else were friendly to the gospel. Only his en­e­mies took no­tice of the fact that he did not ob­serve the cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of his hands be­fore he sat down to eat. Ab­ner washed his hands at the be­gin­ning of the meal but not dur­ing the serv­ing.

167:1.4Near the end of the meal there came in from the street a man long af­flicted with a chronic dis­ease and now in a drop­si­cal con­di­tion. This man was a be­liever, hav­ing re­cently been bap­tized by Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates. He made no re­quest of Je­sus for heal­ing, but the Mas­ter knew full well that this af­flicted man came to this break­fast hop­ing thereby to es­cape the crowds which thronged him and thus be more likely to en­gage his at­ten­tion. This man knew that few mir­a­cles were then be­ing per­formed; how­ever, he had rea­soned in his heart that his sorry plight might pos­si­bly ap­peal to the Mas­ter’s com­pas­sion. And he was not mis­taken, for, when he en­tered the room, both Je­sus and the self-righ­teous Phar­isee from Je­ru­sa­lem took no­tice of him. The Phar­isee was not slow to voice his re­sent­ment that such a one should be per­mit­ted to en­ter the room. But Je­sus looked upon the sick man and smiled so be­nignly that he drew near and sat down upon the floor. As the meal was end­ing, the Mas­ter looked over his fel­low guests and then, af­ter glanc­ing sig­nif­i­cantly at the man with dropsy, said: “My friends, teach­ers in Is­rael and learned lawyers, I would like to ask you a ques­tion: Is it law­ful to heal the sick and af­flicted on the Sab­bath day, or not?” But those who were there pres­ent knew Je­sus too well; they held their peace; they an­swered not his ques­tion.

167:1.5Then went Je­sus over to where the sick man sat and, tak­ing him by the hand, said: “Arise and go your way. You have not asked to be healed, but I know the de­sire of your heart and the faith of your soul.” Be­fore the man left the room, Je­sus re­turned to his seat and, ad­dress­ing those at the ta­ble, said: “Such works my Fa­ther does, not to tempt you into the king­dom, but to re­veal him­self to those who are al­ready in the king­dom. You can per­ceive that it would be like the Fa­ther to do just such things be­cause which one of you, hav­ing a fa­vorite an­i­mal that fell in the well on the Sab­bath day, would not go right out and draw him up?” And since no one would an­swer him, and inas­much as his host ev­i­dently ap­proved of what was go­ing on, Je­sus stood up and spoke to all pres­ent: “My breth­ren, when you are bid­den to a mar­riage feast, sit not down in the chief seat, lest, per­chance, a more hon­ored man than you has been in­vited, and the host will have to come to you and re­quest that you give your place to this other and hon­ored guest. In this event, with shame you will be re­quired to take a lower place at the ta­ble. When you are bid­den to a feast, it would be the part of wis­dom, on ar­riv­ing at the fes­tive ta­ble, to seek for the low­est place and take your seat therein, so that, when the host looks over the guests, he may say to you: ‘My friend, why sit in the seat of the least? come up higher’; and thus will such a one have glory in the pres­ence of his fel­low guests. For­get not, ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, while he who truly hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted. There­fore, when you en­ter­tain at din­ner or give a sup­per, in­vite not al­ways your friends, your breth­ren, your kins­men, or your rich neigh­bors that they in re­turn may bid you to their feasts, and thus will you be rec­om­pensed. When you give a ban­quet, some­times bid the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In this way you shall be blessed in your heart, for you well know that the lame and the halt can­not re­pay you for your lov­ing min­istry.”

121:7.3The scribes, the Phar­isees, and the priest­hood held the Jews in a ter­ri­ble bond­age of rit­u­al­ism and le­gal­ism, a bond­age far more real than that of the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal rule. The Jews of Je­sus’ time were not only held in sub­ju­ga­tion to the law but were equally bound by the slav­ish de­mands of the tra­di­tions, which in­volved and in­vaded ev­ery do­main of per­sonal and so­cial life. These minute reg­u­la­tions of con­duct pur­sued and dom­i­nated ev­ery loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly re­jected one of their num­ber who pre­sumed to ig­nore their sa­cred tra­di­tions, and who dared to flout their long-hon­ored reg­u­la­tions of so­cial con­duct. They could hardly re­gard with fa­vor the teach­ings of one who did not hes­i­tate to clash with dog­mas which they re­garded as hav­ing been or­dained by Fa­ther Abra­ham him­self. Moses had given them their law and they would not com­pro­mise.

194:4.10This Je­sus sect was grow­ing rapidly, and once more the Sad­ducees took no­tice of them. The Phar­isees were lit­tle both­ered about the sit­u­a­tion, see­ing that none of the teach­ings in any way in­ter­fered with the ob­ser­vance of the Jew­ish laws. But the Sad­ducees be­gan to put the lead­ers of the Je­sus sect in jail un­til they were pre­vailed upon to ac­cept the coun­sel of one of the lead­ing rab­bis, Gamaliel, who ad­vised them: “Re­frain from these men and let them alone, for if this coun­sel or this work is of men, it will be over­thrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to over­throw them, lest haply you be found even to be fight­ing against God.” They de­cided to fol­low Gamaliel’s coun­sel, and there en­sued a time of peace and quiet in Je­ru­sa­lem, dur­ing which the new gospel about Je­sus spread rapidly.

140:8.22Je­sus did not ve­he­mently de­nounce even the Phar­isees, as did John. He knew many of the scribes and Phar­isees were hon­est of heart; he un­der­stood their en­slav­ing bond­age to re­li­gious tra­di­tions. Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis on “first mak­ing the tree good.” He im­pressed the three that he val­ued the whole life, not just a cer­tain few spe­cial virtues.

162:3.1It was dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem that Je­sus dealt with a cer­tain woman of evil re­pute who was brought into his pres­ence by her ac­cusers and his en­e­mies. The dis­torted rec­ord you have of this episode would sug­gest that this woman had been brought be­fore Je­sus by the scribes and Phar­isees, and that Je­sus so dealt with them as to in­di­cate that these re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews might them­selves have been guilty of im­moral­ity. Je­sus well knew that, while these scribes and Phar­isees were spir­i­tu­ally blind and in­tel­lec­tu­ally prej­u­diced by their loy­alty to tra­di­tion, they were to be num­bered among the most thor­oughly moral men of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

165:3.2“What I have many times said to my apos­tles and to my dis­ci­ples, I now de­clare to this mul­ti­tude: Be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees which is hypocrisy, born of prej­u­dice and nur­tured in tra­di­tional bond­age, al­beit many of these Phar­isees are hon­est of heart and some of them abide here as my dis­ci­ples. Pres­ently all of you shall un­der­stand my teach­ing, for there is noth­ing now cov­ered that shall not be re­vealed. That which is now hid from you shall all be made known when the Son of Man has com­pleted his mis­sion on earth and in the flesh.

171:4.4It was here at Livias, just af­ter break­fast, that cer­tain friendly Phar­isees came to Je­sus and said: “Flee in haste from these parts, for Herod, just as he sought John, now seeks to kill you. He fears an up­ris­ing of the peo­ple and has de­cided to kill you. We bring you this warn­ing that you may es­cape.”

121:3.43. The small mid­dle class. Al­though this group was in­deed small, it was very in­flu­en­tial and pro­vided the moral back­bone of the early Chris­tian church, which en­cour­aged these groups to con­tinue in their var­i­ous crafts and trades. Among the Jews many of the Phar­isees be­longed to this class of trades­men.

163:2.6When Mata­dor­mus heard this, his coun­te­nance fell. He arose and went away sor­row­ful, for he had great pos­ses­sions. This wealthy young Phar­isee had been raised to be­lieve that wealth was the to­ken of God’s fa­vor. Je­sus knew that he was not free from the love of him­self and his riches. The Mas­ter wanted to de­liver him from the love of wealth, not nec­es­sar­ily from the wealth. While the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus did not part with all their worldly goods, the apos­tles and the sev­enty did. Mata­dor­mus de­sired to be one of the sev­enty new mes­sen­gers, and that was the rea­son for Je­sus’ re­quir­ing him to part with all of his tem­po­ral pos­ses­sions.

175:4.8The Phar­isees had dif­fer­ent mo­tives for want­ing to see Je­sus put to death. They feared him be­cause:

175:4.91. He was ar­rayed in telling op­po­si­tion to their tra­di­tional hold upon the peo­ple. The Phar­isees were ul­tra­con­ser­va­tive, and they bit­terly re­sented these sup­pos­edly rad­i­cal at­tacks upon their vested pres­tige as re­li­gious teach­ers.

175:4.102. They held that Je­sus was a law­breaker; that he had shown ut­ter dis­re­gard for the Sab­bath and nu­mer­ous other le­gal and cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments.

175:4.113. They charged him with blas­phemy be­cause he al­luded to God as his Fa­ther.

175:4.124. And now were they thor­oughly an­gry with him be­cause of his last dis­course of bit­ter de­nun­ci­a­tion which he had this day de­liv­ered in the tem­ple as the con­clud­ing por­tion of his farewell ad­dress.

147:5.8“This trans­formed woman whom some of you saw at Si­mon’s house to­day is, at this mo­ment, liv­ing on a level which is vastly be­low that of Si­mon and his well-mean­ing as­so­ciates; but while these Phar­isees are oc­cu­pied with the false prog­ress of the il­lu­sion of travers­ing de­cep­tive cir­cles of mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­nial ser­vices, this woman has, in dead earnest, started out on the long and event­ful search for God, and her path to­ward heaven is not blocked by spir­i­tual pride and moral self-sat­is­fac­tion. The woman is, hu­manly speak­ing, much far­ther away from God than Si­mon, but her soul is in pro­gres­sive mo­tion; she is on the way to­ward an eter­nal goal. There are pres­ent in this woman tremen­dous spir­i­tual pos­si­bil­i­ties for the fu­ture. Some of you may not stand high in ac­tual lev­els of soul and spirit, but you are mak­ing daily prog­ress on the liv­ing way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties in each of you for the fu­ture. Bet­ter by far to have a small but liv­ing and grow­ing faith than to be pos­sessed of a great in­tel­lect with its dead stores of worldly wis­dom and spir­i­tual un­be­lief.”

• did not shun publicity about their philanthropy

147:5.2The wealthy Phar­isees were de­voted to alms­giv­ing, and they did not shun pub­lic­ity re­gard­ing their phi­lan­thropy. Some­times they would even blow a trum­pet as they were about to be­stow char­ity upon some beg­gar. It was the cus­tom of these Phar­isees, when they pro­vided a ban­quet for dis­tin­guished guests, to leave the doors of the house open so that even the street beg­gars might come in and, stand­ing around the walls of the room be­hind the couches of the din­ers, be in po­si­tion to re­ceive por­tions of food which might be tossed to them by the ban­queters.

• ceremonial devotion to own self-righteousness

166:1.2By the time Je­sus ar­rived at this break­fast, most of the Phar­isees, with two or three lawyers, were al­ready there and seated at the ta­ble. The Mas­ter im­me­di­ately took his seat at the left of Na­than­iel with­out go­ing to the wa­ter basins to wash his hands. Many of the Phar­isees, es­pe­cially those fa­vor­able to Je­sus’ teach­ings, knew that he washed his hands only for pur­poses of clean­li­ness, that he ab­horred these purely cer­e­mo­nial per­for­mances; so they were not sur­prised at his com­ing di­rectly to the ta­ble with­out hav­ing twice washed his hands. But Na­than­iel was shocked by this fail­ure of the Mas­ter to com­ply with the strict re­quire­ments of Phar­i­saic prac­tice. Nei­ther did Je­sus wash his hands, as did the Phar­isees, af­ter each course of food nor at the end of the meal.

166:1.3Af­ter con­sid­er­able whis­per­ing be­tween Na­than­iel and an un­friendly Phar­isee on his right and af­ter much lift­ing of eye­brows and sneer­ing curl­ing of lips by those who sat op­po­site the Mas­ter, Je­sus fi­nally said: “I had thought that you in­vited me to this house to break bread with you and per­chance to in­quire of me con­cern­ing the procla­ma­tion of the new gospel of the king­dom of God; but I per­ceive that you have brought me here to wit­ness an ex­hi­bi­tion of cer­e­mo­nial de­vo­tion to your own self-righ­teous­ness. That ser­vice you have now done me; what next will you honor me with as your guest on this oc­ca­sion?”

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

137:7.6The scribes and rab­bis, taken to­gether, were called Phar­isees. They re­ferred to them­selves as the “as­so­ciates.” In many ways they were the pro­gres­sive group among the Jews, hav­ing adopted many teach­ings not clearly found in the He­brew scrip­tures, such as be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, a doc­trine only men­tioned by a later prophet, Daniel.

175:4.14A small group of the Sad­ducees had ac­tu­ally pro­posed to dis­pose of Je­sus by as­sas­si­na­tion, but the Phar­isees ut­terly re­fused to coun­te­nance such a pro­ce­dure.

175:1.12“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites! You would shut the doors of the king­dom of heaven against sin­cere men be­cause they hap­pen to be un­learned in the ways of your teach­ing. You refuse to en­ter the king­dom and at the same time do ev­ery­thing within your power to pre­vent all oth­ers from en­ter­ing. You stand with your backs to the doors of sal­va­tion and fight with all who would en­ter therein.

• disgracefully lax divorce practices

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

• systematic dogmatic theology

149:3.1Not­with­stand­ing the fa­vor­able re­cep­tion of Je­sus and his teach­ings by the com­mon peo­ple, the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem be­came in­creas­ingly alarmed and an­tag­o­nis­tic. The Phar­isees had for­mu­lated a sys­tem­atic and dog­matic the­ol­ogy. Je­sus was a teacher who taught as the oc­ca­sion served; he was not a sys­tem­atic teacher. Je­sus taught not so much from the law as from life, by para­bles. (And when he em­ployed a para­ble for il­lus­trat­ing his mes­sage, he de­signed to uti­lize just one fea­ture of the story for that pur­pose. Many wrong ideas con­cern­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus may be se­cured by at­tempt­ing to make al­le­gories out of his para­bles.)

• untaught people accursed

162:2.9Eber and his as­sis­tants re­fused to ar­rest Je­sus; they re­turned to their meet­ing place with­out him. When, there­fore, the chief priests and the Phar­isees up­braided Eber and his as­sis­tants be­cause they had not brought Je­sus with them, Eber only replied: “We feared to ar­rest him in the midst of the mul­ti­tude be­cause many be­lieve in him. Be­sides, we never heard a man speak like this man. There is some­thing out of the or­di­nary about this teacher. You would all do well to go over to hear him.” And when the chief rulers heard these words, they were as­ton­ished and spoke taunt­ingly to Eber: “Are you also led astray? Are you about to be­lieve in this de­ceiver? Have you heard that any of our learned men or any of the rulers have be­lieved in him? Have any of the scribes or the Phar­isees been de­ceived by his clever teach­ings? How does it come that you are in­flu­enced by the be­hav­ior of this ig­no­rant mul­ti­tude who know not the law or the proph­ets? Do you not know that such un­taught peo­ple are ac­cursed?” And then an­swered Eber: “Even so, my mas­ters, but this man speaks to the mul­ti­tude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the down­hearted, and his words were com­fort­ing even to our souls. What can there be wrong in these teach­ings even though he may not be the Mes­siah of the Scrip­tures? And even then does not our law re­quire fair­ness? Do we con­demn a man be­fore we hear him?” And the chief of the San­hedrin was wroth with Eber and, turn­ing upon him, said: “Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Gal­i­lee? Search the Scrip­tures, and you will dis­cover that out of Gal­i­lee arises no prophet, much less the Mes­siah.”

• 613 rules of living

163:4.87. Teach that man’s whole duty is summed up in this one com­mand­ment: Love the Lord your God with all your mind and soul and your neigh­bor as your­self. (This they were to teach as man’s whole duty in place of the 613 rules of liv­ing ex­pounded by the Phar­isees.)

• paid particular attention to tithing, purification, avoidance of non-Pharisees

166:1.7There were just three things to which the Phar­isees paid par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion:

166:1.81. The prac­tice of strict tithing.

166:1.92. Scrupu­lous ob­ser­vance of the laws of pu­rifi­ca­tion.

166:1.103. Avoid­ance of as­so­ci­a­tion with all non-Phar­isees.

• disgracefully lax divorce practices

167:5.2That night, in Jeri­cho, the un­friendly Phar­isees sought to en­trap the Mas­ter by in­duc­ing him to dis­cuss mar­riage and di­vorce, as did their fel­lows one time in Gal­i­lee, but Je­sus art­fully avoided their ef­forts to bring him into con­flict with their laws con­cern­ing di­vorce. As the pub­li­can and the Phar­isee il­lus­trated good and bad re­li­gion, their di­vorce prac­tices served to con­trast the bet­ter mar­riage laws of the Jew­ish code with the dis­grace­ful lax­ity of the Phar­i­saic in­ter­pre­ta­tions of these Mo­saic di­vorce statutes. The Phar­isee judged him­self by the low­est stan­dard; the pub­li­can squared him­self by the high­est ideal. De­vo­tion, to the Phar­isee, was a means of in­duc­ing self-righ­teous in­ac­tiv­ity and the as­sur­ance of false spir­i­tual se­cu­rity; de­vo­tion, to the pub­li­can, was a means of stir­ring up his soul to the re­al­iza­tion of the need for re­pen­tance, con­fes­sion, and the ac­cep­tance, by faith, of mer­ci­ful for­give­ness. The Phar­isee sought jus­tice; the pub­li­can sought mercy. The law of the uni­verse is: Ask and you shall re­ceive; seek and you shall find.

167:5.3Though Je­sus re­fused to be drawn into a con­tro­versy with the Phar­isees con­cern­ing di­vorce, he did pro­claim a pos­i­tive teach­ing of the high­est ide­als re­gard­ing mar­riage. He ex­alted mar­riage as the most ideal and high­est of all hu­man re­la­tion­ships. Like­wise, he in­ti­mated strong dis­ap­proval of the lax and un­fair di­vorce prac­tices of the Je­ru­sa­lem Jews, who at that time per­mit­ted a man to di­vorce his wife for the most tri­fling of rea­sons, such as be­ing a poor cook, a faulty house­keeper, or for no bet­ter rea­son than that he had be­come en­am­ored of a bet­ter-look­ing woman.

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

• wealth is token of God’s favor

169:2.8When the Phar­isees who were pres­ent heard this, they be­gan to sneer and scoff since they were much given to the ac­quire­ment of riches. These un­friendly hear­ers sought to en­gage Je­sus in un­prof­itable ar­gu­men­ta­tion, but he re­fused to de­bate with his en­e­mies. When the Phar­isees fell to wran­gling among them­selves, their loud speak­ing at­tracted large num­bers of the mul­ti­tude en­camped there­abouts; and when they be­gan to dis­pute with each other, Je­sus with­drew, go­ing to his tent for the night.

• Jesus discredited

173:3.3Je­sus did not de­spise the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees per­son­ally. It was their sys­tems of teach­ing and prac­tice which he sought to dis­credit. He was hos­tile to no man, but here was oc­cur­ring the in­ev­i­ta­ble clash be­tween a new and liv­ing re­li­gion of the spirit and the older re­li­gion of cer­e­mony, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity.

• human body literally resurrected

174:3.4Je­sus ap­pealed only to Moses in his en­counter with the Sad­ducees be­cause this re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal sect ac­knowl­edged the va­lid­ity of only the five so-called Books of Moses; they did not al­low that the teach­ings of the proph­ets were ad­mis­si­ble as a ba­sis of doc­tri­nal dog­mas. The Mas­ter in his an­swer, though pos­i­tively af­firm­ing the fact of the sur­vival of mor­tal crea­tures by the tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion, did not in any sense speak ap­prov­ingly of the Phar­i­saic be­liefs in the res­ur­rec­tion of the lit­eral hu­man body. The point Je­sus wished to em­pha­size was: That the Fa­ther had said, “I am the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob,” not I was their God.

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

135:6.7John was a heroic but tact­less preacher. One day when he was preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing on the west bank of the Jor­dan, a group of Phar­isees and a num­ber of Sad­ducees came for­ward and pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism. Be­fore lead­ing them down into the wa­ter, John, ad­dress­ing them as a group said: “Who warned you to flee, as vipers be­fore the fire, from the wrath to come? I will bap­tize you, but I warn you to bring forth fruit wor­thy of sin­cere re­pen­tance if you would re­ceive the re­mis­sion of your sins. Tell me not that Abra­ham is your fa­ther. I de­clare that God is able of these twelve stones here be­fore you to raise up wor­thy chil­dren for Abra­ham. And even now is the ax laid to the very roots of the trees. Ev­ery tree that brings not forth good fruit is des­tined to be cut down and cast into the fire.” (The twelve stones to which he re­ferred were the re­puted memo­rial stones set up by Joshua to com­mem­o­rate the cross­ing of the “twelve tribes” at this very point when they first en­tered the prom­ised land.)