The Pharisees

The Pharisees actually started out as a group of committed and very well intentioned followers of the Judaic Law. Apparently they were both lovers of God and lovers of scripture. You might say that they were passionate about being obedient to Yahweh which is not a very bad place to begin.

Many scholars believe that they developed around the time of the Babylonian Captivity of Israel when Israel was displaced from their land and taken abroad. In the minds of the people Yahweh was gone because Yahweh had always been the God of a certain location, Israel, and the God of a certain place, the Temple in Jerusalem. When the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586 BCE then Yahweh was also destroyed with it. Truly God was dead.

But to distinguish themselves from the surrounding foreign culture a few were left who nobly and tenaciously still held on to the ancient Jewish laws. They became so zealous in fact they began to build what was called a "hedge around the law" in order to protect it...like Eve telling Adam that they were not even allowed to "touch" the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This wasn't true of course. God never said not to touch it. Presumably they could have picked it, played ball with it, and rubbed it all over their bodies for all that God was concerned and that would not have posed a problem. All God said was don't eat it. But caution often gets the better of us and so it was with those lovers of the law...the Pharisees.

Over time, the hedge that was meant to protect the Law became synonymous with the Law itself and before anyone consciously realized it, the violation of the hedge became a violation of God... or so it was thought. By New Testament times hardly anyone knew the difference, the leaders or the followers. C

hristianity is a lot like that today. We all too often confuse cultural mores and Biblical morality. The old preachers used to say that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" but it doesn't pay to be holier than God.