THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART VIII)

“The Origin of the Pharisees”

By Akin Ojumu

In modern parlance, the word “Pharisee” is an epithet that carries a leprous stigma. It’s a potent pejorative people often deploy to dismiss criticism, denigrate rebuke, or deflect confrontation. Playing the Pharisee Card is a common practice in contemporary Christianity. Charlatans, false apostles, false prophets, false teachers and their followers all love to throw the Pharisee label at anyone who calls them out for their doctrinal errors.

It’s not uncommon today to be labeled a “Pharisee” simply for believing in the sufficiency of Scripture and for standing for the supremacy of the Word of God as written in the Bible. The moment you dare to critically compare what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God, it’s almost certain that you’d be called a Pharisee. To accuse someone who is deemed to be hypercritical as having a pharisaical spirit has become routine. Modern definition of a Pharisee has been reduced to any Christian who is adjudged to be judgmental. 

If you insist on upholding the fidelity of Scripture, you are a Pharisee. For being uncompromising in insisting on an accurate and precise exegetical interpretation and understanding of God’s Word and for encouraging other believers to do the same, you are most definitely a Pharisee. If you point church folks back to the Scriptures and you try to steer them away from the narcissistic, self-promoting, and self-aggrandizing cock and bull stories of the general overseers and other daddies in the Lord, you are most assuredly a bloody Pharisee. You unquestionably have a pharisaical spirit if you believe that all Christians have been commanded by God to correct and call out false teachers for their erroneous teachings. 

That the name Pharisee is a byword in contemporary times is no surprise. Given what we know about them in the Bible, the Pharisees deserve their bad rap. They’re the villains virtually every time they appear in the pages of Scripture. Jesus never had anything good to say about them. And their heavy-handed, legalistic authority made them a scourge to all of Israel – even other pious Jews (Source: Grace to You).

Before proceeding to discuss the animosity between the Lord Jesus and the religious leaders, especially the Pharisees, it’s important that we understand who they were, what they taught, and how they shaped the religious landscape of Israel leading up to the time of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As far as the Bible goes, this much is clear about the Pharisees. You won’t find the name mentioned or alluded to anywhere in the Old Testament. The Pharisees were simply not there during the Old Testament period of biblical history and there’s not a single mention of them in the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. It’s not until the New Testament that we come across this religious sect.

Just so there’s no ambiguity, you’d be wrong to assume that the Pharisees were the New Testament successors to the Aaronic Priesthood. And the reason such an assumption is false is simple. Membership in the sect of the Pharisees was not based on belonging to the tribe of Levi, a requirement for being Priests and Levites in the Old Testament. The Pharisees were equal opportunity recruiters. Proselytes into Pharisaism came from everywhere. In fact, the Pharisees were known to traverse the gentile world of their time to go make a disciple.

Matthew 23:15

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

Although there’s no mention of the Pharisees in the Old Testament, what we do know about them is that their origin can be traced to the inter-testamental period. The Pharisees emerged as a powerful and influential religious sect during what’s popular described as the “Silent Period,” i.e., the approximately 400 years between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.

While the silent period was a period of no new prophetic books, it was not silent, but was filled with significant political, cultural, and religious developments that set the stage for the arrival of Jesus. Key events included the conquests of Alexander the Great, the creation of the Septuagint, the Maccabean Revolt, and the rise of various Jewish sects like the Pharisees and Sadducees (Source: Google AI).

Starting out as a religious separatist movement made up of mostly laypeople zealous for the Law, the Pharisees sought to separate themselves from the corrupt and immoral influences of the Greek culture which was, at this time, being forced upon the people of Judea during the reign of the Greco-Seleucid conqueror, the infamous Antiochus IV “Epiphanes.” The Pharisees emerged as a result of the compulsory Hellenization of the Jewish people.

Arguably the worst the villain in history, Antiochus IV Epiphanes was from the ruling Seleucid kingdom, one of the splintered kingdoms of Alexander the Great’s broken empire that ruled Judea prior to the advent of the Romans. Taking the epitaph Epiphanes, i.e., “God Manifest,” Antiochus claimed to be Zeus incarnate. The historian Polybius, who was a contemporary of Antiochus, referred to Antiochus IV as Epimanes, i.e., “the Insane One,” a play on his epitaph.

Upon coming to power, Antiochus instituted a Hellenization policy which sought to force everyone in his domain to adopt the Greek way of life. Believing that by creating a cultural uniformity across his kingdom, he would bring about a socioeconomic prosperity, Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to impose the Greek culture and language on all peoples. And this Hellenization program was enforced in part by the imposition of the worship of the Greek pantheon, especially Zeus, upon the citizens regardless of their own personal religion.

Eventually, the aggressive and forceful Hellenization of Judea resulted in severe persecution of the Jews. The Jewish people suffered great tribulation as Antiochus IV Epiphanes outlawed the observance of Jewish religious and cultural practices such as the circumcision. Additionally, the sacred Scriptures were burned and anyone caught reading the Torah suffered severe punishment including death.

Many of the pagan nations embraced and welcomed these policies, but in the land of Judea they caused a cultural civil war, notably among members of the high priestly families. In the midst of this turmoil, according to the books of Maccabees and the Jewish historian Josephus, Antiochus plundered the Jerusalem Temple and carried off the sacred vessels – to help finance his campaigns (Source: Biblical Archaeology Society).

When Antiochus efforts met opposition, he persecuted the Jewish people, throwing circumcised infants and their mothers from Jerusalem’s walls, murdering 40,000 Jews, and enslaving another 40,000 over a three-day period. He also forbade the Jewish people from keeping the Sabbath or observing the feasts of Israel, and he sacrificed a pig in the Temple, desecrating it (Source: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry).

Let’s take a pause here for now. Next time we’ll have more to say about the armed rebellion that arose as a result of the tyrannical Hellenization of the Jewish people by Antiochus IV Epiphanes.