7 - Pharisaic leadership after the Great Synagogue (170 B.C.E.–135 C.E.)

Summary

The purpose of this chapter is to show that, contrary to the almost universally accepted view, there is no inconsistency between the rabbinic sources regarding the leaders of the Pharisees from the time of the Maccabean revolt and the non-rabbinic sources, such as the New Testament and Josephus. On the contrary, Josephus and the record in the New Testament supplement and confirm the rabbinic tradition with regard to these teachers.

It will be seen that of these teachers some were also heads of the contemporary Temple tribunal, which in the course of time came to be called the Sanhedrin; others were members of the Sanhedrin, but not its heads; still others were not even members of that body. But whatever their relation to the contemporary Sanhedrin might be, all were heads of the Pharisaic schools and tribunals, and indeed of Pharisaism as an organized movement.

Virtually all modern discussions regarding the Pharisees and Pharisaism are based on the premise that there existed only one form of Pharisaism. Doubtless this is because Josephus and the New Testament always speak of the Pharisees as a unit. Yet, as any student of the Talmud soon realizes, there were, in fact, two forms of Pharisaism, differing from each other on basic issues – the one, that which came to be known as the doctrine of the school of Shammai, the other, as that of the school of Hillel. While only about a score of issues are recorded as dividing the Pharisees from the Sadducees, more than three hundred divided the Shammaites from the Hillelites.