The Pharisees

You would expect that the authors of the Christian Scriptures would attempt to teach the doctrines of Christianity. Indeed, the theology of Christianity can be found by reading the letters of Paul. But the writers of the Christian Scriptures did not stop at presenting their own theology; they also found it necessary to give their readers a perspective of Jewish theology. It seems that believing certain things about Jews and Judaism is part and parcel of Christianity.

The word “Pharisee” appears 100 times in the Christian Scriptures. Who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were the leaders of those Jews who believed in the national testimony of the Jewish people. The Pharisees were the leaders of the Jewish people and their philosophy and teachings is known today as Orthodox Judaism.

A popular thesaurus equates the word “Pharisee” with: “hypocrite”, “fraud”, “deceiver” and “pretender”. A typical Christian study Bible…