The Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
-Mark 2:24

You may have heard, wrongly, that the Pharisees were the rabbis and that they basically ran the show in Yeshua’s time.

You may have heard that the Pharisees . . .

• were all hypocrites
• made up 613 rules which were oppressive
• led the synagogues and governed the way Jews lived for God.

Great resources for those who want to read up on the Pharisees: E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief and Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. I provide no documentation for the assertions I will make in this summary on the Pharisees. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

There are several reasons why the Pharisees are misunderstood:

• Josephus, who was a Pharisee, exaggerated their power and influence
• The later rabbis (third through sixth centuries), whose origins were in the Pharisee movement, exaggerated their power and influence when writing about the first century
• The other parties (Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians) all ceased to exist after 70 CE
• Yeshua clashed with the Pharisees on some matters of Torah
• Un-careful reading of the Gospels leads people not to notice the Sadducees and chief priests were the primary instruments of his execution, while some Pharisees instigated against him.

Here are some important truths about the Pharisees:

• They tended to be middle class, some working as scribes and other in various occupations.
• They tended to be urban, not rural.
• Their numbers were never large.
• Their origin was as a political party in the days of the Maccabees.
• They had some popularity because they stood against Rome in some early clashes.
• They were a sort of fraternity with a common interest in reforming Israel by increasing zeal for the Torah.
• Their beliefs were the closest of all the parties to the views of Yeshua and the apostles.
• In the early days especially, and the later rabbis corrected this tendency, they emphasized ritual over love and justice and mercy.
• You should no more judge Judaism by the things Yeshua criticized about the Pharisees than you should judge any Christian group by the ideas or behavior of some.
• If Yeshua was commenting today, he’d have many sharp criticisms for various Christian sub-groups that might make the Pharisees look good by comparison.
• The synagogues were run by common Jews, elders in the various towns.
• The rabbis of later centuries, whose origins were from the Pharisees, did not become the recognized leaders of Judaism until the sixth century.
• Synagogues in Israel in Yeshua’s time were not places of power, but learning and piety, and they were not led by Pharisees.
• Most Jews did not follow the growing list of traditions the Pharisees were coming up with out of a desire to see Israel come closer to God.
• The 613 are biblical commandments, not man-made rules of the Pharisees.
• Yeshua had positive things to say about some Pharisees. Nicodemus seems to have become a disciple. Of one Pharisee Yeshua said, “You are not far from the kingdom.”
• Many Pharisees believed in Yeshua after the resurrection, and one of them was Paul.
• Paul continued to say, “I am a Pharisee,” the rest of his life and never repudiated this identity.
• The Pharisees who thought more like Shammai were probably more violent in their manner of dealing with threats to Israel’s renewal.
• The Pharisees who thought like the gentler, more tolerant Hillel outnumbered the Shammaite Pharisees.
• Paul the persecutor was probably in the more militant Shammaite wing.
• The Pharisees were a minority on the Sanhedrin and the Sadducees called the shots.
• The Temple did not run according to the wishes of the Pharisees; if it had, this would have been a vast improvement and would have made the Temple much more in keeping with what Yeshua believed.
• The Pharisees in Yeshua’s time lived in Judea and had not spread much into Galilee.
• Yeshua believed the Pharisees did not keep the Torah enough and said his disciples had to surpass them.
• A large part of Yeshua’s critique was that the Pharisees should have seen loving God and people as the highest priorities of Torah.
• Yeshua expected his disciples to outdo the Pharisees literally in loving God and people.

So why would Pharisees come up to Galilee to check Yeshua out? Why would they sometimes follow him around and find reasons to criticize his disciples?

They cared deeply about Israel getting right with God. They wanted to see Messiah come and had a notion of Messiah and victory over Rome that Yeshua came to teach against.

They saw Yeshua at first as a disciple of John the Baptizer. They came to evaluate him as they had first evaluated John. They were critical of his ideas which did not match their own about what Torah renewal would look like.

They were well-meaning people who were wrong about a few things. But they were more like Yeshua in beliefs than most other Jewish sub-groups. And some of the things they were wrong about no one else understood either. Even the disciples did not think Messiah would die, make atonement for Israel and the world, and rise again.

Questions? Doubt something I said has substantiation? Feel free to ask me in the comments. Or if you would like to share how misinformation about the Pharisees and about Judaism has bothered you, I’d love to hear from you.

Here is the growing Table of Contents (more to come):

• What is in the gospels? (Genre).
• Study Methods and Tips: Beginner to Intermediate.
• Reading as a disciple.
• Parables, Gospel by Gospel.
• List: Teachings of Yeshua.
• List: Teachings Unique to Luke.
• List: Healing Miracles of Yeshua.
• List: Exorcisms by Yeshua.
• List: Nature Miracles of Yeshua.
• Symbolic Actions and Kingdom Enactments.
• Midrash in the Gospels, the Example of Matthew 2:15.
• Yeshua’s Exalted Identity (Synoptic Gospels).

READING IMMERSION METHOD: Read Mark first. Then Matthew. Then Luke. Then John. This is the very likely order in which the gospels were written. Notice that Mark ends at 16:8. Anything after 16:8 printed in whatever translation of the Bible you are reading is based on late manuscripts and was added by scribes. Did Mark ever have an ending beyond 16:8? No one is sure. Notice what Mark does not have that Matthew and then Luke add: infancy narratives and resurrection narratives (Mark ends with the empty tomb). Notice that Luke’s infancy and resurrection narratives are quite different from Matthew’s. Notice how John’s gospel is largely stories near Jerusalem, how the sayings of Yeshua are long discourses, and how his is the only gospel which does not follow Mark’s basic outline.

READING HABITUAL METHOD: Make it your habit to read a bit of the gospels daily, in order either Mk-Mt-Lk-Jn or Mt-Mk-Lk-Jn. You might read one chapter a day. Or you might get a good commentary and read one section or subsection from its outline every day. If you are a Torah reader, following the parashot of Torah, you might read Matthew with Genesis, Mark with Exodus, Luke with Leviticus, John with Numbers, and Acts with Deuteronomy (I have an email list called the Daily D’var that provides these readings daily with my commentary — to request it email me at yeshuaincontext at gmail).

CHECK VARYING TRANSLATIONS: It is good to give preference to translations such as RSV (Revised Standard Version) and NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) and ESV (English Standard Version) and NASB (New American Standard Bible). The DHE (Delitzsch Hebrew English Version) is a good supplement (based on Franz Delitzsch’s Hebrew translation of the gospels and recently translated into English by Vine of David). Loose translations such as NIV, NLT, CEV, and TNIV may give you some false impressions of certain sayings and narratives.

HARMONY: Some narratives and/or sayings in the gospels are parallel passages. In many cases, the section in Mark will be repeated in Matthew and Luke. Some material in Matthew is shared by Luke and not in Mark. Only a few parallels exist between John and the other gospels. It is often helpful to check a Harmony of the Gospels or Synopsis of the Gospels. There is a free online Harmony of the Gospels available a BlueLetterBible (click here). A very helpful printed Harmony is A Harmony of the Gospels: New American Standard Edition by Thomas and Gundry (available at amazon). The advantage of a printed harmony is that the passages are laid out in parallel columns for easy comparison and contrast. A Greek synopsis is also available: Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum: Locis Parallelis Evangeliorum Apocryphorum Et Patrum Adhibitis Edidit by Kurt Aland. Notice the ways Matthew and Luke change Mark. Notice also similarities. And in the double tradition (Mt-Lk) material, compare and contrast Matthew and Luke.

HEBREW BIBLE: A.K.A., Old Testament. You need to understand the first five books of the Bible to get past a basic level of understanding in the gospels. If you are somewhat Pentateuch illiterate, habitual daily reading is a great idea. The Jewish readings (called parashot — singular is parashah) bring you through the Pentateuch in a year (see HebCal.com for the readings of the day). If you need a Torah course (recommended), First Fruits of Zion’s Torah Club is a great one (start with Year One). My book, A New Look at the Old Testament may be helpful also (available at amazon or at my site here: MountOlivePress.com).

ALLUSIONS AND REFERENCES TO THE HEBREW BIBLE: Look them up. You will often find that Yeshua’s way of using the Hebrew Bible (or the way the gospel author uses the Hebrew Bible) is unusual, perhaps different than the ways you have seen people use the scriptures. Yeshua’s methods are very Jewish. Also, see the category here: “Hebrew Bible as Testimony.” Certain themes from the Bible are very important: Creation, Covenant, Temple, Wisdom, Messianic Age, Messiah (Son of David), Son of Man.

ASSUME A POSITIVE VIEW OF TORAH AND JUDAISM: You will find it more illuminating to read Yeshua as positive about the Mosaic Torah, Temple, Law, and customs of Judaism than negative. Keep in mind that the Pharisees were a small sect and did not at this time dominate Jewish practice. Keep in mind that various Jews differed on the best way to keep Torah and that Yeshua is teaching how to do it, not arguing whether it should be done. And, Yeshua is Galilean, while Sadducees and Pharisees are Judean (and Galileans mistrust Judeans).

COMMENTARIES: If you want commentaries that combine readability and scholarship, the Sacra Pagina Series (Catholic) is hard to beat (so, for example, if you search “mark sacra pagina” at amazon, you will find the commentaries I am talking about).

• Infancy narratives
• John the Baptist narratives
• Teaching narratives
• Parables
• Sayings
• Enactments and symbolic actions
• Miracle narratives
• Healing (and exorcism) miracles
• Nature miracles
• Identity stories
• Dispute narratives
• Passion narratives
• Resurrection narratives

This principle is not evident to everyone. Recently I posted something positive on Facebook about the Pharisees. I met with fierce resistance from a well-meaning Christian (actually, I’m not so sure he was well-meaning). He started posting comments with exclamation points and some words capitalized. Didn’t I know Pharisee means hypocrite and they are of their father the devil? And he had a Bible verse to back up each point.

I told him that from knowing a little history we could see that the Pharisees were not what many people think. They were a smaller and far less influential group than many think. They were not all hypocrites and neither were their teachings all opposed to Yeshua’s way. I pointed out a few positive things said about Pharisees, such as Matthew 23:1-2.

The commenter fired back, “All we need to know is in scripture. No need to bring up history to understand the Pharisees. The Bible only is our source.”

It sounds good. It’s not true. The Bible assumes knowledge of some history, trends, facts, and personalities that is not talked about in the text itself. People in Israel in Yeshua’s time knew plenty about Herod Antipas, Essenes, Sadducees, the differences between Galileans and Judeans, the way oil lamps worked, and a thousand other things that are not common knowledge.

So, the first basic principle for gospel study is that you will need some information that is not in the gospels themselves, and sometimes not anywhere in the Bible. You’ll have to consult parts of the Bible outside of the gospels (it is best to have a good knowledge of the Pentateuch and at least some of Isaiah and Psalms before getting too far). You’ll have to consult some resources outside of the Bible too.

How is your Bible study library? Want to know the very first tool you should get?

A Bible dictionary. Which one do I recommend? First, do NOT (please) use one of the free ones to be found online. For most readers, I would recommend either The New Bible Dictionary (eds. Marshall, Millard, Wiseman) or The Eerdman’s Dictionary of the Bible (ed. Freedman).

And another of my pointers, which forms the basis for this post: “Understand the genre of parables in rabbinic literature.” And the golden text for learning about this subject: David Stern, Parables in Midrash (note: this is not the David Stern who is famous in the Messianic Jewish community, but the Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania).

WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN RABBINIC PARABLES AND YESHUA’S?
This is a tricky question that needs to be addressed. Rabbinic parables started being written down in the fourth century in the land of Israel. That’s quite a long time after Yeshua. Some books and studies have unwisely blurred the lines between the first and fourth century.

Stern sums it up simply: “They were both part of a single genre” (188). This conclusion is based on the work of David Flusser (a scholar whose work, in my opinion, has flaws, but on this specific issue he must have made his point well) who demonstrated that literary characteristics of rabbinic parables have much in common with parables in the gospels.

People were telling parables already before Yeshua’s time and the genre continued with much similarity for hundreds of years.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PARABLES IN RABBINIC WRITINGS?
Rabbinical parables in most cases originated “in public contexts (sermons or preaching), and as an instrument for praise or blame, often directed at persons in the audience” (200). They “tend to be phrased in terms of praise or blame, or as a variation upon these opposites: approbation or disapproval, appreciation or disappointment, pleasure or pain” (52).

Among the purposes mentioned by Stern for parables are apologetics (defending the idea of faith against ideas that undermine it) and polemics (urging a point of view in opposition to others).

WHAT PARABLES ARE NOT
They are not primarily about doctrine. They may reflect on doctrinal themes. But they are primarily about praise or blame.

They are not riddles intended to confuse outsiders. Stern argues this in spite of Yeshua’s sayings about “to you has been given the secret of the kingdom” and “in order that they might not see” in Mark 4:11-12 (and parallels in Matthew 13:11-13 and Luke 8:10).

Stern thinks Yeshua (or Mark) has been misunderstood. The point is not that the parables were too hard to understand rationally. The point is that outsiders, those who do not remain near to Yeshua and ask questions and learn from him, will not be able to apply them. They will not penetrate the deeper message of the parables, which are mysteries, truths of a complex nature, involving more than interpretation: “To understand correctly, one must be a member of the community” (204).

TIPS FOR READING PARABLES
Who is Yeshua praising and why?

Who is he blaming and why?

How does the praise and blame from the parable receive added information from Yeshua’s teaching and actions with the disciples?

In other words, the parables are persuasive pieces of rhetoric designed to encourage action or belief in a certain direction. They are not primarily about information or revealing doctrine. The rabbinic parables may be later, but they provide a wealth of additional contexts in which we can see the same patterns as in Yeshua’s parables. They confirm for us the way parables were used in public speaking to persuade hearers to a new course of action or to stand firm in a good course of action or belief. We should look for Yeshua’s parables to function the same way.

This will largely keep us from reading too much later Christian theology into the parables, to imagine that they are about a timeline for the last days or a foretelling of Christendom or anything of the kind. They are persuasive sermons delivered to Jews in Galilee and Judea about Jewish life and faith.

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
–Mark 11:18

The gospel did not just happen. The events which marked the onset of a new stage in the world’s redemption happened in a time and place with three main cultural backdrops. Parts 1 and 2 introduced Greek and Roman influences on these events, both in Yeshua’s time and the later time the gospels were written. What about conditions and social structures in Israel itself? What are some basics readers need to know about conditions and groups in Israel? What about Jewish concerns in the times of the evangelists?

First, it cannot be over-emphasized, and it rather has been under-emphasized, that Yeshua was Galilean and his movement was primarily a Galilean one at the beginning. For more about this, see “Yeshua the Galilean” by clicking here. In Galilee itself, Yeshua was safe unless he ran afoul of Herod Antipas. It was primarily in Judea and Jerusalem that there was danger for Yeshua. Galilee was rural and had no aristocracy. Judea had powerful people with statuses to protect so that prophets and upstart messianic brigands were quickly eliminated.

Second, we must locate Yeshua among the common Jews and not see him as part of any of the parties. In an overreaction to centuries of neglecting the Jewish context of Jesus, some studies in recent decades have aligned Yeshua with the Pharisees. This is a misunderstanding of what the Pharisees represented. Yeshua did not belong to any of the parties. Of the parties, the Pharisees may have been closest to Yeshua’s way of thinking, but he himself was not a Pharisee.

As one of the people of the land, Yeshua’s common belief with his countrymen centered on monotheism, covenant, the election of Israel as God’s people, the Temple, and the way of life laid out in the Torah. Readings of Yeshua overturning laws of the Torah are without basis and should be rejected. A more sophisticated reading of Mark 7 and Matthew 15 is called for, a reading based more in Jewish discussions about how to keep the food and purity laws, not whether to keep them.

Second, we can and should accept the picture of the gospels that there was some degree of literacy in Galilee and synagogues with some education. It is not difficult to believe that Yeshua could read the Hebrew text. But we should not imagine him as a scribe with the kind of training found in Judea in the small movement of Pharisees and scribes. Yeshua would have been a literate, but by Judean standards, poorly educated layman.

Third, we should understand the times of Yeshua in Judaism as formative. The last decades before the First Jewish Revolt in 66-70 CE were a time when Israel was looking for an identity, for a way to be Israel. The powerful chief priests and Sadducees held nearly all the power in Jerusalem. Galileans paid tithes to the chief priests out of duty to Torah in spite of corruption and the fact that the Temple-state in Judea was abusive of wealth and power. The Pharisees were seeking to bring their own kind of renewal, but it too was a movement defined by power and status, not righteousness in the mode of the prophets of Israel.

Israel was seeking to be Israel, to recover some sense of what Torah had expressed as the ideal. The common people were powerless. From time to time, groups of the common people would follow an upstart messianic or prophetic leader. None of the small revolts inspired a wide following.

It is in this sense that we should understand Yeshua, who worked wonders in Galilee and attracted crowds. People were ready for change. They wanted to see something from God. Some of the people were ready for a revolution. Otherwise the various brigands who led small revolts would have found no followers. Yeshua seemed to be a person who could make things happen at long last.

Yet nearly all of Yeshua’s teaching and his actions were calculated to overthrowing popular messianic notions. Yeshua found a people so out of touch with the vision of the prophets for the world to come, the kingdom of God, that he set about overturning sacred cows. He dined with sinners. He healed impure people. He praised the faith of non-Jews. He warned that being the Chosen People would not bring inheritance by itself in the kingdom. He denied the idea of power and status as a way for Messiah or Messiah’s followers. He spoke of a long delay in the coming of the kingdom. He established a renewal movement, a group within Israel to be True Israel. He claimed to be of very high and exalted status which people would only understand when he was glorified. He gave many hints and signs of his identity. He left a group of disciples to lead a movement after his death and glorification when these things would become clear. He spoke of coming in the future as the Son of Man.

Yeshua’s vision of Messiahship and kingdom is a Jewish vision, but different in many details from other Jewish ways of imagining the kingdom.

In the days of the evangelists, division with synagogues throughout the empire heightened the distance between the Yeshua-movement and Jewish communities. The evangelists emphasized the origins of their movement as Jewish but with a view to spread to the nations. Yeshua had other sheep. Yeshua called for his name to be proclaimed to the gentiles. The Abrahamic promise was at last being realized.

Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
-Acts 2:7

The miracle of that special Shavuot (Pentecost) at the Temple was something very human: the appearance of the Spirit of God in individual theophanies on the disciples. Many onlookers seem to have missed the tongues of fire that Luke says rested on the disciples. What they noticed was the strange speech. Humble Israelites were speaking languages from far away lands. And it occurred to the onlookers as more than strange that these powerfully endued speakers were Galilean.

It was the Judeans, not the Galileans, who emphasized scribal education. If anyone might be expected to have such learning of languages, and possibly if anyone were to be chosen as a prophet, most would expect this to happen to Judeans and not Galileans.

What is the nature of being a Galilean in Yeshua’s time? How had the history of Galilee shaped the people there? Were these Galileans descendants of foreign converts? Were the relocated Judeans? Or were they descended from the northern tribes of Israel who had long ago settled in Galilee? How separate and independent was Galilee from Judea? Did Galileans have a different outlook than Judeans on matters of Temple and Judaism? How did being a Galilean impact the personality and methods of Yeshua?

Background: Galilee from Deborah’s Time to Yeshua’s

A great resource for understanding Galilee is Richard Horsley’s Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee.

To begin to understand the Galileans, go back to Judges 5 and the days of Deborah the prophetess. Egyptian power is crumbling and their control of Canaan is slipping. The Canaanite city-states have been here for a long time. They are the old order. They tax the surrounding agricultural lands. Their wealth and power derives from the land, but their military might is Egypt.

The Israelites moved in during this phase of crumbling power. In many cases, and the hints of this scenario show through in Joshua and especially in Judges, the Israelites did not cast off the Canaanite powers all at once. Instead, the Israelites settled on less valuable land, terracing hillsides and eking out a difficult agricultural living. They stayed out of the normal realms of Canaanite power, so that the cost to the Canaanites to make war on them was often too high to be worth the fight. You could say that Israelites got their start in Canaan living in the shadows of the crumbling city-states.

Galilee was a prime area for this sort of avoidance. The hills and rugged terrain included many places where agriculture was difficult but possible. And when Deborah the prophetess presided over a war with a major Canaanite power, Jabin the king of Hazor and his general Sisera, the people of Naphtali and Zebulon fought valiantly. They were Galileans. And we read of them:

They shall recount the righteous deeds of the Lord . . . for his peasantry in Israel . . . The people came down to me as warriors . . . Zebulun was a people who despised their lives even to death, and Naphtali also in the high places of the field.

They despised their lives to the point of death, a trait Galileans would be known for more than once in history. Galileans have been called “fiercely independent.” And they occupied “high places in the field,” which Horsley suggests may describe terraced agriculture on the hills.

After the time of Yeshua, when the Jewish war with Rome broke out in 66 CE, Josephus said of the Galileans, who were under his command, “they had always been numerous and warlike” (Jewish War 3:41-43).

The Question of Identity: Who Were the Galileans?

Misinformation abounds about the identity of the Galileans and the phenomenon of the so-called “Lost Tribes.” You may have heard either that the Galileans were gentiles, forcibly converted in the days of the Maccabean rulers known as the Hasmoneans. Or you may have heard that the Galileans were actually peoples from Judea who settled in Galilee, so that the people of Galilee and Judea really came from the same handful of tribes.

Adding to the confusion is the well-known label from Isaiah 9, which we will say more about later, referring to Galilee as Galilee of the gentiles. Furthermore, as the city of Sepphoris was being discovered in recent times, many made irresponsible claims about how a big Greco-Roman city dominated Galilee and how the people of Galilee were so enthralled with Greek and Roman culture. Some were teaching that Jesus the carpenter probably did most of his work in nearby Sepphoris. Some scholars with massive audiences have been portraying Jesus in the image of a Greek wandering philosopher, Jesus the Cynic Sage.

Horsley goes back to the biblical accounts of the Assyrian conquest of the northern tribes of Israel and also to Assyrian descriptions of the fighting in Israel and the deportation of Israelites. His conclusion? The Assyrians only took the skilled artisans, military leaders, scribes, and ruling elite. Horsley dismisses language in both the biblical account and Assyrian accounts about “all the people” being taken away. This kind of language is not to be taken literally, he says. A more detailed examination of Assyrian methods and the numbers of deportees suggests that the only valuable deportees were the ones who could be of use to the Assyrians.

Furthermore, the Assyrians immediately sent in their own administrators to take control of Galilee after conquering it in 732 and Samaria in 722. The reason they would send in administrators is to tax the agricultural land. This they could only do if the peasantry was still there, working the land as they had always done, but now for new masters.

This means that the Galilee of Yeshua’s time was populated with Israelites, with peoples who had occupied this land for over a thousand years. They had never formed their own aristocracy but had served rulers in Samaria, Judea, and foreign overlords. Yet their lives were governed by agriculture and they got along just fine whoever was in charge.

The Galilean Spirit

How did Galileans relate to Judaism, to the Temple in Judea, to the religious powers vying for control? Were they loyal to the Sadducees and High Priest? Were they interested in the Essene or Pharisaic movements seeking to renew Israel under a different vision of Torah living?

We should suspect that Galileans were never loyal to Judea or Samaria in particular. The power of the chief priests mattered little to Galilean farmers. Galilean piety was a matter of pilgrimage to the Temple, of giving tithes, of education in the Torah in village schools. Their attitude to the Temple, which we see perfectly in the teaching of Yeshua the Galilean, would be reverence for what the Temple was supposed to represent, obligation to the laws of tithe and sacrifice, but resentment toward the false priests who were not from the legitimate priestly lines and resentment toward the power-plays of the leaders in Jerusalem.

To the Galileans, the “Jews,” meaning Judeans, were corrupting the place of God’s dwelling. Yet they were obligated to tithe and make pilgrimage to the Temple in spite of such corruption. At least, this summarizes Yeshua’s feelings as represented in the gospels and fits well with the situation of Galilee. Galileans would have more naturally emphasized the aspects of tithing that were about redistribution to the needy in the local towns while Judeans emphasized the tithe as a sort of tax to make the leadership powerful and wealthy.

The developing traditions of the elders, promoted by the Pharisees and some of the Judean scribes, were a foreign notion to Galilee. The small but in some ways popular movement of Pharisaic and scribal teachers was a Judean phenomenon. The Galilean holy man best known in the Talmud is Hanina ben Dosa, who is represented as separate from the Judean schools, but reluctantly respected by Yohanan ben Zakkai due to his effectiveness in prayer. As Geza Vermes depicted Hanina in his book Jesus the Jew, so we might think of Yeshua as a pious man with Torah learning, but not in the traditions of the Judean scribes.

Matthew 22 as Galilean vs. Judean

One place where the Galilean vs. Judean ideas about God and Torah show up is Matthew 22. For more details, see my article, “Galilean vs. Judean in Matthew 22.”

Some Judeans try to trap Yeshua at the Temple into making either an unpopular statement in support of Caesar’s tax or a statement that could get him arrested if he publicly opposed Caesar’s tax. Yeshua, the Galilean, out does his opponents with a simple rebuke. He says, “Show me the coin used for the poll-tax.”

How is this a Galilean rebuke against the Judeans? The answer is simple. No Galilean would have on their person a coin which has an image of Caesar and that proclaims Caesar the filius divius, or son of god. In other words, these Judeans have been corrupted by their power games and they have become too much like Rome.

Similarly, the other stories in Matthew 22 show a Galilean Yeshua answering Judeans. The Sadducees do not have proper faith in the afterlife and are defeated in debate with a mere Galilean. A Judean Pharisee is surprised at Yeshua’s insight into the greatest commandment of Torah. And Yeshua castigates the Judean Pharisees for making themselves out to be teachers and yet they do not understand the basics of the promise of Messiah.

Yeshua is a Galilean. He reveres the Temple, but denounces the corruption of the Judean Temple-state. He reveres Torah, but denounces the authoritative stance of Judean self-proclaimed authorities. He accuses them of overruling God’s commandments and misinterpreting Torah. Yet he also teaches his disciples to respect their teaching, apparently looking for the good and throwing out the bad.

And, when the first followers of Yeshua gather for Shavuot at the Temple, there are doubtless some Judeans among them. But overall as a group, they are Galileans. Jerusalem is the holy city and the announcement of Yeshua must take hold in Jerusalem and go out from there.

But is a message about a Galilean, first believed by a group of Galileans. It is as Isaiah had said:

In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.
-Isaiah 8:23-9:1 or 9:1-2 in Christian Bibles

As Horsley explains it, “Galilee of the Nation” translates galil hagoyim, which literally means “circle of the nations.” And Galilee gets its name from the word for circle. It is not that Galilee is gentile, but that it is ringed all around by gentile cities.

And as we see when we examine the Galilean nature of Yeshua’s first followers and his own Galilean attitudes and ways, truly the light did come to Galilee. The fiercely independent Galileans saw a great light and the man of Galilee did become known to all the nations.

Chapter 1.1 – ORDER AND RELATIONSHIPS IN THE GOSPELS

Before you get too far in reading and thinking about the gospels — their history, the way they present Yeshua, their literary themes, their theology, the practical aspects of discipleship, and so on — it is a good idea to consider where they came from and something about how they came to us. I’ll present a more detailed theory in “Part 4: Eyewitness Theory and the Gospels.”

First, there is some terminology that is important. The first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are known as the synoptic gospels. “Synoptic” means “seeing together” and these gospels are in many ways similar in outline. They present Yeshua from the time of John the Baptist or earlier, his career in Galilee, his final journey to Jerusalem, his trials, death, and empty tomb. The fourth gospel (John) has a different sort of outline in several ways, presenting Yeshua as going to Jerusalem multiple times at various festivals.

There are other terms that can be important to know. Infancy narratives: in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, the story of Yeshua’s birth and childhood. Passion narratives: all four gospels relate the story of Yeshua’s presentation, trials, and death in Jerusalem. Resurrection narratives: all four gospels relate the empty tomb and three of the four relate appearances after the empty tomb.

For now, I will present two basic theories about the order and relationships of the gospels. The first we might call the standard scholarly paradigm and the second a modified paradigm:

Standard Scholarly Paradigm
MARK is written first (most agree on this point).
MARK is a source for MATTHEW and LUKE.
MATTHEW and LUKE are independent of one another.
MATTHEW and LUKE share material in common not found in MARK.
A non-existent document called Q is considered a possible source for the common material in MATTHEW and LUKE that is not in MARK.
Q is thought to be a document of sayings of Yeshua (no narratives).
JOHN is often thought to be independent or maybe even unaware of the others.
This is also called the TWO-SOURCE theory, which means the synoptic gospels are based on two sources: MARK and Q.

Modified Paradigm
MARK is written first.
MARK is a source for MATTHEW.
MARK and MATTHEW are sources for LUKE.
There is no such thing as Q.
JOHN may present a different approach, but does use MARK as a source (and perhaps all the synoptics).

The modified paradigm is my own preferred way of looking at the evidence and combines ideas from several scholars. To read more about why Q probably does not exist, consider the arguments of Mark Goodacre in The Case Against Q. To consider the case for John using Mark as a source, consider Richard Bauckham’s “John for Readers of Mark” in The Gospels for All Christians.

Yeshua said in Mark 7:15, “there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”

I have always thought that this passage was one of the most penetrating, well-phrased, to-the-heart-of-the-matter statements of what Yeshua stood for. It’s actually only part of what Yeshua had to say on the matter. It’s what he said to the crowds, the outsiders, the ones who did not get private instruction as part of the inner circle. Mark 7:15 is rather vague and can be taken in some different directions all by itself.

Yeshua gives further clarification in vss. 17-23. I won’t go into detail about some of the controversial matters here. Many people wonder if Yeshua is nullifying the dietary law. You can find my take on that question in chapter 8 of Yeshua in Context.

What I am interested in in this podcast is the meaning of Yeshua’s ethical teaching here. We’re too quick to make blanket statements and simplistic arguments. I hear all the time, “God hates religion and loves relationship.” You can’t possibly read the Bible with intelligence and believe this. What God hates is not religion, but the kind of things some people make of religion and the kinds of religion the masses tend to settle for. These weak and sometimes evil forms leave people empty, unfulfilled.

Likewise, it’s simplistic to say, “Yeshua is against ritual purity laws.” That’s not the point.

I’m saying Mark 7 cuts through our shoddy notions of religion. It is not simply a rebuke against those scribes back then.

Neither is Mark 7 unique in Yeshua’s teaching. It is a thread that runs throughout it.

In one parable, Yeshua calls his movement a mustard bush. That is, Yeshua’s movement is an annoying weed that pops up in the religious scene which the official gardeners can’t get rid of. It results in sinners and gentiles and the great unwashed coming into the kingdom.

In a famous scene, Yeshua protests the Temple. It is his Father’s house. He has zeal for it, as his disciples testify. Why does he protest it?

The simplistic say, he was against the Temple. Those who look deeper say, he was against what the leaders made the Temple to be. It has become an unjust system, a burden on the people and a source of enrichment for the power-brokers.

His Father made the Temple a place not only of worship but also of feeding the hungry and filling the people with abundance. But the leaders demand the tithes of the people without fulfilling the purpose. They keep as much of the proceeds as they can and use the Temple as much as they can to perpetuate their power. They demand without giving.

Yeshua opposes the Pharisees again and again and modern religion completely misses why. So many modern religious people act just like the Pharisees Yeshua opposed.

They shut people out of the kingdom. All the while they congratulate themselves, “We believe in grace; we are not legalistic Pharisees.” Mark 7 doesn’t allow any of us the luxury of self-congratulation.

In spite of much rhetoric, much modern religion is no more than “come to our meeting so you can have the mark of being one of the saved.” And in order to accommodate the idea of grace, many have made the meeting more like a concert, so that the threshold is lowered and it is not so hard for large numbers of people to attend the meeting and have the mark of the saved. Come as you are. You can wear a T-shirt. But by God, get here. If you don’t, you’re missing God’s healing power and heading to a dangerous place.

No wonder Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of religionless Christianity as being so needed.

When people reduce the message of Yeshua to something as powerless as having the marks of the saved on you, outward signs like mere attendance, they have missed Yeshua completely.

Belonging to a community of believers is not and never has been, for Yeshua, about having the mark. Yeshua designed his community to be the place that IS and DOES his will.

How about we translate Yeshua’s saying in Mark 7: “Failure to attend meetings and bear the outward marks of faith is not what defiles, but righteousness comes from within, goes out from my followers, and comforts the suffering”?

What are the false notions of impiety in modern religion. They are many. Wrong music. Disinterest in shallow or boring worship services. Failure to apply the right bumper sticker or proclaim Jesus in a T-shirt logo.

Think about what Yeshua is actually saying in Mark 7: “Don’t worry that in the jostling crowds at Walmart you might contact uncleanness. It’s not contact from the outside that defiles. It’s what comes out of you, the wickedness in your heart. Your sense of superiority, I’m better than that woman. Your deceit. Your lust. Your grasping for self-enthronement is what defiles.

But you can get these words wrong too.

It’s not that Yeshua is saying, “Measure up.” Nor is he calling you to be a righteous individual.

First, a focus on measuring up will lead you astray. Don’t look at your shortcomings and feel unshakable shame. Look at all the good you can do and do it. Be a force for love, justice, kindness, goodness, service, help for those hurting.

Second, a focus on being a righteous individual will lead you astray. You were not created to be a solitary paragon of virtue. You made for others, to be with others, to be completed by others. You were made for God’s family.

But, you say, the congregation near me has it all wrong. Well, start somewhere. Yeshua’s generation had it all wrong too.

And no matter where you go, you’ll find people who want love, friendship, encouragement, help, and even to lend a helping hand.

But you will find that evil always pops up, in you and in others. Why be surprised? The power of sin is in perpetuating evil. The power of good is in reclaiming lost ground and advancing the kingdom of God.

While we are waiting for it to fully arrive, the kingdom of God is what we do together. It is what Yeshua taught us to do. Comfort mourners. Fill the hungry. See God. Supply needs. Right wrongs. Promote life.

If you are not religious, the idea of some great importance being attached to the figure of Yeshua might seem ludicrous. Religious figures (Buddha, Mohammed, Zeus, Krishna, Israel’s God) are a dime a dozen. Why should Yeshua command any special inquiry or attention?

If you are religious and, in fact, Christian, the same question may be at the back of your thoughts. Are we overemphasizing this guy from Galilee?

If you are religious and not Christian or Messianic Jewish, you may be absolutely convinced that Yeshua is not worthy of such devotion, study, and faith. So, is Yeshua just another religious figure?

Some religious figures present a philosophy which you may or may not find compelling (Buddha). Yeshua does more than that. Even if you have grave doubts about some of his sayings, he left an impression on history that is tangible, real, and hard to explain away. Perhaps you have not evaluated the evidence that Yeshua did, in fact, rise from the tomb and leave behind a Presence in this world that is not easily dismissed.

Some religious figures are not credible in their literal sense (Zeus), although the meaning of myth is much deeper than the literal sense. Much can be learned from myth on the level of human needs and archetypes. Yeshua is more than that. He is myth become real, the Presence of Omnipotence in the real world (or at least that’s what he claimed and left signs indicating was true). He deserves a closer look than mythical figures do.

Some religious figures came along late to the scene and simply modified existing religious ideas in ways that are not credible (Mohammed). Yeshua is not like this. His take on the Hebrew Bible, the identity and ways of God, the realization of the hopes of Judaism, is compelling. His message is beloved even by those who do not follow him explicitly (look at the impact of the image of the cross and sacrificial death and resurrection in art and literature).

Yeshua is not just another religious figure. He broke into history and changed something fundamental (the finality of death). He left an imprint that is about more than sociology (a religious movement) and more than philosophy (a teaching). He left a movement of eyewitnesses claiming that the Realm Above broke through to Here Below. It is history as surely as events you more readily accept as true.

The real question is why so few people give Yeshua the inquiry and attention his legacy deserves.

For an in-depth and rather academic case that the resurrection of Yeshua truly happened, see N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. For a simpler case, see Jesus, the Final Days by Craig Evans and N.T. Wright.

…Reading methodically, regularly, as a discipline.
The best method is reading through the gospels, from start to finish, in order, a little each day. The practice in Judaism of reading the books of the Torah daily is a good point of comparison (Yeshua-followers could add acts to the gospels, making five books which correspond in a reading cycle to the five books of Torah).

…Question assumptions while reading.
Many readers find a word such as “saved” or “life” or “kingdom” and gloss over these as terms already understood and defined. Frequently the theologies which people bring into their reading are not well thought out. A holy uncertainty about such terms while reading is not a bad idea. And assumptions about motivations and unstated conclusions should also be questioned. We should not assume we will understand the depths of Yeshua’s teaching without finding our assumptions challenged.

…Don’t ignore gaps.
Yeshua doesn’t exactly answer the questions Nicodemus poses in John 3. Matthew 7:13-14 speak of few finding the way of life but 8:11 speaks of many. Matthew 11:30 says Yeshua’s yoke is easy, but 10:34-39 makes is sound hard. Notice the problems, the mysteries, the things that don’t seem to add up. Note them and come back to them. The gap itself often turns out to hold the clues to deeper insight.

…Seek the references.
Some are obvious, such as when Matthew cites a verse and says Yeshua has filled it up (often rendered “fulfilled”). Others are less so, such as Yeshua speaking of a house which may be built on his words in Matthew 7:24-27 (see Proverbs 9:1 and following and 24:3 and following).

…Learn theological arcs from the Hebrew Bible.
Related to the last method, we should assume that Yeshua uses themes from the Hebrew Bible in ways that call for a deep knowledge, not surface reading. Thus, Yeshua as the giver of wisdom in Matthew 7:24-27 may be a deeper clue to his identity, if you understand the theme of wisdom personified in Proverbs and its relation to later Jewish thought about God and creation.

…Read both in the context of each gospel and in harmony with parallels.
It matters both how Matthew or Mark cast a story or saying and how they compare or differ in different accounts. Mark may not use a story or saying in the same context as Luke. In studying Mark’s theology, the near context matters. In studying Yeshua’s life, the comparisons and differences matter.

Avoid all false assumptions of Jewish vs. Christian antagonism.

Look for a both-and reading instead of either-or.

Avoid anachronisms (assuming rabbinic literature describes Yeshua’s time, etc.).

Have a rich and thematically rich understanding of the Hebrew Bible.

Assume a positive view of Law and tradition.

Learn or at least reserve for further study words and concepts that may have had Jewish background.

Know social realities of the time and the groups involved.

Understand the symbols and hopes of Israel in Yeshua’s time.

Look for relation of gospel narratives and sayings to Jewish theological arcs.

Understand that Yeshua’s culture valued concrete images over abstractions.

Now, many stories (you could say all of them) in the gospels are about Yeshua’s identity. But some stories in particular are not teachings, they are not symbolic actions, they are things that happen to Yeshua and reveal his identity. What are the top examples?

The Baptism of Yeshua – His Sonship is proclaimed by a heavenly voice. This potentially embarrassing story (Yeshua submitting to John?) becomes a ray of light from heaven.

The Temptation of Yeshua – His Sonship is the entire issue. See “Interpreting the Temptation” under the “Identity of Yeshua” category.

The Transfiguration of Yeshua – Again with the heavenly voice and adding now blinding light and appearance with Moses and Elijah.

The Ascension – Only in Luke (and Acts), though much talked about in John and hinted at in the final scene of Matthew.

The word gospel has a long history of use in the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. It is interesting to see how Mark uses the word in the first verse of his narrative: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ [Messiah Yeshua].”

What is this the beginning of? It is the beginning of an account, Mark’s account, telling the story and message of Yeshua from beginning to end. The life of Yeshua is the gospel, in Mark’s usage.

It’s an interesting corrective to so many who have understood the word gospel in different terms, as a message of benefits for Jesus’ followers. Gospel has become a word used in religious circles for a sort of sales pitch to persuade people to believe. But the common sales pitch is usually put in simple terms of a bargain with God: believe and get heaven as a reward. This is such a poor gospel compared to Mark’s.

We need to read the gospels for information, clarity, even for survival.

If you are in inquirer into the possibility of Yeshua’s story being relevant, don’t simply rely on books about Yeshua or the gospels. Read the gospels themselves. Their stories speak. You may not find in them what a book says you will find.

If you are a well-read Christian, read them. You may be surprised, once you accept that the gospels are not obsolete, how they change your view of life, God, faith, and deeds.

If you are Jewish, read them. You will likely be surprised how easy it is to read the gospels as Jewish literature. The little-emphasized secret, of course, is that they are Jewish literature. They fit perfectly into the world of Second Temple Jewish writings, though with their own distinctive ideas and flavor.

If you are a beginner, read them. Experience is the best teacher. You have to first experience them to understand them. Wine tastes bitter at first, but you acquire the taste. Patience is rewarded and many before you have found in these four books a wine of unending complexity and a bouquet of constant renewal.

Read them for survival. In this world of trouble, the life and words of the redeemer from our troubles is our sign of hope for a way out. In a Jewish midrash on Lamentations, a woman weds a king who then goes away to fight wars and strengthen his kingdom. During his many years of absence, the neighbors take to taunting her. He will never come back. She should marry someone else, move on. She has been abandoned. But the woman daily reads her ketubah (wedding contract with the promises of the groom to provide for her and bless her).

Eventually the king comes back. He finds that she has waited the long years for him. “Why didn’t you marry someone else?” he wonders.

“I read your ketubah,” she says, “and every day I reminded myself you would return.”

So, we read the Torah (the five books of Moses) continually and, for Christians and Messianic Jews, I would add that we should similarly read the gospels continually, for survival.

Some of these categories overlap, but perhaps there is a reason for the differentiation into categories. For example, some of Yeshua’s sayings occur in miracle narratives or in dispute narratives, but others are included in teaching narratives (the Sermon on the Mount is the most famous of the teaching narratives, by which I mean a longer account of Yeshua’s teaching with multiple sayings strung together). Anyway, these are some categories I see:

Infancy narratives
John the Baptist narratives
Teaching narratives
Parables
Sayings
Enactments and symbolic actions
Miracle narratives
Healing (and exorcism) miracles
Nature miracles
Identity stories
Messianic secret thematic elements
Dispute narratives
Passion narratives
Resurrection narratives

In the three books known as the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Yeshua talks about his exalted status many times. Sometimes people think it is only in the fourth gospel (John) that he is presented as more than simply a man. Here are a few examples (citations are from the NET Bible):

All things have been handed over to me by my Father. Matthew 11:27.

. . . something greater than the temple is here. Matthew 12:6.

I grant to you a kingdom, just as my Father granted to me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. Luke 22:29-30.

. . . the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:38.

Find more in the upcoming Yeshua in Context Sourcebook. See Yeshua in Context, chapter 6, “The Messianic Secret,” and chapter 13, “Born From Above.”