There are two extremes, both false. The one is to picture Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed surfer-type who dropped onto the earth from outer space and spoke without any cultural context whatever. (Yes, I wince and cringe a bit at pictures of Jesus as an American boy. He wasn't. He was Jewish.)
The other extreme is that of reductionism. It is to say that Jesus was just a Jew, and to reduce everything He was to human terms — picking what school He fit Himself into, making everything cultural and customary.
The truth is that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, He was God incarnate, God in human flesh — and the flesh that He became (John 1:14) was in fact Jewish flesh..
So when the author says, "Let's see which Jewish school of thought Jesus was a member of; well, looks like the Pharisees," he's not speaking from all of the evidence. They both cited Scripture, so that proves that Jesus was a Pharisee? How silly! Anyone who believes that the Bible is God's Word (as Jesus certainly did) is going to cite it as his authority. That Jesus and the Pharisees both did so is simply because both affirmed the authority of the Word; it isn't that Jesus agreed with the Pharisees, it is that the Pharisees were right on this point, and thus affirmed the same thing Jesus did.
I cite Scripture, too. Am I a member of the Pharisees' party?
You say you don't want to argue, so let me make this point and trust you not to turn it into an argument. Suppose a hundred years from now someone is studing my thinking. (Won't happen, that's not the point.) He sees in my Statement of Faith that I affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. Then he notes that the Roman Catholic Church affirmed a similar doctrine. And he concludes that I was a Roman Catholic on that basis.
Of course, that would be nonsense, as you well know. If (I say "if") I affirm the same thing that the RCC affirms on this point, it would be because the RCC affirms something that the Bible teaches, which is in fact my source for the doctrine. You see my point?
And so, because they affirmed the authority of Scripture, there were numerous areas where the Pharisees would teach things that Jesus would also teach. But He did not teach them because they taught them; he taught the same thing they did becaue they were both going to the same source, and the P's, like broken clocks, were sometimes right. Jesus, by contrast, was always right.
But He had numerous differences with them, though sometimes they got the theory right. Hence His remark: "... whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do" (Matthew 23:3).
And then again, the author simply ignores areas where Jesus stood all by Himself. The article cites Jesus' use of "our Father," which was relatively infrequent. What he ignores is Jesus' very frequent recorded reference to God as "My Father." The evidence we have indicates that, in this, He was unique -- because He had a unique relationship to God. Again, in the doubled amen amen ("Verily, verily"; "truly, truly") Jesus gave His pronouncements a unique authority and solemnity — contrasted to the more rabbinic method of "Rabbi ____ said...."
His portrait of Jesus does not really explain why "when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matthew 7:28, 29).
But that's what you get when you don't just build your portrait of Jesus from the excellent documents we have. As I argue, by means of satire, in How to Make Your Very Own Jesus.
Dan