Posted on 10/11/2020 7:59:49 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
That doesn't sound like they wanted to listen to Christ's call to repentence. Joseph of Arimathea (who was a member of the council) and Nicodemus both hid their beliefs from the rest of the Pharisees. Just a simple search for the term "Pharisee" under BibleGateway shows vast number of verses with our Lord Jesus calling out the Pharisees (e.g. "whitewashed tombs", "hypocrites", "blind guides") and how much the Pharisees hated the Christ (e.g. "casting out demons by Beelzebul", trying to present trick questions, always plotting to destroy the Christ).
This didn't stop after the death of Christ. We find in the book of Acts the disciples faced a number of problems with the Pharisees. Paul was given letters so that he could bind Christians and take them by forced them back to Jerusalem.
The Bible only records few Pharisees following Christ and those who did suffered great persecution.
I think we’re saying the same thing. How many of the early Christians were former Pharisees is anyone’s guess. We just know that they were around and played enough of a role in the early church. Some of them, like Paul, renounced his Pharisee background and counted it as rubbish. Others, as you point out in Acts, failed to grasp the salvation message and became legalists in the church. Still others, like Rabbi Singer, are no different then the Pharisees of Jesus’ day who venomously oppose the message of Christ. The first two groups are the wheat and the tares of the church. This last group isn’t any different then any other cult one finds today.
Sure
According to Rabbinic sources, when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD, Yochanan ben Zakkai (a leading Pharisaic proto-rabbinic leader who opposed the Saddusaic leadership) established a center of learning in Jamnia. This attracted proto-rabbinic scholars to this area. After the Temple’s destruction, Jamnia gradually became a new spiritual center in Israel. Israel’s legislative body (the Great Beit Din later referred to as the Sanhedrin) relocated to Jamnia (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 31a). Other names often associated with Jamnia are Gamliel II, the leader of Bet Din and Akiva ben Joseph, a charismatic leader from the days of Bar Kochba Revolt.The relevance of this is that this redefinition of Judaism along Pharisaic lines, has continued in direct continuity to this day, and is currently launching an effective attack on Christian claims about scripture, the Deity of Christ, his sacrifice , the need for blood atonement, etc. the Noahide deception is part of the fruit of this virulent assault by neo-Pharisees.
Exactly and that was the big significance of 70 AD and the destruction of the temple. With that destruction, there were no more sacrifices in the Temple. With that, the ONE sacrifice of Jesus was shown to have completed it, and just as He prophesized in the Olivet discourse, the temple was destroyed, rendered stone from stone.
From a historical point of view
The population of Roman Judaea was around 1.5 million people.
The Sadducees were a tiny elite - the High priests, the Levites in the temple etc.
The Pharisees were also small in number - these were the ones who could spend the time to look through the prophets and learn the Oral Torah from their rabbis. So necessarily a small number.
The Essenes were larger than these two as they were, for want of a better word, a cult like the Pythagoreans or Epicureans of 400 to 300 BC - they went to the mountains away from everyone.
The vast majority would be those who followed the teachers - mostly Pharisees, but also Essenes and just the basic Levites (saying sacrifice this or that).
I would guess, looking at similar communities in Greece that the Sadducees would be less than a thousand, then Pharisees a bit more - may be up to 10 thousand and the Essenes also around that number.
The Bible doesn’t record everyone who became a Jesus-follower, but it would be reasonable that a large number of the unwashed did and at least a few Pharisees.
The scribes? Why do you say so?
Jesus was opposed in the Gospels by the Pharisees as His message was in contradiction to theirs.
The Sadducees opposed Him as He was a political threat. They didn't see him so much as a religious threat.
The Essenes aren't recorded, but if one goes by the Mandaens (who are descendants of descendants of the Essenes imho), they consider him someone who took the credit from John
... nothing got by those folks. They even had their sure proof that not only was Jesus violating the Sabbath, he was making himself equal with God.
Well, Jesus did violate the Pharisee concept of the Sabbath and He did equate Himself with God.
Matthew 7:29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Yes. I had a discussion about “they have pierced/dug into” on Quora not long ago.
Firstly, that's Biblical Hebrew - different from modern Hebrew, and while mostly mutually comprehensible, is not completely comprehensible to a modern Hebrew speaker (that's natural, languages evolve)
Secondly, it is definite that at least 268 verses of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic - such as a large chunk of Ezra, some of Daniel and Jeremiah.
Furthermore, there are competent translators from Hebrew and Aramaic, so many translations, like much of the KJV, are quite good in the translation, though I will agree they lose something
Yet to say "to understand the bible you need to only read it in Hebrew" is used as a red herring by people, just as Mohammedans who say "to understand the Quran you need to read it only in Arabic" - and that too Quranic Arabic. It's a cop-out.
Next, Phinneous, let’s burn down the little link you sent
Firstly, the question itself is riddled with errors
1. “He came not only for the gentiles, but for the Jews as well. “ — He came primarily for Jews and secondarily for gentiles. salvation came from the 2nd temple Jews and yet not from the Pharisees who added on the Oral Torah (hint, that’s what you use now, btw)
2. “ by so-called Christians”, “these were not real Christians,” — let’s be specific - the Nazis were Nordic occulists who hated Christianity secondarily to Judaism, so they don’t count — that murder, that genocide was based on the flawed premise of “race” (if a person was Christian but their grandparents were Jewish, they were murdered by the Nazis). BUT the Christians who persecuted Jews and were happy to convert them - they were not acting according to Christ’s teachings, but we need to acknowledge that they were Christian. They thought they were doing right — just as the Jewish persecutors of the Jesus-movement thought in the 1st century, just as the Jewish king Dhu Niwas of Yemen who slaughtered Christians thought it was right, just as the Jews who committed genocide against the gentiles in Cyprus and Cyrene during the Kitos war were “real Jews” who did sinful things. The “no true scotsman” argument doesn’t hold
Then the answer is also flawed
1. “no tongue that uttered more vulgar curses against the Children of Israel than this founder of the Reformation whom you apparently revere.”
—> Martin Luther called Calvinists and Catholics and Anabaptists and peasants as sons of devils etc. - the same epithets he hurled against Jews WHO DIDN’T CONVERT TO LUTHER’S WAY OF THINKING. And that’s the key - Luther hated anyone who didn’t agree with Luther, whether they be Jew or Catholic or Calvinist. If Mordechai or Francis became Lutheran, then Martin Luther would have been all smiles.
That’s not anti-semitism, that is not race-based hatred. That is hate against people who disagree with him. Not nice, but there is a serious difference between that and anti-semitism.
2. “Even the anti-Semitism of the New Testament “ — huh? The New Testament talks out against the PHARISEE Jews —> every single one of the authors of the New Testament books with the exception of Luke, were JEWS, born Jews, circumcised etc. But they were not PHARISEE-JEWS (the one form of Judaism that has been there since the destruction of the temple in 70 AD) — they were JESUS-MOVEMENT-JEWS i.e. Christians.
The texts are all against the Pharisee sect.
3. “almost none of them can read or understand the Hebrew Bible in its original language.” — really, “if you can’t read the Quran in Arabic, don’t discuss with me”
4. “ passionate resistance of the Jew to the teachings of Christianity “ — err.. nope - a large chunk of Jews followed Jesus. Only when the Pharisee invented their religion in 70 AD and edited out texts that supported the Jesus-sect, did the baptisms trickle.
5. Then next the Psalm itself - I have “[17] For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet. “ — perhaps Rabbi needs to know there ARE other translations?
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