And i think John Paul saw that the shared portion – the moral and political conlusions of monotheism and the brotherhood of mankind, and the law of Moses that expresses them – were under prolonged, virulent attack. If anything the battle has gotten fiercer since then. Religious Christians and Jews are very much in the same bunker in the current cultural/political/moral struggle for the soul of the West.

Judaism always had an oral tradition alongside the written, received law. This tradition included details of observance, homiletical/philosophical material, and folk stories that complement the Biblical telling of events with personal experiences. It is mentioned obliquely when the Bible describes Moses sitting to judge the people all day (Exodus 18:13) and in other verses describing the lay leadership if the heads of the 12 tribes.

In Judaism’s view prophecy waned after the 1st Temple. The return from Babylon is led by the last minor prophets and by men of lesser Divine inspiration such as Ezra and Nehemiah. Without the monarchy, leadership passes to the descendants of Moses and the elders. The era of Rabbinical Judaism begins – those who preserve and learn both the written and oral traditions.

By the time of Jesus the continued lack of full sovereignty and an increasingly corrupt priesthood solidify the position of the Sanhedrin.

The zedukim/sadducees rejected the oral tradition and its laws. They are largely associated with the Hellenized, corrupt priestly class cultivated by the Romans.

So Pharisee means 2 things:
1. Those who uphold the oral tradition of interpretation (perush).
2. Those who remained separate (parash) from the general trend of Hellenic culture and assimilation into the Roman empire.

There are other sects at this time such as the Essenes.

Orthodox Jews are the direct descendants of the Pharisees. This has been mainstream Judaism for 2000 years.

The modern era has seen new versions of the sadducee approach and other attempts by assimilating Jews to reduce Judaism to universal principles and shed its restrictions – so-called “Reform Judaism” and “Reconstructionist Judaism”.

Without insulting anyone else’s understanding of Jesus: the Talmud’s take on the man called Jesus is that he started out as a student of a Pharisee teacher, then became “radicalized” – both religiously and politically. He is one of tens of thousands of young scholar-soldiers who joined the revolt against Rome. There were many more than 3 crucifixes on the Jerusalem skyline in that era.

As a matter of interest, Arabic-speaking Christians still call him “Yeshua,” not the Muslim “Issa,” who is quite a different character in their ideology.

(Gosh, a Jew criticizing other Jews! Whodathunkit??)

The religio-ideological opponents of the Perusheem (i.e., Pharisees”) were the Zadokim (or “Sadducees”) named after high priest called Zadok (pronounced Tzadok, a word related to “Tzedek” (justice) and “Tzedakah” (charity or justness). This was (or had become by Herodian times) an elitist, priestly class whose ideology and rulings were believed by the Perusheem to be essentially counter to Jewish law and the spirit of that law (in the sense of being archaic, unevolved and politically motivated).

So, yes, it is rather ironic that the “Pharisees” have become the villains of the drama, though clearly, Yeshua’s Pharisee colleagues may have believed that their fellow Pharisee had, in some of his interpretations, gone overboard…

As I recall, Pope John Paul II once said that to be a good Catholic one must first be a good Jew. Which sounded like a woopsie to me.

Still, JP II worked hard to mend fences with Jews. Due credit.
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Which IMO covers much of the conversation since.

Keep My statutes and My ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.

The Talmud’s gloss on this: (the commandments were given) that they shall live by them – and not that they should die from them.

2. Most New Testament stories of the Pharisees are axe-grinding and innaccurate, and often occur in the later books written by Gentiles who never set foot in Judea. They reflect a later period of Christian anger at Jewish rejection of the sect that had drifted too far from Judaism – in particular, the split caused by recasting Jesus from a flesh-and-blood messiah to a godhead. These stories are the first instances of Christian demonization of Jews.

3. Pope John Paul’s rapprochement with Judaism stemmed from his up-close experiences of WW2 and communism. Like President Reagan he was one of the first to articulate the cultural and moral dangers facing the Judeo Christian West, and he attempted to cleanse the Church of 60s “liberation theology” radicalism. So statements like Nostre Aetate were a sort of warning that “if we don’t hang together we shall hang separately”.

You didn’t aggravate or annoy me in the least.

I seem to be having trouble communicating clearly today. You, huxley and Kate are all level headed folks and I’ve seemed to aggravate all three of you. I best take a break, burn a few thousand calories exercising, and try to clear my muddled noggin’.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams quoting God, “I apologize for the inconvenience.”