RBL 07/2004 Maccoby, Hyam Jesus the Pharisee London: SCM, 2003. Pp. x + 228. Paper. $16.99.

ISBN 0334029147.

Michele Murray Bishops University Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada J1M 1Z7 Jesus and the Pharisees of his day were staunch opponents who frequently engaged in hostile disputes. While Jesus was compassionate, flexible, focused on the important elements of a spiritual life such as love of God and neighbor, and advocated rigorous moral principles, the Gospels consistently depict the Pharisees as highly materialistic, caught up in the trivialities and minutiae of Jewish law. Their decrees were oppressive and legalistic, and they were hated by the general populace. Jesus abrogated the Jewish dietary laws, rejected the Pharisaic regulation pertaining to hand-washing before meals, and persistently opposed the ceremonial rites and sacrifices of the temple and the law of Moses in general. He promoted reform of the Jewish laws, allowing for healing on the Sabbathsomething the Pharisees were adamantly against. The Phariseesarrogant and ruthlessly rigid in their views, deceitful and hypocritical in their behaviorwere swindlers who accumulated wealth at the expense of the poor. Jesus sought to weaken the divisions in Jewish society created by purity regulations (regulations endorsed and encouraged by the Pharisees), thereby incurring the wrath of the Pharisees, who delivered him to the high priest, the chief religious leader among the Jews.

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So goes the conventional depiction of the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, derived from the Gospels. It is a depiction with which Hyam Maccoby strongly disagrees. Maccoby argues that the Pharisees, far from being despised by the vast majority of Jewish people in the first century C.E., were widely supported. Drawing on descriptions from Josephus and rabbinic literature and, yes, even evidence from the New Testament itself, Maccoby argues that the Pharisees conducted themselves with virtue and flexibility. While the prevailing image of the Pharisees in the Gospels is derogatory, other passages in the New Testament reveal a more positive image. For example, Maccoby points to the description of how Gamaliel, leader of the Pharisees according to rabbinic literature, saved Peter and company from the Sadducean high priest (Acts 5). If Jesus had indeed been the person depicted in the Gospels as a blasphemer and Sabbath-breaker who so aroused the hatred and anger of the Pharisees that they constantly sought his death, why did the leader of the Pharisees defend Jesus chief disciple and even state that Peters advocacy might be from God? (6). Maccoby rejects the argument that the inclusion of this episode was motivated by the authors desire to show continuity between the Jerusalem church and Judaism; the incident portrays instead an actual solidarity (8). Maccoby argues that Jesus movement was patriotic and insurrectionist; it aimed at liberation from the Roman occupation. It had no notion of elevating Jesus to divine status. It had no aim of abolishing the Jewish religion; the Jerusalem Church shows no sign of doing this, but is portrayed in Acts as very observant of the Jewish laws (9). Like E. P. Sanders, one of the few currently active scholars referred to in the book, Maccoby argues that Jesus did not reject the Torah, nor did he teach his disciples to do so: the book of Acts, after all, presents Peterone of Jesus closest companionsas an observant Jew. Jesus teachings and general approach to Judaism, in fact, did not clash with Pharisaic interpretation. On the contrary, the alleged conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees described in the Gospels, such as on the question of Sabbath-healing and issues of ritual purity such as hand-washing, did not occur. This understanding of the relationship is based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the ritual purity code in Judaism. Bringing in evidence from rabbinic literature and Philo as well as anthropologist Mary Douglas, Maccoby argues effectively that Jewish purity laws did not demarcate divisions within Jewish society, and did not render certain classes or individuals, such as tax-collectors, as irredeemably unclean: tax-collectors incurred disapproval on moral grounds. . . . The ideas that tax-collectors were usually unclean and were regarded as incapable of repentance derive from misreadings of passages in the Mishnah and Talmud (51). Jesus mixing with tax-collectors would not have prompted a breach between Jesus and the Pharisees. Indeed, argues Maccoby, no such breach existed, for Jesus was himself a Pharisee. In teaching style and content, parallels between Jesus and the rabbis abound, argues
This review was published by RBL 2004 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

Maccoby. Jesus emphasis on love of God and love of neighbor was not a novel idea but one deeply embedded in Pharisaic thought, and while the Pharisees generally supported temple worship and ritual, they were soundly against the notion that these were the crux of Judaismunlike the Sadducees. While the Gospels claim that the Pharisees opposed healing on the Sabbath and sought to put Jesus to death because of his involvement in such activity (Mark 3:6; Matt 12:14), when the rabbinic literature is consulted, we find that they did not forbid it, and they even used the very same arguments that Jesus used to show that it was permitted (e.g., Mekhilta Shabbeta 1, on Exod 31:13). The Gospels engage in politically motivated invective that especially targets the Pharisees. This was the strategy of the Gentile Christians, who, in the period following the disastrous first Jewish revolt against Rome, had the challenging task of dissociating themselves from the insubordinate Jews while at the same time having as their focus of worship a Jew who had died on a Roman cross. Their intent was to show that Jesus had never rebelled against Roman authority. What he had rebelled against was Judaism. Most of these views have been offered by scholars, including Maccoby himself in other books, and so will not be new to experts in the field of Christian origins or Jewish/ Christian relations in antiquity. In his preface, Maccoby explains that he has a twofold objective. The first is to make this material accessible to the ordinary reader, and this he does. The book is written clearly and, with several exceptions (see below) is cogently argued, with few footnotes to encumber the flow of the text. His second objective is to add much new material so that the volume will interest professional scholars as well. This new material centers on his argument that Jesus is a member of the Pharisees; more precisely, Jesus is a member of a subgroup of Pharisees referred to as Chasidim. Maccobys presentation of Jesus as a Pharisee is dependent, he admits, on understanding the rabbis as continuous with the Pharisees. Now, while virtually all scholars view the rabbis as the descendants of the Pharisees, there is generally much less certainty about whether the two groups behaved identically. Maccoby, in contrast, assumes confidently that the two groups are the same, simply from different time periods. In his attempt to prove that Jesus is a Pharisee, Maccoby uses rabbinic literature (he even refers to rabbinic literature as Pharisee law books) to liken the behavior of Jesus with that of the Pharisees, without first proving that the rabbinic literature is Pharisaic literature. Maccobys entire thesis that Jesus is a Pharisee is dependent on the Pharisees and the rabbis being the same; this latter point Maccoby does not (and, in my view, cannot) prove with certainty. He also claims that Chasids, referred to in rabbinic literature, are an officially organized subgroup of Pharisees. However, this, like his equation of Pharisees with rabbis, is an assumption for which more substantiation is required than what he offers. It is true that the rabbis refer to some

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people as Chasids, but this could be simply an epithet rather than a designation for a recognizable group. Another weakness that will be apparent to experts in the field is that most of the secondary scholarship consulted is rather old, dated primarily to the 1970s and 1980s. Maccoby does not, for example, engage with very many current Christian origin scholars, restricting himself to John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and E. P. Sanders. He frequently refers to some scholars or some modern scholars without specific references to whom he is referring. In chapter 8 Maccoby writes, Some scholars, as we have seen, have argued that there is no evidence of the use of parables among the Pharisees of Jesus day, and that the frequent parables of the second-century rabbis show that they were influenced in this aspect by Jesus himself, but the only scholar he mentions or engages with in his argument is Joachim Jeremias (1972). The strengths of this study outweigh its weaknesses, however. In particular for the educated nonexpert, this is an important book. Whether one ultimately finds Maccobys argument about Jesus as a Pharisee persuasive or not, there is much to appreciate in his treatment of the New Testament polemic. He convincingly undermines the monolithic depiction of the Pharisees as hypocritical legalists in the negative passages in the Gospels by highlighting more positive descriptions of Pharisees in other New Testament documents and by drawing on noncanonical literary evidence. As Maccoby states, this is an urgent mater, in view of the part this image has played in the demonization of the Jews (vii). This book is a significant contribution toward correcting that image.

This review was published by RBL 2004 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.