The Pharisees were a group of people at the time of Christ with a set of beliefs recognizable by outsiders. However, exactly what those beliefs were remains a hotly debated question. Scholars have begun to agree upon several common characteristics of Pharisees, can clearly distinguish them from Sadducees, and often note that the sect receives unfair treatment in the gospels. In this interview, New Testament scholar Thomas Wayment discusses what scholars currently think about who the Pharisees were.
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Table of Contents
- Origins and Definition
- Beliefs and Practices
- Jesus and the Gospels
- Myths and Misperceptions
- Legacy and Scholarship
Pharisee Definition, Origins, and Biblical Identity
Who were the biblical Pharisees?
No firsthand sources have survived that tell about the rise of the Pharisees in the mid-second century BCE. Instead, information about the movement must be traced through the works of others, most notably Flavius Josephus (who was both sympathetic to the movement and shared some of their beliefs), the New Testament, and a few other scattered references that mention them.
All this is to remind the reader that what we know about the Pharisees must be viewed critically and with the skepticism that surrounds any movement whose story is told through historical sources that were subject to bias, differing conceptions, and unique agendas.
The Pharisees appear in Josephus’s description of Salome Alexandra’s reign (ca. 76–67 BCE) after her husband, Alexander Jannaeus had died in 76 BCE. According to Josephus, the Pharisees stepped in to stabilize her reign, or perhaps even to manipulate her to rule in ways that they found acceptable (JW 1.110–12).
Part of the passage reads:
Beside Alexandra, and growing as she grew, arose the Pharisees, a body of Jews with the reputation of excelling the rest of their nation in the observances of religion, and as exact exponents of the laws.
Translation Thackeray, LCL 203, 1927.
Even for Josephus, the Pharisees were religious hard-liners, interested in being “exact exponents of the laws,” who were also interested in holding sway with Salome Alexandra.
In another narrative, Josephus returned to the story and added the detail that Alexander advised his wife Salome to seize power quickly and to form an alliance with the Pharisees and not to take any actions without their consent—not because of piety, but because Alexander hoped to keep his wife on the throne and to not have his corpse desecrated (AJ 13.404). Despite these early events describing the Pharisees as a law-interested group who held sufficient power that they could topple, or at least injure, Salome, Josephus tells his readers little else until the reign of Herod the Great (37–4 BCE).
They appear to have held sway with the masses, perhaps because of their supposed religious piety.
According to one reading of Josephus’s description of the Pharisees during the reign of Herod, there was a Pharisee among the prominent members of the Sanhedrin who prophesied that Herod would rise to power (AJ 14.172–73). Moreover, this individual Pharisee spoke on Herod’s behalf and defended him against a charge of murder.
It is important to remember that our earliest information about the Pharisees suggests that they were influential in Judean politics in the first century BCE, and that they made a number of politically wise associations, with Salome and then Herod, which helped launch them to a position of greater influence. They also appear to have held sway with the masses, perhaps because of their supposed religious piety.
However, we cannot be certain whether they were more concerned about religious practice than political influence or vice-versa.
What is the definition of Pharisees?
It is common to point out that the name “Pharisee” derives from an Aramaic word meaning “set apart” or “separated.”
This encourages modern readers to see Pharisees as the owners of the meaning of the name or people who intentionally thought of themselves as separate from their fellow countrymen. But that would be a mistake.
Rarely do names and religious titles portray the actual ways a group thinks about itself, particularly over time.
Whatever the origin of the term, whether it was a self-designation or one given to them by outsiders, one should be cautious when considering them as being intentionally set apart from the larger community of Jews. Many people held views that aligned with Pharisee beliefs—including Jesus and his followers.
More work needs to be done on the topic, but I think the best way to look at the issue today is to consider the Pharisees to be a group, a movement, or even a party with a coherent set of religious beliefs that were identifiable to outsiders.
It remains unclear how much of their teachings one had to accept in order to be considered a Pharisee.
Were rabbis and Pharisees the same?
During the medieval period, the rabbis traced their intellectual heritage to the Pharisees—but that is a connection that was made later. Perhaps if we are to think of the rabbis and Pharisees as “the same,” our thinking would need to focus on the concept that they were both deeply committed to living the Law and teaching it correctly.
In other words, their desire to teach the Law and live by its teachings give them a shared heritage. But it would be incorrect to think that first-century CE Pharisees were rabbis.
Core Beliefs, Practices, and Daily Life
Were all Pharisees married?
No, there is no clear requirement that Pharisees be married, or at least the sources we have do not allude to such a requirement. However, Pharisees would have taken seriously the command to multiply and replenish the earth.
Like most Jewish men, Pharisees would have married in their early 20s, but it would be a mistake to think of their marriages as a requirement for being considered a Pharisee. From Paul’s own writings, a Pharisee himself, he encouraged his listeners in Corinth to remain unmarried as he was (1 Corinthians 7:7–9).
What were the core beliefs and practices of Pharisees?
It’s impossible to offer a set of core beliefs that defined the Pharisees movement, in part because there’s no single document that sets forth their beliefs. However, there are some features that scholars broadly recognize as typical of the Pharisees, including:
- Afterlife: A belief in an afterlife that is determined by the exercise of free will.
- Resurrection: A belief in a resurrection, although some teachings attributed to the Pharisees make it less certain that they believed in a resurrection of all people. Instead, they may have viewed resurrection as a reanimation of souls and not necessarily a resurrection to a bodily existence.
- Monotheism: The Pharisees believed in the One God, and thus were strictly monotheists.
- Politics: The Pharisees were opposed to the ruling elites known as the Sadducees, which may have extended to a rejection of rule by birthright.
As with any religious set of beliefs, it is difficult to know which ones defined the movement, or were considered to be the most significant among many beliefs.
For example, the belief in a resurrection is notable if one takes into account beliefs in the first century concerning the resurrection of the flesh. This belief, if indeed the Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection, would be sufficient to make a group stand apart from the others.
What were some of the key debates and disagreements within the Pharisaic movement?
This is a fair question, and one that continues to challenge modern readers because there is not a significant amount of evidence for inter-party debates and disagreements.
Acts 5 depicts a debate between Gamaliel and other Jews about how they should proceed in their treatment of the Christians. Gamaliel called for patience and caution in moving too hastily. This event, while told from a Christian source, may capture the ideal of the movement to heartily and openly debate matters of concern that came before them.
This would be particularly interesting because of the great value the later rabbis placed on the practice of debating the meaning of the Law.
What was the relationship between the Pharisees and other Jewish sects, like the Sadducees and Essenes?
The Pharisees appear in our historical sources during Hasmonean times in the second century BCE. During that early period they were aligned with the Sadducees in seeking political power among the Hasmonean rulers.
It appears that one point of division between the Pharisees occurred when the Hasmonean rulers accepted Hellenistic practices, which the Pharisees rejected as pagan and foreign.
The Pharisees were able to exert enough political control on rulers like Alexander Janneus that they eventually came into power again and helped influence political messaging around their teachings.
What was the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees?
An important difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees was that the Pharisees represented what we refer to nowadays as the middle class (or even the lower class) of people while the Sadducees represented the ruling aristocratic elites.
For me, the Sadducees took a rather narrow view of the continued influence and activity of the God of Israel in world affairs. They rejected ideas of post mortal punishment (or reward), a resurrection of soul, and most importantly they rejected divine influence and instead accepted a type of divine fate in human affairs. Therefore, the Sadducees accepted that free will was absolute and that they alone owned their choices.
They sought to achieve the same purity standards practiced in the Jerusalem temple in their daily lives.
One might see in these differences an interest to adapt and transform old beliefs into a new political expediency while the Pharisees and Essenes emphasized the old beliefs of the Torah and purity, law observance, and holiness.
The Essenes and Pharisees differed in the level of emphasis they placed on these ideas, and the Essenes were certainly more extreme in their practice in many regards. For example, for some Essenes it was common practice to live an ascetic lifestyle without marrying.
What are the key differences between the Pharisees’ sphere of influence and that of the Temple-based Sadducees?
It is commonly accepted that the Pharisees controlled temple ritual in the first century of the common era. I think Jacob Neusner was correct when he suggested that a defining feature of Pharisee teaching was that the Pharisees encouraged temple purity practices outside the temple. In other words, they sought to achieve the same purity standards practiced in the Jerusalem temple in their daily lives. They extended this into the home and in dining, which is where a number of negative interactions occurred with Jesus’s followers.
Sadducees, which I take to be a term derived from the name Zadok, a priest who lived under Solomon, were hereditary priests who administered the affairs of the temple. While the Pharisees spoke of matters of ritual purity, it was the Sadducees who received their priesthood by lineage, and they were able to collect taxes, thus making them a wealthy landed elite segment of society.
It is common enough in secondary literature to speak of Sadducean literalness and Pharisee acceptance of oral tradition. Pharisees did rely on continuing debate and inspiration to interpret the word of God for a new generation while the Sadducees seemed to rigidly interpret the word as it was written and to reject the oral interpretations of the Pharisees.
Perhaps more telling, however, is the fact that the Sadducees ceased to exist with the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, which is a strong argument that their power was quite closely bound up with the fate of that particular edifice and its practices.
How did the Pharisees respond to the growing Roman presence in Judea?
Pharisees fought against the threats of Hellenism that the Hasmonean rulers at times accepted. The Pharisees took a hardline against the incursion of foreign Greek ideas, but by the first century of the common era they had adopted some level of Hellenism by accepting Greek as the language of empire and drawing upon Greek education practices which emphasized training in rhetoric.
Mark 3:6 indicates that the Pharisees aligned themselves with the “Herodians,” which may be Mark’s way of telling his readers that this political alliance against Jesus made sense to Pharisees, who had historically rejected Roman rule and practice.
What were the Pharisees’ views on the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Israel?
Pharisee belief in a Messiah was not part of their early first century beliefs and expectations, but with the fall of Jerusalem to a Roman army, Pharisees took part in the emerging national hope that a Messiah would deliver them from Rome.
The question of whether Pharisees exegeted certain passages like the reference to the star of David (2 Samuel 22:31) to refer to a Messiah is difficult to tell. Certainly their willingness to engage in oral interpretation would give them the opportunity to debate the promises of a renewed Davidic dynasty within a nationalistic framework.
The Conflict: Jesus, the Gospels, and Notable Pharisees
Did the Pharisees hate Jesus?
I think that the person who reads the Gospels might come away with the opinion that the Pharisees were united in their hatred of Jesus and that Jesus only rebuked them. This would, of course, overstate the historical evidence, which shows that Pharisees “believed” in Jesus (Acts 15:5) and that some leading Christians like Paul were either of the Pharisee tradition or were sympathetic to their teachings.
The four gospels are not unanimous in their description of what things the Pharisees found offensive in Jesus’s teachings, but it appears that some of the early points of disagreement were centered on ritual purity, the miracles performed on the Sabbath, and other matters of personal and public religious observance.
Why is Matthew so antagonistic toward Pharisees?
I think it is easy enough to see Matthew as emblematic of the trend to vilify the Pharisees, but Mark also does it—as do the other gospel writers. The trend to make Pharisees the bad guys of the gospels is quite pervasive, and while this likely overstates the moments of interaction and conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, it does appear to be quite pervasive.
The reason for Matthew’s antagonism might be rather simple. In particular, his readers needed clear differentiation between their teachings and Jesus’s. With considerable overlap between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Pharisees, it is reasonable to assume that a first century author would need to offer as much clarity as possible in order for readers to make an informed choice.
A reasonable person in the first century would want clarity on a matter such as how Jesus’s teachings on the resurrection differed from those of the Pharisees, who also believed in immortality of the soul.
How did Jesus view the Pharisees?
My academic training was in the sources used by the gospels, which forced me to see the narrative structure of the gospels as being something the evangelists offered for the sayings of Jesus which the authors contextualized.
Without offering a rather lengthy response, it is remarkable how rarely the word “Pharisee” appears in Jesus’s actual teachings, or in his sayings.
More often it is the authors of the gospels who inserted the reference. Matthew 5:20 indicates that Jesus thought they were hypocritical, while Luke 11:39 indicates that Jesus was skeptical of some of the ritual purity practices.
Who are notable Pharisees in the Bible?
The three most notable Pharisees in the New Testament are Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and of course, Paul, who continued to identify as a Pharisee throughout his life. Others would have also accepted Pharisee positions and beliefs, but it’s difficult to know to what extent Jesus’s followers embraced Pharisee teachings broadly.
Notably, Nicodemus cared for Jesus’s body at death (John 19:38–42) along with Joseph of Arimathea. Also, Gamaliel encouraged his countrymen to treat Christianity with patience and restraint (Acts 5:33–39). Acts 15:5 makes it clear that belief in Jesus did not preclude one from continuing to identify as a Pharisee, but unfortunately we do not know the names of those Christian Pharisees who spoke up in Jerusalem to sway the Christian community’s decisions regarding clean foods and circumcision.
Historical Truths vs. Common Misperceptions
What are some common misperceptions about the historical Pharisees?
Foremost among the common misperceptions about the Pharisees is the nation that they were united in their rejection of Jesus and his teachings. A more accurate view would see the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees as taking place between a people who accepted religious debate and conversation engaging Jesus, and who held beliefs that were at times at odds with Jesus’s teachings about religious purity.
The interactions need not be seen as violent, but rather a public debate about what it meant to be Jewish at the time of Jesus.
How did the Pharisees view the relationship between ritual purity and moral righteousness?
Perhaps one can take Mark’s view of this question as a way to demonstrate that the gospel authors each held differing views about Pharisee concerns regarding ritual purity.
Mark directly condemns the Pharisees for their moral shortcomings, telling his readers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees (Mark 8:5), that they are hypocrites (7:6), and that they have hard hearts (10:5). If one looks at all eleven references to the Pharisees in Mark, one will notice that most of them have to do with eating and food purity. To put it in other terms, for Mark, the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees came down to table fellowship and questions of ritual purity at those events. Jesus in Mark appears unconcerned with the question of ritual purity at table, and so he condemns their religious zeal by pointing out that larger questions of moral action are of concern.
While Mark likely does not represent the actual views that all Pharisees held, he does draw attention to the fact that ritual purity was likely a matter of concern to the movement or party. This is what one would expect from a Torah observant people who wished to maintain the standards of cleanliness that the Law advocated.
That Jesus would reduce such a concern to a matter of nitpicking and worry over religious minutiae indicates that perhaps Jesus recruited his own followers among those who saw such questions as important to their own religious observance.
How do the Dead Sea Scrolls shed light on the beliefs and practices of the Pharisees?
Perhaps the most important point to make here is that the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to the Pharisees as those who enjoyed “smooth things,” meaning easy teachings. This is precisely the opposite view of them that is presented in the canonical gospels, and so the scrolls help us see that Pharisees were not universally seen as hardline religious zealots.
The scrolls almost certainly make numerous references to the Pharisees, but not by name directly, and so it is the work of scholars to find consensus regarding which passages securely refer to the Pharisees. It is commonly accepted that the scrolls are anti-Pharisee
The Legacy of Pharisaism and Modern Scholarship
What is the legacy of the Pharisees?
When the rabbis began tracing their lineage to the Pharisees, it signaled a moment in history when the religious elites of a later generation saw value in aligning themselves with a respectable and notable past.
There are good reasons to think that the rabbis saw themselves as part of a noble heritage, a vibrant intellectual past, and a faithful people. This should cause all those who have maligned the Pharisees to pause and consider just what the Pharisees mean to the Jewish people. Certainly they carry the unfortunate stigma of the gospel authors’ wrath, but I think many Christians today would applaud their commitment to maintaining the purity of their ancestral beliefs.
What outstanding questions about the Pharisees are scholars working on today?
The questions that have been put forward in this interview form part of an ongoing debate about the Pharisees and early Christianity. Scholars are working through the very issues being discussed here.
I think, however, that one of the more interesting questions is whether or not a person like Paul would still consider himself a Pharisee after accepting Jesus. In other words, were Christian belief and belief in Pharisee teachings mutually exclusive? This question has generated a sizable body of literature, and it continues to animate Pauline studies.
I think some of the implications of that discussion could be carried over into the early John the Baptist movement to ask what relationship there was between adherents of the Baptist and the Pharisees. The gospels are quite in agreement that there was contact between the two at an early stage, and the Jesus tradition may have grown out of a less Pharisee friendly segment of the Baptist’s followers.
About the Scholar
Thomas A. Wayment is a Professor of Classical Studies and Section Head at Brigham Young University. A specialist in the New Testament and Christian literary papyri, he earned his PhD from Claremont Graduate School. Dr. Wayment is a recognized authority on the historical context of the Bible, the development of early Christian texts, and the Joseph Smith Translation. His extensive research bridges the gap between ancient manuscript traditions and modern scriptural understanding, providing a rigorous historical framework for studying the life and world of Jesus Christ.
Citation Information: This post was originally published on September 15, 2024. The most recent update on March 21, 2026, includes updated headers, images, and resources, as well as an improved online reading experience.
Further Reading
Learn more about Jesus and the Pharisees in these exclusive From the Desk interviews:
- Were the Pharisees Bad?
- Pharisees vs. Jesus: More Than Rebukes?
- Did Herod the Great Claim to Be the Messiah?
- How Was the New Testament Canonized?
- Was Jesus a Rabbi?
Who Were the Pharisees Resources
Dive deeper into the New Testament’s religious sects in these resources from other top scholars and publishers:
- The Pharisees (Eerdmans)
- Overview (Wikipedia)
- In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (Biblical Archaeology Society)
- Historical Reconstruction (Ancient Jew Review)
- Cultic Piety and Pharisaism before 70 AD (BYU Religious Studies Center)
