The Pharisees (cf. NBD, pp. 924–925) were spiritual descendants of pious groups that had successfully opposed the notoriously cruel government of Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BC). This Syrian monarch had attempted to obliterate the Jewish faith. The Pharisees were extremely scrupulous about observing every minute detail of the law of God as they understood it, and were engaged in establishing an oral tradition about how that law was to be obeyed. At the same time they were in certain respects innovators, not mere traditionalists, for the creative and innovative manipulation of the oral tradition meant they were able to meet new challenges and situations more imaginatively than could mere traditionalists. Josephus, a first-century soldier-historian, tells us that there were about six thousand Pharisees in his day (Jos., Ant. xvii. 42). They met in ‘fellowship groups’ and controlled the teaching of many synagogues around the country. Most priests and Levites, however, belonged to the party of the Sadducees (whom John does not explicitly mention, probably in part because they were no longer a significant power at the time of writing). The Sadducees held to the authority of the written word alone, and judged the Pharisees to be both too innovative and too particular on many fronts. Their power was centred in Jerusalem and its temple–and therefore in the priests and Levites.
- The Gospel according to John, by D. A. Carson. (PNTC)
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