Pharisees were the religious megastars of Jesus’ day. They were generally viewed by the populace as deeply committed, genuinely spiritual, and on fire for the Law of Moses. To us, the word Pharisee is synonymous with hypocrite or religious legalist, but much of that is the result of what the gospels later said about them, not what people thought of them at the time. In our context, they would sell books, attract lots of followers on social media, and have lots of adoring fans. There have been such popular “Christians” in recent years that turned out to be fakes. Jesus sees through all of that. He knew their hearts—just like He knows mine.

In Matthew 23, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees severely. He describes them as hypocrites only interested in what people think, and then declares eight woes upon them. It might be interesting to see how Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees in Matthew 23 compares with the Talmud’s criticism of the Pharisees written between 300 and 500 years later (https://chavrutai.com/talmud/Sotah/22b).

The Talmud says that there are seven types of false Pharisees. …

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