While it may seem odd to the reader of the Gospels 2,000 years after the events they describe, Jesus had persistent conflicts with two religious groups within first-century Judaism: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
In one sense, the disputes between Jesus and His critics have an ordinary source: jealousy.
Jesus was not wealthy or born to an influential family. Without wealth or institutional connections, Jesus developed a large following in the Judean countryside. Developing a following of thousands early in His ministry would have caused any other religious leader to experience some jealousy.
Pharisees
More than the very human emotion of envy, there were deep theological differences between Jesus and his opponents. The most frequently mentioned of them, the Pharisees have developed a most unfortunate reputation. Some even use the name Pharisee as a synonym for "hypocrite." Those who lived in Jesus' time would not have shared that opinion of most of the Pharisees, however.
The Pharisees were not a large group, estimates are that there were 6,000 of them in Israel during the time of Jesus' ministry. Although small, they were very influential. There is an old legend about the Pharisees. It was said that if someone took a scroll of the Law of Prophets and stuck a pin through it, the Pharisee could state every letter the pin pierced. Undoubtedly, that story is legendary, but the legend had a point. The Pharisees knew the law very well, committing much of it to memory.
The Pharisees maintained separation from those who did not keep the law. Preferring each other's company because it made keeping the law easier, they not only tended to eat with each other, they tended to only do business with each other.
Not only were they careful to obey the law, they saw themselves as teachers of the law. They became teachers of the law to the larger Jewish population. They carefully maintained the oral interpretations of the Law. The Gospel writers often call these oral interpretations "tradition."
Sadducees
The other group Jesus clashed with most frequently, the Sadducees, were probably descendants of High Priest Zadok who served during David and Solomon's reign over Israel. By the time of Jesus, the Sadducees tended to be wealthy and politically powerful. They ran the temple and held a majority in the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. Because of their positions in the priesthood and among the elites in Jerusalem, they had little influence on the populace. Concentrated in Jerusalem, their concerns tended to be political focusing on the condition of Israel as a people. They were much more concerned with politics than the Pharisees.
Their belief system was quite different from the Pharisees as well. They denied eternal life, resurrection, angels, demons, the importance of the oral tradition, and fate.
The Sadducees were also quite insistent that the law be kept as well, and much of their energy was focused on Sabbath keeping and enforcing Sabbath guidelines.
Hypocrisy
The conflict between Jesus and these two groups emerges into outright hostility, eventually leading to Jesus' crucifixion. While the Pharisees and Sadducees questioned Jesus constantly, Jesus had His own critique of them.
Jesus' charge against the Pharisees was hypocrisy. Jesus notes the Pharisees' tendency to do works of piety to be seen. What they loved was the recognition of their role. Seeking the honor of preferred seating at banquets and the use of the title "Rabbi," they neglected the internal matters of their soul.
The contrast between external and internal is a constant tension between the Pharisees and Jesus. The Pharisees focused on externally keeping the law. While Jesus acknowledges keeping the law is important, Jesus focuses on the internal. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives examples of how merely avoiding external violations is not enough. Jesus not only condemns murder but adds that the one who holds on to rage and willfully expresses contempt toward another person is in danger of God's wrath.
Jesus says that because it is the internal condition of wrath and malice and the external practice of contempt that often leads to killing. Outside the conditions of wrath, malice, and contempt killing is practically impossible. For Jesus, matters of the heart are the source of external action. Jesus requires a restoration of the human heart that leads to a change in action. Jesus' stark description of the Pharisees is that they focus on the external so much that they make the law a burden.
The Pharisees' focus on externals morphed into a fixation on the minor. In vivid language, Jesus describes how carefully they tithed including tithing on their spices. They neglected, however, what was most important.
Jesus and the Tradition
The Pharisees and Jesus viewed the tradition in very different ways. The Pharisees thought the tradition had to be kept to keep the law. Jesus saw the tradition as an impediment. The disputes over the role of tradition are most pronounced in the Sabbath conflicts. When Jesus heals on the Sabbath, his critics are livid. How can a man who has broken the Sabbath be a prophet, much less the Messiah? Jesus repeatedly heals on the Sabbath provoking their ire and perhaps some cognitive dissonance. If Jesus were not a prophet, He could not heal. If He were a prophet, though, he would keep the Sabbath, they had to reason. Jesus heals on the Sabbath because it is right to bring wholeness to an individual at any time. Jesus' retort to His critics, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," both provoked their ire and silenced them.
Jesus' Association With Sinners
Jesus also refused to make the kinds of distinctions among persons they made. For His critics, the world was divided into law keepers and sinners. The righteous, the law keepers, were not to keep company with sinners. Jesus not only kept company with sinners, he kept company with notorious sinners. Tax collectors (who were seen as co-conspirators with the hostile Romans) and prostitutes found Jesus to be welcoming.
Divine Claims
The claim Jesus made that isolated Him most from the Sadducees and Pharisees is His claim to be divine. In John 10, Jesus states that He and the Father are One. Immediately His opponents tried to stone Him. Jesus would probably not have been killed for claiming He was the Messiah. His divine claims, however, would have led to persistent rage against Him.
Cleansing of the Temple
If there is any one episode that pictures the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and Sadducees, it is the cleansing of the temple. The temple had a large area outside the main inner holy place designed to be an area of worship for Gentiles to be able to worship. The temple authorities had filled the area with a currency exchange and a marketplace for the purchase of sacrificial animals. A place designed to be a place of prayer for the nations, a crass marketplace was at work. Not only was the marketplace preventing Gentiles from worshipping but there is reason to suspect price gouging and rank profiteering were common there.
Seeing the abuses, Jesus made a whip and drove out the money changers, the animals, and those selling the animals. Jesus disrupted their commerce and restored worship. He taught and healed there, and the temple leadership plotted to kill Him as a result.
Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees and Sadducees then was personal with envy. They clashed over Jesus's revealing their hypocrisy, and the way they made following the law more difficult. Their conflict was also theological about the nature of the law, tradition, and Jesus' own identity. The flash point of the conflict was the cleansing of the temple which most likely was the reason they finally decided to kill Jesus. As Jesus said, "The zeal for your house has consumed me."
1Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Meaning, 39–41.
