We started talking about the Pharisees yesterday. My argument was that growing up, these guys were just big dads. They were just, you know, naughty bad guys who just wanted to see the world burn and just because they're evil and selfish and awful. But the more I've been around the New Testament and the more I've learned about the Pharisees, the more I've come to believe, dang, I might have initially been on their team back in the times of Jesus because in terms of good ideas, they had a lot of them. They they were pretty dialed in on trying to do the right thing. And maybe their motives weren't perfect. That kind of comes to the surface as we go through the Gospels. But on paper, at least, they were team nice or trying to be. They were trying to be team good guy. And they come, they talk to John here, uh, John the Baptist, that is, in John chapter one. The Levites and priests, it looks like, they take a run at John, they ask him a bunch of questions, and then the Pharisees kind of jump in and they try it their way. Now, some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, John the Baptist, why then do you baptize if you're not the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet? And then John gives an answer that we're going to get to later on. So who are these Pharisees? What do they think? And are they really as multidimensional as I've been trying to convince you to believe that they are? Well, I could give you a bunch of speculation that I took from people who took it from somebody else, who took it from somebody else, who took it from somebody else, or I could just read you some original material. So we're gonna we're gonna do the latter. All right, over here in Josephus's The Antiquities of the Jews, book 13. This is around chapter 5, chapter 6, this edition. I don't know, maybe it doesn't have the chapter markers in it, but whatever the case, we're gonna start in sentence or line 171. Josephus is this Jewish historian who wrote around the same time as Jesus, just a little bit after, and he tells us a whole bunch of valuable information about how things were, uh, not just during the time of Jesus, but for centuries before. Hang on, I need a drink. Mm-hmm. I got one of these big stupid silver cups, and I always bang it against my glasses when I wear these. I mean, I have like a perfect cup mark circle across both lenses. I'm not used to wearing glasses, I'm still new at this. All right, this is what Josephus says about the Pharisees, starting in uh book 13, line 171 of the Antiquities of the Jews. At this time, there were three sects among the Jews who had different opinions concerning human actions. The one was called the sect of the Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and the other the sect of the Essenes. Just so that you remember here, because we're not going to go through all of this. The Essenes are the group that did the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were sort of the rejectionists. Some people think maybe even John the Baptist was a part of their club. The Sadducees we'll talk about more in a minute, continuing with Josephus. Now, for the Pharisees, they say that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate, and some of them are in our power, and that they're liable to fate, but they're not caused by fate. But the sect of the Essenes affirm that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determinations. You tracking with that? The Pharisees are kind of a hybrid between they're they're like soft determinists, I guess would be the fancy term. And the Essenes, they're harder determinists. Like it just, you know, we don't have a lot of free will, things just happen. And for the Sadducees, they take away fate and say there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its disposal, but they suppose that all our actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the cause of what is good and receive what is evil from our own folly. So now the Sadducees, they're on the far end of the spectrum toward free will. Interesting that Josephus notes that. However, I have given a more exact account of these opinions in the second book of the Jewish War. Well, we're going to work our way over there in just a little bit. All right. So there's a little introduction. Josephus, right off the bat, is saying that the Pharisees have kind of a balanced view between free will and determinism. You know what? I bet the majority of you, if pressed on that issue, would probably land in the same realm as the Pharisees. Now, some of you are sitting there going, but what about the sect of Christianity called Calvinists? Don't Calvinists believe in hard determinism? Well, not really. Go talk to a Calvinist. There are some who are hard determinists. That is, like the Essenes, they would say everything is dictated to us, but nah. Yeah, most of them would say some stuff is strongly dictated, but there's some at least impression of human decision-making within the boundaries of God's sovereign will as it pertains to the mundane. So probably most Calvinists, the people we think of as being the most determined, they would, if you really pushed them, I think most of them would probably sound more like the Pharisees on that particular issue. And my guess would be that most of you would as well. So I just think that's an interesting place to start. Josephus tells us there are these three sects, that they think different things. Then we turn the page a few pages up here, and Josephus takes us into the birth story or one of the birth stories of the Pharisees, kind of when they became a big deal. For those of you who were here for Philemon, the last season we did, all of this is going to ring a bell because we did a whole bunch of history stuff in the first, I don't remember, 20 or 30 episodes of Philemon. For those of you who were not here for that season, I mean, maybe go, you know, power through that. It'll be helpful. Bottom line is this the Pharisees were born out of the time that happened between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, Nebuchadnezzar came along with Babylon in 586 and destroyed what was left of the Jewish kingdoms, that is, the southern kingdom of Judah. And then 70 years later, after living in exile under Babylon, the Persians came along and defeated the Babylonians. In 538 BC, Cyrus the Great then lets the Jews go back and start to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple and the walls and leaders like Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Mordecai get all of the city and the people built back up and the Jews recommitted to the law. They banish idolatry. They finally whip that demon that they'd been dealing with for so many years of idolatry. And they live as sort of subject people under Persia for a long time. Alexander the Great comes along in the 330s and defeats Persia. And then Alexander dies, and his generals run things in a Greekish style for a couple hundred years. And somewhere in there, those Greek generals who eventually, you know, their descendants become kings, they start getting pretty uppity and they want the Jews to become Greek and they want to wipe out Jewishness. Well, that doesn't work in the 100s BC for a group, a Jewish family called the Maccabees, and they throw a rebellion. Hanukkah celebrates an important moment in this rebellion. They throw off their Greekish Seleucid overlords and they establish their own 100-year kingdom that runs from the mid-100s until the mid-first century BC, about 50, 60 years before Jesus. It's not a great kingdom. This is called the Maccabean dynasty or the Hasmonean dynasty. It's corrupt, it's weird at times. The high priest and the king are kind of like the same guy. So there's some ambiguity about exactly how to govern and how it works. Eventually the thing implodes. And in one of the dramatic moments that happens in here in Book 13 of the Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus tells us a story about a high priest who's also a secular authority at the same time, named John Herconus. He's like a grandchild, I think, of the Maccabean era. You know, he's descended from the original rebels who put all of this in motion. And he himself is a Pharisee, a part of this relatively new sect that teaches that there is such a thing as resurrection from the dead. They believe in the spiritual world of angels and demons. They uh also are really interested in the purity rituals of that surround the priestly life and the temple. And they're like, well, if these things are good in the temple, why wouldn't we have everybody do them? Like, let's be a little more particular with what we do and don't eat. I mean, in Daniel, that was held out as being good, that Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, that they all were very, very particular about what they would and wouldn't eat. So let's idealize that and take those rules even further. They were really rigorous in their enforcement of Sabbath laws. And basically anything that involved religious procedure or particular practices of religious habit, they were really into that, which I mean you'd think would not make them popular with normal people who just want to be left alone. But again, they were very popular with normal people. They were the populist blue-collar kind of party. But interestingly, they had a champion in this John Herconus guy, who was high priest in the middle of the Hasmonean dynasty. And he identified as a Pharisee. He received their teaching. And Josephus tells us this story that one time he was at a banquet, and in front of everybody, he made this big ovation. He's like, Hey, Pharisees, I am totally with you on not just what the Bible says about in terms of rules and stuff, but your bonus rules that you have written to protect us from ourselves so that we can't even get close to breaking the actual rules of the Bible. I am all in on that. And you have my permission. If you ever see me, even though I outrank you, if you ever see me get anything wrong, you just come and tell me, guys. Just tell me. I'll listen. I totally will. And they're like, that's great. And we have nothing for you, John. You are so good. And it's just this big, you know, clap on the back, happy time for everybody. But Josephus says there's a dishonest guy there named Eliezer. He sees an opportunity to drive a wedge. And so he lays a trap in terms of it's a question about like the severity of punishment. And Hyrcanus, it kind of catches him in a trap. It's like the traps that get set for Jesus at times in the Gospels. And along comes another character, also named John, but this John is a Sadducee, and he buddies up alongside John Urcanus. And the result is that Urcanus makes a decision in terms of punishment and how that should be carried out that offends the Pharisees, and the Pharisees kick him out. They don't like it. So now there's a showdown of power. And then Josephus tells us about a little bit more about where the Pharisees come from and what they believe in the context of this showdown. He says, What I would now explain is this that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses. And for that reason, it is that the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory, which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. Now, if you're a Christian, this is probably the place where you most agree with the Sadducees and least agree with the Pharisees, whereas a lot of that other stuff I said a minute ago, like they believed in angels and demons and resurrection and kind of that balanced view of free will and determinism. On all of that stuff, you're like, oh, wow, I don't think you want to be a Pharisee, but I guess I'm kind of Pharisee-like on that. Well, probably here, if you're a Christian, you're going, oh man, I'm more with the Sadducees on this one. I don't like these extra biblical rules creeping in. That's legalism. That's not good. And I think you would be right in that regard to have hesitations about it. But to be clear, Josephus is straightforward, just smoking gun. He's telling us these Pharisees made up bonus rules. And the other religious leaders, the dominant party, were constantly saying to the masses, you don't actually have to do any of those bonus rules that the Pharisees keep making up. That's that's beyond the stuff of Moses. So the tension is shaping up here between these two groups. Okay. All right, so you're not uh you don't have to abide by that. And concerning these things, it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side. But about these two sects and that of the Essenes, I have treated accurately in the second book of Jewish Affairs. And obviously, we're going to take another day on this and we're going to get to all of that. But isn't it interesting to get an outsider's perspective who lived at the time of the Bible but wasn't right in the Bible, on how exactly these two groups thought. Now, here's one important detail you need to keep in mind as we hit pause here. Josephus most closely personally identified with the Pharisees. So anytime here you're reading this and you're like, oh, he's, you know, I bet he didn't like them very much. Well, actually, he kind of did. So that's one important interpretive detail that we need to keep in view. I got a couple more historical quotes and details about the Pharisees that we need to look at. And then we're going to come back around and see what John the Baptist does with the question they're hitting him up with here in John chapter one. All right, interesting bad guys make for interesting material. And well, these are interesting bad guys, and weirdly, I think we agree with them on some stuff and disagree with them on some other stuff. All right, more to come. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again, sir.