If Jesus Joined This Forum . . .

Pharisees were people and people are not uniform, but individually have a variety of merits and flaws, so we should be like someone insofar as we are emulating their merits, but not insofar as we are emulating their flaws. Pharisees also criticized other Pharisees for their hypocrisy, so Jesus was not the only one to do that. Likewise, someone can criticize the leaders of a denomination of which they are a member without being opposed to the denomination itself, so we should be careful not to confuse a criticism of the flaws of some Pharisees as being a criticism of their merits. Jesus never criticized the Pharisees for being zealous for doing good works in obedience to God, but rather that was one of their merits, especially because Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works (Titus 2:14). Christians today would be doing pretty good if they were half as zealous for obeying God as the Pharisees were.

Nicodemus, Joseph of Aramathea, and Paul were all Pharisees who followed Jesus, so someone does not need to cease to be a Pharisees in order to follow him, and refusing to follow the Pharisees in includes refusing to follow Paul. Again, Acts 15:5 speaks about a group of Pharisees from among the believers. It was Jesus spending a week the Sadducees that resulted in his death.

Orthodox Jews pride themselves on having an unbroken chain from one rabbi to another back to the Pharisees of the 1st century, so they are the modern Pharisees. You can look at the teachings of Orthodox Jews online and see them teaching about things like, grace, faith, and love.

The Torah is God's way (Pslams 119:1-3), the truth (Psalms 119:142), and the life (Deuteronomy 32:46-47), and the way to see and know the Father (Exodus 33:133), the Torah is God's word and Jesus is God's word made flesh, so he is the embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life, and the way to see and know the Father (John 14:6-7).

BTW I do not hate Jews to me we are all brothers.

Look there were a few very few examples but I have quoted what Jesus said for a reason he was right about the pharisees, where I used to live in Montreal we had a lot of orthodox Jews, they would hang strings between the nearby houses, in their mind it was a way to visit each other on sabbath, what the pharisees were teaching is still around today.

These orthodox Jews and many other think it is O.K to lie to a goyim they even spit on us and curse aloud against the gentiles, the pharisee effect of pervering the law and commandments is still alive today. BTW I do not hate Jews to me we are all brothers. this is just what i saw and experience for myself. What about the talmud? What to make of it?

While Jesus did criticize some Pharisees for their pride and hypocrisy, he did not criticize them for being zealous for obeying the Torah. In Deuteronomy 17:8-13, if gives authority to priests and judges to make rulings about how to obey the Torah that the people were obligated to obey, which got passed down as Oral Torah, and in Matthew 22:1-4, Jesus recognized that the scribes and Pharisees had this authority by saying that they sit in the Seat of Moses.

Jeremiah 17-21-22 Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. 22 And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.

The purpose of an eruv is to mark a large private domain where it is permitted to carry items that are not otherwise prohibited on the Sabbath, so those verses permitted carrying within Jerusalem because of an eruv bounded by the city walls, but they prohibit carrying through the gates was carrying outside of the eruv.


The Talmud is more of a flow of thought than an official ruling on matters, where it gives discussions on a topic with a variety of views, some of which are stringent interpretations while others a lenient, and it often argues from the extremes to make a point about what is permitted in other situations, so it can be easy to take it out of context and a Jew is not required to agree with everything said in the Talmud. Even if someone does not think that they are obligated to obey the Torah, they can still recognize that things that are said in the Talmud are fair interpretations, such as with the passage that I quoted form Shabbat 31a. There is much in the Talmud that the average Christian would agree with, especially because Jesus taught many of the same things. There are also much in the Talmud that is really strange, but if you dig there is always a reason why it was said.

While Jesus did criticize some Pharisees for their pride and hypocrisy, he did not criticize them for being zealous for obeying the Torah. In Deuteronomy 17:8-13, if gives authority to priests and judges to make rulings about how to obey the Torah that the people were obligated to obey, which got passed down as Oral Torah, and in Matthew 22:1-4, Jesus recognized that the scribes and Pharisees had this authority by saying that they sit in the Seat of Moses.

Jeremiah 17-21-22 Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. 22 And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.

The purpose of an eruv is to mark a large private domain where it is permitted to carry items that are not otherwise prohibited on the Sabbath, so those verses permitted carrying within Jerusalem because of an eruv bounded by the city walls, but they prohibit carrying through the gates was carrying outside of the eruv.


The Talmud is more of a flow of thought than an official ruling on matters, where it gives discussions on a topic with a variety of views, some of which are stringent interpretations while others a lenient, and it often argues from the extremes to make a point about what is permitted in other situations, so it can be easy to take it out of context and a Jew is not required to agree with everything said in the Talmud. Even if someone does not think that they are obligated to obey the Torah, they can still recognize that things that are said in the Talmud are fair interpretations, such as with the passage that I quoted form Shabbat 31a. There is much in the Talmud that the average Christian would agree with, especially because Jesus taught many of the same things. There are also much in the Talmud that is really strange, but if you dig there is always a reason why it was said.

This thread is designed to cause us to look inward, not outward. The Purpose is for self-diagnostics and tes


Hello, Soyeong!

You seem to be well-versed in the topic of Pharisees. I just ran across this in my Bible studies for the day and I don't get it. Tell me what you think.

Matthew 23:2-3 NKJV - ". . . saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. "Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, [that] observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do."

Yet in Verse 13, we have the following:
Matthew 23:13 NKJV - "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in."

If the Pharisees were the official interpreters of the Law of Moses, and if what they taught was right, how would they be preventing others from entering into the Kingdom of God? Yes, they were hypocrites, so if the people followed their example, how would their example not violate their teachings? Or . . . just thought of this . . . were the common people following their example of hypocrisy? That actually seems more likely.

Thanks!

Hello,

The Hebrew word "yada" refers to intimate relational knowledge gained through experience, such as in Genesis 4:1, where Adam knew (yada) Eve, she conceived, and gave birth to Cain. The Bible starts and ends with the Tree of Life and everything in between is essentially about how to return to the Tree of Life, or in other words, the Bible is essentially about how to know (yada) God and Jesus through experiencing His character traits, which is eternal life (John 17:3).

There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant in terms of being a marriage relationship between God and Israel, so the goal of the Mosaic Law is to teach us how to know (yada) God and Jesus. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know (yada) God. In Genesis 18:19, God's way is the way in which He practices aspects of His character such as righteousness and justice, and in 1 Kings 2:1-3, God taught how to walk in His way through the Mosaic Law. In Jeremiah 9:3 and 9:6, they did not know (yada) God and refused to know Him because in 9:13, they had forsaken the Mosaic Law, while in 9:24, those who know God know that he delights in practicing steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in all of the earth, so delighting in practicing those and other aspects of God's character is the way to know (yada) Him, which is also the way to know Jesus, who is the exact image of God's character (Hebrews 1:3). In 1 John 2:6, those who say that they know Jesus, but don't obey his commands are liars, in 1 John 3:4-6, those who continue to sin in transgress of the Mosaic Law have never seen nor known him, and in Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven in contrast with saying that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them.

The problem is that people can go through the motions of obeying it while neglecting to experience the aspects of God's character that it was given to teach us how to experience, such as in Matthew 23:23, Jesus criticized them as being hypocrites and said that tithing was something that they ought to be doing while not neglecting weightier matters of the Mosaic Law of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In Philippians 3:8, Paul had been going through the motions of obeying God's while, but without being focused on knowing Jesus, so he counted it all as rubbish because he had been missing the whole goal of the law. The word for hypocrisy is an acting term that refers to doing something for show, so that is the sense in which Jesus was criticizing some of the Pharisees, where they were obeying God's law for show in order to be seen out of pride, but were not doing it from a place of expressing the character traits of God. So there is a sense that Pharisees were correctly interpreting how to obey God's law, such as in regards to tithing dill, mint, and cumin, but there is still a sense that they were preventing people from entering the Kingdom of Heaven by not teaching the character traits of God.

@Soyeong

I get the feeling you may have received Biblical training. Would I be correct?

Not formal training, I've mostly just spent over 20 years studying and discussing theology on forums.

What would be more relevant to ask ourselves is what if we did what Jesus said and showed us?

He would probably be called a Calvinist.

By calvinists.

What if Jesus joined this forum? ? What would be more relevant to ask ourselves is what if we did what Jesus said and showed us? And he showed God's word is for us. And God's will was shown from the beginning, with compromise to accommodate us along the way. And Jesus showed this will of God for us, and spoke for that. In Jesus we can live that way. That would involve how we use this forum site, too. It is for us, not for us to just tell others.

Sometimes a joke is just a joke. Might want to try a little less starch in the underoos.

When He began talking to you, would He find you to be more like His Disciple or like a Pharisee, Sadducee, and teacher of the Law?

When He began talking to you, would He find you to be more like His Disciple or like a Pharisee, Sadducee, and teacher of the Law?

He would probably be called a Calvinist.

It’s strange no one who ever asked for a sign got one …..but those who just followed Jesus saw things that were undeniable