What is the difference between

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patrick457 said:
Nope, it’s actually the reverse. The Sadducees were the ones which had close connections with the aristocratic Temple priesthood.
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Exactly! Now the question is why the Christian scriptures mix them up?
 
patrick457 said:
Nope, it’s actually the reverse. The Sadducees were the ones which had close connections with the aristocratic Temple priesthood.
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That is correct. Modern Rabbinic Judaism is the result of the extensive roots established by Pharaseeism and their insistence upon the existence of the “Oral Torah”, a “Kingdom of Priests”, etc.
 
I would suggest the difference between Jesus’ “Way” and Pharasaic Judaism to be even more radical than Ben Witherington’s characterization.

Jesus does not come for the law-givers or law-obeyers. He is cast out far from God, beyond the lawgivers, kings or prophets. He is treated as the garbage of God, the Forsaken one - he does not come for those close to God but for those abandoned by God, the garbage of the world, the hypocrites.

It is a far more radical approach.
 
Yab_Yum said:
I would suggest the difference between Jesus’ “Way” and Pharasaic Judaism to be even more radical than Ben Witherington’s characterization.

Jesus does not come for the law-givers or law-obeyers. He is cast out far from God, beyond the lawgivers, kings or prophets. He is treated as the garbage of God, the Forsaken one - he does not come for those close to God but for those abandoned by God, the garbage of the world, the hypocrites.

It is a far more radical approach.
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Good point, but I sure hope you’re not going down the route of “Jesus was literally abandoned/hated by the Father at the cross” here. 😉
 
patrick457 said:
Where exactly does the Christian Scriptures mix them up?
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To elaborate on the question:

I’ll admit that “the Pharisees” indeed figure more in the gospels as Jesus’ (admittedly rather two-dimensional) opponents - at least for the earlier half of the gospels, and I will grant that the increasng tension between the first generations of Christianity and Judaism may have had ‘colored’ the Jesus tradition which eventually resulted in this (a phenomenon which is especially evident in the gospels of Matthew and John). And yes, while later Christians did, and do, have a knack of lumping the various groups - the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Temple priests - together (let’s be honest here), my question is, where exactly does the New Testament mix them up? Matthew and John do not count here IMHO since while “the Pharisees” are paired together with “the chief priests” in those gospels at least once (Matthew 27:62 and John 18:3; “the Pharisees” are not mentioned in the other portions of the Matthean and Johannine Passion narrative and not at all in Mark and Luke), “the chief priests” remain the prime movers. While the gospels could be and are read as encouraging the conflation, it is different from claiming that the gospels themselves conflate them all.
 
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