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Hi! So this is Part Two of a three part series on an influential Second Temple-era Jew and what might have been his Jewish context. I'm doing a little textual speculation. (Also new this week: The little grey circles? New! Improved! Footnotes! Click on them for the bonus material.)

If you haven't read Part One, you might be pretty confused walking in here, particularly if you don't have a background in this kind of stuff. I've already begun to tee up my argument in many ways, so maybe go read that before reading this, if you haven't already.

OK, I read Part One, I'm ready– but...

Jesus the… Pharisee?

First of all:

There is a very popular (and antisemitic) belief that in the Gospels, Jesus only criticizes Pharisees, calling them hypocrites, terrible stinky bad baddies in a thousand different ways. (We’ll unpack some of that in a moment. )

But, like, even in the Gospels, Jesus hung with Team P plenty of times.

We see, in the Gospel of John, an ongoing relationship with a Pharisee (later revealed to be on the Sanhedrin) named Nakdimon/Nicodimous, eg in John 3:1-2, he clearly refers to him:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

Nakdimon also shows up after Jesus’ death, helps pay for the burial expenses.

The Pharisees had Jesus’ back!

At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” (Luke 13:31)

And most of all: Pay attention to who’s listening to Jesus in so many of these stories. Who’s in the audience, engaging with him, questioning, debating? Pharisees, Pharisees, Pharisees. Because they’re doing their thing together: Jamming (on Jewish law) in the name of the Lord.

Because, y’all:

Arguing and questioning and debating is what the Rabbinic tradition is ALL ABOUT.

You know that crack, “two Jews, three opinions?”

RABBINIC JUDAISM.

aka "The era and enduring framework of Judaism that started with the Pharisees." Yeah.

I submit: 

Jesus argued like a rabbi.

And taught like a member of the School of Hillel.

(Most of the time.)

Hillel and Shammai were two of the most important teachers in my tradition. They were bar plugtot —uh, not sure how to translate this, there’s no real concept for this in our culture.

They were each other’s debate partners.

The people who habitually disagreed with each other but who, through the process of playing out their disagreements, sharpened one another’s thinking. This is a thing in Rabbinic tradition. It’s part of the culture.

We throw hard. And then we go to each other’s houses for Shabbat dinner.

My suspicion is that when non-Jews read the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels–  particularly given the perhaps deliberately unflattering lens in which they may be refracted – they may see ferocious rebuke and fearsome condemnation. [[1]]

I read the Gospels and assume that Jesus and "the Pharisees" (it'll make sense in a moment why they're getting quote marks like that) are sometimes engaged in earnest debate, sometimes jabbing in jest, sometimes possibly angry and hurt, sometimes just... living in community, and disagreement?

What if the perimeters of those conversations have the level of shared communal not only– consent, but agreement– that a rap battle does? Everybody who agrees to show up, agrees to the terms?

Hillel and Shammai each taught many students, who then taught students. Their students are known as Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai—the House of Hillel or the School of Hillel and etc. of Shammai.

Although Beit Hillel prohibit the marraige of rival wives to the brothers [in cases of levirate marriage] and Beit Shammai permit them, and although these disqualify these women and those deem them fit, Beit Shammai did not refrain from marrying women from [families of] Beit Hillel, nor did Beit Hillel refrain from marrying women from Beit Shammai. Furthermore, with regard to all of the disputes concerning the laws of ritual purity and impurity, where these rule that an article is ritually pure and those rule it ritually impure, they did not refrain from handling ritually pure objects each with the other, as Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel frequently used each other’s vessels. (Mishnah Yevamot 1:4)

You see? They had directly contradictory rulings from one another, but they still– lived as though the other's ruling was kosher: They were popping in and out of each other's homes! Borrowing each other's stuff as though nobody was worried that the other's kitchen wasn't up to snuff around ritual purity! Marrying each other's people– they were family! They were community! These contradictory rulings about what God said was OK to do and not to do – and the long fights and debates that accompanied them– didn't preclude the bread-breaking.

People often get their knickers in a twist about this passage: 

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do,  So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23:1-4)

The Talmud says the House of Hillel was

agreeable & forbearing, and when they taught, they would teach both their own statements & the statements of the House of Shammai. When they cited a dispute, they prioritized the statements of Beit Shammai to their own. (Talmud Eruvin 13b)

Reread Jesus' statement in light of him being part of the House of Hillel, both accepting the legitimacy of the House of Shammai's opinions and perhaps feeling a little salty that the deference and respect the House of Hillel extended wasn't reciprocated. I'm just saying.

Now imagine Jesus’ comments, above, said in that tone of jesting snark you’d offer a sibling, or with the taunting attitude you’d hit when some of the guys from the rival team come to check out your practice. Everybody’s still playing hockey! Everyone’s still in the league! They could be your teammates next week! There’s just some smack being talked. 

It did get contentious at times, after all: 

From the time that the disciples of Shammai and Hillel grew in number, and they were disciples who did not attend to their masters to the requisite degree, dispute proliferated among the Jewish people and the Torah became like two Torahs. (Sanhedrin 88b) 

Listen, I don’t really think we can get to what was actually going on in any of the passages in the Gospels– remember how much later the Gospels were written than the life of the guy, and separating history from legend from agenda is as impossible a task here as it is with any of the tales in the Mishnah, Talmud, Torah, or elsewhere. (And likewise, that impossibility doesn’t mean it’s not a sacred text.)

But the point remains: There are more ways to understand what’s happening here than might be evident at first blush. [[2]]

Was there even some question about how academic some of Beit Shammai’s positions were? (That is, whether they always practiced what they preached?) Even if they tended to take the more stringent side, generally? Hmm: 

Reish Lakish said to him: Do you hold that Beit Shammai actually acted in accordance with their own statement? Beit Shammai did not in fact act in accordance with their own statement, as the dispute was merely theoretical. And Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Beit Shammai certainly did act in accordance with their opinion. The later Talmudic voice comments: And this is also reflected in the dispute between Rav and Shmuel, as Rav says: Beit Shammai did not act in accordance with their own statement, and Shmuel said: They certainly did act in that manner. (Talmud Yevamot 14a)

From the Talmud’s perspective, the reason that Beit Shammai might not have followed their own rulings is either a) because everyone understood that the rules of the game are that we follow the majority opinion– which would be Beit Hillel’s– or, b) that they started following Beit Hillel after a literal voice came out of Heaven to say that we hold by Hillel, as the story goes, (Talmud Eruvin 13b).

So from this read, Beit Shammai weren't hypocrites– but they were, perhaps, not doing what they argued was Correct, just grumblingly following Hillel’s opinions as a good-sport concession that they had lost the dispute.

But taking all this into consideration, it does illuminate the Matthew passage above a bit, no?

So. I'm going to make a suggestion that is neither wholly original, nor does it have universal scholarly consensus (does anything, especially where Jesus is concerned?)

Other people have great evidence for other theories and someone might come along with something that might actively disprove this one, great, happy to learn. But I'd like you to consider this lens with me:

Consider the possibility that, generally speaking, Jesus held by the school of Hillel, and that when he is depicted as hollering at “the Pharisees,” he may, in fact, have been debating with the school of Shammai.

And that, after the Great Jewish Revolt, and the destruction of the Temple– and possibly Bar Kochba, or at least some of the fissures leading up to that time– some of the stories about Jesus vs. Beit Shammai became written down in the Gospels as Jesus vs. "The Pharisees" as the new Christian movement began to distance themselves from Jesus' former peeps. 

This lens would make sense given that Shammai was more interested in precision and rigorousness; Hillel was more for accessibility and openness. Shammai didn't suffer fools. Hillel humored them, let them in, taught them along the way.

In other words: it’s possible that instead of “House of Shammai,” the authors of the Gospels wrote “Pharisees.”  But who Jesus is really yelling at is Beit Shammai, as Beit Hillel. Try it on for size.

I also submit: This lens may not be 100% exclusive of other possible lenses. Just as historical figures like Josephus acknowledged spending time in various Jewish communities before defecting to the Romans, or the priest Yosef ben Yo'ezer was said to be both, well, priest and Pietist/Pharisee– or as many of us nowadays are able to dwell in multiple spaces... it may not have been normative to sojourn in multiple communities during Second Temple times, but I think we can generally agree that whoever this historical Jesus was, he probably wasn't particularly normative. 

So I just want to say that the argument I'm making doesn't require, to my mind, that this person– who clearly was all about transcending traditional boundaries to some degree– stay 100% in the Pharisee box. But just walk with me, OK?

Let’s have a look. 

OK, first, a quote from Hillel himself, in Talmud Shabbat 31a:

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

Jesus says in Matthew 7:12:

"Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."

Next, we find in Mark 12:28-31:

“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: God is our God, God is one. Love God your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  (Leviticus 19:18) There is no commandment greater than these.”

Wasn’t the “teacher of the law” (aka the Pharisee) asking a trick question? I mean, would a Jewish sage suggest such a thing, that there's a most important mitzvah??

Well, yes.

"And you shall love your neighbor as yourself:" (Leviticus 19:18) Rabbi Akiva teaches: this is the greatest principle of Torah. Ben Azzai teaches: "This is the book of the generations of Adam" (Gen. 5:1) is more fundamental. (Sifra Kedoshim 4:12)

Rabbi Akiva was a student of Eliezer ben Hurcanus who was a student of Yohanan ben Zakkai who was a student of… yep, Hillel.

Go figure he came up with just about the same answer as Jesus. [[3]]

Ready to hear more? 

For the rest of this post, we’ll go back to Matthew 23, one of the most notoriously antisemitism-justifying chapters in all the Gospels. I’m not going to go verse by verse– remember, there were Layers and Additions and Agendas and so forth; my aim isn’t to justify every word. But– there’s just a lot more context to some of it, is all I’m saying. 

On the Fringes

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries/tefillin wide and the tassels on their garments/tzitzit long. (Matthew 23:5)

👀 👀 👀

The Sages taught in a baraita [Mishnaic-era text]: How many strings [for tzitzit] does one place on a garment? Beit Shammai say: Four strings are inserted into the hole in the garment, so that there are eight strings hanging down altogether, and Beit Hillel say: Three strings are inserted into the garment. And how much should be hanging [meshulleshet] beyond the knots and windings? Beit Shammai say: Four fingerbreadths, and Beit Hillel say: Three fingerbreadths. And the three fingerbreadths that Beit Hillel say should be hanging are each one-fourth of a handbreadth [tefaḥ] of any average person. (Talmud Menachot 41b) 

I'll also note that the Gospels talk a lot about people touching Jesus' own tzitzit–  Matthew 9:20-22 and 14:34-36; Mark 5:25-34 and 6:56, Luke 8:43-48, etc. He wasn't an impartial observer in the Matthew text.

I'm not saying there wasn't a barb being thrown– though if there was, Jesus wasn't exactly doing unto others that wonderfully, eh? Maybe there could have been editorial work? – but just that.. you know, context does matter, as does tone– is he teasing with a mischievous smirk on his face? Having a "Team Hillel Rules, Team Shammai Drools," pep rally moment? It's unlikely we'll ever know.

Woe! Whoa. 

What are often called the Seven Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees– Jesus says a bunch of things (some of which we'll examine below) that begin with, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" and other awkward conversation starters.

He certainly could have been telling a bunch of specific people in the room that they suck, to their faces. Or! It's possible that he was talking about ways of being sucky that exist in his community, as some of his other peeps did? Also a possibility?

Here's a Mishnaic-era text (a baraita). But note that what is being translated as "pseudo-righteous," here is, literally "Pharisee" in the text– פְּרוּשִׁין.

The Sages taught: There are seven pseudo-righteous people who erode the world: The righteous of Shechem, the self-flagellating righteous, the bloodletting righteous, the pestle-like righteous, the righteous who say: Tell me what my obligation is and I will perform it, those who are righteous due to love, and those who are righteous due to fear. (Talmud Sotah 22b)

[[4]]

So you can see here, we Jews have a whole series of "Oy va voy for these guys who..." in our own community. It's not not a thing that we love to do.

I mean:

The Talmud relates: King Yannai said to his wife before he died: Do not be afraid of the Pharisees [perushin], and neither should you fear from those who are not Pharisees, i.e., the Sadducees; rather, beware of the hypocrites who appear like Pharisees, as their actions are like the act of the wicked Zimri and they request a reward like that of the righteous Pinehas (see Numbers, chapter 25).  (Talmud Sotah 22b)

So the Pharisees themselves– that is, the Rabbis– are talking snarkily about

hypocritical Pharisees?

After all, who, in a religious community, might be angriest that some members of their community don't practice what they preach?

Could it be... oh, I don't know... members of that same group who see their people not doing right by their own very same values that they all share together?

Yeahhh. Huh.

OK, here's a spicy one:

Who gets in to the World to Come. 

Remember, Matthew was likely part of an intra-Judaic argument about the shape of what service to God looks like in this bewildering new post-Temple era.

And in his read, Jesus was way more open to non-Jews than, say, the Rabbinic guys on the other side of the conversation.

First, let's look at this chunk of Talmud. Here's Rabbi Eliezer, who held by the House of Shammai, being quoted implying that non-Jews don't have a share in the World to Come. Then you see Rabbi Yehoshua, who held by the House of Hillel, saying no–it's only non-Jews who don't fear God who don't get in.

It is in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua, as it is taught in a baraita [an earlier Rabbinic text] that Rabbi Eliezer says: It is written: “The wicked shall be turned back to the netherworld, all that nations that forget God” (Psalms 9:18). “The wicked shall be turned back to the netherworld”; these are the sinners of the Jewish people, as only the sinners are sentenced to the netherworld. “All the gentiles that forget God”; these are the sinners of the gentiles. From the fact that it is written: “All the gentiles,” [as ‘goy’ means both nation and non-Jew] it is apparent that none of the gentiles have a share in the World-to-Come. This is the statement of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Yehoshua said to him: But is it stated in the verse that the sinners of the Jewish people will be like all of the gentiles? It is stated only: “All the gentiles that forget God.” Rather, the wicked shall be turned back to the netherworld, and who are they? They are all the gentiles that forget God. Gentiles who fear God do have a share in the World-to-Come. (Talmud Sanhedrin 105a)

Now, what happens if you read Jesus as yelling at the House of Shammai here, below, for suggesting that non-Jews who are righteous might not have a share in the World to Come?

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13-14)

Can you see how Jesus and Rabbi Yehoshua may be making the same point, with a different tone? 

Now read this, from Matthew 22, keeping in mind an author who

a) might be angry at the Jews who aren't getting on the Jesus Train and glad to imply that said failure on their part led to the Temple's destruction

and

b) wants to be more attentive to non-Jewish members of the Jesus movement:

“The kingdom of Heaven is like a ruler who prepared a wedding banquet for his child. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:2-14)

How easy is this to square with Rabbi Yehoshua? Pretty easy, imho. Even with the Temple-burning interpolation at the top.

What was that about taxing spices? 🫙🌿🥣

Woe about that mint, man!

What is this all about??

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former…You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:23-24)

When you acquire agricultural produce from someone who doesn’t know Jewish law, you can’t be sure they tithed correctly– that is, that they set aside a portion for the priests, Levites and those struggling to get by. So you might need to tithe again, just to be sure:  

Oil spiced [with spices from a Jew who may be ignorant of Jewish law]: Bet Shammai makes it liable [to the rules of produce where there's doubt about its tithing]. But Bet Hillel exempts it. (Mishnah Demai 1:3)

Rabbi Eliezer [who, again, holds by Beit Shammai] said: as for dill, tithe must be given from the seed and the plant, and the pods. But the sages say: only in the case of cress and eruca are both the seeds and plant tithed. (Mishnah Maastrot 4:5) 

As you may have expected by now: Beit Shammai demands more tithing, just to be sure, because you don't want to use something if there's a chance that some of it might be owed to others. Because that would be a sin, and also morally wrong. Beit Hillel errs on the side of assuming it's probably OK. They simply have different approaches to Jewish law.

And why does this, of all things, matter to everyone so much?

Who's really impacted by the whole hot tithing debate?

 And Rav Huna said that it was taught: Beit Shammai say: One may neither feed the poor doubtfully tithed produce nor feed soldiers doubtfully tithed produce. And Beit Hillel say: One may feed the poor doubtfully tithed produce and feed soldiers doubtfully tithed produce. The law is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel. (Talmud Shabbat 127b)

Mmmhmm:

You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. (Matthew 23:23)

Yeah.

The week after next, we'll return to the last in our three-part series on this, and look at a bunch of other examples of Gospel accounts squared with Rabbinic texts. Lots more Jesus ❤️ Beit Hillel-type positions, plus showing that Jesus does, in fact, hold by Beit Shammai – as well as, probably, Beit Nobody, at least sometimes. (Edited to add: It's up, here. Read on and then spread the word about the whole series!)

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

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[[1]]: New Testament scholar AKM Adam, who generously reviewed all three of these posts before I sent them (THANK YOU AGAIN, AKMA!! 🙏) (which doesn't mean he agrees with everything I'm writing here, so don't give him heat if you don't like this; he just helped correct me in some places) put it this way– not meaning that these are his personal beliefs, but that this is how it's framed to be read: "Bei mir, the simplest explanation, plain as the nose on my face, is that (a) Jesus is always right, so people who argue with him are always wrong; (b) Pharisees are among those the gospels accuse of conspiring to have Jesus executed; (c) theological leaders have for millennia taught that Pharisees are rotten-spirited, malevolent panto villains (and they're the spiritual antecedent of Rabbi Danya and her ilk!); so (d) OBVIOUSLY the Pharisees were baddies."

[[2]]: I want to make this clear: I am offering a theory to try on for size. I'm arguing a thing that I believe is likely. I am not stating that I know what happened definitively (none of us do!!) and I'm definitely not arguing that Jesus was a Pharisee of the House of Hillel at the exclusion of any other thing. It seems obvious to me, anyway (and again: I'm not a scholar of this stuff) that Jesus was someone who transcended typical boundaries like social categories, and as we'll see next week, also at times possibly critiqued Rabbinic ideals. But what I do want to do is to profoundly complicate many longstanding assumptions about what was happening in these Gospel conversations, to show how many of them could be illuminated by this lens, and that it's really quite plausible. This might be a good moment, as well, for me to thank Professor Stan Stowers, who was responsible for my first engagement with scholarship on early Christianity (and, uh, Religious Studies as a discipline. He's the reason I'm writing to you about anything at all, in a way?) and was even generous enough to let me TA his class as an undergrad after I stalked my way through the department's offerings. Taking his class on a lark after being confused by The Last Temptation of Christ turned out to be one of the most life-changing choices I've ever made.

[[3]]: Ben Azzai was a student of both Rabbi Tarfon (who was School of Shammai) and Rabbi Yehoshua (who was a student of Ben Zakkai’s). Seems that people swimming in Beit Shammai / School of Shammai waters weren’t shocked by this question, either. Presumably our “teacher of the Law” here was either from the School of Shammai or was Hillel colleague or etc. and curious to hear how this young up-and-comer would answer what could even have been a fairly standard question.

[[4]]: The commentary on the parallel text by, presumably, British-Jewish scholar Abraham Cohen, explains this as follows (adapted slightly for clarity): "Shechem Either the Pharisee who observes the Torah for what they can profit thereby, like Shechem (cf. Gen. 34:19) who submitted to circumcision only from an ulterior motive; or who carries their good deeds upon their shoulder (שכם), i.e. ostentatiously. The ‘flagellating’ Pharisee, One who walks with exaggerated humility, scarcely lifting feet from the ground, so that they strike their feet against stones and stumble. The ‘bloody’ Pharisee, In order not to look at a woman he walks with closed eyes, so that he dashes his face against a wall and bruises himself and bleeds." So yes, our ancient Rabbis talked smack about guys who acted too pious to look at actual women (*ahem* to all the dudes still making women's existence the problem.) "One who walks with bowed head like a pestle in a mortar. The translation might well be ‘the pestle Pharisee’, i.e. one who wears a large cap in the form of a mortar to cover his eyes. One (who says,) 'What is my duty that I may perform it?' ...implying that they have already fulfilled every mitzvah." 🙄 "From love The word in the text defies interpretation and is obviously a corruption. The reading adopted is that found in the parallel passages, and even this is explained in a derogatory sense, viz. they perform mitzvot for love of the reward or to win the love of fellows. Fear of retribution from Heaven." tl;dr Pharisees reading other Pharisees for filth, as they say.