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Pharisees and Pharisaism: Vital link in transmission of Torah
Luc Dequeker

Professor Luc Dequeker, of the National Catholic Commission for Jewish-Christian relations in Belgium, is Professor of Old Testament at the Catholic University of Leuven and has published articles in the fields of Scripture and Jewish-Christian relations.

It is not easy to write about the Pharisees. One could begin as St. Luke starts his gospel: Many have undertaken it before us. However, our task is to follow all things closely from the beginning and to write in our turn an orderly account. The object of this article is to make clear the part played by Pharisaism in transmitting and interpreting the Torah. Pharisaism is, as it were, the culmination of a biblical movement, of a living tradition which began around Deuteronomy after and even before the exile. It is our intention in this article to confine ourselves to making a selection of rabbinic texts with commentary so as to situate the pharisaic movement in the totality of biblical and Jewish tradition. It is important to understand how Pharisaism has defined itself with regard to biblical tradition. If Pharisaism is to be understood we must read those scriptural texts from which the movement derives its authority and which have furthered its development. The Pharisees cannot be « isolated » from their Bible.2 It is significant that on this point the gospels associate the Pharisees with the scribes.

THE GOSPELS

We shall dwell for a while on the gospels, since they witness to the importance of the pharisaic movement. They mention four Pharisees by name, individuals markedly different from the typical Pharisee described elsewhere. First there is Nicodemus, a prominent Jew, member of the pharisaic party. He came to Jesus by night to show his allegiance (Jn. 3:2) and sided openly with Jesus in face of his fellow Pharisees saying: « Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does? » (Jn. 7:50-51). This faithful witness from the Pharisees appears again after Jesus' death when the Master's body is to be embalmed with «a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight » (Jn. 19:39).

In Luke's gospel we find Simon the Pharisee with whom Jesus was at table (Lk. 7:36-50). His great surprise at seeing a sinner approach Jesus, and his manner of receiving Jesus, are not necessarily proofs of hypocrisy and ill-will.

The third Pharisee known to us by name is Paul, both a Pharisee and an apostle of Jesus. Paul never renounced his pharisaic training but he refused to glory in it: « . . circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee . . . » (Phil. 3:5-6).

According to Acts, Paul spoke before the Sanhedrin as a Pharisee: « Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead I am on trial x (Acts 23:6). Some scribes from the pharisaic party took up the apostle's defence: « We find nothing wrong in this man » (Acts 23:9); and Paul felt obliged to declare before King Agrippa: « [The Jews] have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee » (Acts 26:5).

The fourth identified Pharisee of the New Testament is Gamaliel, Paul's master in the observance of Torah. After his arrival in Jerusalem Paul declared that he was « brought up . . . at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers » (Acts 22:3). This Gamaliel defended the apostles before the Sanhedrin saying: « . . . if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God! (Acts 5:38-39).

The « typical » Pharisee of the gospels, associated with the Sadducees, high priests and scribes, is quite different. There « Pharisee » becomes a term expressive of typical hypocrisy, the dead letter, legalism, hardness. It is clear that this way of judging the Pharisees as enemies to be put down does not come from Jesus but from the Christian community. After the destruction of the Temple (70 CE.) and the set-back of the second Jewish revolt (135 CE.), this group separated itself more and more from rabbinic and pharisaic Judaism and gradually turned to the pagan world.

The association of the terms Pharisees n and Sadducees n — terms which are in fact opposed —is peculiar to Matthew's gospel, and is not found in the others. Where Mark says, for example: « Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod n (Mk. 8:15), Matthew says: « Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees » (Mt. 16:6). It is a known fact that because of their sacerdotal immobilism and a « fundamentalism » mainly closed to both the message of the prophets and the subtleties of messianism, they were attracted to the conservative element.

The gospel of Luke alone mentions another association: that of « Pharisees and « teachers of the lawn (Lk. 5:17; 7:30; 14:3). We find the grouping € scribes and Pharisees n or the reverse in all four gospels. It is plausible because the scribes were trained in a pharisaic milieu. They were the exegetes searching the Scriptures, and the Pharisees relied on them in their practice of the Torah.

It is easy to see that Matthew has a preference for the term « Pharisees n which he generalizes excessively. Mark, for example, in the passage on the greatest commandment, puts the question into the mouth of an apparently well-disposed scribe (Mk. 12:28-34); Luke speaks of a legalist who wants to corner Jesus by asking him the question (Lk. 10:25-28); while Matthew brings forward the Pharisees who had come to test the new teacher (Mt. 22:34-40). It is the same with the question of the Jews about Jesus' authority: in Mark and Luke it is asked by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders (Mk. 11:27; Lk. 20:1). Matthew terminates this incident at the end of the chapter, after the parable of the wicked vinedressers, by a plot between the chief priests and the Pharisees (Mt. 21:45; cf. Jn. 18:2 at the arrest of Jesus). Neither Mark nor Luke mentions the Pharisees in the plot (Mk. 12:12; Lk. 20:19).

There is then in the gospels a tendency to present « the Pharisees » as the enemies of Christ par excellence, witness the accusation: He is possessed by Beelzebul n (Mk. 3:22) which Matthew puts into the mouth of the Pharisees (Mt. 12:24), whereas Mark attributes it to the scribes (Mk. 3:22) and Luke to members of the crowd (Lk. 11:15).

THE CHAIN OF TRADITION

In rabbinic tradition there are two celebrated texts which at least establish by well-chosen links the bond between the pharisaic milieu — let us say the age of the tannaim or the Mishnah; the Bible — that is, the Torah; and the transmission of the Scriptures after the exile. These texts are: a midrashic passage in the Sifrei to Deuteronomy (S 48) and the well-known excerpt from the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot I. /ff. We read them as models of the writings which issued from the pharisaic milieu.

a. Deuteronomy

The law never fell into oblivion.
Shaphan arose in his time,
Ezra in his,
and Akiva when his hour came (Sifrei Deut. S 48).

The maxims of the Fathers thus bring together three eras and three men who succeeded in re-enforcing the link between the Jewish people and their law. This was clearly the intention of Pharisaism which aimed at commitment to a life according to the Torah.

Rabbi Akiva, martyred in the second Jewish revolt, was one of the first compilers of the Mishnah. Who were his precursors? In what current of tradition is Akiva to be placed? How is his Mishnah, his new law, to be understood?

The antecedents of the Mishnah are Deuteronomy and the « revival » of the Torah by Ezra. There was a restoration of the Torah after every period of stress, every national catastrophe that threatened the existence of the Law: the fall of the Northern Kingdom, the Babylonian exile, and — for Akiva — the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.

Shaphan is the name of the scribe (ha-so/er) who, after the rediscovery of the book of the law in the Temple, proclaimed the Torah openly before King Josiah (2 Kings 22:3-10). In Jewish tradition the book of Deuteronomy was called Mishneh Torah (see Megil. 31b) and the Greek term Deuteronomion is very probably of Jewish origin. Already, in the Bible itself, Deuteronomy is a sort of Mishnah, a second law n, a commentary on the divine law revealed on Sinai, and restored after the catastrophe of the Northern Kingdom (the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C.E.) and the progressive weakening of the Assyrian power until the reform of Josiah a century later.
Let us recall the teaching of biblical exegesis on the relationship between the « Book of the Covenant n (Ex. 20:22-23:13) and the Decalogue (Ex. 20:1-17) of which it is the first authorized commentary (the Mosaic law). Deuteronomy also has its starting-point in the Decalogue (Deut. 5:6-21) and makes new, authorized commentary on it, very closely inspired by the Book of the Covenant and put, like a mishneb ha-Torah," into the mouth of Moses.

We must also remember the place of Deuteronomy 18:15 in Jewish and in Christian tradition (Acts 3:2223; 7:37; Jn. 1:21, 45; 5:46; 6:14; 7:40): «The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren — him you shall heed. . .

In Pirkei Avot it is said that Joshua received the law from Moses; we shall return to this later. The link between Joshua chapter 24 — the great assembly at Shechem — and the original ending of Deuteronomy (Dew. 27:1-28, 68) must be stressed: the inscription and solemn proclamation of the law on the two mountains above Shechem, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. The most recent edition of the deuteronomist (Dent. 28:69 and 29 to 30) situates the proclamation of the Mosaic law in the country of Moab and makes it more of a new law, destined to replace the former one broken by the people's infidelity in the desert.

Other parallels drawn by exegetes can, it seems, illustrate the importance of Deuteronomy as the first link in the chain of rabbinic tradition. In chapter 6, the chapter of the Shema, after the child's question about the commandments, Deuteronomy quotes a short confession of faith apparently of ancient origin and structure. It says that the Torah must be obeyed because the Lord has rescued his people from slavery in Egypt and given it the land promised to its ancestors. This is the fundamental plan of salvation history in which particular attention is drawn to the structural link between the saving acts of God and the law. The same plan is seen in chapter 26 in the prayer to be recited at the offering of first-fruits: «A wandering Aramean was my father . (Deut. 26:5-10). This prayer also is of very ancient pattern. Joshua 24, the great assembly at Shechem, is similarly constructed (vv. 1-13: general survey of salvation history; vv. 14ff.: « Now therefore fear the Lord »). After Joshua 24 there is no analogous text until Nehemiah 8 to 10 which gathers together in a confession of faith the important events of salvation history precisely in view of a solemn commitment to the ways of the Torah. In Nehemiah 9:38 and 10:29, after the proclamation of the law by Ezra we read: « Because of all this we make a firm covenant . . . to walk in God's law which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and his ordinances and his statutes. (. In rabbinic tradition we find this same indissoluble link between grace and law, with the Talmud and halakhic law on one side, and Midrash and the aggadah on the other. In order to understand the pharisaic movement these structures must be taken into consideration.

b. The Great Synagogue

« Moses received Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue » (Pirkei Avot I. la)." Thus the rabbinic tradition with which the Pharisees are connected is itself connected with Moses; the most important links mentioned are significant.

We have spoken of Joshua's place in the transmission and proclamation of the Torah. As we have said, we must bear in mind above all Joshua 24 which makes clear the relationship established by the rabbis between Moses, Joshua and Ezra.

Although, from the historical point of view, it is difficult to identify with certainty the Great Synagogue mentioned in Pirkei Avot,6 it is true that in Jewish tradition the men of the Great Synagogue are Ezra and the doctors of the law who succeeded him. More precisely we have in mind the great assembly of Jerusalem, Nehemiah 8 to 10, with the proclamation of the law by Ezra probably about 398 B.C.E. Compare this with the great assembly of Shechem, Joshua 24. It is true also that decisions or aphorisms attributed by the rabbis to the men of the Great Synagogue are indeed found in Nehemiah 8 to 10. Because of the mission conferred on him by the king of Persia, Ezra bore the title « scribe of the law of the God of heaven (Ezra 7:12). For the chronicler responsible for editing the acts of Nehemiah and Ezra in the Bible, this title meant that Ezra was the scribe par excellence, the expert versed in the law of the Lord (Ezra 7:6). a Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel « (Ezra 7:10).

In addition to the renewed proclamation of the Torah after the exile, rabbinic tradition attributes to Ezra and to the Great Synagogue a whole involvement in the transmission of biblical texts such as, for example, transcribing Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets, Daniel and Esther, and correcting the text of the Bible. This same concern for the biblical text is found also in a saying attributed to the men of the Great Synagogue (Avot I. lb): « Make a hedge for the Torah *.

The work of the scribes and doctors of the law cannot be isolated from the riches of biblical tradition. According to Pirkei Avot I. 2, one of the last representatives of the Great Synagogue was Simon the Just. They consider him the bridge between Ezra and the Jewish scribes of the last two centuries before our era. The identification of Simon the Just is a problem still under discussion. Ile has been identified with Simon I, high priest about 300 B.C.E., called « the Just » by Josephus, but he is more commonly thought to be Simon II, grandson of Simon I and father of Onias III — later to be expelled from Jerusalem by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Simon II, who lived about 200 B.C.E., is praised by Sirach at the end of his eulogy of the ancestors in chapters 44 to 50 of his book.

The contacts between the pharisaic movement and Sirach are real in spite of the fact that the book was finally declared non-canonical (Palestinian Talmud Sanh. 10. 1; Tosefta Yad. 2. 14). In the Babylonian Talmud Sirach is sometimes mentioned as a constitutive part of the Scriptures (Hag. 12a; Nid. 16b; B.K. 92b). There is also a resemblance between the Jewish prayer, the Amidah (Shemone Esreb), and the short psalm inserted between Sirach 51:12 and 13 in the Hebrew text; this text is moreover the link with Qumran. The same wisdom literature must have inspired such different centers as the esoteric community of Qumran and the democratic brotherhoods of the Pharisees.

The mishnaic tractate of the « Fathers » (Avot) seems to have found its inspiration in the literary genre of Sirach (a string of didactic pronouncements), particularly in the eulogy of the ancestors in chapters 44 to 50. The ancestors thus praised by Sirach are: the patriarchs who lived before the flood, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, David and the Prophets, Josiah and Nehemiah. There follows the eulogy of the high priest Simon, son of Onias. It is difficult to deny the similarities of these chapters with the chain of tradition in Pirkei Avot I. 1-2: u Moses received Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue . . . Simeon the Just was of the survivors of the Great Synagogue.*

The ideal of the scribe as outlined by Sirach was one of wisdom: « Draw near to me, you who are untaught and lodge in my school i> (Sirach 51:23). To classify Pharisaism we must consider the long sapiential tradition of the Bible where from the beginning study of the law and wisdom are equally emphasized. The great rabbis of the Hasmonean period bore the title of « sages i> (hakhamim) and their disciples were called talmid hakham. a All wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and in all wisdom there is the fulfilment of the law » (Sirach 19:20). « Wisdom will praise herself . . . All this is the book of the covenant of the most high God, the law which Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob » (Sirach 24:1, 23).

STUDY AND PRACTICE OP THE LAW

To classify Pharisaism we shall take two of the talmudic maxims most typical of the pharisaic attitude which at the same time are often misunderstood.

a. a Make a hedge for the Torah » (Avot I. lb)

We must give some consideration to the tripleinjunction Pirkei Avot attributed to the men of the Great Synagogue: « Be deliberate in judging, and raise up many disciples, and make a hedge for the Torah.

According to the commentaries, the hedge for the Torah is oral tradition, carefully established by the doctors of the law to protect the Torah, but which finished by obscuring the original intentions of God. Oral tradition (Torah she be-al peb) is said to have existed independently of the Torah and to have enjoyed an almost equal authority because it also had been revealed to Moses.

The hedge for the Torah should consist, more Precisely, of preventative laws so that the Jew would not break the prescription itself. See Berakhot I. 1: every commandment to be observed before sunrise should be fulfilled before midnight to remove the possibility of transgressing it. The mishnaic sentence of Pirkei Avot is explained by a talmudic text which does not itself draw the parallel. This parallel is clearly drawn in the Midrash on Exodus 12:8 (Mekhitta, piskha 6) which explains that the paschal lamb must indeed be eaten before midnight to save man from any transgression and to fulfil the precept of the members of the Great Synagogue who said: a Make a hedge for the Torah * (= Avot I. 1). This interpretation, although ancient, is not original.'

In Avot III. 14 Rabbi Akiva is quoted as saying: « Tradition (masoret) is a fence for the Torah. » Masoret does not mean the oral rabbinic tradition in which the Mishnah originated, but the exact transmission of the biblical text.' The vowel system now used in our Hebrew Bibles dates from several centuries after the beginning of our era. It is called masoretic or traditional, but already before the Christian era attempts of this kind existed, and above all, there was a living «tradition*. The problems of fixing and transmitting the biblical text were dearly the major preoccupations of the scribes. The rest of Avot I. 1 can be understood in the same way; there is, as always, in Avot I. 1-18 a logical sequence between the different elements of the triple sentence.

« Be deliberate in judging »: the judging is that exercised by the master in interpreting a text, eventually to become a prerequisite of legal justice.

Raise up many disciples »: the mature and sure judgment of the master strengthens his disciples in their faith and in their knowledge of the law.

« You will thus make a hedge for the Torah *: through a reliable tradition based on the judgment of the master and on the affirmation of his disciples the work of God is protected as by a living hedge; it will never fall into oblivion.

The scribes, Pharisees and doctors of the law at the time of Jesus were men versed in the law. We must not forget that their Torah corresponded to our Bible (« Old Testament ») and that halakhic practice of the law presupposed scrupulous study, illuminated by wisdom, of the biblical text which had been carefully established and exactly transmitted to the disciples.

b. « Bury yourself with the Torah, talk not much with a woman* (Avot I. 4-5)

In Christian milieux there is a huge misunderstanding about the place of women in pharisaic Judaism. In a recent book on women in Christianity stress is again placed on « the wretched and entirely marginal place of woman in the Jewish world contemporary with Christ. She was totally subjected to the will of man, had almost no social rights and was excluded from a large sector of religious life.

Still today the Jewish man says in his morning prayers:
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe who gives the cock understanding to help us distinguish between day and night. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a heathen. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe who has not made me a slave. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe who has not made me a woman .9

Even in Jewish milieux a certain uneasiness can be noticed with regard to this prayer, above all when it is contrasted with that of the woman who prays resignedly: « Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe who has made me according to Thy will. »10

The prayer is an ancient one found with variants in both Talmuds (J. Ber. 9. 22; B. Men. 43b) and in the Tosefta (Ber. 7. 18): sometimes « slave » is replaced by brutish man » (B. Men. 43b), and instead of the negation « who did not make me a heathen » the Babylonian Talmud says « who made me an Israelite ». The Jerusalem Talmud and the Tosefta explain why a man prays thus. He is thanking God for not being a goy because, according to Isaiah 40:17, « all the nations are as nothing before him ». He thanks God for not being a woman because, according to some, women arc not obliged to keep all the commandments. Finally, he thanks for not being ignorant because, according to Hillel (Avot II. 6) the ignorant man has no fear of judgment. In these explanations, confirmed by Bashi in his commentary, the point of comparison between the three categories — the non-Jew, the woman, the ignorant person or slave — is the inability of these persons to perform all the commandments. The non-Jew does not know the law. The ignorant person and the slave are not qualified, not free to practise the law. The woman has other obligations. According to the Mishnah, women are dispensed from all positive commandments conditioned by time (Kidd. 1. 7). Theupright Jew respects the obligations proper to women in the household and with the children. Does the man boast that he is capable of keeping the law? To recite the prayer as a real act of thanksgiving helps him to thank God humbly that he is able to accomplish the Torah. He takes the yoke of the law joyfully upon his shoulders.

The text quoted at the beginning of this paragraph — a Busy yourself with the Torah, talk not much with a woman » — is from a series of maxims attributed to the first of the five pairs of scribes (within) who lived in the second century before our era.

Jose ben Joezer, of Zeredah, said: — Let thy house be a place of meeting for the Wise, and dust thyself with the dust of their feet, and drink their words with thirst. . . Jose ben Johanan of Jerusalem said: — Let thy house be opened wide, and let the poor be thy household, and talk not much with a woman (Avot I. 4-5).

The second maxim is in answer to the first: the study of Torah is not enough; it must be put into practice by charity. « Simeon his son [son of Rabbi Gamaliel] said: . . . not study is the chief thing but action J> (Avot I. 17). The last maxim speaks of a danger that risks confining a man to the intimacy of his own home. « To talk all the time with his wife » could take him away from the study of the Torah and close his heart to the poor.

Ha-isba in this context means the wife, the mistress of the house. Two additional glosses confirm this exegesis. The first explains the rule: a Everyone that talketh much with a woman [ha-isba, wife] causes evil to himself and desists from words of Torah, and his end is he inherits Gehinnom. »

The second gloss, inserted between the first and the original texts, is more specific: « He said it: in the case of his own wife, much more in the case of his companion's wife. » It must be stressed that the point of these texts is not the fact of speaking to a woman but of gossip, which prevents a man from studying the Torah and being open to others.

This statement on women should be developed because in the interpretation of the text, the commentaries overstress the so-called generalized negative attitude of the rabbis and of the oriental world as a whole to women. We must do the opposite and re-examine the texts.
There are, it seems, two dominant facts. First, texts like the one we have just read which warn the wise man against all that could draw him away from study: idle talk, gossip, pride, and « woman seeking ».

Our rabbis taught: six things are unbecoming for a scholar. He should not go abroad scented; he should not go out by night alone; he should not go abroad in patched sandals; he should not converse with a woman in the street; he should not take a set meal in the company of ignorant persons; and he should not be last to enter the Beth ha-Midrash (B. Ber. 43b).

Another dominant fact is sexuality and respect for women. In the rabbinic texts there are many cautions against passion and immodest glances: « Do not look at a woman, do not look at her with passion » (histakel, fix your eyes »). Thus in Berakhot 6Ia for example: When handing money to a woman in payment advantage must not be taken to gaze upon her. When walking in the street one must not walk behind a woman so as to watch the swaying of her hips. Above all, when crossing a river one must not get behind a woman when she is lifting up her dress. Still today when going upstairs masculine etiquette obliges a man to precede a woman. Jesus' statement: x Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart » (Mt. 5:28) is in the same tradition. See, for example, the Midrash on Exodus 20:14 of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai: « You shall not commit adultery not with the hand or with the foot or with the eyes or with the mind. » 11

In the tractate Avodah Zarah a distinction is made between praising the Lord for female beauty and the passionate desire of the man who cannot even keep his eyes off women's clothing on washing day.

Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel and Rabbi Akiva praised the Lord when they saw a beautiful woman, because the master said: « He who beholds goodly creatures should say, 'Blessed be He who hath created such in His universe' (Avodah Zarah 20a).

THE LEGAL TESTIMONY OP WOMEN

We shall end this account with certain elements on the legal testimony of women." To begin with, Judaism has no general rule on this subject. Reference is often made to a passage of Flavius Josephus which says that a woman's testimony must not be accepted because of the frivolity and boldness _of her sex (Antiqu. Jud. IV 8. 15 5 219). Josephus speaks also of slaves: their testimony cannot be accepted because it could be influenced by fear. In Roman law women, children and slaves were not sui iuris; they had not, therefore, the right to act as witnesses. Flavius Josephus adds an explanation of this rule. What he says with regard to the credibility of women is personal opinion of his own found neither in the Bible nor, properly speaking, in rabbinic tradition.

In Jewish talmudic law there are precise cases where a woman's testimony is required. She alone is competent in cases involving a custom or an event located in a place frequented by women only. She is competentalso in matters appertaining to female purity, and in cases of identification, above all those involving members of the female sex!? When a husband dies abroad in his wife's presence, the wife can witness in her own country to her husband's death; she can remarry. On this point the Mishnah states that the school of Hillel is in line with the views of Shammai (Eduy. 1. 12).

With regard to the Mishnah and the Talmud the question is not one of knowing whether by their nature women are or are not worthy of credibility, but whether they are or are not in specific cases qualified witnesses. The majority of texts deal with witness for the prosecution or the defence, according to Leviticus 5:1 (the obligation to testify) and Deuteronomy 19:15 (« A single witness shall not prevail ... only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sustained. »). According to the Mishnah (Shev. 4. /-3), the wife, parents and those whose testimony is unreliable are not obliged to inform about serious offences or to testify in legal actions. A woman is not guilty of perjury when she refuses to testify, saying: a Amen, I know nothing! »

Who are the suspects, the pesulin?" . . . a dice-player, a usurer, pigeon-flyers, or traffickers in Seventh Year produce Y, (Sanh. 3. 3).

With regard to the obligation of witnessing, the following distinctions are made: the private sector (« woman »), kinship, and those whose testimony is unreliable. We see in these texts a respect for private life and family relationships. The talmudic tractate Shevu'ot 30a declares in ,the same spirit that to testify before a court is not according to the nature (the dignity) of woman, since, according to Psalm 45:13, a the princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes. »

Besides the Mishnah, which is the basic text, there are others, more recent, which treat of the credibility of women in disputed cases. It is here stated that women are not among those qualified (kosher) to act as witnesses for the prosecution (see Sifrei to Deut. 5 190, on Deut. 19:17) because the Bible is here held to be speaking of men alone. In Bava Kamma 88a it is said that what holds for women holds a fortiori for slaves (rule taken from the Mishnah Rosh Hashanah I. 8; see below). Why cannot women testify in law suits? The Mishnah speaks of the obligation as one from which she can withdraw, but here she is refused a right. The reason for this is clear: in ancient law women, like minors and slaves, were not sui earls. It is interesting to note in a still later text another explanation in the line of Flavius Josephus. It is from the midrashic collection of Simeon (Yalkut Shimoni I. 82) where the inability of women to testify is explained by Genesis 18:15, the lie of Sarah.

Besides these cases of litigation there are texts that deal with witness in the sense of an attestation. We have already noted the cases where an attestation by a woman is accepted. In others it is not accepted, for example where the new moon is concerned. See the Mishnah Rosh Hashanah I. 8. The statement of a woman on the exact moment of the apparition of the new moon cannot be admitted; nor can that of a slave. a This is the general rule: any evidence that a woman is not eligible to bring [en ha-isha keshera] these [i.e.slaves] are not eligible to bring » (Rosh Hash. 1. 8).

Again, as in the case of Shevu'ot 4. 1-3 (the obligation to inform) the unqualified woman is distinguished from those who are suspect. To say that women are not qualified does not therefore mean that they are suspect. Women cannot make a statement about the new moon because they are busy with household duties. The slave also is not free to observe the sky. It goes without saying that no witness can be accepted from suspects.

* * *

Far from being a caricature, a hardening of the religious life of Israel or an obstacle to it, the Pharisees as they appear in the rabbinic texts issuing from their milieu are a dynamic factor in line with biblical tradition. Compared with the ultra-conservatism of the Sadducees, their supple fidelity to the Torah, deep sense of continuity in evolution, social understanding, and faith in the potential of the laity enabled their movement to surmount the dangers that threatened the survival of the Jewish people in the exile and in the dispersion. Through these qualities they became the fathers of present-day Judaism to such an extent that Pharisaism and Judaism are practically synonymous.

It is only by replacing Pharisaism in its historic and traditional context — the Bible and rabbinic tradition —that the character of the anti-pharisaic gospel texts can be judged. This character is both apologetic and strictly limited by time and place.

How could a Christian, as such, judge of a woman in Judaism *, « the Pharisees of Jesus' time*, a rabbinic Judaism* without recalling the Lord's words: « Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone* (Jn. 8:7)?