The Connection Between the Pharisees and Present Day Talmudic Judaism

Posted : 24 Sep, 2012 05:44 AM

The Connection Between the Pharisees and Present Day Talmudic Judaism



24 Sep 2012



The New Testament has a lot to say about the Pharisees, and about the Jews of

Christ's era. Jesus Christ says in Matthew 16: 6, 11-12, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees........

How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees."





In Mark 8: 15 Christ says " And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod."



In John 8: 44 Christ tells the Pharisees "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."



In Matthew 23: 33 Jesus says "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"



The spirit of the Pharisees of Christ's time remain in the religious leaders of our time. There are also the followers of the modern day Pharisees. These followers are the scorpions seen in Ezekiel 2: 3-6 where they are said to be rebellious against the Lord and are impudent children. In Revelation 9: 1-5 they are metaphorically identified as locusts, who come up out of the bottomless pit that has been opened. Locusts are huge in numbers and prey upon the earth. Also metaphorically called scorpions, they have not been given power to kill, but they have power to torment. Applying Paul's teaching in I Corinthians 10: 11, that things in the old timeline can serve as examples of things to come at the ends of the world, we can see that the serpents have power to kill, as they caused Jesus to be killed. We can say that the Pharisees, or serpents, represent Death, while the lucust-scorpions represent torment, or Hell.



But Luke records that Jesus Christ said "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." Luke 10: 19



However, we have to go to sources other than the Old or New Testaments for

information on the relationship of the

Pharisees to modern day Talmudic Judaism.



The issue of the tie between the religion of the Pharisees of Christ's

time and present day Talmudic Judaism is very relevant to the starting

postulate of Christian Zionism which says that All Physical Israel, or All Jews,

now remain the people of God, even the chosen people, alongside

another Body of Christ,

the "church."



"And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon

her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not

my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God."

Hosea 2: 23



Starting in II Kings 21: 13, then moving to Isaiah 29: 16, which

points to the parable of the potter of Jeremiah 18: 1-6, there is in

the Old Testament a thread of prophecy about the coming transformation

of physical Israel to what Peter in I Peter 2: 5-9 calls a spiritual

house. Hosea 2: 23 is one part of this thread on the transformation of

Israel. God said in the Old Testament that he was going to bring

non-Jews into his kingdom.



Then Paul in Romans 9: 23-26 says "And that he might make known the

riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore

prepared unto glory,

24. Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of

the Gentiles?

25. As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were

not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. 26. And it

shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye

are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the

living God."



In the transformation of physical Israel to a spiritual house,

Gentiles were to be included.



But in that transformation there is only one Body of Christ, not two.

Christ says in John 10: 16, "...there shall be one fold and one

shepherd." Galatians 3: 28 states that the people who are in Christ

are not divided by race or by sex, but are one in Christ.



The majority of physical Israel rejected Christ and in Romans 11: 15,

17, 20 were cast away and broken off. Peter says in Acts 3: 23 that

"...every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed

from among the people.' By "that prophet" Peter is talking about the

prophecy of Deuteronomy 18: 15-20, that God will raise up a prophet

like Moses, a flesh and blood man, but also like God, who is fully

God. Deuteronomy 18: 19 says "...whosoever will nopt hearken unto my

words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him."



This prophet, who is to be flesh and blood like Moses, but also like

God, was to lead that transformation of Israel which the parable of

the potter in Jeremiah 18: 1-6 predicts.



That does not leave the majority of physical Israel who rejected that

prophet in a very good position. But Christian Zionism or

dispensationalism, says All Physical Israel remain God's chosen

people.



The false doctrine of the dispensationalists that physical Israel

remains God's people and

the "church" is also a people of God, which can never be Israel needs

to be refuted annd whown

to be wrong. Otherwise, we are not in love with the truth of Jesus Christ.



In his book, Dispensationalism (1966), Charles Ryrie says "The

essence of Dispensationalism, then, is the distinction between Israel

and the church." (page 3, "Dispensationalism")



J. Dwight Pentecost is another dispensationalist theologian who in his

book Things To Come ( 1965) says "The church

and Israel are two distinct groups with whom God has a divine plan.

The church is a mystery, unrevealed in the Old Testament. (page 193,

J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come, Zondervan, 1965).



The dispensationalists say that Israel must always be physical Israel,

i.e., the Jews, in the Bible.



On http://www.come-and-hear.com/dilling/chapt01.html



they say "the missing link in Christian understanding on the subject

of "Pharisees" is best supplied by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia

(1943): The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent,

without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their

leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous

extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud

is the largest and most important single piece of that literature �

and the study of it is essential for any real understanding of

Pharisaism.



Concerning the Pharisees, the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia says: With

the destruction of the Temple (70 A.D.) the Sadducees disappeared

altogether, leaving the regulation of all Jewish affairs in the hands

of the Pharisees. Henceforth, Jewish life was regulated by the

Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the

Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin

of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older priestly

tradition (Abot 1:1). Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and

the life and thought of the Jew for all the future."



"Rabbi Louis Finklestein was chosen in 1937 by the Kehillas (Jewish

communities) of the World as one of the top 120 Jews best representing

"a lamp of Judaism" to the World...In his two-volume work "The

Pharisees." Rabbi Finklestein writes: Pharasaism became Talmudism �

But the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. When the

Jew � studies the Talmud, he is actually repeating the arguments used

in the Palestinian academies. From Palestine to Babylonia; from

Babylonia to North Africa, Italy. Spain, France and Germany; from

these to Poland. Russia and Eastern Europe generally, ancient

Pharasaism has wandered."



"In Rabbi Finklestein's history of the Jews, he states: The Talmud

derives its authority from the position held by the ancient academies.

(i.e. Pharisee) The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and

of Palestine. were considered the rightful successors of the older

Sanhedrin . . . At the present time, the Jewish people have no living

central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrins or

the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish

religion must be based on the Talmud as the final resum� of the

teaching of those authorities when they existed. [page 2] (The Jews

� Their History, Culture, and Religion , Vol. 4, p. 1332, Jewish

Publication Society of America, 1949). "



"Note the Foreword to the first English translation of the Babylonian

Talmud by the late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, J.H. Hertz, who, like

Rabbi Finklestein, was one of the 120 Jews chosen in 1937 by the

Kehillas of the World as best holding up the "lamp of Judaism:" The

beginnings of Talmudic literature date back to the time of the

Babylonian Exile in the Sixth pre-Christian Century � When a thousand

years later, the Babylonian Talmud assumed final codified form in the

year 500 after the Christian era, the Roman Western Empire had ceased

to be."



In Christ's time the Pharisees were the leaders of most of the Jews.

There were a small number

of Jews who were faithful to the Lord, such as the two mentioned in

Luke 2: 25 and 2: 36, Simeon and

Anna, and others. In modern times, as the sources quoted above say,

Talmudic Judaism is derived from

the religion of the Pharisees of the First Century.



The important question is which group of Jews are the

dispensationalists referring to as Israel and the Jews? Is

it the Talmudic Jews who follow the Pharisees, or is it that very

small Remnant of Jews who were faithful to God during the period

Christ was on earth?



The dispensationalists are referring to All Jews, not just the small

number who accepted Christ.

Post Reply