Richard A. Horsley

Understanding of the Pharisees and other scribal groups in the late Second-Temple era has been obscured by the imposition of synthetic constructs of (early) Judaism in the fields of biblical studies and ancient Jewish history. Similarly, the conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus has been obscured and distorted by the continuing imposition of the synthetic constructs of (early) Judaism and (early) Christianity.
When the early Hasmoneans restored the temple-state in Judea, the Pharisees stepped into the role of scribes as their intimate advisers. The Pharisees' principal concern was for the operation of the temple-state according to its politeia, the covenantal laws/customs of the temple-state. In their political practice this meant active opposition to and by expansionist Hasmonean high priests such as John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus and their mercenary troops. Far from having withdrawn from political life, they managed to consolidate their authority as the intellectual-legal "retainers" of the temple-state under Alexandra Salome. In the increasing breakdown of political-economic order under more direct Roman rule through the high priests, the Pharisees evidently managed to become ever more influential in the temple-state as leading high priestly figures became ever more complicitous in Roman rule. After the Roman destruction of the Judean temple-state there is little or no evidence of the Pharisees playing any role in the politics of Roman Palestine.

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