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<\/div>\n

In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, \u201cWe are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

There you have a quintessentially view of a Pharisee<\/span>, someone who both believes in the Torah and who believes its meaning is determined by its interpretive tradition. On the other hand, a Sadducee<\/span> would simply say, to use Chief Hughes\u2019 terms, \u201cWe are under a Constitution.\u201d We don\u2019t need an interpretive tradition for we need only to seek out the original intent.<\/p>\n

Pharisees were judicial activists; Sadducees were judicial conservationists.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the Pharisees built up a body of interpretive tradition, which today is called the Mishnah<\/span> and the Tosefta<\/span>, with an even larger body of anecdotal reflection in the Babylonian Talmud<\/span> and the Jerusalem Talmud<\/span>. At the time of Jesus this interpretive tradition was merely oral tradition, but it carried the day.<\/p>\n

So, this permits us to see the Pharisees as those who both believed in the Torah but who knew it needed interpretation, applications, and it needed to do so along careful lines of thought and procedure.<\/p>\n

If you want to use the terms of today, then the Sadducees were the political conservatives and the Pharisees the political liberals \u2014 in the legal sense (both were conservative morally).<\/p>\n

Jesus agreed with neither? Where would you put him in the first century legal struggle of \u201chow do we live under the Torah<\/span>?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, \u201cWe are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.\u201d There you have a quintessentially view of a Pharisee, someone who both believes in the Torah and who believes its meaning is determined by its interpretive tradition. On the other hand, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1739],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharisees"],"yoast_head":"\nOnce more on the Pharisees<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is."There you have a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Once more on the Pharisees\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is."There you have a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-06-30T09:53:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/\",\"name\":\"Once more on the Pharisees\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2005-06-30T09:53:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2005-06-30T09:53:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, \\\"We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.\\\"There you have a\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/06\/30\/once-more-on-the-pharisees\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Once more on the Pharisees\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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