Dr. Helen Bond

So yeah, and I think it's not helped by the fact that there's all sorts of different ideas about what is the Messiah going to be like.

So it's such a broad brief that a lot of people are going to fit into this.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's slightly later than our period, but in 135, there's the Bar-Kobar rebellion in Judea.

And the Pharisees did actually hail him as a Messiah, or at least the rabbis who are possibly linked with the Pharisees from earlier on.

And I think one of the things too that we need to realize is that when we look at the Gospels and there's all of this kind of

wrangling over what does this mean?

What does that mean?

And intense debate.

I think that's probably quite like what the Pharisees themselves were doing.

They are debating often quite heatedly about what does this passage mean?

What does that one mean?

Is this person the Messiah?

Can we get behind him?

There's all of this debate going on and that's quite normal.

in this sort of Eastern Mediterranean society.

The problem is when it gets written down in a gospel and it's also negative as we have it now that we tend to think that they're these sort of narrow-minded bigots.

In fact, I mean, people have even suggested whether Jesus himself was a Pharisee

because of his interest in the law, interpretation, that kind of thing, messiahship, resurrection, you know, he's sort of ticking all the boxes, really, small boxes, though they might be.

I don't think most people would think that, you know, Jesus seems sort of socially very different to the Pharisees, but there are links.

Well, I don't think they have much say in policy.