Dr. Helen Bond

then probably some of these people from cities are hearing about it.

And I think it's very likely that the Pharisees would have been interested in Jesus, you know, not necessarily in a negative way to start with, but, you know, oh, here's a holy man.

You know, he's got some ideas about the text.

Let's go and hear what he has to say.

And, you know, robust debates, as would have been common.

I think where you have to be much more careful with the Gospels is this idea that the Pharisees were out to get him from the start.

Certainly in Mark's Gospel and repeated in the others, really early on, we're told the Pharisees and the Herodians met together to talk about how to kill him.

This is in chapter three.

So, you know, really early on, as if they hear him, they oppose him, they don't like him and they just want to kill him.

And I think you have to be very careful about that.

But I think the idea that the Pharisees came and they chatted and they debated things with him, this is what they did.

This is what they were interested in.

This is probably what Jesus is also interested in, debating the meaning of Scripture.

I think where you need to be careful, though, is that when you're looking at the Gospels, it's during Jesus's ministry that he has these robust debates with Pharisees.

When he goes to Jerusalem and when he's arrested and passed over to Pilate,

That is exclusively by the high priests and the priestly aristocracy, the establishment in Jerusalem.

So maybe the scribes and elders of the people, but the Pharisees are not part of that.

Yeah, exactly.

And the even worse thing to say is that, you know, the Jews are passing Jesus over.

It's one particular group, the high priestly establishment, whose job it is really to make sure that everything is running smoothly, that there's no troublemakers doing things in the temple.