Tristan Hughes

No, and it harkens back to what we were saying earlier, you know, how mysterious these people are.

And I appreciate I'm pushing, I'm prodding.

It's just the difficulties of then, if I was to ask, how powerful and how prominent do you think, how popular do you think the Pharisees were by the time we get to the birth of Jesus, the time of Jesus, and the time that the Romans are entering onto the stage in Judea too?

And timeline-wise, so Seleucids, then Hasmoneans, then Herodians, and then the Romans.

That's how we should be thinking.

That's the kind of timeline.

A really interesting point to highlight here, Helen, how some 2,000 years ago in Judea, in that region, there were a lot of people who believed that there would be this messianic figure arriving.

And then were there quite a few people who claimed to be this messiah figure at the time?

So giving us the context in which the story of the Pharisees and Jesus is in, probably at the time, Jesus isn't the only one who has these claims coming forwards.

It's interesting to think whether the Pharisees between themselves would have had debates around that at the same time, you know, kind of

Well, which one is more like the one that we're expecting almost, if you know what I mean?

Just before we get into that whole key story of the Pharisees in the New Testament, I'd like to ask about potential struggles between the Pharisees and those other key sects, those groups that you mentioned already, the Sadducees and the Essenes, for instance.

Can we imagine rooms full of these different sects and them having struggles trying to dictate policy as it is in Judea around the time of Jesus and before then?

Is that council that you highlighted there, is that what's commonly referred to as the Sanhedrin?

I'm so glad you've mentioned all that, Helen, because my next question was going to be any sense of how cooperative the Pharisees would have been with the Romans, especially if it's a time when their influence probably is waning, where it's the time of the strong men of the governors and so on, when the Romans come in and say, we want this.

Can you use your influence to make this happen?

And so Caiaphas, the high priest in the gospel, was Helen.

He's not a Pharisee.

He is a Sadducee.

Well, Helen, let's explore some of the key episodes between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels.