Liberal Pharisees?

The quote below is one I lifted from the American Politics forum:


While I could provisionally agree that what the Pharisees were teaching at the time of Christ wasn't the ol' time religion that was good enough for Moishe, simply given the fact that traditions had been established to such a degree that someone who challenged the ruling order (such as Jesus) could be killed for doing so, (with the compliciency of the Roman overlords), relgates those in charge as the Powers That Be.

Now, back when I was a lad I had a short argument with an elder, the nature of this argument was as follows.
We had been discussing the nature of the Soviet Union's rapidly aging leadership, Breznev didn't look so good, etc.
I asserted that a "left-wing" underling could bring the USSR back towards a capitalist system given that the (then) current leadership were beginning to die off.
My elder scolded me lightly and tried to tell me that "see, 'left-wing' would be the ruling Soviet worldview!"
"Right, according to our perpective...acording to the internal politics of the USSR the capitalist is the 'left-winger.'
Alas we never finished our lesson, there was free beer to be drunk.


SO...
Were the Phraisees wilid liberals touncing the edicts of the LORD, trumping the Law with tradition?
Or were they the ruling elite taking care of the people of God by taking care that their systems didnt upset the new bosses in town?

Being non-religious i don't know much about the Phraisees.
But my general rule when it comes to beliefs and practices:
People who want to keep things the way they have been traditionally are normally considered right wing politically, and conservative.

As for the soviet union, they were very keen on their "liberating the working class" idea, working their way towards a classless society, so i'm pretty sure they at least considered themselves liberal.
I'm not sure at what point this direction would be considered the political norm and thus the right wing.
Considering their totalitarian leanings, a group wishing to liberate the people from such could also be considered liberal...
Gah this is confusing. And i'm sure i have no idea what i'm talking about...

Oh, err....next poster!
Nothing to see here.

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Why would one think that everything should map simply onto American political terms?

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Comparatively they wouldn't be liberal - I wouldn't call them conservative either, though I could find plenty of conservatives who fit the mark. But liberals are proudly progressive, and Pharisee's were certainly not that. Rather they prided themselves on upholding tradition - they just only did it for political purposes. So actually yeah, they kind of fit conservatives to a tee...

A bunch of ignorant, out of touch, uncaring people concerned only for their own interests and who were convinced their own Biblical interpretation was true and that everyone had to obey it.

Yup, that's liberals for ya

Some righties are remarkably good at adapting mud to stick to more surfaces than originally intended, I'll give them that much.

Pharisees are bad, liberals are bad, therefore, quite obviously, Pharisees are liberals.

"That's logic", as Tweedledee said.

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Two different political discussions completely, so the analogy fails.

The Pharisees existed within the context of a very nationalistic culture under occupation by the Roman government. Some viewed the occupation as an evil that needed to eliminated by any means necessary (the Zealots). Some viewed the occupation as a worldly political matter that should just be ignored (the Essenes). Some viewed the occupation as neither good nor bad, but as a political system to be exploited (the Sadducees). And, then the Pharisees viewed the occupation as a rightful judgment on the Israelite people for tolerating "sinners".

We live in a very different political context. But, we still have those among us who tend to blame all of society's problems on "tolerance" and "immorality". Generally, these people are not what we would call liberals. But, this is certainly not representative of all conservatives either.

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I tend to think of them as conservative because of them sticking to the letter of the law of their interpretation of scripture. It is 'what do the rules tell us' rather than 'what do the rules teach us' or 'why are the rules the rules'. But I'm biased and could be wrong.

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It's difficult to use modern terms for them. The Pharisees had several characteristics:

* They accepted an oral tradition that supplemented the law
* They wanted to maintain separation from "worldly" influences
* They tended to be intolerant of common people who were unable to keep all of their laws
* They were very focused on purity. Jesus cared about what you do, but that's not quite the same thing.

In many ways the Pharisees were the descendants of the Maccabees, and indeed of the approach described in Ezra and Nehemiah.

In many ways modern conservatives are closer:

* They tend to feel very strongly about things whose actual Biblical basis is dubious: abortion, masturbation, inerrancy.
* They tend to emphasize separation from "the world."
* They tend to be intolerant of people they consider immoral
* They tend to see sexual and other ethics in terms of purity

Jesus opposed all of these things in both 1st Cent and modern contexts.

The Sadducees were the ones more open to more "modern" influences. They were seen by Pharisees as having given in the culture, just as liberals are viewed now by conservatives. Of course the Sadducees were also tied up with Rome, which tended to produce the impression of corruption. I don't know enough about 1st Cent Judaism to know whether there were non-corrupt "liberals" or not.

Both modern liberals and conservatives have been tied up with US politics in ways that could compromise their witness.

It's easy to get the impression from the NT that Pharisees were bad people. By and large they were not. They tended to be well thought of. People respected their focus on obeying God's law. Jesus' objection wasn't to intentional hypocrisy in the modern sense. As far as I can tell he objected to the unnecessary demands that they made on people for legalistic righteousness, and to the barrier they created between themselves and "sinners." This was hypocrisy in the sense that they were making demands than God didn't make, and that no one, even they, could possibly carry out. That's not what we typically mean when we call someone a hypocrite.