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Pharisaios

Φαρισαῖος

GreekG5330“Pharisee”

Appears 101 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 3:7Mat 5:20Mat 9:11Mat 9:14Mat 9:34Mat 12:2Mat 12:14Mat 12:24Mat 12:38Mat 15:1Mat 15:12Mat 16:1Mat 16:6Mat 16:11Mat 16:12Mat 19:3Mat 21:45Mat 22:15Mat 22:41Mat 23:13Mat 23:14Mat 23:15Mat 23:23Mat 23:25Mat 23:26Mat 23:27Mat 23:29Mat 27:41Mrk 2:16Mrk 2:18Mrk 8:15Mrk 12:13Luk 7:36Luk 7:37Luk 7:39Luk 11:37Luk 11:38Luk 11:42Luk 11:43Luk 11:44Luk 14:3Luk 18:10Luk 18:11Jhn 7:45Jhn 9:13Jhn 11:46Jhn 12:42Act 5:34Act 23:6Act 26:5
Word studyResearch-gradefar-ih-SAH-yosnoun

What Pharisaios means

a Pharisee: a member of a Jewish religious party known for careful keeping of the law and the handed-down traditions of the elders

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The Pharisees were one of the main religious parties within Judaism in Jesus' day. The New Testament itself calls them a school or party (Acts 15:5; 26:5), much as we might speak of a movement within a religion today. They were known above all for taking the law seriously and for keeping a body of inherited rules, what the Gospels call the tradition of the elders (Mark 7:3; Matthew 15:2): rules about washing, tithing, the Sabbath, and ritual purity. Unlike the priestly party of the Sadducees (Σαδδουκαῖος), the Pharisees believed in a coming resurrection of the dead and in angels and spirits (Acts 23:8).

The name almost certainly comes from a Semitic word meaning "the separated or set-apart ones." Whether that separation was a proud badge they chose for themselves, a marker of being set apart for holiness, or an insult thrown at them by opponents, the sources no longer let us decide. A respected modern proposal reads the name instead as the precise interpreters, those who give the exact meaning of the law, since their own admirers and critics alike describe them as sticklers for getting the law right.

The word names one group, but the way each New Testament writer paints them differs sharply, and the reader has to hold two things at once. Behind the text stands the actual party of Jesus' time: a popular, learned lay movement of perhaps a few thousand committed men, centered in Jerusalem, often closer to Jesus in belief than any other group. In front of the text stands the writer's own later situation, a generation or more after the events, when the followers of Jesus and the heirs of the Pharisees had become rivals. The Gospels were written in the heat of that rivalry, which is why the portrait can be so hostile. Matthew's famous series of woes, where Jesus calls them hypocrites and blind guides (Matthew 23), is the sharpest example. Yet the same writers also show Pharisees:

  • inviting Jesus to dinner (Luke 7:36)
  • warning him of danger (Luke 13:31)
  • defending his followers (Acts 5:34; 23:9)

The most reliable single fact we have is Paul's own statement that he himself was a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5).

Mat 3:7Mat 5:20Mat 9:11Mat 9:14Mat 9:34Mat 12:2Mat 12:14Mat 12:24Mat 12:38Mat 15:1Mat 15:12Mat 16:1

What scholars say about Pharisaios

Modern lexicography is virtually unanimous in deriving Φαρισαῖος, via the Aramaic emphatic plural pərîšayyâ, from the Semitic root prš "to separate, set apart" (BDAG; TDNT IX, the Meyer-Weiss article; EDNT; HALOT; Louw-Nida). The Aramaic intermediary is required morphologically, since Hebrew pərûšîm alone would not yield the Greek form (Meyer-Weiss; Dalman). The root spans both "separate" and "specify, declare precisely," and the open question is which nuance underlies the name. T. W. Manson's "Persianizer" hypothesis is now generally rejected; the "interpreters/expounders" derivation (Graetz, Leszynsky, Rivkin) faces the objection that it would call for an active rather than passive form. Whether the name began as a hostile label (Schurer-Vermes-Millar; Lauterbach; Urbach) or a positive self-claim of separation for holiness, Leviticus 20:26 (Baeck; Jeremias), is treated as undecidable by Saldarini and Stemberger. The watershed proposal is Albert Baumgarten's "The Name of the Pharisees," JBL 102 (1983), 411-28, which correlates the name with Josephus's repeated description of the Pharisees as the party of akribeia ("precision") and argues for a Pharisaic self-understanding as "the specifiers." The word is absent from the Septuagint, since the party emerges only c. 150 BCE. The NT itself classifies the Pharisees as a hairesis, a school or party (Acts 15:5; 26:5), matching Josephus, who treats them as one of the Jewish philosophical schools and gives the only ancient figure for their size, "more than 6,000" (Ant. 17.42). Steve Mason's Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (1991) reshaped the reading of Josephus, arguing he was not himself a Pharisee and was consistently hostile to them. The Qumran scrolls never name the Pharisees but target them under sobriquets, above all "the seekers of smooth things," and 4QMMT (with Sussmann's analysis, Tarbiz 59) supplies the most independent confirmation that a recognizable Pharisaic legal system existed already in the late second century BCE. On the historical reconstruction, Anthony Saldarini's retainer-class model (Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees, 1988) is now the most widely cited working hypothesis. The defining late-twentieth-century debate set E. P. Sanders, who portrayed the Pharisees as a small, respected, but politically marginal current within a broadly shared Judaism, against Jacob Neusner's table-fellowship reconstruction and against Hengel and Deines, who insisted the Pharisees were the formative religious movement of their period. On the Gospels, the dominant trend reads the sharpest anti-Pharisaic passages (Matthew 23; the Johannine pairing of Pharisees with chief priests) as reflecting a later conflict between the evangelists' communities and proto-rabbinic Judaism, projected back onto Jesus' ministry (Saldarini; Luz; Overman; Martyn; von Wahlde). Paul's first-person "according to the law, a Pharisee" (Philippians 3:5) remains the single most secure piece of evidence we possess for what a Pharisee was.

Where scholars disagree about Pharisaios

What the name "Pharisee" originally meant and whether it began as a proud self-description or a hostile label.

  • contestedIt comes from a Semitic word for "the separated ones" and began as an insult, "separatists," applied by opponents and only later worn as a badge.; E. Schurer, G. Vermes, and F. Millar, The History of the Jewish People, vol. 2 (1979), pp. 396-398; E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (1975), p. 574
  • contestedIt was a positive self-claim, "set apart for holiness" in the sense of Leviticus 20:26, taken up by the group itself.; Leo Baeck, Die Pharisaer (1934)
  • contestedThe name is best read as "the specifiers / precise interpreters," matching Josephus's repeated description of the Pharisees as the party of precision in the law.; Albert I. Baumgarten, "The Name of the Pharisees," JBL 102 (1983), pp. 411-428

How much the Gospels' often hostile portrait of the Pharisees reflects the historical party of Jesus' day versus a later conflict between the early church and the Pharisees' heirs.

  • majorityThe sharpest attacks (especially Matthew 23 and the Johannine "chief priests and Pharisees") largely reflect a conflict a generation or more after Jesus, between the evangelists' communities and the surviving Pharisaic-rabbinic leadership, read back onto Jesus' ministry.; Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community (1994); J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (2003); Ulrich Luz, Matthew, Hermeneia (1989-2005)
  • minorityThe Gospel portrait substantially preserves real conflict between Jesus and the historical Pharisees, even where it has been sharpened in the telling.; Martin Hengel and Roland Deines, "E. P. Sanders' 'Common Judaism,' Jesus, and the Pharisees," JTS n.s. 46 (1995), pp. 1-70

How influential the Pharisees actually were in Jesus' day.

  • contestedThey were a small (about 6,000), respected, but politically marginal party, one current within a broadly shared common Judaism; the priestly aristocracy, not the Pharisees, ran the Temple and the courts.; E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE (1992)
  • contestedThey were the fundamental and formative religious movement within the Judaism of their period, with broad popular influence.; Martin Hengel and Roland Deines, "E. P. Sanders' 'Common Judaism,' Jesus, and the Pharisees," JTS n.s. 46 (1995), pp. 1-70; Roland Deines, Die Pharisaer, WUNT 101 (1997)
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. Φαρισαῖοςlexicon
  • R. Meyer and H.-F. Weiss, "Φαρισαῖος," in TDNT, vol. IX (1974), pp. 11-48theological-dictionary
  • H. Balz and G. Schneider, eds., EDNT, s.v. Φαρισαῖοςtheological-dictionary
  • Albert I. Baumgarten, "The Name of the Pharisees," JBL 102 (1983), pp. 411-428article
  • Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (1988)monograph
  • Anthony J. Saldarini, "Pharisees," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5 (1992)theological-dictionary
  • E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE (1992)monograph
  • E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (1990)monograph
  • Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism (1973)monograph
  • Martin Hengel and Roland Deines, "E. P. Sanders' 'Common Judaism,' Jesus, and the Pharisees," JTS n.s. 46 (1995), pp. 1-70article
  • Roland Deines, Die Pharisaer, WUNT 101 (1997)monograph
  • Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study, Brill (1991)monograph
  • Gunter Stemberger, Jewish Contemporaries of Jesus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes (1995)monograph
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew, Hermeneia (1989-2005)commentary
  • J. Andrew Overman, Matthew's Gospel and Formative Judaism (1990)monograph
  • J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (2003)monograph
  • Urban C. von Wahlde, "The Terms for Religious Authorities in the Fourth Gospel," JBL 98 (1979), pp. 231-253article
  • Shaye J. D. Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism," HUCA 55 (1984), pp. 27-53article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of Φαρισαῖος

nominative m p

Φαρισαῖοι

Mat 9:11, Mat 9:14, Mat 9:34, Mat 12:2, Mat 12:14, Mat 12:24, Mat 15:1, Mat 15:12

genitive m p

Φαρισαίων

Mat 3:7, Mat 5:20, Mat 12:38, Mat 16:6, Mat 16:11, Mat 16:12, Mat 22:41, Mat 27:41

nominative m s

Φαρισαῖος, Φαρισαῖός

Luk 7:39, Luk 11:37, Luk 11:38, Luk 18:10, Luk 18:11, Act 5:34, Act 26:5, Php 3:5

vocative m p

Φαρισαῖοι

Mat 23:13, Mat 23:14, Mat 23:15, Mat 23:23, Mat 23:25, Mat 23:27, Mat 23:29, Luk 11:44

accusative m p

Φαρισαίους

Luk 14:3, Jhn 7:45, Jhn 9:13, Jhn 11:46, Jhn 12:42

dative m p

Φαρισαίοις

Luk 11:42, Luk 11:43

genitive m s

Φαρισαίου

Luk 7:36, Luk 7:37

vocative m s

Φαρισαῖε

Mat 23:26