| <head><hi rend="italic">A. Schlatter: The Pharisees as Rabbis/Sages in Politics</hi></head><p>In 1856 Paret had argued that the identification of Josephus as a Pharisee would enhance the usefulness of his writings for<hi rend="italic">Religionsgeschichte</hi>. Some seventy-five years later, A. Schlatter exploited that identification. For him, Josephus was a Pharisee and, as such:</p><p><q>zeigt uns in griechisches Denken und griechische Rede gefassten Pharisäismus und führt uns damit zu derjenigen Bewegung im Judentum, die die Herrschaft über ganze Judenschaft. . . erlangt hat.<note id="p1_c2_n74" place="foot">A. Schlatter,<hi rend="italic">Die Theologie des Judentums nach dem Bericht des Josefus</hi>(Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1932), V. Cf. also his<hi rend="italic">Der Bericht über das Ende Jerusalems: ein Dialog mit Wilhelm Weber</hi>(Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1923), 38.</note></q></p><p>By and large, Schlatter's<hi rend="italic">Theologie des Judentums</hi>(1932) presupposed Josephus's Pharisaic allegiance;<note id="p1_c2_n75" place="foot">75 Schlatter occasionally points out ideas of Josephus that seem to him Pharisaic (cf. pp. 62, 210f.) but he offers no systematic treatment of the question; nor does he explain how he knows such ideas to be distinctively Pharisaic.</note>that allegiance was what bestowed special importance on Josephus for Schlatter. In discussing Josephus's portrayal of the Pharisees, Schlatter wanted, first, to show how the Pharisee Josephus could have written the material as it stands and, second, to discover what that material teaches about the Pharisees.</p><p>On the former point, Schlatter proposed that Josephus's Pharisees were early representatives of rabbinic religion.<note id="p1_c2_n76" place="foot">Ibid., 198-199.</note>That was clear to him because various persons identified as Pharisees by Josephus—such as those who came to power under Queen Alexandra, the teachers Pollion and Samaias, and Simeon ben Gamaliel<note id="p1_c2_n77" place="foot">Cf.<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:110f.;<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>15:3;<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>191.</note>—are known from the Talmud. Yet, Schlatter noted, Josephus displays a strong antipathy ("eine kräftige Abneigung") toward most of these figures. How can this be explained, given that Josephus was a Pharisee?</p><p>Schlatter answered on three levels. First, Josephus's coolness toward the Pharisees is due in part to his objectivity as a historian. This accounts, Schlatter believed, for his detached portrayal of the Pharisees as<pb n="31" />but one<span class="greek">αἵρεσις</span>among many.<note id="p1_c2_n78" place="foot">Schlatter,<hi rend="italic">Theologie</hi>, 196.</note>Second, Schlatter held that much of Josephus's Pharisee material came from the pagan Nicolaus of Damascus, whom Josephus allowed to determine not only the content (<hi rend="italic">Begrenzung</hi>) but also the nuance (<hi rend="italic">Färbung</hi>) of his presentation.<note id="p1_c2_n79" place="foot">Ibid., 201f.</note>Nevertheless, according to Schlatter, Josephus himself snubs the<hi rend="italic">Rabbinat</hi>by (a) failing to name his own teacher, in violation of rabbinic protocol, (b) failing to mention the "rabbinic" leaders in the Galilee during the period of his administration there, although they must have played an important role, and (c) undertaking a full defence of Judaism, in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="Against Apion">Ag.Ap.</span></hi>, without once mentioning the rabbinic leaders who controlled Judaism at the end of the first century.<note id="p1_c2_n80" place="foot">Ibid., 202.</note>Josephus's own anti-rabbinic attitude, therefore, calls for an explanation.</p><p>Schlatter suggested that Josephus's use of the name "Pharisees" for the rabbis, rather than "sages/<span class="greek">σοφισταί</span>", indicated that his dispute with them was political and not religious.<note id="p1_c2_n81" place="foot">Ibid., 203-204.</note>That is, Josephus revered the rabbis as such, in their religious and teaching functions, and commended their exegesis of the laws.<note id="p1_c2_n82" place="foot">Cf.<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:110, 649;<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>17:149, 216.</note>Their (alleged) hostility toward Rome, however, was a frustration to Josephus's own efforts at<hi rend="italic">rapprochement</hi>: "Sein eigenes politisches Ziel machte ihn zum Gegner der Rabbinen; denn diese lehnten die von J. gewünschte Versöhnung mit Rom ab."<note id="p1_c2_n83" place="foot">Ibid., 203.</note>Thus Josephus was committed to Pharisaic-rabbinic religion; he portrayed his fellow-Pharisees in a negative light only because of their troublesome political stance.</p><p>Having explained Josephus's unfavourable presentation of the Pharisees by these means, Schlatter asked what could be learned objectively about the Pharisees from Josephus's narative, which is after all the account of an insider. He discovered:<note id="p1_c2_n84" place="foot">Ibid., 205-208.</note>(a) that the Pharisees' goal always appears as<span class="greek">ἀϰρίβεια</span>, exactitude or precision in the laws; (b) that this striving after the laws included adherence to the "traditions of the fathers"; (c) that, in order to keep the tradition alive, the Pharisees sponsored a vigorous programme of education;<note id="p1_c2_n85" place="foot">Cf. the references to "disciples" or "students" at<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:649;<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>13:289; 15:3; 17:149.</note>(d) that their teachers occurred in pairs, which reflects their self-understanding as tradents<pb n="32" />rather than as individual innovators;<note id="p1_c2_n86" place="foot">Cf. Pollion and Samaias and the two scholars who urged the removal of the eagle from Herod's Temple, Judas and Mattathias (<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:648).</note>(e) that the Pharisees relied on proselytism, as well as natural reproduction, for their constituency;<note id="p1_c2_n87" place="foot">Cf. Josephus's own "conversion" to Pharisaism,<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>10-12.</note>(f) that the Pharisees combined divine providence and human responsibility; and (g) that the popular influence of the Pharisees grew in the early part of the first century.</p><p>Like those who went before him, Schlatter both recognized the negative tone of Josephus's portrayal of the Pharisees and sought to explain how Josephus, as a Pharisee himself, could have written it. One can discern in his treatment the combined influence of source criticism and Laqueur's emphasis on Josephus's circumstances as decisive. Nevertheless, Schlatter's work is a strange combination of literary and historical analysis. He went far beyond Josephus's intentional, explicit remarks about the Pharisees, supposing that virtually any religious teacher who had an interest in the Law was a Pharisee/Sage and using that identification to shed light on the Pharisees. But this procedure bypasses the question of Josephus's literary purpose. Further, Schlatter invoked external criteria, such as his belief that the Pharisees/Sages were unwilling to co-operate with Rome, to interpret Josephus's account. These factors make it difficult to compare Schlatter's work directly with simple analyses of Josephus's Pharisee passages.</p> |
