| <head><hi rend="italic">M. Smith and J. Neusner: Anglophone Heirs of Laqueur</hi></head><p>After a hiatus of some three decades, Rasp's approach to Josephus's Pharisee passages, based on Laqueur's insights, was introduced to the English-speaking world by M. Smith. Smith's essay, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century", set out to demonstrate both the pervasive Hellenization and the plurality of pre-70 Judaism. It drew together evidence from the NT, Josephus, the Talmud, and elsewhere to show that many different religious groups operated in pre-war Palestine.<note id="p1_c2_n88" place="foot">Smith, "Palestinian Judaism", 71-73. He cites, for example, various baptist groups, the Essenes, and the many practitioners of magic.</note>In view of this well-attested variety of religious outlook, Smith asked how the notion could have arisen that first-century Jews embraced a "normative", essentially Pharisaic, Judaism.</p><p>Much of the blame for this distortion he laid at the feet of Josephus, because of the latter's frequent statements in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>about the Pharisees' great influence over the people (cf. 13:298, 400-402; 18:15).<note id="p1_c2_n89" place="foot">Ibid., 74-79.</note>If these<pb n="33" />statements are not simple reflections of fact, how are they to be explained? Smith found the key in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>13:400ff., the story of Alexander Janneus's deathbed recommendation to his wife Alexandra that, on her accession to the throne, she yield some administrative power to the Pharisees. For Janneus points out to his wife that the Pharisees have enough influence with the people both to injure their enemies and to assist their friends (13:401); he allows that his own rule has been embattled because of his harsh treatment of the Pharisees (13:402). Since these observations on Pharisaic influence are absent from the parallel account in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>(1:106f.), written some twenty years earlier, Smith discovered a new theme in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>, to the effect that Palestine cannot be ruled without Pharisaic support.</p><p>In the Laqueur/Rasp tradition, Smith sought to explain this new promotion of the Pharisees on the basis of Josephus's circumstances in the last decade of the first century, when<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>was written. Smith's proposal:</p><p><q>It is almost impossible not to see in such a rewriting of history a bid to the Roman government. That government must have been faced with the problem: Which group of Jews shall we support? . . . To this question Josephus is volunteering an answer: the Pharisees, he says again and again, have by far the greatest influence with the people. Any government which secures their support is accepted; any government which alienates them has trouble.<note id="p1_c2_n90" place="foot">Ibid., 72.</note></q></p><p>According to Smith, then, Josephus wanted to throw in his lot with the rising fortunes of the Pharisees after 70 by commending them to the Romans as the group which they should support in Palestine. To accomplish this goal—a service to both Romans and Pharisees<note id="p1_c2_n91" place="foot">Smith believed (p. 77) that the Pharisees were negotiating for Roman support when Josephus wrote<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi></note>—Josephus rewrote history in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>so as to give the Pharisees enormous popular influence.</p><p>In Smith's view, the truth about the Pharisees is more accurately reflected in the school passages of<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>and<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>: they were only one among many philosophical schools that flourished in Palestine before 70.<note id="p1_c2_n92" place="foot">Ibid., 79f. Smith also adduces parallels between the Pharisees and the Greek philosophical schools.</note>For him, the presentation of the Pharisees in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>arose from Josephus's political interests and is therefore unreliable as history.</p><p>In many respects, Smith's theory echoes Rasp's earlier proposal: Josephus's perspective on the Pharisees changed between<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>and<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>and this changed perspective accounts for<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>'s (alleged) promotion of the Pharisee. Smith's position, however, differs from Rasp's in two<pb n="34" />significant respects. First, whereas Rasp had viewed<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>as a peaceoffering to the Pharisees, Smith claimed that Josephus wrote to help the Romans, who were still in a quandary about whom they should support in Palestine. Second, whereas Rasp had viewed<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>as more accurate than<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>—in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>Josephus deliberately obscured the political facts, Smith took the opposite view.</p><p>Smith's theory went virtually unnoticed for some fifteen years—that is, until his student J. Neusner publicized it in a 1972 essay.<note id="p1_c2_n93" place="foot">J. Neusner, "Josephus's Pharisees",<hi rend="italic">Ex Orbe Religionum</hi>, 224-253.</note>Referring to the five relevant pages of Smith's essay as a "landmark study of Josephus's pictures of the Pharisees", Neusner lamented the lack of interaction it had thus far elicited. His own article, therefore, was intended to publicize and further substantiate Smith's view:</p><p><q>Here I wish to review the several references to Pharisees in Josephus's writings and to spell out the sources in such a way that Smith's study will both receive the attention it deserves and be shown to be wholly correct, therefore, to necessitate the revision of our picture of pre-70 Pharisaism.<note id="p1_c2_n94" place="foot">Ibid., 225.</note></q></p><p>To achieve this goal, Neusner begins with the references to the Pharisees in<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>, in which he finds Josephus eager to claim Pharisaic credentials (10-12) but silent about the implications of this affiliation. In<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>189-198 Neusner finds the Pharisees presented as important politicians during the revolt.<note id="p1_c2_n95" place="foot">Ibid., 226-227.</note></p><p>In<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>Neusner finds two distinct emphases with respect to the Pharisees. First, in 1:107-114 they appear as a powerful political group under Alexandra Salome. In 2:162-166, however, they appear simply as the opponents of the Sadducees, both groups being portrayed as philosophical schools who differed only on theoretical issues. Neusner notes that the Pharisees of<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>are not prominent in the narrative.<note id="p1_c2_n96" place="foot">Ibid., 227-230.</note></p><p>Following Smith, Neusner argues that the key to understanding the Pharisees in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>is Josephus's new advocacy of the group: Josephus has now taken the side of the Pharisees and is lobbying for Roman recognition of them as the new leaders in Palestine. Neusner summarizes:</p><p><q>The Essenes of<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>are cut down to size; the Pharisees of<hi rend="italic">Antiquities</hi>predominate. And what Josephus now says about them is that the country cannot be governed without their cooperation, and he himself is one of them.<note id="p1_c2_n97" place="foot">Ibid., 238.</note></q></p><pb n="35" /><p>Like Smith, Neusner considers the story of Alexandra's admission of the Pharisees to power (<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>13:400ff.), in comparison to the<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>parallel (1:106ff.), to have been "strikingly revised in favor of the Pharisees".<note id="p1_c2_n98" place="foot">Ibid.</note>The new story of John Hyrcanus's break with the Pharisees ends with a comment on the people's support for the Pharisees (13:297f.). These and other additions lead Neusner to fall in with Smith's conclusion, which he cites at length, that<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>more accurately reflects the true state of affairs;<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>, he claims, represents a tendentious reworking of the facts.<note id="p1_c2_n99" place="foot">Ibid., 238-243.</note></p><p>Neusner did, however, add something to Smith's conclusion. That was the observation that in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>, the Pharisees appear not only as a religious-philosophical group in the early part of the first Christian century (so<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>2:162-166), but also as a powerful political organization in the first century BC, under Alexandra Salome (<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:110-114). This qualification allowed Neusner to absorb Smith's theory into his own reconstruction of pre-70 Judaism, which he outlined in<hi rend="italic">From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism</hi>(1973). Neusner argues there that the Pharisees moved from active political involvement, in Hasmonean times, to solely religious concerns, under Hillel's leadership, then back to political involvement after 70.<note id="p1_c2_n100" place="foot">Neusner,<hi rend="italic">Politics</hi>, 146.</note>His chapter on Josephus's Pharisees is essentially his earlier essay in defence of Smith.</p><p>Smith's theory gave Neusner justification for rejecting<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>'s portrait of the Pharisees in favour of the account in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>, which account well suited his politics-to-piety scenario. In return, Smith's theory won a major supporting role in a famous study of Pharisaism. Under Neusner's sponsorship, it is winning broad support.<note id="p1_c2_n101" place="foot">Cf. J. Blenkinsopp, "Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus",<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="Journal of Jewish Studies">JJS</span></hi>25 (1974), 256 n.80; D. Goodblatt, "The Origins of Roman Recognition of the Palestinian Patriarchate",<hi rend="italic">Studies in the History of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel</hi>4 (1978), 99 [Hebrew]; I. L. Levine, "On the Political Involvement of the Pharisees under Herod and the Procurators",<hi rend="italic">Cathedra</hi>8 (1978), 12-28 [Hebrew]; S. J. D. Cohen,<hi rend="italic">Josephus in Galilee and Rome</hi>, 237f.; H. W. Attridge, in M. E. Stone, ed.,<hi rend="italic">Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period</hi>("Compendia Rerum ludaicarum ad Novum Testamentum", 2:3; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 186; R. A. Wild, "The Encounter Between Pharisaic and Christian Judaism: Some Early Gospel Evidence",<hi rend="italic">Nov T</hi>27 (1985), 110f. The editors of the new Schürer indicate their agreement with Smith (G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black, edd.,<hi rend="italic">The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ</hi>, by E. Schürer [3 vols.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979], II, 389 n.20), but they cite him in support of the position that he explicitly rejects, viz., that the Pharisees "represented not a sectarian viewpoint but the main outlook of Judaism" (389).</note></p> |
