| <head>I.<hi rend="italic">The Goal of Research on the Pharisees</hi></head><p>One reason for the "heated arguments" referred to by Neusner is that scholars have come to study the Pharisees with different aims and interests. Now it would be naive to disallow any motives other than the "purely historical" as reasons for studying the Pharisees; to indulge<pb n="5" />such personal interests, however, would be to deny the<hi rend="italic">wissenschaftlich</hi>character of history. One must distinguish, then, between the private factors that motivate one to study Pharisaism and the shared, professional goal of the enterprise.</p><p>One of the obvious motives behind the study of the Pharisees is to shed light on the formative years of one's own tradition, Jewish or Christian. On the one hand, Judaism tends to see itself as the descendant of ancient Pharisaism. K. Kohler writes, "Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future."<note id="p1_c1_n17" place="foot">Kohler, "Pharisees",<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="Jewish Encyclopaedia">JE</span></hi>, 666. Cf. also Elbogen,<hi rend="italic">Religionsanschauungen</hi>, 3.</note>So also R. L. Rubenstein: "All contemporary branches of Judaism—Reform, Conservative and Orthodox—are the spiritual heirs of the tradition of the Pharisees."<note id="p1_c1_n18" place="foot">R. L. Rubenstein, "Scribes, Pharisees and Hypocrites: A Study in Rabbinic Psychology",<hi rend="italic">Judaism</hi>12 (1963), 456.</note>So the Jew might understandably have a historical interest in the Pharisees.</p><p>On the other hand, the classical Christian texts appear to define the aims of Jesus and Paul over against those of the Pharisees.<note id="p1_c1_n19" place="foot">For Jesus, cf. Mk 7:1-23; Mt 23 and<hi rend="italic">passim</hi>. For Paul, cf. Phil 3:5-9.</note>This circumstance attracts the attention of Christian theologians and biblical scholars to the problem of the Pharisees. In the past, as is well known, such investigators were predisposed to regard Pharisaism as a foil for emerging Christianity. This tendency was not limited to those with a "high christology"<note id="p1_c1_n20" place="foot">The implications of a high christology for one's assessment of the Pharisees were forthrightly stated by one L. Williams,<hi rend="italic">Talmudic Judaism and Christianity</hi>(1933), 63, cited by H. Loewe, "Pharisaism", in<hi rend="italic">Judaism and Christianity</hi>, edd. W. O. E. Oesterley, H. Loewe, and E. I. J. Rosenthal (3 vols.; New York: Ktav, 1969 [1937-38]), I, 158:<p>If Jesus, who was the Incarnation of God, and therefore the personification of perfect knowledge and truth, thus depicts the Pharisees, thus they must have been and not otherwise; no more is to be said.</p></note>but showed up even in the classic liberalism of A. Harnack.<note id="p1_c1_n21" place="foot"><hi rend="italic">Das Wesen des Christentums</hi>(Stuttgart: Ehrenfried Klotz, 1950 [1900]), 43, 62f.</note></p><p>Religious tradition and other factors must be acknowledged as the source of much interest in the Pharisees. Nevertheless, if historical research means something more than the reinforcement of tradition and private intuition, the critic's own motives and interests must submit themselves to norms and controls that are recognized across the discipline of history. We must posit a goal for research on the Pharisees that derives from general principles of historiography and can therefore be pursued by the community of scholars. Ultimate judgements of value remain the prerogative of the individual historian as a moral being; since, however, the criteria for these judgements arise from sources other than the discipline of history itself and are not subject to its controls, they can form no part of the common agenda.</p><pb n="6" /><p>Modern historiography is pre-eminently concerned with the aims, intentions, or thoughts of those who acted in the past to effect the events known collectively as history. R. G. Collingwood calls this thought-determined aspect the "inside" of an event.<note id="p1_c1_n22" place="foot">R. G. Collingwood,<hi rend="italic">The Idea of History</hi>(Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), 213.</note>The outside of an event, he says, is "everything belonging to it which can be described in terms of bodies and their movements", for example, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon on a particular date. Collingwood unites the outside and inside of an event as the dual object to be known:</p><p><q>The historian is never concerned with either of these to the exclusion of the other. He is investigating not mere events. . . but actions, and an action is the unity of the outside and inside of an event. . . . He must always remember that the event was an action, and that his main task is to think himself into this action, to discern the thought of its agent.<note id="p1_c1_n23" place="foot">Ibid.</note></q></p><p>This emphasis on apprehending the intentions of historical actors provides the goal for modern research on the Pharisees. Our purpose is to go beyond the events in which the Pharisees were involved to try to grasp their motives, their intentions, and their thoughts.</p><p>It may not always be possible, given the state of the sources, to get behind the events to the Pharisees' intentions. Although, then, the apprehension of Pharisaic thought must be the final goal of research, we shall have to consider many events from the "outside" on the way to that goal. Because of the subsequent impact of Pharisaism on Western Civilization,<note id="p1_c1_n24" place="foot">The<hi rend="italic">Wirkungsgeschichte</hi>of Pharisaism is no less impressive for its having occasionally been exaggerated or misunderstood, as in Finkelstein's remark that "Fully half the world adheres to Pharisaic faiths" (<hi rend="italic">Pharisees</hi>, I, ix).</note>those events are already important in their own right<note id="p1_c1_n25" place="foot">This position is in contrast to Collingwood's extreme view that the historian "is only concerned with those events which are the outward expression of thoughts, and is only concerned with these in so far as they express thoughts" (<hi rend="italic">Idea</hi>, 217). Such a view would seem to exclude Jesus' crucifixion, the fall of the Temple, and the Balfour Declaration as proper objects of historical study; they are important events because of their impact and not because the various actors' intentions are recoverable. On<hi rend="italic">Wirkungsgeschichte</hi>as a criterion for the selection of historical topics, see E. Meyer, "Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte", in his<hi rend="italic">Kleine Schriften</hi>(Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1910), 42-48.</note>and the reconstruction of them can be considered an end in itself. As E. Meyer long ago pointed out, "Die erste und fundamentale Aufgabe des Historikers ist also die<hi rend="italic">Ermittelung von Tatsachen</hi>, die einmal real gewesen sind."<note id="p1_c1_n26" place="foot"><hi rend="italic">Kleine Schriften</hi>, 42.</note>But of the sum total of reconstructed events, it is to be hoped, some insight will be gained into the Pharisees' aims and intentions.</p> |
