| <head><hi rend="italic">Summary and Conclusion</hi></head><p>A new blueprint for research on the Pharisees, informed by the mistakes of earlier scholarship, by the experiments of Neusner and Rivkin, and by general insights from contemporary historiography, will seek to recover both the external or physical history of this group and, so far as possible, their intentions and their thought. This goal can best be reached by an initial limitation of the admissible evidence to Josephus, the pertinent NT documents, and the rabbinic corpus. The procedure will fall into two broad phases: first, the analysis of each source's presentation of the Pharisees, by means of exegesis, and, second, the hypothetical reconstruction of events and intentions.</p><p>Although the proposed programme embodies certain controls, it by no means excludes subjectivity. On the contrary, it acknowledges both the private interests that may motivate scholars to study Pharisaism and also the individual's right of ultimate (and private) moral judgement on his<pb n="17" />subject. Further, it calls for the interpreter's complete involvement and imagination, both in exegesis and in historical reconstruction. Thus our two chief examples of the<hi rend="italic">de novo</hi>quest, Neusner and Rivkin, have produced flatly contradictory results. Nevertheless, their work raises the possibility of a new consensus on method, on the "standards" of which Sanders speaks. That achievement is far more important than any particular set of conclusions. If scholarship on the Pharisees takes up this new agenda, which offers some semblance of a language for common discourse, then proposed hypotheses should encounter clearer discussion and critique than had been possible before the new beginning of Rivkin and Neusner. To the degree that arbitrariness can be contained and public accountability enhanced by commonly accepted criteria, the discussion will become more "objective".</p><p>If the foregoing proposal for research on the Pharisees has any merit, one can envision the role that a study of Josephus's testimony about the Pharisees ought to play in the larger endeavour. Of our three primary sources, Josephus is the most self-consciously historical: as we shall see, he sets out to write history pure and simple. Moreover, unlike the authors of the other sources, he unquestionably had direct, intimate contact with Pharisaism before 70.<note id="p1_c1_n84" place="foot">On these points, cf. Rivkin,<hi rend="italic">Revolution</hi>, 32f.</note>His portrayals of the Pharisees, therefore, are of paramount importance.</p><p>Josephus refers to the Pharisees in three of his four extant works, viz.,<hi rend="italic">The Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities</hi>, and the<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>. Analysis of his accounts falls within the first, exegetical, phase of the endeavour described above. One must, therefore, determine his purposes in writing and then ask how his discussions of the Pharisees serve those purposes. What is the role of the Pharisees in any given narrative? To what extent do they illustrate any of Josephus's overriding themes? Why does he discuss them at all? Does he describe them with significant, "charged" vocabulary? In short: How do the Pharisees function within his vision of things?</p><p>It is necessary now to survey the previous interpretations of Josephus on the Pharisees in order to test the adequacy of those interpretations, by the criteria formulated above. I shall argue that we do not yet possess the kind of comprehensive analysis that could serve as a suitable basis for historical reconstruction. Nevertheless, the previous scholarship raises many issues that will serve to clarify our own aims and procedures.</p> |
