Editing Pharisees (section)

=== Oral Torah ===
The standard view is that the Pharisees differed from Sadducees in the sense that they accepted the Oral Torah in addition to the Scripture. [[Theology]] professor Anthony J. Saldarini argued that this assumption has neither implicit nor explicit evidence. A critique of the ancient interpretations of the Bible are distant from what modern scholars consider literal. Saldarini stated that the Oral Torah did not come about until the 3rd century AD, although there was an unstated idea about it in existence. In a way, every Jewish community possessed their own version of the Oral Torah which governed their religious practices. Josephus states that the Sadducees only followed literal interpretations of the Torah. To Saldarini, this only meant that the Sadducees followed their own way of Judaism, and rejected the Pharisaic version of Judaism.<ref name="Saldarini2001">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Bre6P-OPfEEC&pg=PA303|title=Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society: A Sociological Approach|author=Anthony J. Saldarini|publisher=W.B. Eerdmans|year=2001|isbn=978-0-8028-4358-6|pages=303–}}</ref> To Rosemary Ruether, the Pharisaic proclamation of the Oral Torah was their way of freeing Judaism from the clutches of [[Kohen|Aaronite priesthood]], represented by the Sadducees. The Oral Torah was to remain oral but was later given a written form. It did not refer to the Torah in a status as a commentary, rather had its own separate existence which allowed Pharisaic innovations.<ref name="Ruether1996">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XNJJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA53|title=Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism|author=Rosemary Ruether|date= 1996|publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers|isbn=978-0-9653517-5-1|pages=53–}}</ref>

The sages of the Talmud believed that the Oral law was simultaneously revealed to Moses at [[Mount Sinai (Bible)|Mount Sinai]], and the product of debates among rabbis. Thus, one may conceive of the "Oral Torah" as both based on the fixed text and as an ongoing process of analysis and argument in which God is actively involved; it was this ongoing process that was revealed at Mount Sinai along with the scripture, and by participating in this ongoing process rabbis and their students are actively participating in God's ongoing act of [[revelation]].{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

As Neusner explains, the schools of the Pharisees and rabbis were and are holy:
<blockquote>"...because there men achieve sainthood through study of Torah and imitation of the conduct of the masters. In doing so, they conform to the heavenly paradigm, the Torah believed to have been created by God "in his image," revealed at Sinai, and handed down to their own teachers ... If the masters and disciples obey the divine teaching of Moses, "our rabbi," then their society, the school, replicates on earth the heavenly academy, just as the disciple incarnates the heavenly model of Moses, "our rabbi." The rabbis believe that Moses was (and the Messiah will be) a rabbi, God dons phylacteries, and the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions. These beliefs today may seem as projections of rabbinical values onto heaven, but the rabbis believe that they themselves are projections of heavenly values onto earth. The rabbis thus conceive that on earth they study Torah just as God, the angels, and Moses, "our rabbi," do in heaven. The heavenly schoolmen are even aware of Babylonian scholastic discussions, so they require a rabbi's information about an aspect of purity taboos.<ref name=inv/>{{rp|8}}</blockquote>

The commitment to relate religion to daily life through the law has led some (notably, Saint Paul and [[Martin Luther]]) to infer that the Pharisees were more legalistic than other sects in the Second Temple Era. The authors of the Gospels present Jesus as speaking harshly against some Pharisees (Josephus does claim that the Pharisees were the "strictest" observers of the law).<ref>{{cite book|last=Josepheus|title=The Antiquities of the Jews|pages=13.5.9}}</ref> Yet, as Neusner has observed, Pharisaism was but one of many "Judaisms" in its day,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Neusner |first1=Jacob |title=Judaic law from Jesus to the Mishnah : a systematic reply to Professor E.P. Sanders |year=1993 |publisher=Scholars Press |isbn=1555408737 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/judaiclawfro_neus_1993_000_3727046/page/n219 206]–207 |url=https://archive.org/details/judaiclawfro_neus_1993_000_3727046 |url-access=limited }}</ref> and its legal interpretation are what set it apart from the other sects of Judaism.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Neusner |first1=Jacob |title=From Politics to Piety: the emergence of Pharisaic Judaism |date=1979 |publisher=KTAV |pages=82–90}}</ref>