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Jesus From The Perspective Of The Pharisees
The Pharisees get a lot of crud and not a lot of empathy
If you ask someone who the antagonist of the Gospels is, the Pharisees would be near the top of the list. The Pharisees have numerous contentious debates with Jesus regarding his nature and the nature of God and Judaism. Jesus called the Pharisees all sorts of names, including vipers and whitewashed tombs. In response, the Pharisees plotted Jesus’s death and eventually succeeded in maneuvering the situation, resulting in the Crucifixion.
The Pharisees get very little love from Christians, and they never have. There is no grace for the Pharisees and even less understanding.
But what if I told you that the Pharisees were just doing their jobs?
There were very good reasons why the Pharisees were being so hard on Jesus. And while they reached the wrong conclusion in the end, their initial attempts to test and vet Jesus and his followers were not wrong. In fact, they were mandated by Scripture.
If you look at Jesus from the perspective of the Pharisees, many of the events of the New Testament make a lot more sense. Because to an orthodox rabbi in First Century Palestine, Jesus looked extremely dangerous.
