Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (00:03)
⁓ my work academically is on ancient Judaism and the New Testament. And I’ve, ⁓ my, most of my writing, ⁓ is on ancient Judaism and the gospels. so I have a, a fairly good, understanding of who the Pharisees were. And I’ve recently, ⁓ did a paper on the Pharisee portrayal, ⁓ in the chosen for the last.
annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.
Dru Johnson (00:35)
yeah, I that was a fun section. Was it on film, TV, and portrayals and that kind of stuff? Okay.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (00:38)
What?
Yeah, was specifically
it was filmed in the Bible, but specifically with attention to the chosen.
Dru Johnson (00:48)
Yeah, and we talked about that once, so if you want to hear all of his hot and cold takes on how the Pharisees are portrayed in The Chosen, you can go listen to that episode. For now, we want to talk about something that our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said last week, and not so much to dog on him, but I think what he says is just very representative of how a lot of Christians think about the Pharisees, so it’s worth listening to what he’s doing here, and then talking about what’s problematic here. So I’m going to go ahead and hit play and we can…
Watch, this is ⁓ the Senator from Nevada, Jackie Rosen, I think is her name, who is questioning Pete Hegseth here. So she’s gonna talk for a little bit and then he’s gonna say what he thinks about using the term Pharisee.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (01:24)
Mm-hmm.
Thank
Dru Johnson (02:58)
Okay, so she pulled out the big anti-semitic term there at the end. Okay, first of all, what is she referring to, do you think, when she says this is a historically, I don’t know if she said abusive term, it’s a problematic term historically, what’s she talking about there?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (03:00)
you
Yeah
Yeah, I mean, I think what she’s referring to is the use of ⁓ the term Pharisee to paint all Jews with a very broad brush. Historically, this is ⁓ what eventually leads to the slur Christ killer that has been used for the Jewish people. ⁓ And the Pharisees become that entry point into that conversation.
And that term has yet to be dealt with seriously, think, more importantly, at a church level. Like, there’s been serious engagement scholarly-wise, ⁓ but that doesn’t always make it down to, you know, the layperson. And there’s a lot of work to do in that. But I think that’s what she’s referring to.
Dru Johnson (04:05)
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking as well. Yeah, I mean, let’s just dissect a little bit of what he says here is anybody who can’t see the plank in their own eyes, Pharisees is the right term. Can we just talk about like biblically New Testament, why that sentence doesn’t even make sense?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (04:24)
I mean, for how he’s using it, it doesn’t make sense. I mean, he’s comparing it to a war operation. he’s ⁓ about, I mean, this is also used at a press conference that he had recently where he called the core reporters Pharisees and then brought up another text, the man with the withered hand and the plot of the Pharisees at the end of that text to go against Jesus, which
Dru Johnson (04:39)
Right. Right.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (04:54)
Actually, today I was looking at it again and the translations have already ⁓ a sort of position against the Pharisees. So it’s translated almost antagonistically because that’s for a long time where Christian tradition has stood and still is. The looking at, mean, it’s interesting because the phrase the whole looking at the plank ⁓ in your own eye is the whole hypocrite thing.
Right? Like you’re looking at someone else but not dealing with your own stuff, ⁓ which feels very sort of like almost projecting. He’s sort of projecting the position. ⁓ And again, it’s a misunderstanding of the ancient context. And like I tell my students often, ⁓ this is very much where we need to return to the idea that the Bible was written for us but not to us. ⁓ And how do we do that?
are careful with not painting with a broad brush so that we’re leaning somewhere between anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic.
Dru Johnson (05:57)
Yeah, and I mean, so in the original context of that phrase, the plank in your own eye, it’s how can you look at the speck in your brother’s eye? It’s actually commending all Hebrews to act this way. And the Pharisees are interesting for lot of reasons in their interactions with Jesus. But I guess I always try to think of like a modern analogy. It’s almost like, you know, if you were
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (06:06)
Yes. Yes.
Dru Johnson (06:24)
if a Protestant was arguing with a Catholic or somebody who was Catholic adjacent or something, and like, you already agree on a lot of things, but you really need to make this final turn in order, you know, to see it the other person’s way. ⁓ So I wonder, you know, when we say, here’s the phrase I hear, Pharisee means hypocrite, it means you just make up rules, and you make up rules for the sake of making up rules, because, you you like to be in control and powerful.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (06:29)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (06:53)
Maybe we can deal with that making up rules part. ⁓ Like why are they accused of making up rules?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (07:00)
mean, it’s interesting in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have ⁓ what we believe is a critique of the Pharisees where they are called the seeker, seeker smooth things, ⁓ which apparently is a critique that suggests that they found ways out of being ⁓ as observant as they should have been. And this is a common intra-Jewish commentary on other groups, because a group often needs to define themselves in contrast to another group.
Dru Johnson (07:30)
Right.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (07:30)
So we’re not like them because of A, B, and C. ⁓ With the Pharisees, ⁓ it seems like when Jesus engages them, there’s something about his teaching that resonates with them. He just usually takes a position that the current group that he’s talking to is not really ⁓ pro, even though the New Testament is only giving us a small window into a much, much larger conversation, right?
⁓ And there are many things that whichever Pharisee Jesus interacts with, ⁓ they have a great deal in common. We’re just getting a conversation that is limited to this particular topic. As you said, Catholic Protestant would probably be ⁓ a good cognate relative to what’s happening.
Dru Johnson (08:17)
Yeah, it’s difficult to think of ⁓ because we’re not on the ground with the Pharisees next to us and how they’re processing things. think everything Jesus says they’re going to go along with in some way or most of it and at some point it’s going to go adverse to what they think about something. But that’s not just true of the Pharisees, that’s true of every single group that Jesus encounters, including his own disciples. has to chastise and rape them, right? So in that
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (08:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely. Correct.
Dru Johnson (08:46)
The Pharisees aren’t really different from anybody who they have all kinds of unmet expectations or ways in which Jesus confuses them. ⁓ They’re not really different than disciples. What do you, like if you were to, how do you put the Sadducees on the spectrum here between Pharisees and Sadducees? Because I think the Sadducees actually are people who are fundamentally opposed to what Jesus is doing.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (09:07)
Yes.
Yeah, the Sadducees, we usually put them among the elite priests. ⁓ I think Luke describes them as the elite priests and does this whole leaders, elite leaders of the people that are turning against Jesus. ⁓ And they’re really the ones that Jesus is a threat to. ⁓ He critiques them in similar ways that some Pharisees critique the priests. They are the ones that we know from historical sources and archaeological sources are the ones that are
that are the ones that are corrupt and making money off the backs of their fellow Jewish people. So the Pharisees weren’t friends to them mostly as much as Jesus and his movement wasn’t a friend to them. And they’re really the ones that set out to sort of ⁓ get rid of Jesus because of his popularity. And I would also say that the places where Jesus and the Pharisees disagree, there is a sense that there is also…
He’s popular among the Pharisees, right? Because they’re always asking questions and always coming after him. And I often have told my students if they really disliked him or hated him, I mean, think about in your life, if you dislike someone or hate them, how often do you want to be around them asking them questions? Probably not much. So it’s a sign of some kind of popularity, even if they disagree, there’s a popularity, maybe even a celebrity there that is happening among the Pharisees with Jesus. He’s definitely saying things that resonate with them.
Dru Johnson (10:05)
yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hmm.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (10:31)
⁓
and then sort of bring forward questions that they want to know, even if when he answers, they disagree on his particular approach.
Dru Johnson (10:41)
Yeah, and certainly there are going to be people amongst the Pharisees, like there would be amongst any other group, who are really hostile to him and are trying to debunk him and dethrone him in some way. So that’s, I don’t think you have to throw that idea out either. Let’s go back before we wrap this up. ⁓ Is it wrong to make rules about how to live? Does that actually go against the gospel?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (10:48)
Sure. Absolutely.
Get it.
No, absolutely not. I mean, I would say just to go back to what you said previously, the big problem is also making the Pharisee one thing, right? So we presume that within the Pharisees, they are similar to denominations that are very large. You know, go to like, let’s say the Assemblies of God is one of the largest evangelical denominations. If you went to every one church that was AG, they probably have different opinions about different things, right?
Dru Johnson (11:25)
Hmm.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (11:37)
but they’d all be assemblies of God and they all agree on specific, you know, big things. ⁓ With ⁓ the Pharisees in terms, well, sorry, within the gospels making rules, ⁓ I’ve often used this descriptor as for my students to sort of get this conversation going when we’re talking about ancient Judaism and Jesus. ⁓ You know, when someone comes to faith, they go to a church, they come to faith.
You know, the language that evangelicals would use that they are saved. ⁓ No one ever tells that person, listen, now that you’re saved, you can do whatever you want. You can go out and just party and live it up and don’t look back. Usually the follow-up is, okay, how can we disciple you and mature you as a believer? And that for a lack of a better way saying it is a law, is a system of commandments and a system of direction.
Dru Johnson (12:18)
Right.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (12:36)
The assumption of which that you as a human being will fail at some of these points, which is why both Judaism and Christianity adapting for Judaism have the idea of repentance. Because we should have structures by how we live, commandments, laws, we have it in relationships, me to my students, me to my wife, those are all very important to how we live and structure life. And Jesus is not outside of this, right? The conversations that he’s having with Pharisees,
is often legal conversations, not how do we get rid of this law, but how do we live this law out properly so that we are living out the ideals of the kingdom of God.
Dru Johnson (13:15)
And how do we, as good Jews, how do we disciple younger people into the faith of Judaism, which is now crowned with the King of Jesus. But it’s still, I like that, is the talk about pharisaical discipleship. And I always have to mention here, Jesus says you tithe, mint, and dill, cumin, and so you should, but not neglect the weightier matters of the law. Again, it’s a hypocrisy issue there.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (13:21)
Exactly.
Precisely.
Yep.
Dru Johnson (13:43)
And I point out, I don’t know how you feel about this, but I also point out that before anything goes wrong in Eden, God commands the man saying, right, he already gives him some instructions. And so there already is a positive view of guiding instructions. And then it’s also implied that the man has to like improvise on those instructions, what counts and what doesn’t. So ⁓ there’s certainly a way you can go too far. It’s not clear that the Pharisees as a group are doing that.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (13:53)
That’s right. That’s right.
Andribs.
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (14:11)
Obviously some within the group will be doing that, some will not. ⁓ Okay, so when our pastor does the inevitable sermon where he’s like, now the Pharisees were these people who just made up rules to keep rules, and they do the caricatures, what’s the, if we want to lovingly guide our pastor, what would be an easy way to kind of guide them to thinking like, hey, maybe Pharisees are more complicated than you’re thinking?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (14:11)
Mm-hmm.
Of
The first thing I would do is ⁓ if I know the pastor well, would invite them for a conversation. Let’s sit down and talk. I lot of these things don’t often occur in dialogue. They sometimes occur like why they’re on social media, which is a huge problem. You’re not going to win anything on social media. Or ⁓ if you start out combative in terms of, I know what you don’t know, that’s not a good place to start. So we could sit down and have a dialogue and say, well,
Dru Johnson (14:54)
Right. Right.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (15:09)
Have you ever considered this and make it relatable to what’s happening in the gospels and bringing it back to our sacred text? Then there’s something significant there. I think sometimes if you are pulling to more ancient resources than you are the sacred text in a pastoral Christian environment, that’s a little bit more difficult. But there’s enough in the gospels alone to have that conversation.
Dru Johnson (15:36)
And if you include Acts in there, you can ask simple things like, why do you suppose Paul doesn’t ever revoke his membership as a phar… Like he brags about being a Pharisee late in life before he dies for the sake of Christ. Yeah, why…
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (15:49)
Or the one I like also is
in Acts 15 where it says, there were Pharisees who came to believe.
Dru Johnson (15:53)
Yes.
Yeah. And then they’re part of the voting on what they should tell the Gentiles, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. that’s a great one, too. I’d forgotten about that one. Yeah. ⁓ And so, yeah, you could, you know, kind of politely say, boy, these Pharisees were really into Jesus’s teaching, and they’re poking and prodding. What does that look like? Like, when somebody’s really into somebody’s teaching, but they’re poking and prodding and thinking about it, what kind of relationship is that? Yeah.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (15:57)
That’s right. That’s right.
Dru Johnson (16:21)
⁓ That’s great. That’s probably really good advice for any beef we may have with with the sermon we heard.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (16:27)
Yeah, I think, I
also think the other framework that I find a little bit helpful is to understand that in Eastern ancient context, the asking of a question to an authority was the proper way of coming to that authority, that rabbi, that sage, so on and so forth. Where in the West, we develop the idea that questioning authority is disrespectful. And that there is a framework shift from the East to the West.
Dru Johnson (16:51)
⁓ yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I personally love it when I have a student come up after class and you can tell they want to very respectfully ask something because they’re not sure they agree with me on something. And I’m just like, wow, that’s I mean, I can handle it way more direct. I love living in the New York City area like you did. But I really respect the fact that they want to be respectful, but they really have a serious question to ask. Yeah, that’s great advice. OK, anything else we need to say about?
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (17:07)
Yeah.
Yeah. Me too.
Dru Johnson (17:25)
this issue of Pharisees and the public discourse of Americans? ⁓ I would want to say one thing, and you can tell me how you feel about this. I think the thing with Pete Hegseth, which ⁓ this maybe, you know, it’s political, so who knows what actually is going on in his mind. I think the thing that bothered me is that he didn’t seem to either understand that it’s anti-Semitic or care that Jews would hear that as kind of a threat to them. And I think, you know, just being humans in the world and Christians that care about our brothers and sisters,
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (17:40)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Dru Johnson (17:54)
in Judaism, ⁓ even if I thought what he was saying is correct, I might want to be sensitive to the idea that it sounds like Christ killer to somebody. That has been used to persecute and kill Jews through the years.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (18:03)
Sure, sure.
Yep. Yep. I mean,
think, yeah, no, I agree 100%. I think, you know, the other thing I’ve used with my students, ⁓ you know, me coming from a Puerto Rican background, you experience that sort of wholesaling of people ⁓ negatively ⁓ so. previously when I was at Niack College and most of my students were from neighbors that like I’m from where I’m originally from, you know, East Harlem. ⁓
that conversation held weight because they understood what it would be to be marginalized and identified as one thing negatively and basically wholesaled as a group. So then when you put it in the context of this is something that’s been used to sort of wholesale the Jewish people and it’s had negative, horrific consequences historically speaking, it gets picked up right away.
Dru Johnson (18:41)
Hmm.
Hmm
Yeah, that’s good. And while it’s not the same, I feel like being a white guy, we’re getting there on the marginalized and wholesale negative. What do you know? You’re a white guy. Not the same, but it’s getting close. Yeah, well, Dr. Jeffrey Garcia, thank you so much for your help and your wisdom in this.
Dr. Jeffrey Arroyo Garcia (19:14)
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah.
thank you, Dru. Appreciate being here.
