Who were the Sadducees and the Pharisees?? Are there similarities between them and JW's??

by confuzzlediam 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  confuzzlediam

  Last month, I had the privilege of traveling to Jamaica with a Study Abroad group from my community college. While there, we went to a place called My Father's House in which severely disabled children lived when they had no one else to take care of them. As part of their day, they hold worship in a small, outdoor meeting place. I was a bit apprehensive about going to worship as I am not sure where I stand with the whole God thing yet. But, I attended out of respect for the group that I was with.

  There was a visiting pastor, a woman, who blew me away! I could have listened to her ALL day. She was passionate about the scriptures and about having faith in God and in Jesus. Her sermon dealt with forgiveness and was quite moving. One thing she mentioned in her sermon was how the Pharisees and the Sadducees lived and they were known to be ones that were showy in their way of worship to God. I wish I could remember exactly what it was that she said that got me thinking that this is how the JW's live. They brag about how many hours they spend in the field service, about how many publishers they have, about how clean they are, how they are NO part of the world...etc. I was reading a post on a FaceBook group I am in where someone talked about how at every assembly, they brag about how clean they leave the convention centers that they meet in every year and how they are complimented by "worldly" people on their upstanding behavior in contrast to "worldly" events held at the same facilities. Essentially JW's say that their lives are SO much better because of following the WT's rules on how to live.

  SO how does this make them any better than the Sadducees and the Pharisees that Christ rebuked? I have included info below my post that I found on a website describing who the Pharisees and Sadducees were and what they believed. If you look at the Pharisees, a lot of what they believed or taught sounds a LOT like what the JW's believe and teach!!! The Sadducees remind me of the wealth and power that the WTS holds.

  Any thoughts on this? Every once in a while I have these AH HA moments that make me go hmmmm....

  Question: "Who were the Sadducees and the Pharisees?"
  

  Answer:The Gospels refer often to the Sadducees and Pharisees, as Jesus was in constant conflict with them. The Sadducees and Pharisees comprised the ruling class of Israel. There are many similarities between the two groups but important differences between them as well.
  
  The Sadducees:During the time of Christ and the New Testament era, the Sadducees were aristocrats. They tended to be wealthy and held powerful positions, including that of chief priests and high priest, and they held the majority of the 70 seats of the ruling council called the Sanhedrin. They worked hard to keep the peace by agreeing with the decisions of Rome (Israel at this time was under Roman control), and they seemed to be more concerned with politics than religion. Because they were accommodating to Rome and were the wealthy upper class, they did not relate well to the common man, nor did the common man hold them in high opinion. The common man related better to those who belonged to the party of the Pharisees. Though the Sadducees held the majority of seats in the Sanhedrin, history indicates that much of the time they had to go along with the ideas of the Pharisaic minority, because the Pharisees were popular with the masses.
  
  Religiously, the Sadducees were more conservative in one main area of doctrine. The Pharisees gave oral tradition equal authority to the written Word of God, while the Sadducees considered only the written Word to be from God. The Sadducees preserved the authority of the written Word of God, especially the books of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy). While they could be commended for this, they definitely were not perfect in their doctrinal views. The following is a brief list of beliefs they held that contradict Scripture:
  
  1. They were extremely self-sufficient to the point of denying God's involvement in everyday life.
  
  2. They denied any resurrection of the dead (Matthew 22:23;Mark 12:18-27;Acts 23:8).
  
  3. They denied any afterlife, holding that the soul perished at death, and therefore denying any penalty or reward after the earthly life.
  
  4. They denied the existence of a spiritual world, i.e., angels and demons (Acts 23:8).
  
  Because the Sadducees were more concerned with politics than religion, they were unconcerned with Jesus until they became afraid He might bring unwanted Roman attention. It was at this point that the Sadducees and Pharisees united and conspired to put Christ to death (John 11:48-50;Mark 14:53;15:1). Other mentions of the Sadducees are found inActs 4:1andActs 5:17, and the Sadducees are implicated in the death of James by the historian Josephus (Acts 12:1-2).
  
  The Sadducees ceased to exist in A.D. 70. Since this party existed because of their political and priestly ties, when Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70, the Sadducees were also destroyed.
  
  The Pharisees:In contrast to the Sadducees, the Pharisees were mostly middle-class businessmen, and therefore were in contact with the common man. The Pharisees were held in much higher esteem by the common man than the Sadducees. Though they were a minority in the Sanhedrin and held a minority number of positions as priests, they seemed to control the decision making of the Sanhedrin far more than the Sadducees did, again because they had the support of the people.
  
  Religiously, they accepted the written Word as inspired by God. At the time of Christ's earthly ministry, this would have been what is now our Old Testament. But they also gave equal authority to oral tradition and attempted to defend this position by saying it went all the way back to Moses. Evolving over the centuries, these traditions added to God's Word, which is forbidden (Deuteronomy 4:2), and the Pharisees sought to strictly obey these traditions along with the Old Testament. The Gospels abound with examples of the Pharisees treating these traditions as equal to God's Word (Matthew 9:14;15:1-9;23:5;23:16,23,Mark 7:1-23;Luke 11:42). However, they did remain true to God's Word in reference to certain other important doctrines. In contrast to the Sadducees, they believed the following:
  
  1. They believed that God controlled all things, yet decisions made by individuals also contributed to the course of a person's life.
  
  2. They believed in the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:6).
  
  3. They believed in an afterlife, with appropriate reward and punishment on an individual basis.
  
  4. They believed in the existence of angels and demons (Acts 23:8).
  
  Though the Pharisees were rivals of the Sadducees, they managed to set aside their differences on one occasion—the trial of Christ. It was at this point that the Sadducees and Pharisees united to put Christ to death (Mark 14:53;15:1;John 11:48-50).
  
  While the Sadducees ceased to exist after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Pharisees, who were more concerned with religion than politics, continued to exist. In fact, the Pharisees were against the rebellion that brought on Jerusalem's destruction in A.D. 70, and they were the first to make peace with the Romans afterward. The Pharisees were also responsible for the compilation of the Mishnah, an important document with reference to the continuation of Judaism beyond the destruction of the temple.
  
  Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees earned numerous rebukes from Jesus. Perhaps the best lesson we can learn from the Pharisees and Sadducees is to not be like them. Unlike the Sadducees, we are to believe everything the Bible says, including the miraculous and the afterlife. Unlike the Pharisees, we are not to treat traditions as having equal authority as Scripture, and we are not to allow our relationship with God to be reduced to a legalistic list of rules and rituals.
  
  Read more:http://www.gotquestions.org/Sadducees-Pharisees.html#ixzz3ejzlYZUI
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  FayeDunaway

  Noticing the witnesses are like Pharisees is something probably every ex witness experiences at one point!! So congrats :). ironically, you will often hear in talks how ridiculous Pharisees were with all their rules about what not to do on the sabbath, rules not in the bible but extremist expansions on the rules in the bible. Witnesses usually don't look at themselves and say 'oh. We. Do the same. Thing....' Unless they are going to one day be ex witnesses!
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  blondie

  The thing I understand is that the Sadducees were connected with the jewish temple and their function disappeared after the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.

  I under the Pharisees were connected with the synagogues that came into being during the time the jews were in Babylon and continued after the return and rebuilt of the temple.

  That's my unofficial summary of it.
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  confuzzlediam

  Thanks FayeDunaway!! I remember sitting there, listening to this pastor talking about the Sadducees and the Pharisees and it just hit me BOOM!! Like this ton of bricks came crashing on my chest...honestly made my chest tighten and all of these thoughts started just flowing and I realized at that moment that what I had been taught for the first 39 years of my life was all lies. Kind of made me a bit sad, but at the same time thankful for being open to TTATT!!
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  confuzzlediam

  Blondie, that's pretty much what the article said as well. To me, the WT reminds me of the Sadducees in regards to the wealth and power that they had and held. The WT would not have their wealth if not for the people they have power over. Great example of this is the recent plea for money and the quick response of the JW's who gave more because of it. The Sadducees also believed that the soul perished at death, same as the WT teaches.

  I guess the Pharisees beliefs better fit the WT beliefs, to me.
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  FayeDunaway

  Confuzzled, it is so true. Hits you like a ton of bricks. But also it's sort of a relief, cause you probably knew all along that something wasn't right, and you were constantly trying to MAKE it right in your own mind. It had to be right, it was the only 'right' there was. But ultimately you can't make it right because it's wrong, and it's a relief to finally realize that and your brain can stop doing cartwheels around that fact. You just have to figure out how to get out...
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  fulltimestudent

  If you want to look for similarities, take a good look at the Essenes, and buy a copy of "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English." (Penguin, 1997) translated and with editorial comments by Geza Vermes.

  Product description
  The discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" in the Judaean desert between 1947 and 1956 transformed our understanding of the Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and the origins of Christianity. These extraordinary manuscripts appear to have been hidden in the caves at Quumran by members of the Essene community, a Jewish sect in existence before and during the time of Jesus. Some sixty years after the Scrolls' first discovery, this revised and much expanded edition of "The Dead Sea Scrolls in English" crowns a lifetime of research by the great Qumran scholar Geza Vermes. As well as superb translations of all non-biblical texts sufficiently well preserved to be rendered into English, there are also a number of previously unpublished texts, and a new preface. Since its first publication in 1962, "The Dead Sea Scrolls in English" has established itself as the standard English translation of the non-Biblical "Qumran Scrolls" and as giving an astonishing insight to the organization, customs, history and beliefs of the community responsible for them.
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  fulltimestudent

  You can also access the DSS on line.

  Try: http://www.ibtimes.com/dead-sea-scrolls-online-text-available-thanks-google-video-links-318984

  and

  http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/project
  
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  DATA-DOG

  Lawyers and business men. Nuff said.....

  DD
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  CalebInFloroda

  Christians who rely on the New Testament alone in drawing conclusions about the Sadducees and Pharisees end up with a warped picture. The reason is that the New Testament texts were not intended by their writers to be historical accounts or biographies of Jesus. The words of Christian gospel were a combination of catechesis and polemics, designed to educate, proselytize, and propagandize all at once.

  The Gospels were composed in their present form after the Roman war and the destruction of the Second Temple. This event left all the Jewish religious movements in a predicament (including the early Christians who saw themselves as Jews also), and this was not so much because the Temple itself had fallen.

  Under Roman law, the only religion besides the state’s paganism that was allowed in the empire was the worship of the Jews. All other forms of worship were outlawed. You either worshiped the Roman gods or because you were a Jew (or favored their religion) worshiped the God of Abraham. Worshipping a foreign deity from a different kingdom independent of Rome’s jurisdiction was tantamount to treason.

  The Romans never intended to destroy the Temple during the wars. As Judaism was an approved religion practiced by many Roman citizens, the Temple of Jerusalem was a landmark of Roman civilization. The Temple fell due to a mistake carried out by the soldiers under Titus, a mistake Rome tried to undo when Emperor Julian, in 363 as part of his plan to revive Roman religion (which included Judaism) in his attempt to squash out Christianity, ordered it rebuilt. Though the order never came to fruition, the fact demonstrates the favored (and most especially legal) position Jewish worship held in ancient Rome.

  You see when the Temple fell, a competition in the Jewish community arose. Vying for validity in the eyes of the empire, Christians competed with the Pharisees over who were the true and rightful Jews. It was during this period that the written Gospels, especially Matthew’s, took shape. The negative description of the Pharisees in the Gospels was glossed over in rhetoric as Christianity was striving for what it believed was its rightful place as a legal religion. Much like Watchtower publications draws pictures of crazy-eyed clergymen appearing pompous and radical, the written Gospels did similar things with the competing Jewish groups in an attempt to say: We are the one true Jewish religion.

  Without the Temple, the priestly sects of the Essenes and the Sadducees disappeared. Since the Pharisees centered on obedience to and study of Torah, they survived. You read nothing about the Essenes in Christian writ, only a little about the Sadducees, but a lot about the Pharisees because of this. The battle for the right to be recognized the authentic "Jews" led to the Pharisees as described in the New Testament to be written as polemic caricatures. Early Jewish descriptions of Christians were likewise colored with negative rhetoric, meaning that the truth about both groups (Jews and Christians) is actually somewhere in between.

  Eventually Christianity was legalized in Rome, becoming the state religion. The persecuted became the persecutors because as soon as they realized they no longer needed to fight for the recognition of the worship as Jewish, they began a systematic oppression of the Jews that led to pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition and expelling of the Jews in 1492 from Spain, and eventually laid the groundwork for the ideology of Adolf Hitler’s “solution” regarding the Jews. Today Christians are making formal apologies for these mistakes, even rewriting their theology and admitting that these descriptions in the New Testament are colored with anti-Semitism. Groups like the Roman Catholic Church, some Lutherans, and even a few Evangelicals are coming to grips with the fact that they were virtually the inventors of anti-Semitism that laid the groundwork for the ideologies that inspired the Holocaust, though some more conservative members among them still disagree with and/or debate this.

  It would be incorrect to claim that the JWs were therefore like the Pharisees and Sadducees of the first century as described in the Gospels. In fact, the Witnesses are closer to the Gospel writers who gave us some not-so-accurate caricatures that have led to 2000 years of hate crimes.