Pharisees

The Pharisees are the party of exact observance, and the Gospels present them both as the sharpest critics of Jesus and as individuals who come to him. Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews," comes by night and hears that "unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:1–3). He speaks up in the council for due process (John 7:50–51) and finally brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes to the burial (John 19:39). Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner and receives the parable of the two debtors when a sinful woman anoints the feet of Jesus (Luke 7:36–47).

Jesus eats in their houses and is watched there. On a Sabbath he goes to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, where the guests were "watching him carefully," and heals a man with dropsy before asking whether they would not pull an ox out of a well on the Sabbath (Luke 14:1–6). Some of them also warn him: "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you" (Luke 13:31).

In Acts the party divides. Gamaliel, "a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people," halts the rush of the council to kill the apostles with the counsel that if this plan is of men it will fail, "but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them" (Acts 5:34–39). Believing Pharisees rise in the Jerusalem assembly to insist that Gentiles be circumcised, and the council answers them (Acts 15:5). At the trial of Paul before the Sanhedrin, when he declares himself a Pharisee on trial for the hope of the resurrection, the Pharisees present take his side against the Sadducees: "We find nothing wrong in this man" (Acts 23:6–9).

Paul himself belongs on this list. He describes his old standing plainly — "as to the law, a Pharisee" (Philippians 3:5) — and tells the crowd in Jerusalem that he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, "educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers" (Acts 22:3). The zeal was real; what changed was the road he was on.