This Pharisee is a man who is moral and religious and he is grateful to God for his morality and his religion. Now when we read this prayer, we immediately smell self-righteousness in it and we are right to do that and Jesus intends us to smell self-righteousness. But Jesus also knew that His original audience would not have immediately recoiled with repugnance at this prayer of the Pharisee because there were going to be qualities in this prayer that they would admire.
He was all about the Torah, he was all about God's Word, he was the equivalent of a godly ruling elder or deacon who's a Gideon and a Rotarian or a Sertoman or a Kiwanian who was moral. He was good in his dealings with other people, he was faithful to his wife and family, he was involved in his community — he was an upstanding man of respect. First of all, they would have admired his morality. In this prayer, notice verse He doesn't rip people off in business, he doesn't cheat on his taxes, he doesn't cheat on his wife, and he hasn't betrayed his country like this tax collector has who is working for the Romans and probably skimming some off of the top.
The Pharisees didn't just fast on certain special occasions on the Jewish calendar. They fasted on Tuesday and Thursdays and their fasts were more dramatic than the fasts that many other people in Israel did. They would not even drink water when they were fasting. Furthermore, they had gone through the Torah and they had discovered every tithe listed in the Torah and they had added them all up and do you know how much of their income they gave? They gave over twenty-percent of their income to the Lord! Now what pastor wouldn't want a leader in his congregation who doesn't cheat on his taxes, who has an honorable reputation in business, who doesn't cheat on his wife, who isn't a betrayer in his community, and who gives over twenty-percent of his income to the work of the Lord?!
Boy, you've have pastors lined up for a guy like that in his church! And furthermore, notice he not only indicates that he's a moral man and a religious man, but he does what? He gives God credit for this. Notice how he prays. They made it a point of piety to thank God for their morality. They gave God credit that they were moral people.
They gave God credit that they were religious people. The credit goes to You. But notice my friends two things that are entirely missing from this prayer. There is no sense of sin or need whatsoever in this prayer. And by the end of the story, Jesus wants that to be screaming in your eardrums. There is not the slightest sense that this man has anything that he needs to be forgiven for. His thanks to God is all about what a great guy he is.
No sense of need for forgiveness of sins. I've kept all the commandments!
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What do You mean I lack something? What's the commandment, the first commandment? And Jesus was putting His finger right on that young man's problem. His problem was he loved money. Give away all your money and follow after Me. He had a need that Jesus was seeking to make him aware of. And there is no sense of that need in this prayer. No sense of a need for forgiveness at all. Secondly, did you notice what is present in this prayer? There is a colossal egotism in this prayer. After he thanks God, notice what he says. The prayer lacks a sense of a need for forgiveness and it has the presence of pride all through it.
And those two things are what Jesus is after in this story. The Pharisee's trust is in himself. He's a moral man, he's a religious man, and his conscience is at peace, but the basis of the peace of his conscience rests squarely on the fact that he is a good person and there is no sense of his need for forgiveness of sins. Now contrast this with the second man and with the second prayer.
The tax collector stands afar off and before you even get to the one-sentence prayer, before you even get to the one-sentence prayer, look at what Jesus says about him. It's like this — eyes open, head turned to heaven, arms outstretched. You remember Moses praying for the people of Israel and people holding his arms up as he prays to God? This is exactly how the Pharisee prays. He prays to God like this, with his eyes open, his head turned to heaven, and his arms outstretched, waiting for God to answer and bless him. But this tax collector bows his head. He won't even lift up his eyes to heaven we're told.
And he beats his breast which is an action of penitence that would have been understood commonly to people in Israel. And he prays what? Now notice two qualities about that prayer. First of all, there is the presence of humility and the presence of God-focused trust. Humility and God-focused trust. The humility and the sense of need is apparent, isn't it?
Even before he opens his mouth, his head is bowed. He can't even bear to look up to heaven because he knows that he doesn't deserve heaven's blessing, but he has a great need. And what is that need? He's a sinner and he needs to be forgiven of his sins if he's going to be declared just by God. He identifies himself as a person who must either be the object of God's mercy or he is going to justly be the object of God's judgment.
And he begs God for mercy. And that leads us to the second thing. Notice that he does not ground his hope for acceptance with God on anything in him. It is turned to God. You remember, Derek's just been preaching through 2 Samuel. O God, forgive me because I've been faithful to You!
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So there is both a recognition of his need for forgiveness of sins and then there is a motion away from himself in trust of God. Do you understand, the Pharisee was trusting in his own inherent, moral, religious, God-enabled righteousness, but he had no sense of sin and need in his prayer and he had a false trust in himself and in his own righteousness? And in contrast to that, you have this tax collector who is looking away from himself and to God.
In fact it's a little ironic. The Pharisee looks in himself and he's satisfied that he is right with God having looked into his own heart. I'm going to have to look away to God. His point is that nothing that we do is the basis for God's acceptance of us. Jesus and Jesus alone is the basis for God's acceptance of us. Let me prove it to you. The Babylonian Talmud which was published in CE did not create uniformity among Jews as you claim , rather it was acknowledged as a useful book because uniformity among Jews already had existed for centuries. Judaism became refounded on a very legalistic understanding, stripping away everything they saw as extraneous to expand and polish what they saw as the most important bits.
Judaism remains a mix of stories, poetry, and law. The only difference was that since the 1st Century BCE Jews began to separate legal information from stories. Jews did not reject everything which was not law.
Aggadah story and Halakhah law were simply collected differently. If someone really wants to know what not to do on the Sabbath, stories about Abraham's childhood adventures aren't too relevant to one's research. If you really want to know about Abraham's childhood adventures, laws about the Sabbath aren't of much interest to you. Imagine how difficult American Law would be if it was organized chronologically with tales of the Founding Fathers' exploits interspersed throughout.
Do you really need to know that Thomas Jefferson tried to grow his own maple trees at Monticello when judging a case of triple-homicide? If you're really interested in George Washington's career as a general, do you really want the narrative flow to be interrupted by a treatise on tariffs? The Mishnah was a collection of law, it has little focus on fables. Collections of stories were also created. The Gemara, in fact, is in many ways the insertion of stories back into the Mishnah so that anyone who wants to know some of the background can have it.
Jews still have many stories. There are tons of Aggadic Midrashim. In fact, you can say that midrashim are still written today. I know of many Christians who were very upset with the movie Noah , but the most common response I've heard from Jews is a shrug accompanied with, "All Aronofsky did was write a midrash.
It is incorrect to state that Judaism threw out all our stories or that our art ceased to matter to us. But the sheer diversity of forms of Judaism and often outright rejection of the more legalistic forms of Judaism by many of those groups. Judaism for those outside of specialized academies has always been Pharisaic Judaism. The Essenes were very legalistic and shunned those outside of their community. There are many principles shared among the Essenes and the Pharisees, the key difference being the Pharisaic belief that one can be integrated in the world and in general being less radical.
When you read Dead Sea Scroll sections which might refer to the Pharisees, you don't see the Essenes rejecting the "legalism" of the Pharisees so much as arguing that the Pharisaic legalism was the wrong legalism while Essene legalism was the right legalism. The Essenes charge the Pharisees with senselessly building walls around the Law in order to protect it, yet it was the Essenes who were so driven by a desire to follow the Law that the seceded from the world!
Our knowledge of the Sadducees is limited.
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We know that they were the aristocratic elite. We also know that they supplemented their religion with Greek philosophy and Hellenic culture. The Sadducees were not interacting with the common people. They did not believe in some concepts of Pharisaic Judaism or Essene Judaism and later Christianity , including an afterlife and the existence of angels. Overall, the picture of the Sadducees one gets from various sources referring to them is one of a disdained elite class who sought to use the Jewish religion to sustain their power.
The Sadducees were so small and unpopular that those in power sometimes "[observed] the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them" AJ In contrast to the other groups, the Pharisees were popular among common people. What little a commoner knew about Judaism was tinged by Pharisaic influence. Who did Jesus meet as he traveled throughout Judea? When Jesus encountered people, who had the people previously learned from?
The common Jews might not be termed Pharisees just as modern Jews are not termed rabbis , but the religion of the common Jew was Pharisaic. Josephus writes, "[The Pharisees] are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever [the common people] do about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to [Pharisaic] direction; insomuch that the cities give great attestations to [the Pharisees] on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also" AJ The common people followed Pharisaic Judaism.
And why shouldn't Pharisaic Judaism be popular among common people? The Pharisees accepted people as they were. The school of Hillel was especially welcoming of all people and highly lenient, it was the school of Hillel which was more popular and which was officially endorsed by the Jewish community after the destruction of the Temple. It did not matter to the Pharisees where one came from and what one's background was. Various Pharisaic teachers were even converts to Judaism. Many Pharisees came from humble backgrounds.
The Pharisees taught that Judaism could be fully practiced by every individual, not just priests in a Temple or hermits by a sea. The Pharisees further believed that all people could receive education, and it was intelligence and virtue which determined someone's worth. So which groups are you referring to when you state that there were many Jewish movements who rejected "legalistic Judaism"?
Are you referring to the Sadducees the aristocratic brutes who justified themselves through lineage? Are you referring to the Essenes the highly legalistic movement who seceded from the world? It seems to me that the most educated, most lenient, and most popular movement was the Pharisees. That's why they were successful. Being Jewish does not invalidate my abilities as an historian. Being Jewish did not interfere with my ability to obtain a degree in history. Being Jewish does not cause me to be blinded by legalism. My being Jewish does not justify others dismissing what I have to say.
If Christianity is true, Judaism was true and then fulfilled and now defunct. And Islam is a rip-off. If Islam is true, Judaism was true then corrupted, Christianity was true then corrupted, and Islam is the last in a long line of correcting corruption. I see Judaism as a precursor to Christianity. Jesus was mentioned numerous times in old testament, at the time that Judea was in charge of maintaining the religious needs of the 12 tribes of Israel.
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It appears he even appeared as Melchizedek. King David wrote all about Jesus throughout Psalms, and he was of the tribe of Judah. So, from my perspective, Jewish peoples today are simply Christians that never accepted Jesus as Christ. Sorry, but many Biblical scholars say that the writers of the Gospels manipulated the story of Jesus' life to make it conform to many of the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets.
That's something I would need to see specific proof of before ever believing, or giving any sort of thought to. Judaism is the original religion that spun off from Canaanite polytheism by worshipping YHWH alone, and then that kept evolving over the centuries. If it were a movie, it's a cult classic that is only watched among a minority however because there is a lot of lore to understand, and besides it has its own target audience.
Christianity is Judaism DX Edition, featuring Jesus Christ as the messiah and simplified, more universal rules to follow. If it were a movie, it's the extremely popular Hollywood sequel of the previous movie but fans of the original feel that it deviated too much from what the original author intended and misunderstood major points. If it were a movie, it would be the reboot of the second movie that is also popular although among a different culture than this one , but fans of the second movie are annoyed that its most important points are rendered moot by the remake and fans of the first movie wonder how could things end up like this.
Christians believe he came two thousand years ago in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, Jews believe he still hasn't come yet. Well, some people say Christianity came from Judaism and they do worship the same God. But to say Christians and Jews have the same beliefs isn't accurate. Islam was more of a ripoff of Judaism in theory and praxis, although it could be considered a reactionary rebuttal to Christianity--especially on the perceived polytheism front. Yes it took the people, but not what they preached or their ideals. What it really did was take some gnostic Christianity teachings and said that the Bible is wrong and we have the right story.
The first Christians were Jews abd Christianity started as a Jewish sect. The name "Christians" was first used in Antioch to give a name to Jesus-believers, so that name was given to us from the outside. Of course, with the conversion of Gentiles to Christianity it is not purely Judaism anymore. And Christians with a gentile background don't follow the old laws that apply to Jews like e. Messianic Jews still stick to this law. They are Jews, but they believe in Jesus as the Messiah.
Now, I wouldn't call Islam a rip-off of Christianity. Because the role of Jesus is so significantly different in those religions. Islam shares more with some of the Gnostic writings that said that Jesus was not the Son of God. Muhammed lived in an area that was influenced by Gnosticism. The apostles already got into contact with the early Gnostic movements that influenced the church and condemned them heavily.
They warn of false teachers. From a Christian perspective it makes sense that Satan would not want people to believe in Jesus and that he provides salvation. Thus, we Christians view Islam as a false teaching and the argumentation that it is the last revelation and better because it is newer is kind of ridiculous in our eyes. It's a branch of Judaism that continued to exist post the destruction of the temple.
Christians see themselves as the fulfilment of temple Judaism. Remember that Rabbinic Judaism today isn't temple Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are more like brother religions that descend from Temple Judaism. One of my favourite definitions of Catholicism is "Judaism gone universal". Christianity is simply the truth that has been throughout all time. Ancient Judaism was a veiled prelude to Christianity. Modern Judaism is based on a perversion of that ancient Judaism. It is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, that God's salvation and Word will be spread to gentile nations by faith in descendant of king David, fulfilled in Son of God Jesus Christ:.
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Become a Redditor and subscribe to one of thousands of communities. Christianity submitted 2 years ago by killingspeerx. Want to add to the discussion? Judaism was a mix of stories, poetry and law Judaism became refounded on a very legalistic understanding, stripping away everything they saw as extraneous to expand and polish what they saw as the most important bits.
But the sheer diversity of forms of Judaism and often outright rejection of the more legalistic forms of Judaism by many of those groups Judaism for those outside of specialized academies has always been Pharisaic Judaism. Obviously Jews today, who have inherited that understanding tells a more nuanced and diverse story to the historian.
We should be ashamed.