Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
We've been systematically refuting the claim that Matthew and John modify stories to make the Pharisees do things that they didn't historically due, allegedly to make their Gospels more relevant to their readers.
This week I examine a variant on this theory--namely, that (regardless of whether he has numerically more negative portrayals of the Pharisees than the Synoptics) John tries to focus exclusively on the Pharisees, making the Pharisees "identical to the opposition" in his Gospel. Once again, the data simply do not support this claim. About half the time that the Pharisees appear (negatively or even somewhat negatively) they are accompanied by other groups; about half the time no other specific group is mentioned.
Moreover, there is a place where John attributes opposition to Jesus either to no specific group at all (instead just mentioning "the Jews" as the opposition), when he could (if Keener were right) attribute it to Pharisees. Even more significant is a place where he attributes a murder plot against Lazarus to the chief priests, without including the Pharisees in the report. If John was so concerned to make his readers feel like their persecution was similar to what Jesus and his followers suffered, even going so far as to "transform" priests into Pharisees, why would he not even *include* Pharisees in this story, which occurs nowhere in the Synoptic Gospels?
Unfortunately, New Testament scholars find it hard to recognize when there is no redactive or "transforming" pattern at all, and when we have no evidence from such patterns about what was going on with the audiences of the Gospels. Recognizing the absence of any such patterns should drive us back to the simplest explanation--that the Gospels are *just* recording (not transforming) historical events in Jesus' ministry.
We've been systematically refuting the claim that Matthew and John modify stories to make the Pharisees do things that they didn't historically due, allegedly to make their Gospels more relevant to their readers.
This week I examine a variant on this theory--namely, that (regardless of whether he has numerically more negative portrayals of the Pharisees than the Synoptics) John tries to focus exclusively on the Pharisees, making the Pharisees "identical to the opposition" in his Gospel. Once again, the data simply do not support this claim. About half the time that the Pharisees appear (negatively or even somewhat negatively) they are accompanied by other groups; about half the time no other specific group is mentioned.
Moreover, there is a place where John attributes opposition to Jesus either to no specific group at all (instead just mentioning "the Jews" as the opposition), when he could (if Keener were right) attribute it to Pharisees. Even more significant is a place where he attributes a murder plot against Lazarus to the chief priests, without including the Pharisees in the report. If John was so concerned to make his readers feel like their persecution was similar to what Jesus and his followers suffered, even going so far as to "transform" priests into Pharisees, why would he not even *include* Pharisees in this story, which occurs nowhere in the Synoptic Gospels?
Unfortunately, New Testament scholars find it hard to recognize when there is no redactive or "transforming" pattern at all, and when we have no evidence from such patterns about what was going on with the audiences of the Gospels. Recognizing the absence of any such patterns should drive us back to the simplest explanation--that the Gospels are *just* recording (not transforming) historical events in Jesus' ministry.
