The vilification of the Pharisees has a long history in the Christian Faith, so long, and so well-guarded, that the Pharisees have all become an icon of legalism, if not of evil itself. So here we read: "法利賽人以「禮教吃人」"; "法利賽人的道德警察姿態". If pointing out another's error, perhaps even somewhat agitatedly, is the hallmark of a "道德警察," then we must concede that Christ Jesus himself is no less a moral policeman: witness what he did when he found money-changers in the House of his Father.

But leaving Christ Jesus aside, Christians, now that they need no longer take the New Testament as the sole authority on what happened in the relevant place and time, need to be a little more fair to the Pharisees: both in what they purposed to uphold, and in why Jesus of Nazareth, Christ or not, challenged them so fiercely. All controversies happened, we need first to recall, in a Jewish context. Around the written Law--the Torah--the Pharisees maintained that there was a valid oral tradition tracing back to Moses, a tradition which contained additional legal stipuations, and interpretations of the written Law, which all Jews ought also to observe. Jesus of Nazareth, and he was not alone in this fight, objected to that so-called oral tradition, asserting that it was all invented by later generations, if not by the Pharisees themselves. But he upheld, meticulously, the validity of the written Law in toto, however burdensome it might be. This conflict between "both the written and the oral" and "the written only" replayed itself in all sound and fury in the Reformation, fifteen centuries after the death of Jesus, which has divided the Western Church even to this date.

The full story about the Pharisees is of course much more complicated. But, poor Pharisees, how much injustice your name has suffered because of the triumph of one very large book!

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