IGNORANT STEREOTYPING ALERT (from an MSNBC News article on religion in the campaigns of the nine Democratic presidential candidates):

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean � a Congregationalist Christian who said he prays almost daily and reads the Bible but rarely attends church these days unless it is for a political event � compared some fundamentalist leaders to the Pharisees, an ancient Jewish sect that emphasized strict interpretation and observance of religious law but who have come to be associated with self-righteousness.

I can't believe that people are still repeating this stereotype of the Pharisees, but a Google search looking for this quote shows me that it is still extremely common. For the record, as current biblical encyclopedias etc. now recognize, we have very little in the way of primary sources on the Pharisees and these sources all have their own agendas which may confuse matters. The Pharisees seemed to have had their own oral traditions about scriptural issues (like everyone else, whether they admit it or not); some involvement in politics earlier on; and a good bit of interest in table fellowship (the right way to eat meals before God), Jewish festival observance, and ritual purity - issues important to many if not all Jews in the same period. The unfortunate stereotyping of some New Testament passages has passed down a very distorted picture of the Pharisees.

It is fair to say that the Pharisees wanted to keep the Torah accurately because they believed that God gave it to them, and hence their attention to detail. If the rabbinic sages are any indication - and they do seem to be the spiritual descendents of the Pharisees - this zeal for the law was combined with an extraordinary concern and sensitivity for human need.

This Wikipedia article on "Pharisee" gives a fair summary of what we know (while making more of the rabbinic evidence than I would), as does this Columbia Encyclopedia article on "Pharisees". But this Daily Study Bible article "Who Were the Pharisees?" is a pretty comprehensive collection of ignorant stereotypes.

As you probably know, I don't trust the press to represent people's views accurately and I can't find a direct quote of what Dean said, but if he did say this, then I have to say he choose his words poorly. If one wants to criticize people for being hypocritical and self-righteous, it works fine just to say that they are being hypocritical and self-righteous.

UPDATE (2 December) David Nishimura (Cronaca) doesn't think I'll have much luck changing things and he may well be right (and in retrospect perhaps my blaring headline above was a little overdone). But my point was not entirely an arcane historical one: there aren't any medievals or Byzantines around these days, whereas there are Jews and some people are still prejudging them on the basis of stereotypes of the Pharisees. I've seen it myself and it's not pretty.