Additionally, Greene was complimented for questioning Catholic
pharisaism, something that was otherwise inconceivable on the Spanish stage in the mid-1950s.
Setting the context, Tyra makes a case for the idea that throughout the book of Matthew a generally harsh view of
Pharisaism is presented.
Rabbinic Judaism is not the opposite to
Pharisaism, but actually in many ways, the inventor after the fact of the Pharisees.
The writers of the New Testament had a particular bone to pick with the teachers who expelled them, so it's the dark side of
Pharisaism that makes it into scripture.
Remaining faithful to the tradition of the church means being successful in avoiding the Scylla of unmeasured liberalism, modernism and globalism, and the Charybdis of fundamentalism,
Pharisaism, and triumphalism.
In interwar Germany authors of all stripes--Catholics and Protestants, pro- and anti-Nazis, traditionalists and neo-pagans--stigmatized each other with the stain of "Judaism." In 1927, for instance, Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus warned against the "Jewish threat" while at the same time condemning "anti-Semitic
Pharisaism." (58) In other words, Althaus warned, those who are immoderate in their hatred of Jews reveal their own essential Jewishness.
The response of
Pharisaism was similar to today's Islamists, a return to the Law in their Scripture and a return to the Torah.
Are artists who shun such plays courting smug
pharisaism? This dilemma can spark clashes even within the Christian drama community.
In fact, all three religions, and all their different forms, such as the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican and other Protestant churches, the Orthodox churches, etc., within Christianity, the Shia and Sunni divisions of Islam, and
Pharisaism, cabbalism, and Hasidism in the case of Ju-daism, are variants on the fundamental concepts established by Ju-daism.
Saint Theophon the Recluse, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox monk, says the self-reliant person fosters within "an evil spirit of self-righteousness, arrogance, and
pharisaism." Yet elsewhere he sounds like Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing: "A man becomes entirely human when he comes to self-awareness and independence of mind, when he becomes the complete master and commander of his own ideas and holds certain ideas not because others have given these to him, but because he himself finds them to be true.2
Modern liberal Protestants who sought the faith of Jesus, rather than the dogma of Christ, were actually looking for
Pharisaism. And this, according to Geiger, was now to be found in Reform Judaism, which was a resurrection of the Pharisaic principles of liberalizing Judaism (7).
And the only first-hand testimony we have from pre-70
Pharisaism is Saul/Paul's confident assessment of his progress in Judaism and blamelessness under the law (Gal.
