‘jewish doctrine takes three forms’ 115
and laborious exercises’ in order to gain personal experience of Pharisa-
ism, Sadduceanism and Essenism, ‘in my nineteenth year I began to
govern my life by the rule of the Pharisees.’ Nor was Josephus alone in
claiming personal acquaintance with Pharisaism, since Paul described
himself before he ‘gained Christ’, as having been, ‘as to the law, a Phari-
see’. According to the author of Acts of the Apostles, Paul had been
educated in Jerusalem ‘at the feet of Gamaliel’, who is himself described
elsewhere by the same author as having been a Pharisee. Paul is described
as defending himself before Agrippa against a charge of stirring up agi-
tation among the Jews and profaning the Temple by stating that ‘all the
Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the begin-
ning among my own people and in Jerusalem. They have known for a
long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strict-
est sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee.’ The dissension between
Sadducees and Pharisees on the Sanhedrin during his trial arose when
Paul announced, ‘Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on
trial concerning the hope of resurrection of the dead.’^6
It is evident from these passages that the name ‘Pharisee’ could be
used with some pride as a self- designation (and therefore clearly lacked
the abusive connotations derived in later usage from the Gospel
polemic). Pharisaios in Greek means nothing, and it must be a translit-
eration of an Aramaic word derived from the root prsh, which means
‘separate’: Pharisees were those who separated something from some-
thing else (quite what is separated left unstated). Early rabbinic texts
which refer in Hebrew to perushim (‘separated ones’, in the passive)
presumably had the same group in mind, since these perushim are
described as disputing with tsedukim or Sadducees (see below), but the
name they used was probably an insulting play on the Pharisees’ real
name – such value- laden nicknames crop up elsewhere in early rabbinic
Judaism, as in reference to the rebel leader Simon bar Kosiba as either
Bar Kokhba (‘son of a star’) or Bar Koziba (‘son of a lie’), and the des-
ignation perushim as ‘separatist’ was certainly intended to express
disapproval in some rabbinic texts.^7
One can assume, then, that both Josephus and Paul were in a pos-
ition to tell their readers about the nature of Pharisee doctrines and the
Pharisees’ role in society, but not necessarily that they therefore did so.
It is obvious enough that Paul would hardly present an objective record
of what he called his ‘earlier life in Judaism’, but more notable than any
bias is his silence – nothing in his self- description gives a hint of what
Pharisaism entailed beyond ‘blameless’ in respect of ‘righteousness