(January 26, 2016 at 10:56 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Jesus believed in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and resurrections. The Pharisees believed in those things as well. Therefore Jesus was a Pharisee. The Sadducees thought that they were full of crap.
BTW, since Christians and muslims believe in those things they are also Pharisees.
Acts 23:8 (KJV) = "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both."
The interesting thing about that verse is that it makes the entire Bible a Pharisee fairy tale and not a traditional (Sadducee) Jewish fairy tale.
This link tries to differentiate the various schools of thought: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsou...senes.html
A=>B doesn't mean B=>A. Pharisees believing in angels doesn't mean that an angel believer is a Pharisee. The Pharisees had a radically different agenda to Jesus; hence the NT conflict, and hence a lot of Paul's writing.
As a Pharisee he had been waiting and working for the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Then he realised on the Damascus Road that it had already arrived. Much of his writing follows on from how that game changer meant he could no longer stay a Pharisee.
BTW, the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't the only religious division in C1 Israel. The Pharisees were a numerically small but very active pressure group. Think Momentum (UK) or Tea Party (US).