The Pharisees and the Temple-State of Judea

“Richard Horsley’s groundbreaking essays on the Pharisees and Jewish society are now brought together for the scholar, student, or interested reader who wants to go beyond superficial accounts of this history. At every point Horsley rethinks our use of sources, asks new questions, and tries new approaches. The result is a challenging and refreshing dive into the reconstruction of Jewish groups and early followers of Jesus.”


—Lawrence Wills, author of Introduction to the Apocrypha





“This is a superb collection of essays. With great clarity, method, and passion, Richard Horsley situates in their historical and scholarly context major issues that he has been working on for more than fifty years. His leading voice invites us to question antiquated conjectures in exploring the historical Jesus, the politics of the Jerusalem temple, the role of its priests, its scribes, and the perplexing Pharisees.”


—Gildas Hamel, author of Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine





“Decades in the making, Richard Horsley’s spiral of insights demonstrate how the evidence, carefully examined anew, leads to a portrayal of Pharisees as ‘retainers’ serving the Jerusalem temple-state under Hasmoneans, Herod, and the high priests in the first century CE. Informed constructions of ‘the Pharisees’ will never be the same.”


—Mark Nanos, Lund University





“Horsley examines the role of the Pharisees (and scribes) in the unstable history of the temple-state under imperial rule, emphasizing the variation in their role, sometimes acting as mediators and other times as dissidents or resistance leaders. Horsley impressively creates a comprehensive treatment of the historical and sociological context to redress the distortion of the Pharisees by New Testament scholarship and, ultimately, to understand the nature of the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels.”


—Sarah J. Tanzer, McCormick Theological Seminary