Digital Logos Edition
A. T. Robertson delivered the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, and this volume includes the original content of those lectures, revised and expanded. In these lectures, Robertson investigates the relationship between the Pharisees and Jesus not only as a subject of mere academic interest, but as an issue of vital importance that affects how one perceives the historic origins of Christianity.
“They placed the oral law on a par with the Old Testament Scriptures” (Page 38)
“The brief outline just given of the struggle of the Pharisees for power shows that they had won the sympathy and support of the masses of the people.” (Page 17)
“The Gospels in a wonderful way preserve and reproduce the colouring of the life in Galilee and Jerusalem, while Pharisee and Sadducee shared the power, and were full of jealousy of each other, while the Palestinian Jew still felt his superiority in privilege over the Jew of the Diaspora, while the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was still unbroken and seemed unbreakable.” (Page 4)
“Pharisaism after 70 a.d. may be said to be the religion of official Judaism, and it has remained so ever since. First it gathered round the oral law or Midrash, as the interpretation of the law. Then the Mishna was the interpretation of the oral law. Then the Gemara explained the Mishna. The Talmud has now become the actual Jewish Bible far more than the Old Testament.” (Page 22)
“Jesus had been willing to pose as a political Messiah, with the claim of a world kingdom to throw off the Roman yoke, the Pharisees would have rallied round him.” (Page 41)