The Pharisees and Scribes

Custodians and Interpreters of Scripture

The relationship between Pharisees and scribes to Scripture was complex—they functioned as authoritative interpreters and guardians of Jewish law, yet their approach often diverged in significant ways from the transformative encounter with God’s Word that Jesus advocated.

Professional Roles and Scriptural Authority

In the New Testament era, scribes were involved in copying Scripture and were considered elite scholars who specialized in interpreting the Torah.[1] Jesus acknowledged that the scribes and Pharisees served an important function in reading and proclaiming the Law of Moses from positions of authority, the “chair of Moses.”[2] Pharisees followed the oral law (traditions of the elders) in addition to the written law[1], and Josephus states that Pharisees were influential and right interpreters of the law.[1]

The Critical Distinction: Knowledge Without Transformation

However, a fundamental problem emerged in their approach. For many scribes, the Bible had become merely a textbook of information rather than a means of personal transformation, with their academic approach to Scripture resulting in a head full of knowledge without a lifestyle that matched.[2] The Pharisees’ obsession with outward purity and perfection resulted in an excessive number of man-made rules that nobody could live up to.[2]

Jesus drew a crucial distinction: what people heard from Scripture must be obeyed, for God’s pure, unadulterated Word is true and reliable; but as soon as scribes and Pharisees began applying Scripture or going beyond what it said, their interpretations should be held in suspicion.[2] The danger wasn’t their role as Scripture’s custodians but their transformation of God’s Word into an instrument of control rather than liberation—they crushed common people with unbearable demands, establishing unreachable standards of manufactured “holiness” that produced only guilt and shame among people who should have been able to respond to the Law with joy and peace.[2]

[1] Biju Chacko, Intercultural Christology in John’s Gospel: A Subaltern Reading from India (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2022), 35–36.
[2] Charles R. Swindoll, Matthew 16–28, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2020), 1b:191–193.