I recently published a short piece on the Sadducees in Bible Odyssey. It was fun to do, if for no other reason than it gave me an opportunity to stake out my (controversial) position on the origin of the Sadducees and Pharisees. One thing about that piece that gave me trouble, though, was the framing. Pieces for Bible Odyssey are not supposed to be encyclopedia articles; I was asked to lead with something gripping and preferably contemporary. In the end I settled on Pope Francis’s recent use of the term “Sadducee” in order to castigate other Christians. While my piece was not the place to go deeply into the Pope’s decision, I did indicate there some unease with this rhetorical strategy. “Pharisee, pharisaic” has often been used as an insult, although as the graph below shows the frequency of its use has been relatively stable over the last century and maybe even dipping in the past few decades. And that’s a good thing! Taking a term that referred to a real, historical group of Jews and making it stand for something negative is offensive and potentially dangerous. Its use has helped to promote negative stereotypes of Jews and one […]
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