JUSTIN MARTYR, DIALOGUE WITH
TRYPHO 80.4:
THE CATALOGUE OF HYPOCRITES
The first catalogue that mentions
the Pharisees and that has clear heresiological interests is Justin’s “Catalogue
of Hypocrites” in the Dialogue with Trypho (80.4). The Dialogue is
“the oldest surviving Christian apology addressed against the Jews.”
The catalogue of the Jewish
heresies in Dial. 80 reads:
One, after careful examination,
would not acknowledge as Jews, the Sadducees or the similar sects of the
Genistae, Meristae, Galileans, Hellenians, and the “washing” Pharisees (Φαρισαιων βαπτιστων).
The text seems to suggest that for
Justin, Pharisees, or at least “washing Pharisees,” are not Jews.
Far-reaching sociological conclusions
have been based on this assumption. According to Shaye Cohen, the “expulsion”
of the Pharisees in Dial. 80 mirrors the decision of the rabbis at the
synod of Yavneh (Jamnia) (ca. 100) to exclude sectarian movements in favor of a
liberal, open-minded new form of orthodoxy (“The Significance of Yavneh:
Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” HUCA 55 [1984]: 48-49).
Daniel Boyarin goes one step further: for him, Dial. 80 reveals that the
religious division is not between Christianity and Judaism but rather between
Christian and Jewish orthodoxy on the one hand and the Christian and Jewish
sects on the other (Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity,
40-44).
It is highly doubtful that Justin
simply wants to say: Pharisees are not Jews. He considers them as teachers of
the (contemporary) Jewish community (Dial. 102.5), and this only makes
sense if they are acknowledged to be Jews.
The key to understanding Dial.
80 is Justin’s concern for distinguishing reality from appearance. The section
begins with Trypho’s attack on Justin, in which he asserts that Justin does not
really believe what he has claimed regarding millenarianism; he was, Trypho
suggests, making only a strategic move (§1). Justin’s answer adduces this concern for appearance and reality: he argues that he—and Christians in general—have
the ideal of not saying one thing (externally) and thinking another
(internally) (§2). While there are indeed persons who are called Christians (λεγομενους . . . .Χριστιανους) “but in reality are godless and
impious heretics,” Justin wants to prove his own trustworthiness by promising a
treatise on the topic of his debate with Trypho (§3). He then continues his
defense (§4) with an attack on Typho that has the rhetorical form of a retorsio
argumenti (anticategoria) (Dial. 80.4):
If you have ever encountered any
nominal (λεγομενοις) Christians who do not admit this
doctrine, but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob by asserting that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that
their souls are taken up to heaven at the very moment of their death, do not
consider them to be Christians; just as (ωσπερ) one, after careful examination, would not acknowledge as Jews
the Sadducees or the similar sects (αιρεσεις)
of the Genistae, Meristae, Galileans, Hellenians, and the “washing” Pharisees
[cf. Mark 7:4] (please take no offence if I say everything that I think), but
would realize that they are Jews and children of Abraham in name only (λεγομενους), paying lip service to God,
while their hearts, as God Himself declared are far from Him [cf. Mark 7:6;
Matt 15:8; Isa 29:13]. (Justin, Dial. 80.4 [Falls and Halton])
Justin turns Trypho’s accusation,
the hypocritical “difference between appearance and reality,” against the Jews
by attacking one of their most important representatives, the Pharisees, as
hypocrites; they are like heretical Christians. For the sake of this attack he
also uses the mocking formulation “washing Pharisees” (Luke 11:39 and Matt
23:25 criticize the Pharisees’ purification rites as expressions of a
discrepancy between the external action and the [more important] internal
state).
The word ωσπερ (“like”/”as”) indicates that Justin
is comparing groups that appear to be Christian (but in his view are
heretics) with groups that appear to be Jews (but in his view are not). A
correct interpretation of a comparison (παραβολη) has to find the tertium comparationis, the special aspect
of the comparison. This aspect can be found in the “difference between
appearance and reality” and in its biblical application in Mark 7:6-7 and Matt
15:7-8, citing Isa 29;13 in relation to the Pharisees (!) and scribes (cf. Matt
15:1): “You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ‘This
people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’” (Matt
15:7-8).
For Justin, the Pharisees and
scribes exemplify people whom God or Jesus condemn as “hypocrites” because of
the difference between their external behavior and their internal attitude,
between their appearance and their reality. Scripture offered the means of
argument that Justin was able to use a retorsion argumenti. He, like his
biblical authority, is not making sociological distinctions between Jews and
non-Jews, Christians and non-Christians, orthodoxy and heterodoxy; he is making
spiritual distinctions between a (real) interior and a (seeming) superficial religious
affiliation. He offers an authoritative biblical reinterpretation of religious
affiliation based on the (Christian) idea of internalization, and he knows that
the Jew Trypho can accept neither this reinterpretation nor the retorsion argumenti
in general. Therefore, he says “Please take no offence if I say everything
that I think.”
But this retorsio argumenti works
only if the Pharisees are considered to be Jews by both Trypho and Justin. The
text does not support the far-reaching conclusion that Justin is establishing “interreligious”
borders between orthodoxy and heresy and that the Pharisees and the other
groups he mentions belong to a “Christianized” catalogue according to the
criterion of faith in resurrection. The Pharisees and their colleagues are simply
examples of “hypocrites” Justin’s catalogue is a rhetorical application of the
common patristic verdict “Pharisees are hypocrites” based on the theological
principle of internalization and used as a retorsio argumenti against
Trypho. (Matthias Skeb, “’Pharisees’ and Early Christian Heresiology,” in The
Pharisees, ed. Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2021], 258-61)
