28 Pharisees Follow Man Not God

It is quite clear that the Pharisees and the Scribes wanted to witness the miracles and polularity of Jesus for themselves as evidenced by their willingness to undertake the long journey from Jerusalem to the Capernaum region. In fact it was their anger and outrage that drove them to make the journey. They were looking for reasons to denounce Him because they did not ordain Him as a product of their schools and by their authority.

Before the exile from Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. the scribes were mainly professional document writers for a mostly non-literary population. After the exile and during the first century AD they were primarily men who gathered together, studied and interpreted the Jewish Mosaic Law and its 613 individual commandments. The Pharisees on the other hand were the purveyors of Rabbinic Judaism (such as the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim), which are generally positive and praiseworthy. However they were strong legalists in their devotion to these non-biblical documents. They had disassociated themselves from genuine orthodoxy and fidelity to the Bible.