(printed p. 43 — Book II)
They came from every tribe. The Pharisaic institution was not confined to one tribe, as the priesthood and other duties of the temple were bound to the tribe of Levi. Some were from the tribe of Judah; others from Benjamin, as Saint Paul was, Philippians 3:5; others from the tribe of Levi, as Hyrcanus was at the beginning, according to Josephus Flavius, book 13, chapter 18, and according to Gorionides in the place discussed above. Josephus Flavius, at the beginning of his Life, indicates that others were from another tribe. Saint Chrysostom, on Matthew 15, says: “The Pharisees were scattered through all the tribes in twelve parts.” Euthymius and Leontius say the same.
The same reasoning applies to their family. Whoever wished could follow this or that form of life. Rank, however, may be considered as either plebeian or more noble. Saint Augustine, mentioned above, explains from what source the Jews derived the nobility of which he speaks.
[margin: The Pharisees came from every tribe; family; rank.]
(printed p. 44)
In the same sermon 15 On the Words of the Apostle, when he explains why Saint Paul, in Philippians 3, called himself a Pharisee, Augustine has Paul speak in this way: “I was not a sluggish Jew. Whatever seemed opposed to my law, I bore impatiently and pursued sharply.” Then Augustine adds: “This was nobility among the Jews.”
Josephus shows at the beginning of his Life that family, especially priestly family, was considered by them in assessing nobility. He says in Greek, “Among each people there is some different foundation for noble birth; among us, participation in the priesthood is a proof of the splendor of one’s family.” He indicates almost the same cause at the beginning of book 1 Against Apion: just as today in our Germany the nobility of each person is examined when he is admitted to the colleges of the cathedral and metropolitan churches of Mainz, Wurzburg, Speyer, and others, and just as among the Athenians the descent of the archons was investigated, as Sigonius shows in book 3 On the Athenian Republic, so too priestly nobility was examined among the Jews.
Now the Pharisees came from both ranks. For Josephus reports in that same book that four men were sent from Jerusalem to drive him out of Galilee, men “different by birth, but alike in education and sect.” Two were demotikoi, that is, plebeians; likewise in Antiquities 13.18 he calls to demotikon the people or common crowd, and Gorionides uses the word דלהעם [dallath ha-am, the poor of the people] for “the people.”
(printed p. 45)
In book 14, chapter 8, Josephus says that the pontificate was made from among the common people. The remaining two were nobles of priestly family: Gozorus, himself from a priestly family and a Pharisee, and Simon, one of the chief priests then at Jerusalem, the youngest in age.
Those who had been sent as delegates to Saint John the Baptist were also priests and Levites, John 1:19, and from the Pharisees in the same passage, verse 24. Nicodemus too is called both a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, John 3:1.
Among the Pharisees themselves, however, there was also a certain order. In the same Josephus they are called “the leading men,” and a little after the beginning of his Life, “the first men of the Pharisees”; in Saint Jerome, writing to Algasia, they are “the very wise men set over the synagogues.” Therefore their place was not Jerusalem or Judea alone, but any part whatever of the Israelite land. Luke 5:17 says: “There were Pharisees sitting, and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem.” Theophylact on Matthew 15 says: “In all places there were scribes and Pharisees.”