In Defense of Pharisees - WHAT?!

I'm one of those people that has the urge to read 5 or 6 books at a time, and until recently, it's never been a problem to read the books quickly, and to keep the content in each of them straight.  Over the past few month's, my reading speed has slowed drastically.  I think it's largely because instead of reading books just to read them, I study them, and try to absorb as much of the content as I possibly can.

Right now, I'm reading a book called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.  I just finished reading chapter 11 - Religion and the Gospel, probably my favorite chapter thus far.  It was a great chapter but there was one thing that does irritate me, and is something I see quite often:  the painting of Pharisees as the religious bad-guys of their day.



As transcribed from a set of post-it notes I wrote and stuck in the section of the book:

I understand the sentiment but it really bugs me when people paint the pharisees as the ultimate religious bad guys of Jesus's day.  Yeah, He harped on them, they were the religious leaders of the day, just as pastors are the religious leaders of our day.  Yes, there were corrupt and false pharisees then, but we also have corrupt and false teachers now.  It does not mean that all pharisees were evil, just as not all pastors are evil.  (We just need to be vigilant in discerning false teachers from true ones, just as they did 2000 years ago.)

I'm finding that sound, solid, and biblical teachers are much fewer and much farther between than I originally thought, so maybe it was a similar situation for the Jew's, in that many pharisees held to false teaching.  I know that history and scripture were much more familiar to Jews than they are to us today.  I do not know if, despite that, a multitude of pharisees taught and spread false doctrine.

All that being said, just as there are true, sound biblical teachers today, there were true, sound biblical teachers 2000 years ago.  Just because there were some who were not, should not ruin the credibility of those that are, however few they may have been.