Who is Pete Hegseth calling ‘Pharisees’?

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — At an April news briefing on the Iran war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth digressed from taking a dig at Iranian leadership to take a dig at American news media.

The “relentlessly negative coverage” of the war, Hegseth said, evoked a sermon he’d heard in church about the “Pharisees.” Describing a passage from the book of Mark in the New Testament, he relayed a story about Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath. The “Pharisees,” in the biblical rendition, seemed more concerned that the act of healing had violated the customary day of rest.

“You see, the Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report,” Hegseth said. “But their hearts were hardened. Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.”

He continued, “I sat there in church and I thought, ‘Our press are just like these Pharisees.’ Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press. Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors.”

Hegseth brought out the term again to disparage claims about inadequate food on Navy vessels as “FAKE NEWS from the Pharisee Press.” “Pharisees” also appeared last week in a social media post from Hegseth’s Department of Defense (now calling itself the Department of War).

Asked for comment about Hegseth’s use of the word, a department spokesperson wrote, “We have nothing further to provide outside the Secretary’s remarks.”

The original Pharisees were a group of Jews around the first century who focused on religious ritual and practice. The Bible depicts them debating with and criticizing Jesus, and contemporary Christian preachers and Sunday school teachers invoke the “Pharisees” as key opponents of Jesus, so that the word is frequently used as a pejorative for anyone seen as contradicting Christian teachings — one freighted with antagonism by Christians toward non-Christians, and especially toward Jews.

In an April 30 Senate hearing, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada challenged Hegseth for using “Pharisees,” calling it “hurtful” and a “problematic and historically weaponized term.”

What is known historically about the Pharisees comes from references in the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early rabbinic literature, and archaeology, says Amy-Jill Levine, distinguished professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at the Hartford International University for Religion and Peace.

The Pharisees were “members of a voluntary association that sought to imbue daily life with sanctity,” Levine wrote in an email. Like other Jews of the time, including the Sadducees, the Essenes and Jesus himself, the Pharisees were deeply interested in determining how best to fulfill divine will.

“Pharisees,” which entered English via Latin by way of Greek, derives from the Aramaic root “prš,” said Craig E. Morrison, a professor of the Bible at Catholic University of America. The meaning of the root is contested: It can mean “to separate,” though from what or whom is unclear, or “to discern.”

“Christian scholars have unfortunately taken that word ‘to separate’ as something negative, and then developed into them being separate and better and elitist,” Morrison added. “And that’s simply not there in the etymology of the word.”

Whatever scholars might assume from the etymology, Morrison said the word’s origins reveal little about the Pharisees besides their existence as a distinct group.

Though the New Testament often depicts the Pharisees in conflict with Jesus, and as overly preoccupied with rules and ritual purity, Brian Kaylor, author of “The Bible According to Christian Nationalists: Exploiting Scripture for Political Power,” said the group’s disagreements with Jesus were akin to distinctions between Christian denominations — both sought to serve God, despite differing ideas on what that would look like.

In the New Testament, however, Kaylor said the Pharisees are largely “undeveloped characters of opposition.”

“They’re not really around to speak for themselves,” he said. “But I think the real issue here is that New Testament writers weren’t concerned about us understanding the motives of the Pharisees. That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to tell about Jesus.”

Other sources offer more nuanced portraits of the Pharisees. Levine noted that the writings of first-century Jewish historian Josephus indicate that the group lived a simple life among the people and was highly respected. Archaeological evidence of bathing pools and chalk stone vessels from Judea and the Galilee, she said, show that the Pharisees’ concern for ritual purity was shared by most Jews of the period. Their practices around handwashing, for example, were “likely an egalitarian move” — Levine wrote that in rabbinic literature, the Pharisees task all Jews, not just priests, with maintaining the sanctity of the Temple of Jerusalem.

The New Testament does contain positive depictions of Pharisees — Levine points to Nicodemus, who defended Jesus and helped bury him, and Gamaliel, who advocated for the apostles Peter and John. There are also references to Pharisees who became followers of Christ.

But the negative stereotypes persisted, which Levine attributes to selective readings of the New Testament and a lack of knowledge of first-century Jewish history. Critiques of the Pharisees came to stand in for critiques of Judaism writ large, in what Levine called “part of a larger Christian process of seeing Jewish practice as the negative foil to Christianity.”

“Reading select New Testament polemics against the Pharisees, Christians have classified them as legalistic, elitist, money-loving, xenophobic, misogynistic hypocrites,” she wrote. “They come to represent whatever individual Christians do not like.”

Hegseth follows a long tradition of Christians caricaturing the “Pharisees” as pretentious, self-righteous hypocrites. Even progressive Christians have levied the insult: Pope Francis used it to critique rigid leaders, while Pete Buttigieg used it to denigrate Mike Pence.

Pope Francis and Buttigieg both backpedaled after Jewish leaders expressed concerns. But when Rosen pressed Hegseth on using it, he said he stood by his remarks. “Senator, I feel like it’s a pretty accurate term for folks who don’t see the plank in their own eye and always want to see what’s wrong with an operation,” he said, “as opposed to the historic success of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Hegseth’s use of “Pharisees” offers insight into how he views Trump and the war in Iran, said Sam Perry, an associate professor of rhetoric at Baylor University. The defense secretary has previously invoked his religious identity to suggest that US military action is divinely sanctioned. He has ties to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, an evangelical denomination whose founder has promoted the idea that the US should be a Christian theocracy and enforce a biblical interpretation of society. In his 2020 book “American Crusade,” Hegseth called for a “360-degree holy war,” pitting God-fearing American Christians against “Islamists” and “leftists.”

Taking all that into consideration, Perry said he sees Hegseth’s characterization of Iran war critics as “Pharisees” as more than mere metaphor. “If you’re trying to figure out where Hegseth is placing Trump within that story,” he said, “the only conclusion that you can really come to is that Hegseth is positioning him as a Christ figure.”

To Kaylor, the Christian fixation on the Pharisees is notable for another reason: Though the Roman state was responsible for crucifying Jesus, the Pharisees are often portrayed as his primary opponents. “Which of those two become the key villain in the story changes the moral of the story,” he said. “So this focus on Pharisees has not only been a way of tarnishing Judaism, it’s also been a way of ignoring the critique of empire and militarism so on and so on.”

In Hegseth’s telling, God is on the side of the Trump administration and the US military.

Kaylor has another interpretation.

“We are to the world today what the Roman Empire was in Jesus’s time,” Kaylor said. “And so we need a different opponent to Jesus, and there’s not a whole lot of options in the New Testament stories of people who are debating with Jesus at all. And so the Pharisees become the more convenient scapegoat that allow us not to have to critique the American empire.”

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