Does the Pharisees Sitting in Moses's Seat Prove Papal Authority?

The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, “Rabbi, Rabbi.” (Matt.23:2-7)

This text from Matthew’s Gospel has often been used by Roman Catholic apologists as a defense of Papal authority. The argument goes something like this:

Jesus contends that the Pharisees have a legitimate authority derived from Moses, which is contrasted with the Sadduccees who also claimed authority that Jesus did not similarly affirm. This Pharisaic authority is grounded in some form of succession, such that Moses’s teaching was passed down to those who he appointed who did the same for succeeding generations, eventually leading to the passing on of this authority to the first century Pharisees. Despite Jesus’s constant critiques of their leadership, he appears to affirm, in this text, the Pharisees’s right to teach and interpret the Law, and the necessity of obedience to these teachings by the apostles. If, then, there is a succession of authorities from Moses to the Pharisees whose teachings are to be followed in the time of the New Testament, there must then be a similar authority to guide the teachings of the post-Apostolic age.

Further, according to this reading, Jesus’s criticism of the Pharisees must be recontextualized as an attack on hypocrisy, rather than a denial of the legitimacy of their teaching. The tie made here between the Pharisees and the rightful successors of Peter silences criticisms of the Papal office which point out the gross abuses and immorality that characterize much of the history of its existence. If the Pharisees can be recognized by Jesus as having valid authority despite their hypocrisy, the same is true of the Roman Church.

How are we to respond to this argument?

The text at issue here is a notoriously difficult one for interpreters, as it seems incongruous with the rest of St. Matthew’s treatment of the Scribes and Pharisees. Note, for example, how Matthew contrasts Jesus’s authority with the teaching of these Jewish leaders at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (Matt. 7:28-29)

While the critique of the authority of the Jewish leaders seems clear at first glance, it must be acknowledges that there are two divergent interpretations of this text. The first contends that what differs in the Matthean contrast is simply the manner of speaking between Jesus and the Scribes, rather than God-given authority as such. In this reading, one could argue for compatibility between the Roman Catholic view of 23:2-7 and Matthew’s statements in 7:28-29. The second interpretation argues Matthew’s contrast is that between the actual authority inherent in Jesus, and the feigned authority of the Scribes, which would then negate the Roman reading of 23:2-7 if one understands St. Matthew to be self-consistent in his theology.

One’s decision between these different takes cannot be made solely through grammatical evaluation, as the text could legitimately be read as contending that Jesus teaches out of a real inherent authority or that he teaches authoritatively. The former interpretation is preferable, in my view, as tit recognizes that the second part of the sentence is not a description of the reaction of the people hearing Jesus, but is Matthew’s paranthetical explanation as to why they were so astonished at his teaching (and such comments are common in Matthew’s Gospel). In other words, St. Matthew is pointing out that the reason why Jesus’s teaching sounds so different is that it grows out of an authority that he has which the Scribes and Pharisees do not.

There are, further, several other places where Jesus is critical of the Pharisees’s teaching. Look at Matthew’s commentary on Jesus’s warning to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees:

Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matt. 16:12)

Unlike the prior text, this sentence is unambiguous. Jesus does not merely warn against the hypocrisy or attitudes of the Pharisees, but of their doctrine. Supporting this, he elsewhere calls the Pharisees both “blind” and “leaders of the blind” (Matt. 15:14). Rather than telling the apostles to follow their teachings and respect their authority, Jesus encourages them to leave the Pharisees alone, letting them fall into a ditch with their blind followers. He further critiques not only the teachers themselves but their followers by calling them “son[s] of hell” when converting through Pharisaic teaching (Matt. 23:15). Along with calling them “evil” on numerous occasions (Matt. 9:14, 12:39, 16:4, 22:18), Jesus is also clear at some points that his critique is not only of the deeds of the Pharisees, but also of their words (Matt. 12:34).

Along with these criticisms of the Pharisees, Jesus also speaks quite directly to one of the unwritten traditions—handwashing (Matt. 15:1-7). In this instance, the Pharisees are critical of the apostles because they do not follow the “tradition of the elders,” since they ate with unwashed hands. Rather than affirming these supposedly authoritative traditions, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, not merely for their hypocrisy, but for their traditions, which in this case are opposed to the Word of God. These traditions are, in Jesus’s words, “traditions of men,” rather than divinely revealed teaching as delegated to the Scribes and Pharisees. In this encounter, Jesus opposes this supposed authoritative teaching about handwashing to Scripture, declaring that the Jewish leaders had forsaken the divine Word for these traditions. In other words, Jesus functionally subordinates Pharisaic traditions to the Word of God so that obedience or disobedience to traditions is normed by their coherence with written revelation (which is the essence of the sola scriptura principle).

The teaching of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole is rather clear in his portrayal of the Pharisees as standing in opposition to God’s revelation. They are “blind,” teach “traditions of men” which set aside the Word of God, are “sons of hell” whose teaching makes others even worse “sons of hell,” and whose teaching leads their followers to fall into ditches. If the rest of Matthew’s Gospel (and the portrayal of the Pharisees in the three other Gospels) speaks only critically of the Pharisees as teachers and leaders, it seems rather odd to interpret Matthew 23 in a way that is seemingly incommensurate with that testimony.

In light of this manifold evidence of the Matthean witness against Pharisaic tradition, it is now necessary to examine the primary text under consideration here. What exactly is Jesus talking about here?

The first point to address is exactly what Moses’s seat is on which these Jewish leaders supposedly sit. An examination of the scholarship on this text shows that much of the interpretive discussion here surrounds the exact identification of “Moses’s seat,” as to whether this refers in some sense to a literal seat, or to a metaphorical seat of authority. Regardless of one’s take on what makes up such a seat in this debate, it is agreed that this identification of the Pharisees with the seat of Moses is intended as a statement of their authority.

The question is whether this mention of Pharisaic authority is, by Jesus, meant as an affirmation of divinely granted authority, or of an authority they have by some other means. In other words, they are the ones who are on the “seat of Moses,” in that they bear the social and religious function of holding and teaching the Law. This does not mean that Jesus approves of their being the ones who serve this function. He simply acknowledges it. And, as teachers of the Law, there is a certain respect due them.

This latter interpretation would be further clarified if it was clearly the case that there was an actual piece of furniture within first century synagogues that bore the name “the seat of Moses” (as some scholars have argued). If this was a seat in the most literal sense, this may have been the place where the copy of the Torah was kept. The respect due to the Pharisees then is in their holding of the Law itself, rather than in any kind of authoritative oral tradition which they were called to maintain.

This interpretion is not, however, dependent upon the existence of the seat as actual furniture. If there was no seat, the point would remain, regardless, that the Pharisees bore the social role of readers and keepers of the Law. If it is the actual Law that Jesus is referring to here as recorded in the books of the Torah—rather than interpretive Pharisaic oral traditions—that are to be obeyed when the Pharisees teach, then Jesus’s language about the apostles observing “whatever” the Pharisees say in the text makes far more sense. Otherwise, if Jesus literally commands the apostles to obey all Pharisaic commands (including unwritten traditions), they then should have begun washing their hands and doing less work on the Sabbath.

In defense of the common Roman apologetic view, some have tried to distinguish here between the “tradition of the elders” which Jesus criticizes in Matthew 15 from those other traditions the Pharisees passed on which were interpretations of the Law, rather than additions to it. In this reading, the former are to be rejected, but the latter to be accepted. There are two points (at least) that negate this view. First, there is no distinction between these two elements of tradition in the text whatsoever—neither in Matthew 15, 23, or anywhere else in any of the Gospels. Second, it is often precisely Pharisaic interpretation of the Law that Jesus is most critical, such as their understanding of Sabbath Law. This distinction is artificial and imposed, with no textual basis.

The fact is that this is an extremely difficult text to navigate. Interpreters from Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions alike recognize the incongruity between a reading of Matthew 23 which affirms the validity of the Pharisaic oral traditions and the rest of the Matthew’s Gospel (along with the rest of the New Testament). This difficulty is evident in the number of proposed interpretations of this passage among commentors. As an example of this broad range of views, Mark Allan Powell identifies ten distinct approaches in Biblical scholarship on this issue (Powell, “Do and Keep What Moses Says”). In my examination of scholarship on this text, I have found hardly anyone who opts for the view that there is some kind of proto-apostolic succession in which the Pharisees take part that Jesus literally affirms here—along with a necessity for the apostles to follow Scribal interpretations of the Mosaic Torah. Those who do nearly always believe this to be a contradiction within Matthew’s Gospel, and thus attribute this saying to a pre-Matthean tradition, rather than to the apostle’s supposed more developed theology which differentiates Jesus more strongly from the Pharisees.

The fact that readings which contend for an affirmation of Mosaically-derived Pharisaic authority are found almost entirely within Roman Catholic apologetics (they’re not present in the RC Biblical scholars I’ve read, though my reading is by no means comprehensive) illustrates that this is a case of a conclusion driving one’s interpretation, rather than a theological conclusion being derived from the text. Close examinations of the text of Matthew’s Gospel which assume consistency within the author’s writing do not generally lead toward a view of the Pharisees in which they are granted genuine authority to interpret the Torah, and a seat which must always be respected and obeyed. Since there are a number of plausible interpretations of Matthew 23:2-7 which make perfect sense both grammatically and thematically, it is far more sensible to accept one which is coherent with the rest of Matthean theology and the rest of the New Testament.

On a personal level, I have never understood the appeal of this argument. If Rome defends its authority as Pharisaic in one way or another, this would seemingly also vindicate the use of the harsh language early Protestants aimed at the Papacy, which was often a simple reiteration of how Jesus and John the Baptist spoke of the Pharisees. Further, and more basically, it is rather unambiguous that the Pharisees are the bad guys in the Gospel accounts; I am not sure what benefit it would be to tie one’s ecclesial authorities so closely to them. This would seem to be an argument against Roman magisterial authority rather than a point in support of it.