What does the word "Pharisee" mean?

Question

please note: not asking what one was; but rather what does the actual word mean from the Greek text. TY

Farisai'oß "Pharisaios" is the Greek word whose word origin was in Hebrew. Please forgive me if I wasn't specific enough with the original additional details; great answers thank you very much all.

Answer 1

It's NOT a Greek word originally.

The word Pharisees comes from the Hebrew פרושים prushim from פרוש parush, meaning "separated", that is, one who is separated for a life of purity

Answer 2

Pharisees - A prominent sect of the Jews. The earliest notice of them in Josephus occurs in connection with Jonathan, the high priest. Immediately after the account of the embassy to the Lacedaemonians, there is subjoined (Josephus, Ant., XIII, v, 9) an account of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, therefore implying that then and in this connection they had been prominent, although no notice of any of these parties is to be found that confirms that view. Later (XIII, x, 5), the Pharisees are represented as envious of the success of John Hyrcanus; Eleazar, one of them, insults him at his own table. From the fact that earlier in the history the Assideans occupy a similar place to that occupied later by the Pharisees, it may be deduced that the two parties are in a measure one. See HASIDAEANS; ASMONEANS. It would seem that not only the Pharisees, but also the Essenes, were derived from the Assideans or ḥăṣīdhīm.

The name means “separatists,” from פּרשׁ, pārash, “to separate” - those who carefully kept themselves from any legal contamination, distinguishing themselves by their care in such matters from the common people, the ‛am hā-'ārec, who had fewer scruples. Like the Puritans in England during the 17th century, and the Presbyterians in Scotland during the same period, the Pharisees, although primarily a religious party, became ere long energetically political. They were a closely organized society, all the members of which called each other ḥăbhērīm, “neighbors”; this added to the power they had through their influence with the people.

Answer 3

Definition Of Pharisees

Answer 4

The Pharisees were, depending on the time, a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews that flourished during the Second Temple Era (536 BCE–70 CE).
The word means: seperated

Answer 5

Well, looks like you got various views of what a Pharisee is..( since you'd used the uppercase yourself you implied its use as the name of the group )

And as others told you it is a Hebrew word, not Greek..meaning separate.

Their greatest attempt was to keep "separate" foreign influence from Jewish law..this was their great problem with Christianity. They were against any Romanized or Hellenizing influences into Jewish life and practice and it is largely because of this that Judaism did not disappear.

And while some here wish to make them appear as "elitist"..it was the Pharisees who promoted literacy for ALL, they did not believe that being able to read and write was the exclusive domain of the priesthood or any elite. It is because of the Pharisee's legacy that the language of the Torah was not lost and the knowledge of Torah was available to all Jews through the spread of various schools in the Diaspora.

Their "separation" was NOT one of excluding others, but of excluding the profane from their lives. They accepted converts as completely and fully Jewish whereas some sects of Judaism did not.

The definition above..number 2 and 3..were not any form of meaning of the word in the Hebrew. Those are connotations given to the word by the Christian religion that have found thier way into the common vernacular from the demoniziation of Jews in the New Testament.

Jewish history does not depict the Pharisees in the manner that Christianity records them. The writings and teachings of the Pharisees do not present them as the New Testament depicts them.

One definition, at odds with their own writings, but that I often see being applied to the Pharisees, is of a group of people for whom custom and ritual and outward observance is all important, but who have lost or perverted the spiritual significance and meaning to those practices. That IMHO is precisely how I view the attempts to missionize to Jews by having evangelic protestant Christians dress in Jewish garb and practice Jewish rituals assigning meanings that are contradictory to the Torah precepts for which they were established to honor.

Shalom

Answer 6

Others have supplied the translation of the term. The applied meaning of, as Father K puts it, a life of separated purity would include things like the following::

They were a movement to make all of life "holy", in remembrance of the living presence of the Divine, by adopting for themselves rules for ritual purity that had previously only been followed by priests.

They incorporated oral tradition for some of their practices. And when the Romans dismantled the Jewish state in the first century, CE, their movement (and that of the Jesus' movement) was the only Jewish current to survive. They are the ancestors of today's rabbi's and Rabbinic Judaism.
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Answer 7

Different translations of the bible would suggest love and charity are synonmus. Examples found in.1st Corrinthians ch. 13 vs. 1-17 illustrate this many times. I would enjoy hearing from a scholar of the languages used in those past times to clarify my understanding. The story of the "World's Poorest Philanthropist", Gilbert "Harold" Ewing II (myself) is the reason for this querry. The " act of grace", or charity, reffered to in the news interview, has posited this question and I lack the sort of education to provide any insights of true value.

Answer 8

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word isn't originally Greek but comes from the Aramaic word "perisayya." Wikipedia takes it back to the Hebrew "perushim," which means "separated."

Answer 9

Pharisee
–noun
1. a member of a Jewish sect that flourished during the 1st century b.c. and 1st century a.d. and that differed from the Sadducees chiefly in its strict observance of religious ceremonies and practices, adherence to oral laws and traditions, and belief in an afterlife and the coming of a Messiah.
2. (lowercase) a sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical person.
3. Current synonym: religious conservative

Answer 10

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RE:
What does the word "Pharisee" mean?
please note: not asking what one was; but rather what does the actual word mean from the Greek text. TY