Who were the scribes that often argued with Jesus?

"And the Pharisees and Sadducees came and asked Him, tempting Him, to shew them a sign out of heaven" (verse 1). The Pharisees were the strictest sect among the Jews. They were the religious class, the Ritualists who not alone held to the letter of the law, but who enforced the traditional teachings. They were hypocrites, and fully exposed as such by our Lord in the previous chapter. There He uncovered the hypocrisies and the wickedness of their hearts. Once before the Pharisees and the scribes had come to Him with their subtle cunning and asked to see a sign from Him (chapter 12:38). The scribes were in fullest sympathy with the Pharisees, being as religious and ritualistic as they were. These scribes had the care of the written law and studied it. They made the transcripts, expounded the law, explained difficulties, kept the records and were also called lawyers.

The disciples were accused of eating bread with unwashed hands. This criticism of their behaviour was made by certain Pharisees and scribes who had come up to Galilee from Jerusalem. Among the simple and unlettered peasantry (John 7:48-49), they assumed the professional role of authoritative exponents of the law of Moses, and of the whole body of precepts contained in the Old Testament scriptures. In the exercise of this judicial capacity they condemned the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of God as being contrary to the first principles of Jewish knowledge. Confronted with the undeniable fact that multitudes of the Galilean folk were flocking to hear the Prophet of Nazareth, they had come down from the centre of religious learning and zeal formally to investigate the claims and teaching of Jesus, and to denounce the preacher and the doctrine as being contrary to the approved standards of the Sanhedrin.

Literally Teachers: otherwise called DOCTORS OR TEACHERS OF THE LAW. Those who devoted themselves to the study and teaching of the Jewish law. Luke 2:46; Luke 5:17; Acts 5:34.

Scribes and lawyers were rather closely linked, for scribes began by being simply writers, then virtually became theologians. Eventually they involved themselves with Israel's law from a judicial point of view and thus became lawyers and sometimes doctors of the law (as was Gamalial -- Acts 5:34). They therefore considered themselves to be authoritative interpreters of the law. They could be Pharisees at the same time -- a double evil! A lawyer therefore objected to the Lord's scathing words, for he complained that by implication even the lawyers were reproached (v.45). But if he thought the Lord would retract or modify His words in deference to lawyers, he was mistaken. In fact, the Lord added three "woes" for lawyers also. First, instead of their being concerned to obey the law, they considered themselves enforcers of the law upon others. So they heaped heavy burdens on the people but never lifted a finger to help bear the burden. Too often it is true that one who is rigid in his teaching may be loose in example.

In Israel the scribes arose as a reaction from that departure from the law which had been the nation's ruin. They came forward as its defenders and vindicators, and in order to this its investigators and interpreters. Their zeal for its observance urged them to "make a hedge about it" of their own rules, which, while making it ever a heavier yoke, came naturally by degrees to displace what they were intended to enforce. The human came inevitably into conflict with the divine. As additions to it, they broke the law necessarily from the beginning; and the end could not but be still worse than the beginning.

In the Old Testament this word is applied to the officer who carried on the correspondence for a king, the army, etc., what is now generally understood by secretary. 2 Sam. 8:17; 2 Chr. 24:11; Esther 3:12; Isa. 36:3, etc. It is also applied to those who wrote and explained the scriptures: thus Ezra was "a ready scribe in the law," even "a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord," though he was also a priest. Ezra 7:6, 11; Neh. 8:1-13.

In the New Testament the word is used in the sense in which it is applied to Ezra, and scribes are classed with the chief priests and the elders. They are described as sitting in Moses' seat, and what they taught was to be observed; but, alas, their works were not to be followed. Matt. 7:29; Matt. 23:2, 13-33. Many woes are proclaimed against them, and they are addressed, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers! how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Thus these men, who ought to have been examples to others, were publicly denounced because their practice denied what they taught. They did not form a separate sect in New Testament times, a person might be both scribe and Pharisee or Sadducee: cf. Acts 23:9.

However, Scribes and Pharisees expressed their haughty criticism, not to the Lord, but to His disciples, for their eating with tax collectors and sinners. Because of their personal feeling against tax collectors, they classed them with the general run of "sinners" who probably did not zealously follow the rituals and regulations of the religious leaders. Such rituals were only a cover-up for their own sins, but their proud self-righteousness did not admit this. This self-righteousness of the flesh is its worst feature. The Scribes and Pharisees were not cured because they would not admit they were diseased: they felt no need of correction. This itself is disease in its most advanced and alarming state.

"Their scribes." Cf. Acts 23:9. Some men of this class seem to have belonged to the Sadducean faction also; of them the Temple would be the stronghold, as the Synagogue that of the Pharisees. Cf. note 23 on Mark, and on the Pharisees of the school of Shammai, note 310 below.

In contrast the Jewish scribes relied on the authority of well-known Rabbis who had lived before them for all they taught. This is why their explanations were often lengthy and dry. Many of the schools of Jewish teaching from the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes had grown up in the 400 years after the last prophets of the Old Testament. They disputed over basic questions but were often taken up with debates about trifling matters. It is difficult to follow the arguments of the scribes, but many a sermon of our own day is not much better.

Now let me call your attention to another word for a moment. It is said that "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." You will bear with me in saying it, but to my mind the most contemptible kind of people that were ever in this world were the scribes. And I am prepared to tell you why. I was reading not very long since, and the passage struck me greatly, the account of the blessed One's coming down here into this world, His having been pleased to become man, and reading it in the gospel that presents Him in Jewish connections too. And I do not know any passage that gives us the true character of these men, and shows them exactly as they are, like that passage which tells us of the conversation that took place between Herod the king and those scribes. They could tell accurately everything about the birth of Jesus, they were conversant with all the facts of the Old Testament prophecies, they were the keepers of the law, the copyists of the law, and they read and expounded the law (I believe they are the same persons that are called "doctors of the law"), there was not a recondite mystery connected with the law that these scribes could not unravel before men; but, with all that, they had not the smallest personal interest in the things themselves. That is what they were. May God keep us from being scribes! They could descant upon the prophecies, could tell the place where Christ was to be born — they did — they could quote the very words of scripture, they were as clear, as it is said, as the moon, but as cold; their hearts were not on fire. What did they care about Jesus of Nazareth, what concern had they about the truths that connected themselves with Him? They were simply there as the formal, cold exponents of the law and the prophets. That is why I affirm that the scribes were a despicable class of men. And therefore you see the contrast in a moment. "He taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes." The scribes had no authority; they were merely copyists, they only repeated the thing. And not only this, but what characterised the scribes was their perverse rendering of the law, their fanciful inventions oftentimes, their perverted notions, the manner in which they twisted things and manufactured things according to the sentiments and working of their own minds. They could argue, but they could not reveal; Jesus revealed; He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."