Footnote

a Concerning the Pharisees as false prophets, David Hill writes in the magazine Biblica (1976, Vol. 57): “Josephus knows of Pharisees who possessed foreknowledge of events and used their gift for political ends (Ant. XVII 41-45), and elsewhere he speaks of a certain Pollion and his disciple Samaias who prophesied (Ant. XIV 172-176; XV 3, 370). But more important than Josephus’ meagre and perhaps muddled information is the fact that the Pharisees as a group saw themselves as heirs of the great prophetic tradition: they took over the tradition from the men of the Great Assembly who received it from the last in line of the prophets. And as expert interpreters of Scripture the Pharisees were engaged in a process which was the closest approximation possible in their time to the revelation mediated through the prophets of an earlier time. . . . Of them, as of their successors, it could be said that ‘If they are not prophets, yet are they sons of the prophets’ (attributed to Hillel [a rabbi who lived about the time of Jesus]). Entirely consonant with this is Jesus’ word about the Pharisees building the tombs of the prophets and adorning the monuments of the righteous (Mt 23, :29). It is therefore not impossible that the Pharisees in Jesus’ day laid claim to the role and authority (if not the name) of prophet.”