attack. >> ( dramatized ): woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites.r you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside look beautiful, but inside, they are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth. >> now, in jesus' own times, the pharisees weren't that prominent a group. why does matthew tell the story this way, so that a group that was less consequential during jesus' own lifetime now becomes the main opponent? it's precisely because that's what's going on in the life of matthew's community after the war. the pharisees are becoming their opponents, and we're watching two jewish groups-- matthew's christian-jewish group and the local pharisaic groups-- in tension over what would be the future of judaism. >> narrator: in "matthew," we see a debate between two jewish groups. tensions created by this debate will eventually fracture judaism and lead to the split with christianity. >> most of the gospels reflect a period of disagreement, of theological disagreement. and the new narrative history that evolves in the form of... of the new... n

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he wouldn't have wandered into the crosshairs of the priests because, compared to how the pharisees are criticizing the priests, what jesus doing... is doing is fairy minimal. if he had been complaining about the priests, or criticizing them, or criticizing the way the temple was being run, this would just... it's business as usual. this is... this is one of the aspects of being a jew. >> another possibility, though, is that jesus sounds more like the essenes, who were really criticizing the wholway the temple is run as having become too worldly, too caught up in the money of the day, or maybe just too roman. and if that's the case, then his action looks much more like an act of political subversion. >> try and imagine the temple for what it was. it was both the house of god and the seat of collaboration. it was the high priest caiaphas who had to collaborate with the roman occupation. now, how would jesus, as a gallilean peasant, see the temple? i think with ferocious ambiguity. on the one hand, it was the seat of god, and you would die to defend it from, say, a roman emperor like cali