Before Judaism there was Semitic polytheism. Judaism doesn't come into being until the Persians in the 5th century BC, and even then it was a kind of unstable hybrid of Zoroastrianism and Semitic polytheism. With the Greeks it takes on a more familiar shape. Then they produced their ‘history’ and holy books, and invented themselves.

It’s likely that Pharisees come about as dissidents from the Temple under Greek rule, initially sticking closer to the Zoroastrian Proto-Judaism, hence their Persian name. Yet they are still subject to heavy Greek influence as a group whose focus is books and intellectual culture instead of cultic practice.

Jesus’ beef was likely actually with the Sadducees not the Pharisees. A Jewish Messiah who wanted the Romans gone also wanted the Jewish collaborators with the Romans gone. Rome was Babylon, and Babylon’s Whore were these elite Temple Jews in bed with the occupying Romans. The Essenes and Pharisees were similar in that they both wanted a Messiah. The Pharisees were less militant, but when wars broke out, they fought.

The gospels are not written until after the destruction of the Temple. Pharisees were the only Jews still around, as you say. They were the Jews people knew— and people didn’t like them, for all the same reasons to feel that way today. Jesus would have never said it about them, but the author of the gospel put his own opinion about Pharisees into the mouth of the Jewish messiah.

If you are selling a religion to Romans, you make your Jew insurgent god Rome-friendly; you make Roman representative Pontus Pilate sympathetic to him; and you don’t make Jesus’ enemy the Sadducees who were effectively Rome’s ally.

“We are the real origin” is the master trope of the Abrahamic religions. An Historical fiction seeks to establish primacy through revision of origins. And it all starts with the Persian lie about the “Returners from Exile” being Jews there to restore the ancient truth.

>>513546421
The Torah was not ancient law from Moses but a late Hellenistic creation, first in Greek and then dressed in archaic Hebrew. No pre–3rd century BCE evidence shows it existed in manuscripts, inscriptions, or foreign records, and no one practiced the religion it describes until the Hasmonean period. Its prophecies were written after the fact, turning history into proof of divine plan. The archaic language is imitation, not survival. This means the Torah is political invention, not timeless revelation, a shift that shakes the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The Pharisee are the Edomites (descendent of Amalek which the Israelites were told to genocide and which descent from the Canaanites which worshipped Moloch and such) which previously were forced to convert. However they really liked their old customs which were unlawful and thus they created the Oral Law. You know how in Court a Jew will use semantics, grey areas, loopholes and other pilpul to argue they didnt break a law which they never followed completly ignoring the intent behind the law? The Oral Law of the Pharisee is a guideline on how to do that with the OT Law.
Before Judaism there was Semitic polytheism. Judaism doesn't come into being until the Persians in the 5th century BC, and even then it was a kind of unstable hybrid of Zoroastrianism and Semitic polytheism. With the Greeks it takes on a more familiar shape. Then they produced their ‘history’ and holy books, and invented themselves.

Both say they’re the real continuation of Israel’s faith. Historically they’re siblings, split from the same Second Temple Judaism. You can’t flip it and say Judaism came from Christianity.