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To support his thesis of Jesus as a follower of Hillel, Falk draws conclusions from familiar New Testament passages. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus criticizes the "eye for an eye" view of justice emphasized by a leader of the Shammai school. Shammaite criticism of Jesus for socializing with Gentile sinners or healing on the Sabbath reflected specific debates between the schools. When Jesus attacked the money changers in the Temple, he declared that it was a "house of prayer for all the nations," but had become a "den of robbers." The author suggests that the money changers were corrupt Shammaites who were pocketing donations from Gentile converts to Judaism. Falk even proposes that the Golden Rule of Jesus is just a positive rephrasing of statement by Rabbi Hillel, who once told a pagan inquirer, "What is hateful unto thee, do not do unto thy neighbor. This is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary."
Although Orthodox Judaism shuns doctrinal discussions with Christianity, Falk points out that the great medieval sage Maimonides declared that Christians "will not find in their Torah [the New Testament] anything that conflicts with our Torah." Falk also refers to the commentary of the renowned Polish sage Rabbi Jacob Emden. In a 1757 letter to Polish rabbis, Emden discussed Jesus and Paul as Torah-true missionaries to the Gentiles. Falk, 53, who had studied at the Academy for Higher Learning and Research in Monsey, N.Y., was intrigued when he came across this document in 1974, and it led to his decade of research on Jesus. It is Falk's belief that Orthodox Jews will slowly enter interreligious discussions, in part because the "Christian world is asking us."
Jesus the Pharisee has significant omissions: it does not touch on such salient matters as the Resurrection, the messiahship of Jesus, or the belief that his death atoned for the sins of all humanity. Lawrence Schiffman, a critic of the book who is a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, says that Falk "has bought a stereotype of the School of Shammai, who in reality were good Jews and good Pharisees." Schiffman believes that there will not be a scholarly acceptance of the book's thesis. He maintains that anti-Judaism in early Christian writings is "really there. It had a tremendously pernicious influence over the centuries. There's something dangerous about believing that it's not there, because then you don't have to deal with the problem. It's a much better solution to admit that it is there and then come to terms with it." But Falk hopes, "If my thesis is adopted, Jews will be better Jews and Christians will be better Christians." --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Michael P. Harris/New York