Pharasees (Jewish) Criticized By Hegseth of Trump's Governing Body

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                    Pete Hegseth b: June 6, 1980, 45 years old.  He's a former television personality who has served since 2025 as the 29th United States secretary of defense.   Hegseth studied politics at Princeton University, where he was the publisher of The Princeton Tory, a conservative student newspaper.^[3] In 2003, he was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Minnesota Army National Guard, serving at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.^[4] Hegseth worked for several organizations after leaving Iraq, including as an executive director at Vets For Freedom^[5] and Concerned Veterans for America. He became a contributor to Fox News in 2014. Hegseth served as an advisor to President Donald Trump after supporting his campaign in 2016. From 2017 to 2024,  I don't see any background in Biblical studies other than him being:   Religious Affiliation: Christian:  Hegseth is aligned with the CREC, a denomination known for its, and, according to, a "strong hierarchy" and rigid, patriarchal, and socially conservative beliefs.

Ah yes, Hethseth now criticizing Pharasees (Jews) through the New Testament of Jesus.  The commentator on CNN had it wrong; he wasn't criticizing Jesus;  he was referring to the Pharasees who were the Jews.  The Sadducees in the Temple followed a strict, literal interpretation of the written Law of Moses (the Torah or Pentateuch). They focused on the first five books of the Bible, rejecting the oral traditions, interpretations, and added doctrines held by the Pharisees, such as the resurrection of the dead. 

That's what I took it as, anyway.

Even the HILL's headline reads "Hegseth compares media to Jewish biblical group that clashed with Jesus. He was talking about the Pharasees, probably having no idea who they were other than Jews that Jesus was against.  

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday complained about an “endless stream of garbage” from the media in its coverage of the Iran war, comparing the Pentagon press corps to the Pharisees, the biblical Jewish group that often clashed with Jesus as told in the New Testament only. He is not mentioned in our Jewish Torah at all.  “As I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops,” Hegseth said during a briefing at the Pentagon. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.”

Well, thank you very much, I say bitterly.  You just called our origin of today's Judaism an endless stream of garbage-as you say Jesus must have thought, who was also a Jew, as you should know.  Let me tell you a few things:  

"King Solomon lived from 961 to 920 BCE, almost 1,000 years before Jesus and he is the one who had the Temple completed as Moses had wanted.  

Going back further than Jesus, to the 2nd Temple period, in Jewish history, it lasted approximately 600 years, from 516 BCE to 70 CE. It began with the completion and dedication of the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and ended with its destruction by the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War.  It had Jews in 2 political groups called the Pharisees and the Saducees.  The Pharisees were interested in how the masses needed learning more of the traditional religious teaching.  The Pharisees used to eat in groups and observe all the rules of purity in the same manner as the priests consuming consecrated food in the Temple.  They incorporated into the cult, as some called it, folk-customs not mentioned in the Bible, such as the Water-Drawing Festival, to the dismay of the Saducees.  Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in their legal decisions.  The Pharisees were thus generally lenient in their interpretatioins.  Pharisaism  was responsible for strengthening morality and  introducing the elasticity which enabled Judaism to withstand its subsequent tribulations;  the movement was continued in the stream of historic Judaism.   So, this is the line of our Judaism today, which has evolved into 3 groups as such;  Orthodox, Conservative, and then Reform Judaism.   

The Sadducees had had absolute control.  It is thought that the origin could have come from the high priest, Zadok whose descendants served in the same office until 162  BCE. It was the well-connected priests and prominent aristocrats who belonged to the Sadducees.  They were the influential in political and economic life.  For them, religion was primarily the Temple cult without a basis of abstracted faith. According to their viewpoint, individuals and groups must aspire to well-being in this world without expecting recompense in the world to come.  they had no belief in a future world, resurrections, or the immortality of the soul and also rejected the existence of angels and spirits.  They sounded very much like our scientists of today,   a very scientific outlook.   The Sadducees were incapable of adaption to a changing environment.  They clung to the letter of the text.  

Resource: 

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5834226-hegseth-media-iran-war-criticism/

CNN