Gospel Development Theories Are All Bunk: Engagement with Pharisees 4

Here we hit two more categories of "engagement with Pharisaism" in the Gospels, plus a list of a series miscellaneous mentions of the Pharisees that don't fit into any other categories.As this series has copiously documented, the data simply don't back up Craig Keener's claim that Matthew "engages with Pharisaism" more than Mark and Luke or that John focuses negatively on the Pharisees more than Matthew. This development thesis was supposed to support the explanation that Matthew and, even more, John were trying to make their Gospels relevant to their Pharisee-persecuted audiences.Of all the categories we've surveyed, the only, isolated one in which Matthew has (one) more negative story about the Pharisees than Luke and Mark and John has (one) more than Matthew is that of plots to kill or arrest Jesus. Mark (agreeing with Matthew) has one such story; Matthew has that one plus another where such a plot is attributed to Pharisees (among others); John has three. But the bigger story should be the multiple attestation across all three Gospels, in different stories, that the Pharisees were indeed involved in such plots. This is especially relevant given that Keener questions the historicity of John's claims that the Pharisees were even *part of* a coalition that sent Temple guards to arrest Jesus.The next category is traps--setups by way of questions or sick people to try to play gotcha with Jesus. Here we return to the by-now-familiar picture in which the Synoptics have far more than John and there is no developmental pattern among the Synoptics.And Luke wins the "number of miscellaneous negative references" non-category handily.Why do scholars believe such development theories? Only social explanations can help here. Epistemologically, the entire enterprise of seeing developments is bankrupt, an exercise in seeing what you think is there in Rorschach blots and failing to recognize obvious counterevidence.