Gamaliel's Pragmatism: When Enemies of Enemies Become Unlikely Allies

Gamaliel, president of the Sanhedrin, occupied a peculiar position of power that had calcified into worldly shrewdness. His counsel to leave the apostles unmolested was not born from sympathy with Christian truth, but from a shrewd political calculus: the Pharisees and Sadducees were locked in bitter theological combat over the resurrection, and these Galileans preaching anastasis (resurrection) through Jesus were, in effect, enemies of his enemies.…