For the first time, we meet the teachers of the law.
Anyone familiar with the gospel story knows the stereotype: a group of sniveling, pompous robe-clutchers who could never see the forest for their obsession with the trees.
But not so fast. The scribes—the teachers of the law—are not cartoon villains. To understand the tension of this moment, we have to see them for what they were: earnest thinkers shaped by their time.
