Being too judgemental?

Today's sermon was John chapter 8.
The story is about how the scribes and Pharisees tried to trap Jesus when they brought in a woman who was caught in adultery. Long Story short, they question Jesus what they should follow the mosiac law and stone the woman. Jesus ignore them and wrote on the floor. Then he asked them "Let him without sin cast the first stone". Then the scribes and Pharisees left one by one until only Jesus and the woman was left.
Jesus then asked the woman, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?". The woman replied "no one, my lord" and then Jesus said "Neither do I condemn you; go and do not sin again".

I know I didn't really cut it short, I'm bad at summarising.

So anyway, the sermon was how the scribes and Pharisees was so caught up trapping Jesus and coming out of plans that they dehumanise the woman. A lot has been said about the many attempts that the Pharisees tried to challenge Jesus. Following that came a lot of condemnation of the Pharisees and the Jews. Some people even blame the Jews for Jesus's death. If you think about it Jesus is also a Jew. Oh My God I Didn't know that!!!

I guess we have been too quick to judge the Pharisees. I guess its fair to consider the Jewish society at that point of time to understand the reasons for their action. We all know that Jesus started his work at 30(its on Luke). That is about 26 - 36 C.E.

During that time, Jews were under the Roman rule. There were a lot of tensions between the Jews and the Romans. Initially, the Romans were tolerant towards the Jews, but after a while, they got annoyed. They got annoyed by the Jews not worshipping their gods because it violates the first of the ten commandments and Jewish practices such as circumcision which the romans feel that is to act as a mark of difference from other men(which they find distasteful), which is actually quite true, since the circumcision marks a Jew's convenant with God.

The Pharisees might want to avoid trouble from Roman government. To a large extent, Jesus's declaration as the messiah was challenging the existing Roman government. In my opinion, the Pharisees's insistence towards the mosiac law is to retain or protect the jewish identity. In a time where the jews were colonised by the romans and when a lot of jews were spread all around the middle east at that time. The religious leaders were probably worried that some of Jesus's teaching would dilute or diminish the mosiac law of that time, hence such persistence.

Another reason is likely that the sadducees at that time rejected the belief of the Messiah and the resurrection as they were not in the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is the first 5 books in the Torah, also the first 5 books in the Bible also known as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. This probably explains why they were so motivated to challenge Jesus.