I've been thinking about this for sometime now and I wanted to know how other people felt about this comparison.
The Pharisees were known for hypocrisy and for also promoting traditions of men and other non-bibical teachings.
When we look at the WTBS in light of the actions of the Pharisees there are some amazing similarities.
1. For example take notice of the preaching or field service activity. The bible does make mention of the good news being preached to all the inhabited Earth but to the best of my knowledge I don't recall that verse being applied to the entire congregation. In fact if I remember correctly I beleive Matthew the 24th chapter was directed toward the apostles. But lets just say for the sake of the argument that all christians are commanded to preach, does this mean that an organization has the right to determine for us how many hours we should be preaching each month? Furthermore when members of the congregation don't acheive the standard the WTBS has set, should they be criticized? No where in the scriptures does it regulate or even suggest how much time a person should spend preaching. But yet this is just what the society does, therefore they are going above and beyond the scriptures just like the Pharisees did.
2. Another area that WTBS has shown simlarity to the Pharisees is in unscriptural traditions and rules. A JW can have his privilege of service restricted for wearing a beard, in fact he can even be labeled bad association and shunned for simply wearing facial hair. Then there is the practice of the WTBS in policing the congregation on issues ranging from music to sex. JWs can actually be disfellowshipped from the congregation on matters that are not found in the scriptures while on the other hand there have been numerous cases of child molesters who are retained in positions of oversight despite being known sex offenders.
These are just surface observations, I'm sure if a person was to investigate further that more problems would be discovered. One thing I found to be interesting is the situation of where an elder or ministerial servant had made a serious sin (fornication, adultery, maybe even murder) as long as that person did'nt continue to practice the sin it did'nt have to brought up to the elders. However this is not true for the rest of the congregation, they are obliged to confess any such wrong doing to the body of elders. I read about this practice in one of Amazing's posts. So basically its not hard to see how the WTBS resembles the actions of the Pharisees.