5
Jewish Law
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free, and be not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1).
Some readers of the English Bible have a curious habit. They like
to find the meaning of the words and then insist that they always carry
exactly the same meaning, and no other, everywhere they are found.
Why we do that isn’t clear. After all, English doesn’t work that way.
Why should Greek and Hebrew?We understand that words have denotations and connotations, and
the meaning of a word can vary with context. It can also vary
depending on who is using the word. Some theological discussions
can sound like Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a
scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to
mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make
words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be
master—that's all. . . They've a temper, some of them
—particularly verbs: they're the proudest—adjectives you can do
anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole
lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!”
Sometimes I think impenetrability is the object of some religious
discussion. Semantics raises its head again and again, making it
possible to carry on an argument indefinitely. For all I know, that may
be the objective: endless argument.
But I digress. There are two terms used in discussions of biblical
law that leave non-Jewish readers at sea. They are “The Torah,” and
“The Law of Moses.” The New Testament gives us reason to believe
that the meaning of these terms depends entirely on who is using
them, as well as the context. “Torah” is a singularly confusing word.
If you look it up in an English dictionary, the first definition is, “the
five books of Moses constituting the Pentateuch.” That, naturally, is
the written law. The second definition is, “the body of wisdom and
law contained in Jewish Scripture and other sacred literature and
oral tradition.” The expression, “The Law of Moses,” carries the
same ambivalence.
There is a story behind this, but in order to tell the story, I have to
call your attention to something Paul wrote to the Galatians. He began
his letter with a striking statement.
I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not
something that man made up. I did not receive it from any
man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation
from Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of
life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God
and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond
many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the
traditions of my fathers (Galatians 1:11-14 NIV).
Thus Paul placed “Judaism” firmly in his past. All this seems to
be very important to Paul, because he will end this section with an
unusual affirmation: “I assure you before God that what I am writing
you is no lie” (v. 20 NIV).
It was that excessive zeal that led him to persecute the first
Christians. Nothing Paul said here is particularly difficult, but there
is a common misconception lurking in the background. Not everyone
agrees on what the word “Judaism” means. In modern usage, Judaism
is the religion of the Old Testament. Abraham is called a practitioner
of Judaism, never mind that Judah, after whom Judaism was named,
would not be born for two more generations.
As it happens, that is not how Paul used the term. And in fact,
Judaism, per se, was a relatively late form of the worship of God, one
that grew up after the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon. Prior to
that captivity, there was no “Judaism.” The religion of Abraham, and
indeed the religion of Israel all the way through the monarchy was
never identified by name. It was simply the worship of Jehovah, or
Yahweh, if you prefer.
The consequence of this is that the modern reader is apt to miss
what Paul is driving at when he speaks of his “previous way of life in
Judaism,” and also likely to miss the point of what was happening in
Galatia.
It was Jacob Neusner who began to get this in focus for me.
“Judaism is a religion,” said Neusner, “and every religion is a story.”
It is a story that a group tells to explain where it came from, where it
is going, what it is, in accord with God’s plan.
He describes what he
calls “the Generative Myth,” the story that Judaism tells about itself,
and addresses the origins of what is today called “Rabbinic Judaism.”
Christianity began in the first five centuries C.E. (the
Common Era = A.D.). With roots deep in the pre-Christian
centuries, Rabbinic Judaism, the particular Judaism that
would flourish from the first century to our own times, made
its classical statement in that same period of about five to six
hundred years.
Neusner recognizes that many identify Rabbinic Judaism with the
normative Judaism of the first century. He also points out that the
record does not support that claim. There were many “Judaisms”
extant in the first century.
But in the process of explaining all this, he
develops a theme that may shed some light on the issues before us.
The “Generative Myth” of Judaism is expressed in the collection of
wise sayings of the great Rabbinic sages called “Sayings of the
Fathers.” According to Neusner:
The opening allegation is that Moses received
Torah—Instruction—at Sinai. But it is not then claimed that
Moses wrote the entire Torah in those very words we now
possess in Scripture. Rather, Moses received Torah and
handed it on to Joshua, and so on in a chain of tradition. That
the chain of tradition transcends Scripture’s record is clear
when we reach “the men of the great assembly,” who surely
are not part of the biblical record.
The Jewish story is that Moses received both written and oral
instruction. The Oral Law, they say, has been passed down from
generation to generation, and forms an important part of the Torah,
the Law of Moses. This presents an important distinction for
Christians, because Scripture says that Moses wrote down everything
God told him:
And Moses came and told the people all the words of the
LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered
with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath
said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD
. . . (Exodus 24:3-4).
What is important is this: In Rabbinic Judaism, tradition
transcends Scripture. This fact underlies the ongoing conflict
between Jesus and the Rabbis. Judaism sees a line of tradition from
Moses through the sages to later generations. Jesus challenged that
tradition head on.The conflict is illustrated best in one particular
encounter. Some of the scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus asking
why his disciples transgressed “the tradition of the elders” by eating
without properly washing their hands (Matthew 15:2). There are two
terms here that we need to understand before moving on. The terms
are: “scribes,” and “the tradition of the elders.” The scribes are what
Jewish scholars call “the sages,” while “the traditions of the elders”
are what Jews call “the Oral Law.”
To the Pharisees, the disciples
of Jesus were offending against the Oral Law as defined by the sages.
Jesus’ reply cuts sharply across this idea.
Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God
for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your
father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or
mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says
to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise
have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to
‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God
for the sake of your tradition” (Matthew 15:3-6 NIV).
The Pharisees, who seem to be the progenitors of Rabbinic
Judaism, would have admitted frankly that the traditions of the elders
did indeed transcend the Scriptures. Jesus flatly rejected that idea.
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about
you: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts
are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are
but rules taught by men” (vv. 7-9 NIV).
Thus Jesus characterizes the Oral Law: “Rules taught by men.”
The Jews could not miss the stark contrast between their approach
and that of Jesus. When they interpreted the law, they cited other
sages, other rabbis. An example of Talmudic reasoning:
Talmud of Babylonia tractate Baba Mesia to Mishnah tractate Baba Mesia 4:10.I.15:/59a-b.
A. There we have learned: If one cut [a clay oven] into parts
and put sand between the parts,
B. Rabbi Eliezer declares the oven broken-down and therefore
insusceptible to uncleanness.
C. And sages declare it susceptible. . .
F. Said Rabbi Judah said Samuel, “It is because they
surrounded it with argument as with a snake and proved it
was insusceptible to uncleanness.”
This is a long discussion of an issue among the sages, and the
points are lettered A through X. No less than five different Rabbis are
cited by name with their arguments for or against the proposition,
some citing still other rabbinic sources. Contrast this with Jesus’
repeated use of the expression: “But I say unto you.” This approach
would have jarred many of his listeners, and Matthew takes note of
it:
And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the
people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as
one having authority, and not as the scribes (Matthew 7:28-29
KJV).
Lest we misunderstand the import of what Neusner is saying, and
how this affects our understanding of the distinction, here is what he
goes on to say:
Putting this together, we may say that the generative myth of
Rabbinic Judaism, tells the story of how Moses received
Torah in two media, in writing and in memory, the
memorized part of the Torah being received and handed on a
process of oral formulation and oral transmission.
The “memorized portion of Torah” came to be called the Oral
Law. In the New Testament, it is, “the traditions of the elders.” But
there is more. According to Neusner, “What emerges is now clear,
the masters of Rabbinic Judaism stand in a chain of tradition from
Sinai. Their teachings form part of the Torah God gave to Moses at
Sinai” [emphasis mine].
You may want to read that again, because it really does say what
it seems to say. The teachings of the sages of first century Judaism are
said to be part and parcel of what God handed down to Moses
himself. The generative myth of Rabbinic Judaism holds that
Scripture, the written law, is only part of Torah, only part of the Law
of Moses. The conflict generated by this myth underlies the entire
argument that arises from the New Testament relative to the law. It is
what prompted Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount—the
one I will cite so often:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the
smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means
disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished
(Matthew 5:17-18 NIV).
In referring to letters and strokes of the pen, Jesus made a sharp
distinction. He was talking about the written law. He offered no such
permanence to the Oral Law or Jewish tradition, and his audience
would have quickly picked up on that. I realize what enormous
problems I raise here, for there is much in the written law that is
simply untenable in the modern world. We discussed that in
preceding chapters.
Judaism, as such, grew out of the period when Persia was the
dominant force in the Middle East. It was the Babylonians who
carried the House of Judah captive. Babylon was later conquered by
the Persians, and it was the Persian kings who allowed the Jews to
return home and establish themselves once again in Jerusalem. Not
very much is known about Jewish life in this period, but there was a
body of men called, “The Great Assembly.” Adin Steinsaltz writes of
this group:
The exact nature of the great assembly is unclear; it may have
been a permanent institution with legislative and executive
powers, or merely a generic name for all the scholars of a
given period. In fact, with few exceptions, the names of the
sages and outstanding personalities of this age are unknown.
The same cloud of obscurity envelops the activities of the
members of the great assembly, and nothing is known of their
conduct or methods. But, culturally and spiritually speaking,
this period was a decisive one in the annals of the Jewish
people. It gave Judaism its unique and well-defined spiritual
framework, which has survived, despite changes and
modifications, throughout the centuries in the Holy Land and
the Diaspora.
The Great Assembly probably traced its function to the original
70 elders appointed by Moses to render judgments about the law, and
it would likely have been the precursor of the Sanhedrin of the first
century. Nicodemus, who came surreptitiously to see Jesus is called
an archon, a ruler of the Jews. I presume he was a member of that
important assembly.
The members of the Great Assembly actually collected holy
writings, decided which books would be canonized in the Bible,
which chapters of each book should be selected, and gave the
Bible its definitive form and style. The completion of the Bible,
one of the greatest projects of the Great Assembly, also marked
the beginning of the reign of the Oral Law.
By the time Jesus came on the scene, there were two political
parties who divided along this fault line, and who struggled for
influence among the people. On the one hand were the Pharisees who
believed that the Oral Law was of divine origin and carried authority
equal to that of the written law.
On the other hand were the
Sadducees who rejected the authority of the Oral Law. It isn’t clear
whether the Sadducees rejected it out of hand, or merely refused to
use it for making rulings.
With this background, we can return to the Sermon on the Mount
and see what we make of what Jesus had to say. In affirming the
permanent nature of the written law, he is establishing common
ground and heading off an accusation that might come his way. He
affirms the written law, but he makes no such affirmation of the Oral
Law, embarking immediately on a challenge of the “traditions of the
elders.”
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the
smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means
disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the
kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these
commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven
(Matthew 5:18-19 NIV).
Jesus had to establish this distinction, because he was about to
part company with the sages of an earlier generation. He was going
to say, not only that they were wrong, but that they transgressed the
written law by their interpretations. It was not merely a matter of
opinion or interpretation, but an active setting aside of the written
law, of Scripture. It may be hard to get your mind around it, but
realize that, for the Jew of that time, tradition was deemed part of the
Law of Moses. It was the prevailing belief of the Pharisaic
establishment that everything the sages said was part of that law, even
the conflicts of interpretation, in some curious way. Having
established that he had no quarrel with the written law, Jesus began
to challenge the Oral Law.
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “Do
not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to
judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his
brother will be subject to judgment. . . (Matthew 5:21-22
NIV).
Now we are equipped to consider a particular conflict in the early
church, one that has generated much confusion. The first mission of
Paul and Barnabas represents a major turning point in the history of
the faith. Up to this point, very few Gentiles had been converted, and
these all were people who believed in the God of the Bible before
they ever heard of Jesus. They were Gentile practitioners of Judaism,
commonly called “God Fearers.” The pattern, then, that Paul and
Barnabas followed on this journey was to go first to the synagogue in
every city and announce the good news that the Messiah had come in
the person of Jesus. To their surprise, everywhere they went the Jews
rejected the Gospel wholesale. Only a handful believed.
But when they left the synagogue in defeat, they were thronged by
the God fearing Gentiles who did believe. Paul and Barnabas taught
them, baptized them, and went on their way. When they returned to
Antioch, the church received, with great joy, the news that God “had
opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” But then a fly showed up in
the ointment.
Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were
teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according
to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This
brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with
them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some
other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and
elders about this question. . . . When they came to Jerusalem,
they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and
elders, to whom they reported everything God had done
through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to
the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles
must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses”
(Acts 15:1-5 NIV).
Here I come back to the theme I opened with at the beginning of
this chapter. When most Christian readers come to this passage, they
think the expression “the Law of Moses” was referring to the first five
books of the Old Testament. But now, thanks to Jacob Neusner, we
can see this from another angle. What these believing Pharisees were
talking about was broader than that. They were talking about the
whole of what they called Torah, oral and written. For them, the
worship of God was part of a system that included all the traditions
of the elders, some of which were explicitly rejected by Jesus.
Neusner again:
What we see at the end is what we saw at the outset: Judaic
religious systems rest squarely on the Hebrew Scriptures of
ancient Israel. The Rabbinic sages read from the Written
Torah forward to the Oral Torah.
This is what I had long assumed to be the case. That the traditions
of the Jews that formed what they call the Oral Law, were the
accumulated judgments of the sages. I had never imagined that they
considered them on a par with, or even above, the written law. I
assumed that the traditions grew out of generations of precedents
established by the interpretation of the written law. Neusner finally:
Then are the rabbis of the Oral Torah right in maintaining that
they have provided the originally oral part of the one whole
Torah of Moses our Rabbi? To answer that question in the
affirmative, sages would have only to point to their theology
in the setting of Scripture as they grasped it.
What you see reflected in Paul’s writings is a conflict, not with
the Law of God, but with the rabbis of the Oral Torah. Now with all
this in mind, I can return to Paul’s statement I cited before and parse
it: “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of
me is not after man” (Galatians 1:11).
If we accept that the problem in Galatia was that sect of believers
who followed Judaism, then this statement fits well. My Gospel, said
Paul, does not arise from human tradition: “For I neither received it
of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
(v. 12). This is in contrast with what Neusner said about the Rabbis:
Rabbinic Judaism is thus the Judaism that sets forth the whole
teaching of Sinai, written and oral, and that points to its sages,
called rabbis. . . who in a process of discipleship acquired
(“received”) and transmitted (“handed on”) that complete
Torah, oral and written, that originates with God's instruction
to Moses.
Paul, then, used the language of Judaism to emphasize that what
the sages did was emphatically not what happened to him: “I neither
received it from man, nor was I taught it.” Paul admits that he was a
serious practitioner of the Oral Law.
But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by
his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might
preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man,
nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles
before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later
returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to
Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him
fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James,
the Lord's brother. I assure you before God that what I am
writing you is no lie (vv. 15-20).
This last is striking. It is very strong and apparently it had to be.
The statement represents a major break from the Jewish tradition of
receiving from one sage and passing on to another. What Paul is
establishing is that the Gospel was a matter of revelation, not
tradition. This was in sharp contrast to the troublemakers in Galatia,
who were apparently of the same stripe as those at the Jerusalem
conference of Acts 15. Developing the theme a little further, Paul
cites an instance of Peter’s behavior in Antioch.
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face,
because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came
from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they
arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the
Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his
hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led
astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the
truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You
are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How
is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”
(Galatians 2:11-14 NIV).
This is heart and core of what the Jerusalem conference was all
about and it also serves as a good illustration of the struggle for the
heart and soul of the early church. By this time in the first century, the
Jews had created a whole new set of rules for their relationships with
Gentiles. These rules, in many cases, ran directly contrary to the
written law. The law was explicit. Strangers were to be fully
assimilated into Israelite society, as we will see in the next chapter.
There was to be one law for the stranger and the home born. Strangers
were even allowed to offer sacrifices and to share fully in the worship
of God. But by the time of the second Temple, all that had changed.
What Peter was shown—in no uncertain terms—was that the
Gospel was to go to Gentiles. He was forced to acknowledge that
Jewish law was wrong on this issue. He told Cornelius:
You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to
associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me
that I should not call any man impure or unclean (Acts 10:28
NIV).
Against whose law? Peter called it “our law.” We will walk
through this in a later chapter. Gentiles were to be fully assimilated
into the Israelite community. But by this time in history, Jewish
tradition had led the Jews to separate themselves from Gentiles. As
Paul continued his rebuke of Peter, the theme of justification
emerges.
We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles,
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law,
but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in
Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ,
and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law
shall no flesh be justified (Galatians 2:15-16).
Implicit here is the belief of the Pharisees that doing the works of
Judaism made a man just before God. Paul denied that explicitly and
repeatedly. The only thing the law has to do with justification is that
it creates an awareness of a need for justification. But for some
versions of Judaism, one only comes to God through the law.
Neusner:
But it is only through scripture that Judaism takes the measure
of events and occasions in God’s self revelation. Scripture,
the written part of the Torah or teaching of Sinai, preserves
whatever can be known about how God has revealed himself.
It is the writing down of the encounter—and the contents of
encounter. If, therefore, people wish to know God, they meet
God in the Torah. That guides them, to be sure, to know and
evaluate and understand God's ongoing revelation of the
Torah. Study of the Torah in the chain of tradition, formed by
the relationship of disciple to master, from the present
moment upward to Moses and God at Sinai, then affords that
direct encounter with God through his revealed words that
Judaism knows as revelation.
Take a moment to consider the implications of that statement. It
is not only Scripture, but the entire chain of tradition, that Judaism
knows as revelation. If you are wondering how it is possible for sages
of the first century to become a part of Torah that was given to Moses
at Sinai, so am I. For better or for worse, here is what Neusner tells
us about how that works.
Both Judaism and Christianity for most of their histories have
read the Hebrew Scriptures in an other-than-historical
framework. They found in Scriptures words, paradigms
—patterns, models—of an enduring present, by which all
things must take their measure; they possessed no conception
whatsoever of the pastness of the past. In departing from
Scriptures’ use of history to make a theological point—as the
progression from Genesis through Kings means to
do—Rabbinic Judaism invented an entirely new way to think
about times past and to keep all time, past, present, and
future, within a single framework.
One begins to understand what Jesus was driving at when he told
the Jews they were making the commandments of God of no effect,
by their tradition. This suspension of time is, quite frankly and
unashamedly, an invention of Rabbinic Judaism.
For that purpose, a model was constructed, consisting of
selected events held to form a pattern that imposes order and
meaning on the chaos of what happens, whether past or
present or future. Time measured in the paradigmatic manner
is time formulated by a freestanding, (incidentally) atemporal
model, not appealing to the course of the sun and moon, not
concerned with the metaphor of human life and its cyclicity
either.
Jewish sages, if I understand what he is saying, step outside of
time and become participants in the creation of the Torah God gave
to Moses. If you found that hard to follow, you are not alone. Neusner
has lapsed into philosophical jargon. It is what happens when men try
to explain something that the facts won’t support. We get a lot of that
in politics.
If there is one thing that emerges from a careful reading of both
the law and the New Testament, it is that during the entire period
when the New Testament was being written, throughout all the
existing churches, the Sabbath, the holydays, and indeed the written
law, were honored. The Oral Law was dismissed as mostly irrelevant
and utterly without authority.
As is often the case with unsupportable law, the Rabbis resorted
to sanctions to enforce it. It is the freedom from Jewish sanctions that
Paul is so exercised about in his letters. “Stand fast therefore,” urged
Paul, “in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be
entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
Galatians is a little more complicated than that, but this is a start.
“Thou shalt not steal” is not a yoke of bondage (unless you are a
congressman, perhaps).
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like
a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he
has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately
forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks
intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it,
not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer,
this man shall be blessed in what he does (James 1:23-25
NASB).
I think the reason for James’ choice of words is the underlying
conflict between the controls of Judaism and the liberty of the
Christian.
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