YESHUA AND TORAH

If Christians, Jews, Muslims and pagans are agreed on anything, it is that Jesus was a great teacher. For Christians he is of course much more than a great teacher. But when we read the gospels, we notice that the most common title given to Jesus during his ministry was ’teacher’, ’master’ or ’Rabbi’. These three titles are actually equivalents, the term ”rabbi” being the normal Hebrew title of a teacher of the Torah.

Jesus’ earthly ministry comprised three elements: teaching, preaching and healing (Mt. 4:23). He taught in the synagogues but preached to all who would listen, including Samaritans and Romans. However, Herbert Lockyer says that no real distinction should be made between teaching and preaching: ”A study of the gospels reveals that both terms, namely, preaching and teaching, are used to record the same event, the distinctions in method and ideals not being constantly observed.”

It is, I think, nevertheless a useful distinction. Jesus’ teaching was directed mainly towards the Jews and his Jewish disciples. Jesus’ teaching, his Torah, was almost entirely concerned with exposition and interpretation of the Torah of Moses and of the prophecies of the OT Prophets. His preaching was concerned with the Kingdom of God.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Firstly, for whom was Jesus’ Torah, his teaching, intended? Secondly, what is the main content of Jesus’ Torah? Finally, what is the relation between the written Torah (ha-torah she-be-katuv) and the oral Torah (ha-torah she-be’al pe) in Jesus’ teaching?

Disciples of Jesus

Like any Jewish rabbi, Jesus had a circle of disciples, ’learners’, or talmidim in Hebrew. What he taught was torah or ’teaching’, what they learnt was talmud or ’learning’ (I am not here referring to the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, which contain the teaching, 'learning', of the Pharisaic rabbis and their successors). A rabbi has no right or authorization to teach anything other than torah. Where Jesus differed from the Pharisees was that his teaching of the Torah was thoroughly messianic and egocentric, that is, he himself was the central principle of interpretation. The whole Torah revolves around Jesus.

Traditionally, the Christian Church has taught that Christianity is not so much about following Jesus’ teaching as following his example. Imitatio Christi - the imitation of Christ - is the goal of the Christian life. We should try to live in the same way as Jesus did on earth. And we can learn how to do this by reading the New Testament.

However, there is a great problem here. Jesus’ life was that of a Jewish teacher. He lived the life of an observant Jew. He was circumcised, attended the synagogue and the Temple, took part in the sacrificial system and the festivals, and observed the dietary laws. The Church has taught that none of these things are binding on Christians. In fact, they have been largely forbidden to Christians. So what is left to imitate? Moreover, there were also things that he did by divine right as the Son of God. He healed the sick, forgave sins, died for the sins of the world, and rose again. The first two of these, healing the sick and forgiving sins, Christians can only do as representatives of Jesus, in his name. So it is really he and not we who does these things. We certainly cannot die for the sins of the world, nor do we need to. Jesus rose again, but we have to wait for the general resurrection of the dead to receive our resurrection bodies.

So I would assert that the idea of following Jesus in terms of imitating his life is a dead end.

So what are we left with? His teaching, his Torah. What the Church has declared applicable only to the Jews of Jesus’ day or, grudgingly, as the preserve of Jewish Christians or Messianic Jews, is the very heart of the gospel. Would Jesus, as a good teacher, have given his disciples a three-year intensive course of torah study merely for them to abandon it after his resurrection? Was apostolic teaching radically different from dominical teaching, i.e. the teaching of the Lord himself? It it was and we accept apostolic doctrine, we have no need of Jesus’ teaching today. If it was not, then the so-called apostolicity of the Church is a travesty of the apostles’ teaching and a denial of the Torah of Jesus.

What I intend to do here is to give a brief introduction to each subject mentioned and not give a full exposition. This is partly due to the restricted time available and partly in order to stimulate further discussion and study. Much of the material is taken from Avi Ben Mordechai’s book MESSIAH, Vol. 1 Understanding his Life and Teachings in Hebraic Context, which I recommend with some reservations to anyone who wants to study further.

The Torah and the Messiah

According to Ari Ben Mordechai, in order for Yeshua to be the Messiah, he had to fulfil two Jewish expectations:
1. He had to be a Torah-observant Jew following the written and oral Torah of Moses.
2. He had to be a teacher of the oral and written Mosaic commandments to Jews and Gentiles.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:16-19)

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus summed up his attitude towards the Torah of Moses. He had not come to ”abolish” the Torah and Prophets but to ”fulfil” them.
To fulfil means ’to make full, fill up’. The Greek word used is plero. This should not be confused with the Greek word teleio, ’to make perfect, complete’, ’to complete’, to bring to the intended end or goal’, ’to accomplish’. But this is exactly what Christian Bible interpretation has done, confused the two ideas represented by the two Greek verbs. It has been concluded that what Jesus meant was that he had come to complete the Torah, as if it was incomplete, and bring it to an end, so that it is no longer valid. But did Jesus not know Psalm 19 (v. 8) - ”The Torah of the Lord is perfect”? Surely he did, and this is what he believed. There is some disagreement as to when ”everything” would be ”fulfilled” - with Jesus’ death, with his resurrection, with his glorification, with the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, or with his second coming. In any case, Christians have generally believed that the Torah of Moses doesn’t apply to them.

However, as Ari Ben Mordechai, a Messianic Jew explains, ” ’Fulfill’ does not mean to complete as in not needed anymore or even to replace that which existed, but to fill up, put on a firm foundation and uphold.”

’To fulfil’ and ’to abolish’ were rabbinic expressions concerned with the interpretation of Torah. The late David Flusser, Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, showed that ’to abolish’ meant to interpret the written Torah incorrectly and thus make it invalid. ’To fulfil’ meant to give the correct interpretation of Torah and establish it in a firm basis.

So we may paraphrase Jesus’ words as follows, ”I have not come to undermine the Torah by giving a false interpretation of it, but to uphold it by showing you its true interpretation.”

When would ”all be accomplished”? According to Ari Ben Mordechai, this is a reference to Shemeni Azteret or Simhat Torah (’Rejoicing over the Torah’), the eighth day of the feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles) at the end of the Millennium. (See Isa. 2:3, Mic. 4:2). He interprets the Kingdom of Heaven as being the Millennium, the earthly reign of Yeshua as Messiah. The written Torah points to the Messiah and is still valid; when he comes again he will teach us directly from Zion.

Did Jesus Violate the Sabbath?

Ari Ben Mordechai says aptly, ”The Shabbat (Sabbath) is by far the most fundamental and frequently recurring institution of Judaism. To a very great degree, it is the ”glue” that holds Judaism together.”

So, we may conclude that if Jesus violated the Sabbath, the whole edifice of Judaism would come tumbling down. The Sabbath was the touchstone as to whether a person was a Torah-observant Jew or not. If Jesus observed shabbat, so did his disciples and presumably the early church. If he broke the Sabbath laws, it would mean that the whole Law had been broken.

The written Torah does not define ’work’ but the oral Torah does. According to the Mishnah, there are 39 classes of work prohibited on the Sabbath. These 39 classes are called ’avot’ or ’fathers’. The ’avot’ are subdivided into ’toladot’ or ’children’. We must assume that these divisions were devised by the Pharisees and were thus in force in Jesus’ day.

These 39 avot included sowing, ploughing, reaping, threshing, kneading and baking, spinning, tying, untying, slaughtering, tanning, writing two letters, extinguishing or kindling a fire, carrying from one premise to another.

According to Mt. 12:1, Jesus and his disciples picked grain and ate it on the Sabbath. This was not considered stealing, but the Pharisees thought that it was a violation of the Sabbath, because it was reaping. However, the Talmud shows that the rabbis permitted such things on the Sabbath. The Talmud states, ”He may select and eat immediately, and he may select and put aside for immediate use; but he may not select for (later consumption on) the same day.” In other words, hunger on the Sabbath justified picking small amounts of grain to be eaten immediately but not for storing it to be eaten later.

Apparently, some orthodox Jews today permit preparing food from cans or boxes or re-heating food in a microwave oven, because this is not baking or cooking but merely re-heating what has already been baked or cooked.

We note from the Gospel story that the whole matter was one of the interpretation of Torah. Jesus showed that he was observing Shabbat by quoting Scripture. King David and his men ate consecrated bread when they were hungry, because the Oral Torah allowed the poor enough food for three meals on Shabbat.

Jesus and the Oral Torah

It is often assumed that Jesus confirmed the authority of the written Torah of Moses while rejecting and refuting the Pharisaic interpretation of it, the oral Torah. But the matter is not so simple.

Mt. 23:23 Jesus told his disciples to observe the Pharisaic interpretation of Torah - the Oral Torah, but not to follow their example.

In Mt. 12:5 Jesus refers to the priests in the Temple who work on the Sabbath but are not considered to be breaking the law. ”Have you not read in the Torah how on Shabbat the priests in the Temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless?” says Jesus. However, this matter is not in fact mentioned in the written Torah as we have it in the books of Moses. Jesus seems to be referring to the oral interpretation of the Torah rather than the written word.

Again, in the story of the Good Samaritan in Lk. 10 we seem to have a reference to the oral Torah. The Pharisees taught that it was permissible for a priest or Levite to attend to the dead or someone left for dead. But the Sadducees and Samaritans did not accept Pharisaic oral law. In other words, the Pharisees would have given permission for the priest and Levite to help the injured man, but they, being Sadducees, refused it. The Samaritan should have done the same if he wanted to observe the interpretation of Torah current in his community. But compassion overrode the stipulations of oral Torah. If compassion for animals injured on the Sabbath was allowed by oral Torah, how much more compassion for an injured human being.

Oral Torah in fact taught that danger to human life or to a woman in labour on Shabbat overrode all the written laws. All applicable laws were suspended when such situations arose. The Talmud states that, as Ari Ben Mordechai puts it, ”a Jew should have the privilege of living under the Torah, not dying because of the Torah.”

As Ari Ben Mordechai says, ”The Oral Law was designed to bring life to the written words. Thus, Yeshua’s support of rabbinic Oral Law is beautiful!”

The Messiah was expected not only to expound the written Torah, but also to correct errors in Torah interpretation.

An ancient Jewish rabbinic work called Genesis Rabbah comments on Gen. 49. Its interpretation of v. 11 is as follows: The verse of Scripture runs: ’He washes his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.” Genesis Rabbah interprets the first half of the verse as meaning that the Messiah ”will compose words of Torah” i.e. give new meanings and interpretations of the Torah. The second half means ”he will restore for them their errors”, i.e. he will show the Jews where they have misunderstood the Torah.

Here I would depart from rabbinic interpretation, preferring a Christian messianic reference to the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, as symbolized by wine. Red wine normally stains clothes, not washes them. See Revelation 7:14 and 22:14.

Expounding the Torah in a new way and correcting misinterpretations is a messianic task. This was ”fulfilling” it. We may conclude that when Jesus said that he had come to fulfil the Torah, he was indirectly claiming to be the Messiah.

We must, I think, conclude with Ben Mordechai that Jesus brought renewed meanings to both the written and oral Torahs and restored a proper understanding of both.


Jesus and the Dietary Rules

Christians have long assumed, on the basis of certain texts in Acts and Paul, that Jesus abolished the dietary rules. Most Christians take no notice of the dietary rules in the Torah as being non-applicable to Gentiles, and part of the Old Covenant. Some Messianic Jews observe the full rabbinic kosher laws. I would say that both views are misguided. It seems that Jesus himself observed strictly the Mosaic laws concerning food, while rejecting the rabbinic expansion of those laws. This can be seen clearly in Mt. 15:1-20 and Mk 7:1-23. The debate is over washing hands - a matter of oral law - not the written law. Jesus rejects the need to be concerned with outward piety but is concerned with the inner attitude of the heart. As Ben Mordechai says, ”If Yeshua was canceling God’s Torah laws on eating pork, shellfish, and other forbidden foods then clearly Yeshua could not possibly be Messiah.”

So I personally have come to the conclusion that the dietary rules in Leviticus are given for our good and deserve to be taken seriously, while rabbinic kosher rules make life too difficult - the kind of heavy burden that Jesus accused the Pharisees of laying on people’s shoulders.

So, in conclusion, if Jesus was teaching his disciples to observe Torah, how could they then teach something contradictory to the early Christians? And if that was what Jesus taught his disciples, how can we call ourselves his disciples, if we ignore what he taught, his Torah? And if the church teaches something different, is it not ”another gospel”, not truly Christian or messianic at all?