As if this wasn't enough, according to Mark 6:53, Jesus was at Gennesaret and people ran about "the whole country" bringing sick to him "and wherever he entered villages, or cities or countryside, they were laying the sick in market places and entreating him that they might just touch the fringe (κρασπεδου) of his cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured." From the sounds of this account and the parallel in Matt 14:34-36, this touching of the tzitzit/ציצית/κρασπεδου was a common experience, involving seeming dozens if not hundreds of people. In spite of this strong evidence, I have yet to see an authentic looking rendition of Jesus wearing tassels, save but a third-century painting (linked here and pictured above) in the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus in Rome.
4 comments:
Brian: Hey that's a nice looking blog.
A better question, why don't we see many of the "tasseled" Jews of Jerusalem today following Him? Is it really because Yeshua is always presented as a Goy in paintings down through the centuries? No, I don't think so. In Jerusalem today, they know he was a Jew and they simply don't accept his authority, period.
And now my point. Yes, we have a lot to learn from the Rabbis. But also we have much to learn from Augustine, Tertullian, and Irenaues, just to give a few examples (and with the three mentioned, at least you have "some" evidence of the Holy Spirit working in their writings).
In Rabbinic writings (post 70 CE) please show me one place where you believe the spirit Of Jesus is working in their writings. Rabbinic Judaism (as defined in the Mishnah period post 70 CE) is simply that, Rabbinic. That is, in large part a reaction to the fact that Messiah has come and preached the New Covenant to Israel.
I notice you make no mention of the seven woes later in Matthew Ch 23 wherein Yeshua directly challenges the authority of the Rabbis. And what to make of the parable of the tenants (Mark 12), or the passages in the Gospel of John where Yeshua directed his strongest rebuke against the religious leaders. And most agree that the Rabbis of the Mishnah are the spiritual heirs of those to whom Yeshua was addressing.
Aside: Under the New Covenant, observance of the Torah is no longer the entrance requirement (to borry Sander's phrase) into the Kingdom of God (for Jew or Gentile).
Given that the rabbis do not believe that Yeshua initiated the New Covenant, and furthermore, given the premise that we live under the New Covenant, on what basis would one accept Rabbinic authority in ANY religous matter.
With Brotherly Love.
dov-
You raise many issues. I’ll try to briefly relate to each of them.
I'm not sure about Jews today not following Jesus because of his goyish/gentilish presentation, but it is a good socio-religoius question to keep thinking about.
If one has never read the Rabbis/Sages, it is difficult to learn anything from them. Much of the Christian world does not know about them enough to have an informed judgment. I suggest starting with Perki Avot or tractate Sukkah, both in the Mishnah. See also David Instone-Brewer, Traditions of the Rabbis from the Era of the New Testament, Volume 1: Prayer and Agriculture (Eerdmans, 2004).
The Church Fathers are very significant for Christianity and I thoroughly enjoy reading them and learning from them. The Didache, Justin Martyr and Origen are especially engaging.
About the Sprit in post-70 Jewish writings. One example would be the moving rock in the wilderness tradition which Paul finds enough Spirit in to use it and then appropriate it to Christ (1 Cor 10). This tradition is only known to us from post-70 redacted writings from the Rabbis. While farther a field, the following book about authority in any other tradition outside of orthodox Christianity is incisive—Gerald McDermott, Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? Jesus, Revelation and the Religions (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000).
Another overarching example would be for Protestants, since they subscribe to the Masoretic Text as Scripture which is inspired by the Spirit. The Protestants very own Scriptures are thus preserved in the original manuscripts only by the Rabbis. Quite an ironic indebtedness to the Spirit choosing/allowing/having the Rabbis preserve Protestant Scriptures. More examples will have to wait for another time.
About the woes of Matt 23. We all know about them. Christians typically read-over 23:2-3a. The Matthean Jesus is extremely Pharisaic here and Luke follows with the Pharisees warning Jesus about Antipas’ intent to kill him in Luke 13:31. Back to Matt 23. Only from Rabbinic Judaism to we hear of the kind of nitty-gritty tithing found in 23:23. On this passage see the especially insightful article by Moshe Weinfeld, "The Charge of Hypocrisy in Matthew 23 and in the Jewish Sources." Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 52-58 [available at www.etrfi.org].
Whew, next issue. On Mark 12, see the nearly available (late November) article: by Randall Buth and Brian Kvasnica. "Temple Authorities and Tithe-Evasion: The Linguistic Background and Impact of the Parable of the Vineyard Tenants and the Son." In Jerusalem Studies on the Synoptic Gospels, edited by R. Steven Notley, (Leiden: Brill, Nov 2005). The critiques that the Synoptic writers present are in-keeping with traditional prophetic and even rabbinic critiques of the Jerusalem priestly establishment.
You have a rather questionable assumption with "And most agree that the Rabbis of the Mishnah are the spiritual heirs of those to whom Yeshua was addressing,” Also, it seems you have mis-read Sanders who argued that Torah observance was not an entrance requirement, but a resultant of being in the covenant, i.e. for maintaining covenantal status.
Thanks for your comments, with warm regards, bk
Brian
I must say this has been a pleasure, stimulating and instructive. You almost make me regret being an engineer, because that prevents me having the time and mental acumen to study all the good sources you give me. I will probably tackle the Mishna at some point but otherwise I will (as an incurable layman) have to rely on you to spell the points out to me.
I don't think I misread Sanders (sorry for beating the dead horse -- got to save my reputation, you know) -- there is a slight chance that you misread my passing reference to him. I think we read Sanders the same way; I was not suggesting he saw Torah observance as an entrance requirement.
I wonder, in fact, if we've not been talking about different things, at least as regards the issue of authority. You seem to make the point that there is much in the Jewish tradition -- the Mishna and other sources -- as in other religions, that evangelical Christians would do well to study and ponder and be instructed by. Here I completely agree, and readily concede that I have not done enough of that. My question is rather about authority in the sense of something that commands submission. For example, Rabbinic Judaism on the whole rejects the authority of Jesus, or, to take a more trivial example, would prohibit us from driving to church on Shabbat. Do we as believers submit to their authority in this? If we do not accept their authority in these points, what is our basis for accepting it in others?
The Yad HaShmona moshav where many Messianic events are held recently applied for their certificate of kashrut, and their Haredi inspector was there during one of our kehilla retreats. Now if they were to get it (I don't know if they ever did) they would come under the authority not just of Torah but of the official religious establishment and due to the prevailing Rabbinic interpretation of Shabbat they might have to change many of their practices, possibly affecting believers' functions. Some in our kehilla expressed a concern that making this small concession (kashrut) to Rabbinic Judaism would lead Yad HaShmona eventually to compromise on its Messianic mission. It seems to me we are in grave danger when we misunderstand what is at stake here with regard to authority.
Also, why is my assumption that today's rabbis are spiritual heirs of the religious establishment of Jesus' time questionable? (Yes, I know that some of the leaders of the time believed in him and he used and thereby approved some of their teachings, but the believing ones did not determine today's Rabbinic tradition). In fact, today's rabbis would claim to be the successors, from Moses on down through the Men of the Great Assembly and so forth. If they are not, though they have monopolized the Torah, then do you separate the authority of the Torah from that of the rabbis? If so, it would seem problematic to consult Rabbinic sources on issues of Torah interpretation.
I have read a view (David Stern) that in Mt 18:18-20 (binding and loosing) Jesus, as Son of God and therefore ultimate source of all authority, transfers the authority over making halakhah, Torah interpretation etc., to the apostles and their successors, and by implication away from the religious establishment of his time.
Even your point regarding the Masoretic text and the Protestants, although well taken, does not resolve the issue. That fact in itself does not put the Protestants under the authority of the rabbis, i.e. obligate them to accept the Rabbinic interpretations of the text (which would for instance deny many Messianic prophecies, e.g. Ps. 2) wholesale.
I would also repeat my question about post-70 writings. In the example you give me in 1 Cor 10, Paul uses essentially a pre-70 writing (albeit later adopted by the rabbis). Yes, of course I know that both Paul and Jesus used parts of the Jewish materials of their time. I am asking about the material that came later, after the lines were drawn between Rabbinic and Messianic Judaism, let's say from the time of the Yavneh academy and rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai onwards. Is there something in that material about which a believer could say anything close to what Paul does about the Tanakh in 2 Tim 3:16, which is pretty close to my definition of authority?
Now if I have misunderstood your position on the authority of Rabbinic sources for believers, which is entirely possible, and if you do not go far beyond thinking them instructive rather than compulsory, then we can enter into the next issue which I find fascinating: the New Covenant interpretation of the Law. But that is clearly for another time.
With lots of love and regards.
Dov
In your next to last post you say: "in the absence of clear instruction against observing Torah and tradition, the natural assumption is that Jews should go on observing it." For "Torah" I presume you at least don't mean go on observing it the same way as modern Jews do. Otherwise you must throw the book of Hebrews out of the NT cannon. For "tradition" I presume you don't mean "post-NT rabbinic tradition", because if so, I suppose you are willing to put it on the same level as the tradition of the church. Both claims would be troubling.
To be a little dramatic, I want to counter a view in your writing that I believe is a mistake. It is important to know who the recipients of Paul's letters are, but it equally important to know what the content is. For example, a fireman who rushes to save members inside a house says "your house will burn, it is made of wood" while is relevant to the people at the time (those whose house is on fire), but the statement your house will burn because it is made of wood is relevant to all people with wood houses. That is, just because a letter was written to Gentiles does not make it have nothing to say to Jews. This is a serious logical fallacy. Furthermore, the exegesis is important, but at the end the interpretation is ALL that matters for the Christian life. The exegesis is the decisive first step, but without the second step we have nothing of consequence. {These issues are covered well in a course on systematic theology.}
For example when Paul says the Law is a tutor (Gal / Cor), that the Law is a curse, at the end of our exegesis we must admit that these terms are valid to ANY party who is concerned with the law as a means to salvation. In my example of the case of the fireman, those whose houses are burning are like the gentiles in the first century, but the universal statement "the law is our tutor" applies to Jews and Gentiles at all times. What I am saying is that the implications of Paul's statements about the Law actually DO amount to an annulment of the Law as a means to salvation. Now this is just this change that you say you can't find in the NT writings. The new covenant passage in Jer 31 indicates that the first covenant was broken (by one of the parties) and God saw fit to create another one. So this "change to the Law" is there if we look. Furthermore, nobody has yet handled my objections with your interpretations of these verses where Paul uses "we" all the time. For example he uses the "we" in a few places to indicate "we" are no longer under law. I presume he uses "we", at the very least, to include himself, a Jew.
Just because there were many Jewish believers (in Acts as you quote) observing the Law doesn't allow us draw the rather erroneous conclusion that the Law must not have been changed in some way.
I believe there is a case that, though the book of Acts makes clear that many Jewish believers in Yeshua in Israel (party of James in Jerusalem) continued to keep the Torah the same way after Yeshua, the historical record indicates many Diaspora Jews didn't. This also explains the rapid decline of messianic Judaism outside Palestine in the first two centuries. The fact that messianic Judaism in the land of Israel developed into heretical sects (see Eusebious on the Ebionites, etc) is a troubling development and casts serious doubts on seeing the party of James (and his successors) as a shining star of a correct interpretation of the Law.
You have a hard case to make that Peter and Paul both kept the law the same way as they had before (and they probably had kept it to a different extent to begin with, one being a fisherman and the other a super-Pharisee). I am not convinced by the reference in Acts where Paul says that he has done nothing against the law of the Jews (Acts 23) because the context makes clear that he means that he's done nothing against his CONSCIENCE with respect to the law of the Jews. An interpretation of the Law in light of the new covenant would allow Paul to make such claims in good conscience. Paul became, as F.F. Bruce described him, "Apostle of the Heart Set Free."
The change of which we are speaking probably wasn't fully appreciated by many of those observant Jews you mention in Acts, as it was, for example, to the Jewish writer of Hebrews. There is certainly proof that the writer to Hebrews intended to make a statement about the changing of the law, and his hearers (probably Jewish Christians) were supposed to get the message. "Let us go out to him, outside the camp" Heb 13:13. In other words, let us look beyond the Temple and its sacrifices for they have now a new meaning in Yeshua. Again, saying the intended audience was gentiles (a view not supported by exegesis or most commentators) doesn't really change the content of the message. The content of Hebrews, with the change to the Levitical priesthood, certainly has more relevance to Jews than Gentiles, and only strengthens the argument that it was written to Jewish believers.
With this conclusion, we see in the post-NT era, two traditions growing side by side. One is the Rabbinic tradition which has gone through a few dramatic changes since the NT era, substituting the authority of men for that of Scripture; to the extent that tendency was already evident in Yeshua and Paul's time, they opposed it. The second is the Apostolic tradition rooted in the teachings of Yeshua and the apostles. This later group views the Law as a tutor, and Yeshua the fulfillment of the Law. It gives not a whit of attention to the first party on the role of the Law in the life of a believer because the first party has no authority on spiritual matters.
My main point: Its not that I want to throw out the baby with the bath water (as you said) it is just that I don't see the baby, only the bath water. The baby is sitting safely with the other party (believing gentiles and messianic Jews), that is those with a full understanding of the momentous change wrought with the coming of the Messiah.
These are my views as of today, and I am certainly willing to change them if my views are not supported by scripture and the historical record.
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