The Messiah and His Miracles (Continued)

How did the nation's leaders investigate Jesus' Messianic claim.

Investigating a Messianic Claim - Stage 2: The Stage of Interrogation

Most of the members of the Sanhedrin were either Pharisees or Sadducees. The Pharisees, who were in the majority, considered themselves guardians and cultivators of the ‘oral law’, a body of tradition that had been derived from, and then superimposed on, the T’nach. Therefore, they needed to know the attitude of Jesus to this additional legislation that they obligated the nation to obey – did he accept it or reject it? To understand this issue it is necessary to trace the history of the oral law in order to realise how great an issue it had become at the time of the Messiah.

The history of the oral law

The Mishnah declares, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the prophets, and the prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue ….” (Abot 1.1 ff) And so on, down to Hillel and Shammai who were contemporary with the beginning of the Christian era. The Rabbis traced their own system to Ezra and Nehemiah. Their theory was that the Torah, which Moses himself handed down, included the oral law as well as the written law.

The word ‘Torah’ means ‘teaching’ and was understood to be inclusive and regarded as containing the whole of divine truth, not only that which had already been discerned but also all that in future ages might be brought to light. The explicit was contained in Scripture, the implicit was the further yet undiscovered meaning contained in the Torah. The Talmud says, “Even that which an acute disciple shall teach in the presence of his Rabbi has already been said to Moses on Mt. Sinai” (j.Hag.i.8.76c). Therefore, ‘Torah’ denoted the whole of what, according to Jewish belief, was revealed to man, not merely the written but also the unwritten ‘tradition’, the ‘oral law’.

The foundation of the Torah is the Decalogue and the summary of the Decalogue is the Sh’ma: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (Deut.6:4,5) According to Rabbinical theory, the T’nach rests on the Pentateuch , the Pentateuch rests on the Decalogue and the Sh’ma is the summary of the Decalogue. All Scriptures were to be interpreted in conformity with the Pentateuch. A key figure in the development of the ‘Torah’ was Ezra. Historically, he is the founder of Jewish legalism.

The historical succession is developed thus: “In the beginning, when the Torah was forgotten, Ezra went up from Babylon and founded it; again it was forgotten and Hillel the Babylonian went up and founded it; again it was forgotten and Rabbi Hija and his sons went up and founded it.” (b.Succ.27a) 

Ezra, the founder of Jewish legalism, started the school of Scribes called the Sopherim. He had reasoned that the Babylonian captivity was a judgement of God, the cause of which was broken law. Moses had warned:

“So watch yourselves, that you do not forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the LORD your God has commanded you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. When you become the father of children and children’s children and have remained long in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD your God so as to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD drives you.” (Deut.4:23-27)

Ezra reasoned, to avert a further judgement, Israel must obey the law of God. Therefore, Scribes were to examine and teach the Law of Moses to overcome the lack of knowledge.

However, to the foregoing, laudable aim they added the seed of something that was to undermine the written Hebrew Scriptures themselves, for to Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue, was ascribed the ancient saying, “Make a hedge for the Torah” (Abot 1.1.I.C(3) (Mishnah)). There are 613 explicit laws in the five books of Moses. These were to be examined and re-enforced. The purpose was to set the bar higher, to make the law stricter, thus preventing even breaking the Mosaic Law inadvertently. It was second generation Sopherim who sought to fulfil that ambition. The principle on which they worked was, a Sopher could disagree with a Sopher but not with the Torah. When they reached a majority agreement then it became binding on all Jews. They used ‘Pilpul’, that is, the logic of deriving another law from the original law. For example, from, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Exod.23:19), came the kosher food laws. Therefore, an observant Jew should not eat meat and dairy products together so there could be no chance of having both the milk of the mother and the meat of the kid seething together in their stomach, thus breaking the Mosaic Law.

In about 30 BC a new school arose - the Tanaim (Repeaters). They said there were too many holes in the fence around the Law. They worked on the principle that a Tana may disagree with a Tana but not with the Sopherim. This meant that the work of the Sopherim could no longer be challenged, so it became as important as the Pentateuch. The work of the Tanaim was still proceeding at the time of the Messiah, which partially explains why the Sanhedrists questioned Him so closely on these matters.

Up to about AD220 the work of the Sopherim and the Tanaim, had been committed to memory and mostly passed on orally. It had never been organised and recorded. But in the third century, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch gathered together the work of seven centuries of Jewish Rabbis and teachers and wrote it down - it is called the Mishnah (denoting both teaching and repetition).

The Sopherim and Tanaim claimed great authority for their work. They said, “a more strict rule applies to the teachings of scribes than to the teachings of Torah” (Sanhedrin 11.3 (Mishnah)).

Next time : The conflict over the oral law.