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 ….”[1] 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”.[2] 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[3] 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.”[4] According
to Rabbinical theory, the T’nach[5]
rests on the Pentateuch[6], 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.”[7]
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.”[8]
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”.[9] 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”,[10] 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”.[11]
[1] Abot 1.1
ff (Mishnah)
[2] j.Hag.i.8.76c
[3] The ten
commandments
[4]
Deut.6.4,5
[5] The T’nach (the Old Testament) contains, the Law; the
Former Prophets, the Latter Prophets, and the Writings. The Law is Genesis to Deuteronomy; the Former
Prophets are Joshua to Second Kings but without Ruth; the Latter Prophets are
Isaiah to Malachi, but without Lamentations and Daniel. The Writings are the books that are left -
Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations,
Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles in that order.
[6] The five
books of Moses
[7]
b.Succ.27a
[8] Deut
4:23-27
[9] Abot
1.1.I.C(3) (Mishnah)
[10]
Exod.23.19
[11] Sanhedrin 11.3 (Mishnah)
