Torah
law wasn’t respected any better in the New Testament, than by the characters in
the Old Testament. Jesus himself belittled the law, violated the law, and
criticized the protectors of the law. And he didn’t obsess about faith in its
traditional, Torah-authorized form either. He praised works more than other
aspects of religion such as the law and faith, ridiculing those who pray but
don’t follow up with action, and scribes who say long prayers and then snatch
up the houses of widows. Right in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus insisted that
faith -- professing belief in him -- was not the same thing as actually
participating in the kingdom of God – i.e. making the world a better place. He
told his disciples to ignore Torah law on fasting as long as he was with them,
and said that it is what comes out of a man’s mouth, not what goes in it, which
defiles. He contradicted the law’s decrees on divorce, talked a crowd out of
fulfilling Torah law by stoning an adulteress, claimed that the law of
circumcision was not mandated by Moses, and told the tale of the prodigal son, whose brother –
the one who followed the law closely – never got the big party that the sinner
got. Jesus’s law was “love each other as I love you”, not “thou shalt not…”.
So
despite the fact that Jesus showed deep and thorough knowledge of Torah law
from a very early age, he violated Torah law all over the place, with the
priests condemning his actions every step of the way. His very first miracle
was putting wine into the water jars used for the Jewish rites of purification,
which must have caught the attention of the priests. He was seen curing people
and plucking grain on the Sabbath, violating laws on cleanliness, committing
blasphemy, usurping God’s role in forgiving sinners. When he saw that merchants
were at the temple selling doves for the religious sacrifices mandated by the
law, he assembled a whip of cords, went to the temple, and trashed the place,
hollering and yelling the whole time.
Not
only did Jesus have little respect for Torah law, he had open contempt for the
men upholding the law. Like John the Baptist who came before him, Jesus called
the priests devils, criticized them for putting tradition ahead of God’s will,
and said their temple would be destroyed. Jesus’ followers followed suit: they
called the law imperfect, they called for obedience to God rather than human
authorities such as priests, and they said that, contrary to the law governing
the day of rest, “the Sabbath was made for mankind, not mankind made for the
Sabbath”. Any notion that the Sabbath was made by God and for God was
abandoned.
The
priests themselves broke the law too. Even before Jesus came along, they were
already fiddling with the rules regarding the priesthood itself. They bore
false witness against Jesus. And sometimes the priests couldn’t even agree on
what the law said: when they were trying to convict Paul in trial, they fell
into a major disagreement on a religious question, thus delaying the
proceedings.
People
were questioning the notion that rigid adherence to Torah law was of paramount
importance, even before Jesus came along. Isaiah claimed that God wanted Jews
to focus on ending their sinning, rather than religious ceremonies; Isaiah
quoted God to the effect that Jews worshipped him with their lips but not their
hearts, and that they were merely following human rules, implying that the
Torah was not divinely inspired. Jeremiah said that the important issues were
not the laws and circumcision and the temple, but rather the way people acted
and treated each other; Zechariah echoed the sentiment. Ezekiel compared the
sinners of Jerusalem to a vine, pointing out that a tree is useful in itself,
as firewood, even setting aside its fruits, but a vine must produce grapes to
be useful – the important thing is not just what you are but what you do in the
world.
As
noted earlier, Jesus was no devoted adherent to Jewish law. In fact he resisted
rigid literalism in any form. He felt that the crowds were not sharp enough to
understand the coming kingdom of heaven in literal terms, so parables were
needed. He kept the “decoded” version for the apostles, although sometimes he
resorted to parables even with the apostles.
