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Good News
December 1960
Vol. IX, Number 12
Is JUDAISM the Religion of
Moses?
by Ernest Martin
People assume that Judaism is the religion
of Moses -- that
Jesus brought a message
opposed to the Old Testament -- that He
came to nullify the teaching
of Moses. It is taken for granted
that the New Testament
presents a Gentile religion and that the
Old Testament teaches
Judaism!
Yet all these assumptions ARE ABSOLUTELY
FALSE!
Shocking though it may seem, history proves
that Judaism is
NOT the religion of the Old
Testament Scriptures. Judaism is
plainly and simply the
religion of the Jews -- a religion
manufactured by their own
ingenuity. The Jews of Roman times had
appropriated the name of
Moses as the author of their religion --
but in actuality, they had
rejected Moses. Jesus said: "Had ye
believed Moses, ye would have
believed me ... but ye believe not
his writings" (John
but they didn't practice what
he commanded.
Just as today, there are hundreds of
denominations and sects
in what is commonly called
Christianity, all appropriating the
name of Christ -- saying they
are Christian -- but contradicting
each other and failing to
practice what He taught! And history
proves that the Jews had
misappropriated the name of Moses.
In effect, Judaism was a man-made
religion! Jesus said that
they were "teaching for
doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark
7:7).
It is time we looked into the records of
history. It is time
we learned how the Jews
departed from the religion of Moses. We
will be dumbfounded to
discover that Jesus, in reality,
re-emphasized the message
that Moses brought -- in its true
spiritual INTENTION. And, instead of nullifying Moses' teaching,
He magnified it, having in
view the true spiritual purpose
originally intended.
The time has come to get our eyes open to
the facts! Judaism
was not, and is not, the
religion of Moses!
IT IS obvious to the most superficial reader
of the New
Testament that a fundamental
difference existed between the
teaching of Jesus and the
Judaism of His day.
Why?
The answer is surprising!
History shows -- and the Jews themselves
admit -- that their
religion had drifted far away
from the simple doctrines of
Scripture -- commonly called
the "Old Testament." The Jews
had
modified God's law and even
instituted laws and commandments of
their own which were, in many
instances, diametrically opposite
to the precepts of Moses.
It is time we realize that Christ came to a
people who had,
through their human laws and
traditions, rejected the religion of
the Old Testament which God
had given to their forefathers.
These are the plain facts of history. It is important that we
understand this if we are to
comprehend the significance of
events in the New Testament
period. Christ, in effect, came to
retrieve the Jews from their
apostasy -- from their rejection of
the laws of God. And, He came to reveal to them the Gospel --
the New Testament revelation
-- to COMPLETE the promises that God
gave to Moses, not to do away
with them!
The Divisions of Judaism
Many people have erroneously assumed that
the Judaism in the
time of Christ was a religion
united in a common bond -- every
Jew believing about the same
thing -- all united into one major
Jewish denomination.
This is the first illusion that history
reveals.
Judaism was divided into MANY SECTS in
Jesus' day. Each had
its peculiar beliefs. One of the most authoritative Jewish
writers on Judaism, Dr. Herford, tells us: "If it were possible
to analyze the Judaism of the
New Testament period into all its
component elements, the
results of the process would be to show
HOW COMPLEX A VARIETY is
summed up under that name, and HOW FAR
FROM THE TRUTH it is to speak
of the Jews collectively as if they
were all alike, in respect to
their Judaism" ("Judaism in the New
Testament Period," pp.
41, 42).
Judaism was not one unified organization. Actually, there
were many religious sects
comprising it. And, even within some
of these major sects there
were many "splinter" groups which had
their own ideas and
beliefs. In many respects, the Judaism
of
Christ's time was not unlike
our own world. We have many
competitive sects
representing "Christianity."
So likewise, the
Jews had their divisions,
differing sects representing "Judaism."
Some of these sects will be familiar to
readers of the New
Testament. There were the Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees,
Zealots
and Herodians. However, there were many more divisions of
which
we have a good deal of
history. Some of these were the Essenes,
the
has been written lately), and
others who are called, by
contemporary religious
historians, Apocalyptics.
There were other divisions among the Jews
who lived in the
surrounding areas, such as
-- Judaism was split into
many fragments.
But history reveals another shocking and
little-understood
fact. It will eradicate the fiction from many
people's minds
that the Jews, as a whole,
were deeply interested in religion at
this time in history.
A Surprising Fact Comes to
Light
The records show that FAR LESS THAN 5% OF
THE TOTAL JEWISH
POPULATION OF
Unbelievable as it sounds it is true! Over 95% of the total
Herodian, Essene,
overwhelming majority in
these religious denominations
of Judaism and in most cases were
not particularly religious at
all.
The Pharisees referred to the mass of the
people as the "Am
ha-aretz." This word is Hebrew and signifies "The
People of the
Land," or simply,
"The Common People."
These people were the multitudes who lived
in the cities,
towns, and country. They were, in many respects, like many
non-church members today --
some went to the synagogues
frequently, many only
occasionally, and many never attended at
all.
The scholar
clear that the "Am ha-aretz" (the Common People) were not all of
one type, either in respect
of their religion or socially and
economically. Just as they included rich and poor,
capitalist
and labourer,
the merchant, the farmer, the artisan, the
tax-gatherer (publican) and
the tradesman, so, on the religious
side, they included those who
were just not Pharisees, and those
who paid little or no heed to
religion at all, with every shade
of piety and indifference in
between" (ibid. p. 72).
The Population Analyzed
We can demonstrate quite easily that far
less than 5% of the
population in
New Testament times. By comparing the number of members within
the Jewish religious sects
with the sum of the total
population, we will arrive at
some surprising answers. The
figures should be
interesting.
The "Encyclopedia Biblica"
records that the population of
inhabitants at this time
(Column 3550). This is the figure that
most scholars represent as
the total population of
There is a full discussion on the
question in Salo Baron's, "A Social and Religious History of the
Jews," vol. i. pp. 370-372. This
Jewish historian has summed up
the opinions of the experts
in this matter. He quotes as his
conclusion to the whole
question, the findings of Dr. J.
Klausner, a contemporary Jewish scholar:
"J. Klausner,
finally, has studied in particular, the records
pertaining to the wars
between 63 and 37 B.C. and has reached the
conclusion that at the end of
the Maccabean reign there lived in
all of
of a million Samaritans, Syro-Phoenicians, Arabs and Greeks"'
(ibid., vol. i., p. 372).
This figure should not be far from
right. There were nearly
3,000,000 Jews living in
How Many Jews Belonged to the
Religious Sects?
The most prominent sect in Judaism at this
time was the
Pharisees. This was the group Christ had more to say
against
than any other. One of the reasons for this is because the
Pharisees were the most
influential group and had more members
than any of the other
sects. They also had direct control over
the majority of synagogues
and schools, and in this respect, were
the most popular with the
people. But yet, even though the
Pharisees were the most
influential and the most prominent
religious group among the
Jews in the time of Christ, it is
astounding and dumbfounding
to realize that out of 3,000,000 Jews
in
historian, Josephus, who was
a contemporary of the Apostle Paul,
and a Pharisee himself,
informs us of this fact in his history
"Antiquities of the
Jews," xvii, 2, 4.
But just imagine what this means! Here were the Pharisees,
the MAJOR RELIGIOUS SECT
AMONG THE JEWS, representing nothing
more than an insignificant
.2% of all the Jews in
These facts will have to
change the convictions of many people
who have had the erroneous
idea that most of the Jews in Christ's
time were Pharisees.
Most readers of the New Testament have never
thought it
necessary to ascertain the
religious condition of the Jews in
Roman times. And because of this, most people have been
making
erroneous assumptions based
on our own contemporary conditions.
The Other Jewish Sects
All other sects within Judaism WERE OF LESS
SIGNIFICANCE than
the Pharisees. The Sadducees, for example, were a sect that
Christ came into contact with
frequently, but they were less
prominent than the
Pharisees. There is no question about
the
fact that they had fewer
members ("Antiquities of the Jews,"
xviii, 1, 4 and "Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah," vol. i, p.
322). If we number the Sadducees at less than 3,000
members we
will not be far from the
truth.
Another sect among the Jews at this time,
but not mentioned in
the Bible, were the Essenes. Josephus
informs us that there were
ONLY ABOUT 4,000 OF THEM
("Antiquities of the Jews," xviii, 1,
5). A group known as the
Scrolls just recently found,
were a part of this Essene sect and
represented part of the 4,000
members.
The rest of the sects in
and definitely had fewer
members than the Pharisees, Sadducees or
Essenes (e.g.,
pp. 127, 128).
These figures represent the startling truth
that the
overwhelming majority of Jews
DID NOT belong to the religious
sects.
With the facts staring us directly in the
face, it should not
be difficult to understand
why it can be stated with absolute
assurance that FAR LESS than
5% of the 3,000,000 Jews of
Some Common People Were
Religious
The majority of people, known as the
"Am ha-aretz," the Common
People, who were not members
of the religious sects, represented
all classes and varying
degrees of feeling in regard to religion.
It is definitely known that
some of these Common People were not
totally irreligious. Some of them did hold to a form of
religion, even though they
did not belong to the accepted
religious sects.
Since there were synagogues scattered
throughout
is altogether obvious that
those Jews who did attend had some
form of religious
conviction. Because the
"ministers" in charge
of most of the synagogues
were Pharisees, it is likely that much
of the Pharisaical teaching
influenced them. However, these
Common People WERE NOT
PHARISEES! Most of the people had no
desire to practice the strict
and disciplinary rules of the
Pharisees. Nevertheless, some of the people did attend
the
Pharisaic synagogues to hear
the Scriptures expounded on the
Sabbath or on other
occasions.
The Common People who did attend the
synagogue services,
however, were not required to
hold to the teachings of the
Pharisees. The Pharisees exercised little real authority
over
the religious life of the
people. If a person desired to attend
the synagogue, he could; if
he obliged himself to stay away, that
was his prerogative. There was no coercion to attend Sabbath
services, for THERE WAS LITTLE
EXERCISE OF ANY CENTRAL RELIGIOUS
AUTHORITY WITHIN JUDAISM AT
THIS TIME. "PHARISAISM HAD NO MEANS
OF COMPELLING THOSE WHO WERE
NOT IN THEIR FELLOWSHIP TO CONFORM
TO THEIR REQUIREMENTS"
(ibid., p. 137).
--------------------
PHOTO CAPTION: A view of the
the broken outside wall. Now turn the page and see the inside of
the synagogue.
--------------------
"It is perfectly clear that the people
at large did not share
in the punctilious religious
life of the Pharisees, however much
they might admire it. In
proportion of those actively
engaged in religious service WAS
UNDOUBTEDLY SMALL"
(Mathews, "History of New Testament Times in
It was only over the lives of the
"pious" that the Pharisees
saddled a harsh religion of
"do's" and don't's."
Were Synagogues Frequented by
the Jews?
Even though the synagogues ruled by the
Pharisees were open to
all the Jews and they could
attend them on the Sabbaths, this
does not mean that all the
Jews attended. In fact, from the
available evidence, it
appears quite strongly that only very few
Jews, relatively speaking,
attended the synagogues regularly. At
least, if the size and number
of synagogues, of which records
exist, are any guide, and
they obviously do represent a guide,
then we can safely say that
very few of the Common People
attended the synagogues with
regularity.
Take as an example the Capernaum Synagogue.
It is a matter of history, recorded in the
New Testament, that
there was only ONE synagogue
in the city of
and even that was built by a
Gentile (Luke 7:1-5). That ONLY ONE
synagogue existed in such a
large city SURPRISES even Edersheim
(one of the foremost Jewish
writers on early Judaism), because
considerable Jewish
population. See "Life and Times of
Jesus the
Messiah," vol. i, pp. 365, 432, 433.
The ruins of this synagogue shows that it
would have probably
seated around 500 people at
the very most. This was certainly
not large for the city of
Josephus tells us that there was no city or
village (township)
in all of
the Jews," iii, 3,
3). There is no reason to doubt
Josephus'
statement regarding this, for
he should have known. He was
governor of the
aware of the number of his
constituents, especially since he was
responsible for collecting
taxes from them. So, from Josephus, we
can be certain that
but from other evidence which
shows its political importance in
--------------------
PHOTO CAPTION: An inside view
of the
small, this was one of the
largest synagogues in all
--------------------
Most of the people in
New Testament Times in
population it is said that
"no region was more punctual in
observance of the Sabbaths
and feasts" (ibid., p. 150). And
yet
there was only one synagogue
in
cities of
The importance of
recognized by our
contemporary historians ("International
Standard Bible
Encyclopedia," vol. i, p. 566). It is known that
the city was the residence of
a high officer of the king (John
and
Nonetheless, even being one of the chief
cities of
having a considerable Jewish
population it had ONLY ONE
synagogue. (In the New Testament the definite Greek
article is
used, which indicates only
one synagogue). It would have been
virtually impossible to get
even 10% of the Jewish population
into this synagogue for
Sabbath services. This serves to
indicate that only a small
minority of the Jews attended.
The
It is known that the great bulk of the
synagogues of
were quite small in size even
though there were a considerable
number of Jews living in
every city. (Mathews, "History of
New
Testament Times in
was brought up, there was ONE
synagogue. This, in itself, is not
surprising, for
cite Josephus, had at least
15,000 inhabitants. It was certainly
no mean city, even though it
was smaller than
Edersheim informs
us that
certain of the priests who
ministered in the temple ("Life and
Times of Jesus the
Messiah," vol. i, p. 147). Also,
one of the major cities
located on the great caravan route from
the
a particular importance.
But even with these advantages, the ruins of
the synagogue at
than 75 souls. This size shows how insignificant was the
synagogue compared to the
population of the
which numbered over 15,000
inhabitants. This again serves to
indicate that the synagogues
were not attended regularly except
by the most pious of the
Common People. The rest of them were not
particularly interested in
religion. Undoubtedly many of them
did attend the annual
festivals which were held in the synagogues
and at the
were like national
holidays. But the evidence is clearly
against
the masses attending the
synagogues REGULARLY every Sabbath.
It has
been conjectured by some that the
may have been built later
than the time of Christ because it was
not situated in the highest
part of the city, as they supposedly
think it should have
been. However, Edersheim
shows that this is
not a proper criterion and
rejects the supposition. (ibid., vol.
i, p. 433).
There is every reason to believe that this small
synagogue was the one Jesus
attended. In their visit to
in 1956, both Mr. and Mrs.
Armstrong came to the same conclusion
as did Edersheim
-- it is the very synagogue that existed in
Jesus day.
This religious condition in
should not surprise us
much. Today it is common for many of the
people who profess
Christianity to attend church only on the two
pagan holidays that almost
all churches celebrate today -- Easter
and Christmas. The rest of the year finds the majority not
attending church with any
regularity. The Jews, in Christ's day,
can be compared in like
manner with the common tendency today.
How Many Synagogues in
It is not known exactly how many synagogues
there were
throughout
hints as to the number.
which had a considerable
Jewish population had at least one
synagogue in each of its
cities. ("Judaism in the New
Testament
Period," pp. 27,
133). It must be remembered that
large as it was, had one
synagogue. There can be little question
about the fact that there was
at least one synagogue in almost
every town of any size. This seems to be a foregone conclusion
of all the writers on the
subject.
We happen to know, again from Josephus, that
there were 240
cities and villages in all of
45).
and in fact,
material blessings. Edersheim says the
cost of living in
for example, was five times
that of
relative scarcity of good
soil and crops ("Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah," vol.
i, pp. 224, 225).
However, if we allow
about 500 cities and villages
in all of
had a synagogue. This would represent about 500 synagogues.
But,
if we allow some of the
cities to have had two or more
synagogues, the number could
be raised to about 1,000 synagogues.
That is, if every city and
village did have a synagogue.
If there were, being extremely liberal,
about 1,000 synagogues
scattered throughout
people, this would mean one
synagogue for every 3,000 people.
The sizes of the synagogues
were from the very small, held in the
home (ibid., vol. i, p. 433), to the size of the
synagogue with as many as
500. There were certainly none which
could hold 3,000, nor even a
third of that amount. And the
majority were small
synagogues not much bigger than the one in
That there could hardly be more than 2,000
synagogues
throughout
consider that there were only
6,000 Pharisees to minister in
these synagogues. THE PHARISEES WERE THE SYNAGOGUE RULERS
(Herford,
"Judaism in the New Testament Period," p. 134).
However, not all Pharisees
were religious leaders in the
synagogues. For example, Josephus, the Jewish historian,
was a
Pharisee but was not a ruler
or synagogue official. In fact, a
good percentage of Pharisees
were not a part of the synagogue
government.
And besides this, there were several offices
to be filled in
each synagogue (ISBE, vol. v,
pp. 2878, 2879). The limited number
of Pharisees available could
hardly have filled the necessary
posts for more than 1,000
separate synagogues.
With about 3,000 Jews for each synagogue in
synagogues ranging in size
from around 75 members (even 10 if
held in a home, as was
sometimes allowed) to around 500 people,
it can easily be seen that a
good number of the Common People DID
NOT ATTEND.
Popular Judaism Like Popular Churchianity
The religious condition of the Jews during
the days of Christ
can be compared with our own
society. Today, there are about 750
million people who claim to
be Christians, but how many of these
are fervent in their
beliefs? How many are consistent church
goers? How many are zealously interested in their
church? How
many put their church above
anything else in their lives? How
many really know God?
Even the major Protestant and Catholic
leaders are appalled at
the seeming lack of real
interest expressed by so many of their
members. It is a known fact that the majority of
people today
just aren't interested in
real, heart-felt religion at all --
even though most claim to be
Christians.
Should we then be amazed that over 95% of
the Jews of Christ's
time were no more religious
than our own people? Of course not!
People were the same then as
they are today.
The false notion that the Jews of Christ's
day were intensely
interested in religion -- the
religion of Moses -- must be
eradicated from our
minds. Such deception must be replaced
by
the cold facts! The Jews were no more fervent about the
religion
of Moses than the majority of
Christians are today about the
religion of Christ!
Yet when they heard Christ's message it
began to awaken them
to their senses, just as
millions are being awakened from their
lethargy today by the WORLD
TOMORROW broadcast.
(To be continued next issue)
Good News
January 1961
Vol. X, Number 1
Is JUDAISM the RELIGION OF
MOSES?
How much do you know about
the Jewish sects mentioned in your New
Testament -- the Pharisees,
Sadducees, Scribes, and the Herodians
and Zealots? Were they all really God's Old Testament
Church?
By Ernest Martin
HUNDREDS OF DENOMINATIONS AND splinter sects
are represented
in so called Christianity
today. It is possible to find any
variety that might suit the
fancy.
A Sect for Every Whim!
There are "pentecostal"
sects that cater to those of certain
emotional tendencies. Others appeal to the educated and the
intellectual. There are puritan and fundamentalist
denominations
and at the other extreme,
cold, formal and modernistic ones. On
the other hand, we find
certain denominations having a strong
central government and in
others the congregations rule. There
are those with pomp and
ritual, and those having no religious
adornment. And yet, the irony of the whole thing is the
fact
that all these opposing and
irreconcilable denominations claim to
be the Church that Christ
founded while they preach conflicting
and contradictory
"gospels." It certainly is
obvious that they
are not preaching the ONE
Gospel of Christ (I Cor.
Our people -- claiming to be Christians --
have gotten
themselves into a chaotic
state of confusion in regard to
religion. They have abandoned the Gospel of Christ --
which is
clearly and plainly revealed
in the Word of God -- and
substituted for it their various
opinions and beliefs resulting
in our modern
denominationalism.
It should therefore not be surprising to us
today, who are so
used to the splits and
schisms based on the opinions of men, to
find that the Jews in the New
Testament times were ALSO SPLIT UP
INTO MANY DIFFERING AND
OPPOSING SECTS.
The Denominations of Judaism
It is a common law of human nature that when
mankind uses
human reasoning to arrive at
the truth of a religious subject,
there are going to be many
differences of opinion. The Jews in
the New Testament period were
not one unified denomination
preaching one message. They were far from common agreement with
one another in many basic
points of religion.
Judaism had its sectarian divisions as we
have ours. How did
they originate -- and
why? Let the Jews themselves answer.
Here are the candid admissions of
"If it were possible to analyze the
Judaism of the New
Testament Period into all its
component elements, the result of
the process would be to show
HOW COMPLEX A VARIETY is summed up
under that name, and HOW FAR
FROM THE TRUTH it is to speak of
'the Jews' collectively as if
they were all alike, in respect to
their Judaism" (
pp. 41, 42).
"When looked at from a distance, as is
usually the case with
non-Jewish students, Judaism
appears to be a well-defined and
fairly simple system, with a
few strongly marked lines of thought
and practice capable of easy
description, and supposed to be not
less easily understood. But, when studied from near at hand, and
still more when studied from
within, Judaism is seen to be by no
means simple. THERE WERE MANY MORE TYPES THAN USUALLY
APPEAR,
MANY MORE SHADES OF BELIEF
AND PRACTICE THAN THOSE WHICH ARE
COMMONLY DESCRIBED. In this sense it is true to say, in the
words of Montifiore,
that THERE WERE 'MANY JUDAISMS' ..." (ibid.,
p. 14).
The fact that there were all types of
conflicting and opposing
sects in Judaism is important
to recognize if an adequate
understanding of the New
Testament Period, and especially Paul's
writings, is to be
gained. These various sects, TO WHICH
ONLY A
VERY SMALL PART OF THE
POPULATION BELONGED, disagreed among
themselves on many religious
doctrines. Even within the sects,
many individuals or groupings
were at variance with one another.
This condition of religious discord among
the various sects,
with the independent and
differing views of many even within the
sects, undoubtedly was a
prime factor in causing the Common
People of the land to
dissuade themselves from joining the sects
of Judaism. When there is not unanimity of belief in
religious
teaching, there is a natural
repulsion on the part of most people
to religion itself -- or at
least in taking a serious interest in
it. This is the condition existing in our
contemporary world,
and it was the very condition
that existed among the Jews of
of the Jews did not directly
belong to the religious sects, and
the sects, themselves, were
in a state of confusion as to
religious belief.
Let us look at some of these divided sects
of Judaism in order
to help us better understand
the New Testament period.
The Pharisees
The major sect among the divisions of
Judaism was that or the
Pharisees. This was the most influential group at the
time and
can be called the leading
division.
Even though their membership was only 6,000
out of a
population near 3,000,000,
they had greater religious influence
over the people than any
other group. The main reason for this
is because the individuals in
charge of the majority of
synagogues were
Pharisees. Being in charge of the
synagogues
gave them a certain amount of
sway over the Common People who
attended the synagogue
services. We must remember, however,
that
the evidence shows that only
a minority of the Common People
attended the synagogues with
regularity. The Pharisees had no
direct control over the bulk
of the people at all.
Who Were the Pharisees?
The Pharisees were not exactly like a church
as we know it.
They were, instead, a group
of men, and even some women,
representing many different
walks of life -- teachers, ministers,
businessmen, politicians, etc. These men had voluntarily bound
themselves together in a
covenant to live a particular manner of
life. Instead of calling them a church, they can
best be
described as a RELIGIOUS
FRATERNITY or ASSOCIATION (Edersheim,
"Life and Times of Jesus
the Messiah," vol. i, p. 311). These
were Jews who bound
themselves together into an exclusive
fraternity to perform certain
religious customs and traditions
that the Common People did
not wish to keep, or did not wish to
keep with the strictness of
the Pharisees.
Edersheim
continues:
"The object of the association was
twofold: to observe in the
strictest manner, and
according to traditional law, all the
ordinances concerning Levitical purity, and to be extremely
punctilious in all connected
with religious dues (tithes and all
other dues)" (ibid.,
vol. i, p. 311).
It is important to note that the Pharisees
were merely an
association of men who had
bound themselves to keep the Levitical
laws of purity and also to
conform very strictly to the laws or
tithing. THEY HAD NOT BOUND THEMSELVES TO ACCEPT ANY
CREED OR SET OF DOCTRINES.
"The Pharisees WERE NEVER a homogeneous
body possessed of a
definite policy or body of
doctrine" (Encyclopedia Britannica,
11th ed., vol. xxi, p. 347).
AT NO TIME WAS IT REQUIRED OF ALL PHARISEES
TO BELIEVE ALIKE.
This fact is very
important! By understanding this, we can
come
to a clear comprehension of
the true activity of the Pharisees
during the time of Christ.
It can be plainly shown that the Pharisees
exercised little
central authority among
themselves at all. In fact, other than
their uniformity in their
desire to keep the laws of purity and
the other religious dues, the
Pharisees represented a group of
men WITH UNLIMITED
DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. They were not
one
unified group in the matter
of religious doctrines. One Pharisee
would teach his opinion on a
religious question and another would
teach another opinion, in
many instances, often totally different
or diametrically
opposite. Each Pharisee could teach
whatever he
pleased concerning the
Scripture and STILL BE A PHARISEE so long
as he kept bound to the
Pharisaical rule of life.
You can imagine what confusion this would
bring among the
Pharisees!
The Pharisaical Schools
JUST A FEW YEARS BEFORE THE BIRTH OF CHRIST,
and also during
His lifetime, we have record
of many divisions within the
Pharisaical group. These divisions resulted from differences of
opinion among the
Pharisees. Some Pharisees, who might
believe
one particular set of
doctrines, would tend to associate
themselves together into
their own societies. Some of the
prominent of these societies
would also form themselves into
schools where any differences
of opinion on religious questions
among themselves could be
discussed and then accepted or rejected
by the whole of the school.
Two of the most distinguished schools at
this time,
representing the two major
divisions of the Pharisees, were the
were the rivals of one
another. The points over which they
disagreed were practically
innumerable ("Cyclopaedia of Biblical,
Theological and
Ecclesiastical Literature," by McClintock and
Strong, vol. ix, p.
472). There was hardly a point of
religious
doctrine that these two
schools completely agreed on. Edersheim
says that at one time there
was such violent disagreement between
these two schools that blood
was shed between them ("Life and
Times of Jesus the
Messiah," vol. ii, p. 13).
These two schools were NOT THE ONLY
DIVISIONS of the
Pharisees, however. There were many more! Dr. George H. Box, of
the
WERE SHARPLY DIVIDED INTO
VARIOUS SECTIONS which were NOT
exhausted by the rival
schools of Hillel and Shammai"
("Abbington
Bible Commentary," p.
841). There were many other splinter
groups existing even among
the Pharisees, almost all teaching
different doctrines.
The Pharisee Synagogues
It is readily understandable why the rulers
of the synagogues
were adherents to the code of
the Pharisees. It was a mark of
religious piety to keep the Levitical laws of purity and to be
scrupulous in keeping the
laws of tithing, etc. So, the majority
of the rulers or the
synagogues (ministers) were Pharisees.
This does not mean that these synagogue
rulers taught a
unified creed. The ruler of the synagogue, in most cases,
would
teach what he, himself,
thought was proper. Some of these
Pharisees would conform as
near as possible to the
of interpretation. Others would lean towards the
Many would teach a
combination of the two schools' doctrines
infused with their own
peculiar beliefs. No creed existed in
the
synagogues ruled by the
Pharisees. This is the reason why almost
every opinion was tolerated
in the synagogues. THE SCRIBES AND
PHARISEES NEVER TAUGHT WITH
AUTHORITY as did Jesus! (
"Judaism in the New
Testament Period," p. 170).
Now we can understand why it was not
difficult for Christ and
the Apostles to speak in most
of the synagogues without
molestation. Each ruler of the synagogue could teach what
he
pleased and he allowed those
of the congregation to express their
opinion if they wished. There was little government of God --
and there was little truth.
The Apostle Paul spoke many times in the
Jews' synagogues
about the TRUTH of
Christianity (Acts
Sometimes Paul met with
approval and other times with opposition.
Jesus also preached the true
gospel in many of the synagogues
throughout
Because the majority of the synagogues were
under the control
of individuals who were
Pharisees, it is safe to conclude that
the Common People who
attended endeavored to keep some form of
the Pharisaical
teaching. In this sense, it would be
proper to
say that those who attended
the synagogues were following a type
of NOMINAL Pharisaism -- even though they were not Pharisees
themselves.
"The popular religion therefore, SO FAR
AS IT WAS ENTITLED TO
BE CALLED JUDAISM, might be
described as more or less DILUTED
PHARISAISM" (ibid., p.
136).
And because the Pharisees did control the
synagogues, and had
greater influence over the
Common People who attended, they
assumed the position of being
the major sect of Judaism. They by
no means represent the only
religious group, however. There were
many more!
The Scribes
Along with the Pharisees it is necessary to
mention the
Scribes. They adhered to the Pharisaical rules of
piety and, in
fact, represented a
particular group within the Pharisees.
They
were the SCHOLARLY PHARISEES
-- sometimes called "doctors of the
law" (
In other words, they were the ones most
learned in the Law.
Both Hillel
and Shammai, who founded the two prominent Pharisaic
Schools, were Scribes, or
Doctors of the Law. Not all Pharisees
were Scribes, but ALL SCRIBES
WERE PHARISEES (ibid., p. 158). To
them was committed the
copying of the Hebrew Bible.
The Sadducees
Another major group within Judaism at this
time were the
Sadducees. Even though the members in this sect were
fewer than
the Pharisees, they could
command attention because they were in
influential political
positions in
THE SADDUCEES WERE PRIESTS
who ministered in the
religious service that the
priests were doing at this time.
In the distant past, it had been the job of
the priests, along
with the Levites, to be the
religious leaders in
the time of Christ, the
Pharisees, who were not priests, had been
allowed by Queen Alexandra
(79 B.C.) to take this leadership to
themselves, while the priests
were relegated to the place of
performing only the rituals
at the
Pharisees' authority, however
(Mat. 23:2-3).
Because the Pharisees had deprived the
priests of their
rightful position as teachers
of the people, we can see one
reason why the priests did
not favor the Pharisees nor what they
taught. This is why the majority of priests were
Sadducees!
They had a spite for the
Pharisees, so they joined themselves to
the sect which disapproved of
the Pharisees the most.
The Sadducees had no set religious creed
EXCEPT that they ALL
DISBELIEVED in the
resurrection from the dead, in angels, and
spirits (Acts 23:8). They claimed to believe explicitly in the
Scriptures, but even in their
fundamental doctrines just quoted,
it is clearly obvious that
they rejected much of the Scripture,
for the Word of God plainly
teaches the resurrection, the
existence of angels and
spirits (Job
12:1-3; Ex. 14:19; Dan. 6:22;
I Sam. 18:10). Probably they
rejected such essential and
basic doctrines because the Pharisees
held all of these as
indispensable doctrines of the Scriptures.
Perhaps it was our of spite
that the Sadducees rejected them.
They certainly had no
Scripture proof for doing so. It is
known
that the Sadducees detested
the Pharisees so much that they would
counter almost every belief
the Pharisees would teach.
These doctrines of the Sadducees were not
popular with the
people. Very few of the Common People ever joined
with them.
And, the Sadducees made no
attempt to proselyte. They also had
no synagogues in which to
worship (
Testament Period," p.
122). Nor did they have any real
centralized authority among
themselves. The individual members
of this group could believe
whatever he pleased, and there was "A
CONSIDERABLE VARIETY OF TYPE
AMONG THE SADDUCEES," declares
Their real prominence was mainly
POLITICAL. During the time
of Christ, the Sadducees were
in control of the civil Supreme
Court of the Jews (the
Sanhedrin). Because of their being
majority leaders in this
powerful judicial organization, they had
recognizable respect from the
people. The Sanhedrin was the high
civil court, allowed under
the Romans to try legal disputes which
would arise between
Jews. It even had power, in some
instances,
to give capital
punishment. And, by the Sadducees having
the
majority vote in this court
(called "the council" in the New
Testament -- Luke 22:66),
they could command certain political
esteem from the people --
even at times from the Pharisees.
Religiously speaking,
however, very few of the Jews were
Sadducees. Their materialistic concept of Scripture and
the fact
that they were mainly priests
plus some rich and influential men,
caused this sect not to be in
any way popular. "The priestly and
aristocratic Sadducees were
rigidly exclusive, and insignificant
in numbers" ("The
Cambridge Companion to the Bible," p. 134).
The Essenes
The last MAJOR group of Judaisers
to be considered as
representing Judaism, and
having about 4,000 members, were the
Essenes. This sect is
not mentioned in the New Testament,
although they were in
existence at the time.
Because Jesus never directly by name condemned
this group, as
He did the Pharisees and
Sadducees, some modern scholars have
been led to assume that
perhaps Jesus was a member of this sect!
Nothing could be further from
the truth!
Members of this group were ascetics who
lived in the desert
near the
withdrawing from society
altogether, having no social intercourse
with any except members of
their own sect. They practiced
celibacy (repudiating
marriage entirely), drank no wine, did not
attend
Thes. & Ecc. Lit., vol. iii,
p. 302). Their order was similar to
the practices in monasteries
and nunneries of the Catholic Church
with which we are familiar (
Testament Period," p.
63). They even had their own synagogues
in
which to practice their
ascetic customs.
Christ practiced none of their basic
tenets! Simple reference
to the New Testament shows us
that He was certainly not an
ascetic. HE CAME EATING AND DRINKING WINE (Matt.
went out into the highways
(Matt. 22:9) and even ate with the
Common People of the land,
called SINNERS by the Pharisees (Matt.
The Apostle Paul CONDEMNS asceticism as a
way of life (
doctrine. Neither Paul nor Christ was in any way
connected with
this sect of the Jews nor did
they propound any of this sect's
peculiar doctrines. Even the most skeptical of scholars must
admit this fact
("Abington Bib. Com., p. 842). Most
of the
doctrines adhered to by the Essenes actually came from heathen
influences, not from the Bible.
The
Another sect -- or perhaps sects --
connected directly with
the Essenes,
were the
that this sect existed in
scrolls were found by an Arab
in a cave near the
was found that these scrolls
were hidden by this sect now known
as the
Subsequent archeological discoveries
revealed that this group
were like the Essenes in many ways.
They preferred a life of
asceticism and lived in
monastery-like institutions (Thompson,
"Archaeology and the
Pre-Christian Centuries," p. 107).
However,
a study of their writings
indicated that they may have been a
splinter group of the Essenes. Their own
writings tell us that
there were differences of
opinions among themselves and that
there were different sections
within the group (ibid., p. 115).
That Jesus had nothing to do with them is
apparent! Professor
Thompson says that the
teaching of these
from that of Christ in a
thousand ways (ibid., p. 118).
The Zealots
The Zealots were a religious group (
New Testament Period,"
p. 66), who had as their basic philosophy
-- the defense of the Law of
Moses. At least, this was their
supposition. In their religious beliefs they sided with
the
Sadducees IN ONE RESPECT:
they rejected the authority of the
Pharisaic teachings (ibid.,
p. 68). But they were not Sadducees!
They held that the Law of
Moses was sufficient to guide the
religious life, and that it
did not need the extra teachings of
the Pharisees or any other
group to make it clear. It is not
known just how fervent they
really were in adhering to this
religious conception.
Their main point of doctrine, and the one
which gave them
their name, was their
ZEALOUSNESS for the Law. They were
supposedly willing to fight
or even to die for the Law if
necessary. However, we find that this seemingly good
quality was
actually a tool by which they
could get the Common People to come
to their aid in order to
accomplish their own nationalistic
desires of driving all
foreigners from the
was the overthrow of the
Roman yoke more than anything else that
gave them impetus for
zealousness.
We often meet with this sect in the New
Testament only because
one of the Apostles WAS ONCE
a member of it before becoming a
Christian (Luke
Their importance was not overly great during
the time of
Christ, but their influence
grew, after the crucifixion, to the
extent that much of the blame
for the rebellion against
that caused the destruction
of
A.D., is to be accorded
directly to them. Their fundamental
doctrine of rebellion against
all foreign domination (using the
pretext of fighting for the
Law of God) brought much of the
misery the Jews suffered
during the destruction of
nearly 40 years after the
crucifixion. This sect was
extinguished from Judaism
after that destruction.
The Herodians
During the time of Christ there was another
minor group
represented in Judaism called
the Herodians.
They are mentioned
twice in the New Testament
(Matt.
both cases aligned with the
Pharisees against Christ. Little is
known of them except that
they had independent doctrines of their
own. It has been CONJECTURED by some that they
were endeavoring
to proclaim Herod the Great
as the King and Messiah. The Jews
were well aware that the
Messiah was to come at about this time
because of the prophecy in
Daniel
some scholars -- that the Herodians were proclaiming Herod as
their coming King. However, this is entirely conjecture.
It is not known how many members were in
this MINOR group, nor
is it really known what they
taught.
Other Sects in Judaism
Other than the sects and divisions already
mentioned, THERE
WERE MANY OTHER MINOR
RELIGIOUS GROUPS IN JUDAISM. That these
sects existed is readily
recognized because they wrote many
erroneous and fantastic
apocryphal books which show that they
were people who believed
doctrines totally different from the
common sects. These books express different opinions among
themselves as well, and in
every case endeavor to teach what the
Bible clearly does not teach.
The name that has been applied to many of
these small and
independent groups, or
perhaps they represent nothing more than a
few individuals, is Apocalyptists. The word means "the
revealing-ones" or those
who purport to give SECRET doctrines or
prophecies never heard
before.
Many of the writers of these books claimed
the names of famous
Old Testament personalities,
such as Enoch and Moses, as the
supposed authors of their
books. However, it is well known that
these books were written
about one to two hundred years before
Christ. See R. H. Charles', "Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,"
Oxford University Press, page
123, for the evidence of this.
Instead of revealing many hidden truths,
these books reveal
only the errors that some of
the Jews had foolishly come to
believe. The important point to realize is the fact
that these
false books are at variance
with the teachings of the Holy
Scriptures. THEY DO NOT BELONG IN THE BIBLE! They were all
rejected by the Jews of
Palestine. In a future chapter we will
see just what books really
belong in the Old Testament and who
had the authority to decide
it. It is important to know!
Points to Remember
Let us summarize the religious condition of
the Jews during
the time of Christ.
Out of a total population of about 3,000,000
Jews in
Sadducees, 4,000 Essenes, and a few thousand representing the
other sects of Judaism. Those belonging to the religious sects
represented only a mere
fragment of the population -- less than
5% of the total population.
The evidence shows that, relatively
speaking, very few of the
Jews attended the synagogues
each Sabbath. The synagogues were
just too small or there were
not enough of them to allow all to
attend.
Of the sects themselves, the Pharisees, the
major group, WERE
DIVIDED into many opposing
divisions. Nor were the Sadducees a
unified group, for there WERE
MANY VARIETIES OF BELIEFS AMONG
THEM. The Essenes and
uniform group, BUT WERE
DIVIDED INTO VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF BELIEF.
The rest of the sects were
minor in importance. Even the
writings of the Apocalyptics show a variety of opinions. They
certainly did not agree with
one another -- and especially they
did not agree with the Bible.
Among all these differing sects we find some
keeping the
traditions of the
elders. Some believed in asceticism;
others
repudiated it. There was disagreement over the rituals,
marriage, the Sacred
Calendar, the correct observance of the Holy
Days, etc. In fact, the points of disagreement were
virtually
INNUMERABLE.
About the only things held in common by them
all were some
kind of observance of the
Sabbath, the rite of circumcision, the
calling of
Messiah. However, even in these fundamental doctrines
there were
countless shades of
interpretations.
The condition of the Jews in New Testament
times can best be
described by the statement in
the Bible: "every man did that
which was right in his own
eyes" (Judges
There is no question but that the religion
of the Jews, as
taught by the differing
sects, was not the religion that God gave
Moses. In truth, the message that Christ brought
re-emphasized
the religion of Moses IN ITS
TRUE SPIRITUAL INTENT, and to give
it to a people who had
forgotten the true spiritual application
of the Law!
In the next chapter we shall see how the
Jews originally
departed from the Mosaic
faith; how they instituted the
commandments of men which
Christ condemned (Mark 7:7); how the
religious sects first arose;
and why the Jews came to such a
state of religious confusion
during Christ's time.
(To be continued next issue)
xx
Good News
February 1961
Vol. X, Number 2
Is JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
Here is the third installment
-- revealing what really happened
under Ezra and Nehemiah, and
how the Government of God functioned
in the Old Testament Church.
by Ernest Martin
THE religious condition of the Jews during
the time of Christ
had not evolved in just a few
years. It took over 200 years for
Judaism to firmly implant
itself in Palestine.
If we are to adequately understand the full
development of
Judaism, we will have to go
back in history over 500 years before
Christ. In these centuries history shows why and how
"Judaism"
replaced the Law of Moses as
the religion of the Jews!
The Babylonian Captivity
The proper place to begin a study of the
development of
Judaism is with the
Babylonian captivity of the Jews.
Between the years of 604 B.C. and 585 B.C.,
Nebuchadnezzar,
king of the Babylonians, made
war with the Kingdom of Judah. The
Jews were not successful in
any or the skirmishes with the
Babylonians. In the first years of this war,
Nebuchadnezzar
carried away the majority of
the Jews from Judah to Babylon. At
the end of the war, in 585
B.C., ALL THE JEWS, except those under
Gedaliah, were finally carried to Babylon. And even those under
Gedaliah finally fled
The Babylonian captivity came to an end with
the downfall of
the Babylonian Empire in
October 539 B.C. Isaiah had prophesied,
about 200 years before, that
Cyrus, the king of Persia, would be
responsible for the overthrow
of Babylon and for making it
possible for the Jews to
return to Palestine (Isa. 45:1-4).
Thus, Cyrus and his armies
captured the capital of the Empire and
Babylon was absorbed into the
Persian Empire.
Cyrus was so betook over the exact prophecy
by Isaiah
concerning himself, that he
determined to honor the God who had
granted him victory over the
Babylonians. He issued an edict
that the Jews who had been
carried captive by the Babylonians
could return to Palestine and
rebuild the Temple of God (II
Chron. 36:22, 23; Ezra 1:1,2).
The issuance of this decree resulted in
about 50,000 Jews
later returning to
Palestine. These Jews were under the
leadership of two men. Zerubbabel, a
descendant of David, and
Joshua, the High Priest. The reason for the Jews' return was to
rebuild the Temple, which had
been destroyed by the Babylonians,
and to again establish the
true worship of God. The books of
Haggai and Zechariah were
written during the period when these
Jews were returning to
Palestine and during the building of the
Temple. These books describe the condition of the
Jews at this
time.
Majority did NOT Return
It must be remembered, however, that the
majority of the Jews
did NOT return to
Palestine. Most of them elected to
remain in
the Babylonian area. Under the benevolent rulership
of Cyrus,
many of the Jews had their
own homes, substantial properties and
not a few were wealthy and
influential. They did not want to
give all of this up in order
to go back to the wasted land of
their forefathers. Even Cyrus did not want all of them to leave
the Babylonian area since the
bulk of the population in some
provinces was principally
Jewish. Depopulation would have been a
serious setback to the
ECONOMY of the area (Edersheim, "Life and
Times of Jesus the
Messiah," vol. i, p. 8).
The majority of the Jews were content with
the situation in
Babylon. They had no desire to return, and in
consequence, they
built permanent schools,
colleges, and synagogues. They were
settling down to stay. And,
even though there were several
migrations from Babylon back
to Palestine, the bulk of the Jews
remained in the Mesopotamian
area. Even as late as the New
Testament times, there were
still more Jews in Babylon than there
were in
THE APOSTLE PETER WAS IN
BABYLON IN THE LATER YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
He wrote his two epistles
from near Babylon on the Euphrates (I
Pet. 5:13). Since the Apostle Peter was the apostle to
the
Circumcision scattered abroad
-- the Jews in the Diaspora (Gal.
2:7), it is not difficult to
see why he went to Babylon, where
many of the Jews lived.
Ezra Goes to Jerusalem
After the deaths of Zerubbabel
and Joshua, who led the first
wave of returning Jews to
Palestine, the people began to take a
lackadaisical attitude
concerning the services in the Temple and
religion in general. Even though the Temple had been completed
in the early months of 515
B.C., the people of Palestine took no
interest in rebuilding the
city of Jerusalem. It still remained
in ruins! The people had also begun to intermarry
freely with
the idolatrous Gentile people
round about. The religious life of
the people in general was
becoming corrupt. This condition was
prompted because the people
in general did not have any real
spiritual leaders after the
death of Zerubbabel and Joshua. As
the years rolled by, the
condition became worse and worse.
Finally, in the summer of the year 457 B.C.,
the seventh year
of Artaxerxes,
Jewish reckoning, Ezra came to Palestine to
rectify the situation that
was beginning to get out of hand (Ezra
7:7-8).
Ezra was a priest of no mean standing. He was a direct
descendant of Aaron and some
of his forefathers had been former
High Priests in Israel. His grandfather was the High Priest who
returned with Zerubbabel and Joshua to Jerusalem in the first
migration back to Palestine
("Cyclopaedia of Biblical,
Theological, and
Ecclesiastical Literature," vol. iii, p. 435).
Ezra, himself, was a
"scribe," a "ready scribe of the law of
Moses," "a scribe
of the words of the commandments of the Lord
and of His statutes to
Israel," "a scribe of the law of the God
of heaven" (Ezra 7:11,
12). He was considered by Josephus, the
Jewish historian of the
apostles' days, to have been, in a sense,
the "High Priest"
of the Jews who were still living in Babylon
("Antiquities of the
Jews," xi, 5,1).
The Scriptures say that Ezra "had
prepared his heart to seek
the law of the Lord, and to
do it, and to teach in Israel
statutes and judgments"
(Ezra 7:10). From these Scripture
references alone, we can say
confidently that Ezra was determined
to live by the laws of God
and to teach them to the people. So
profound an influence had
Ezra over the Jews, and so righteous
was his character, that a
later Jewish writer said he would have
been the lawgiver to Israel
had not Moses preceded him ("The
Talmud, Sanhedrin," c.ii).
Ezra knew the laws of God -- he was well
trained in them. And
God directed that he go to
Jerusalem to beautify the Temple,
establish its services in
proper order, to teach the people the
laws of God, and to rebuild
the city of Jerusalem.
He went to Palestine, in the year 457 B.C.,
with authority
from the Persian government
to carry out these reforms. About
2,000 people went with Ezra
to Palestine. These were notably
priests, Levites and servants
of the Temple. The object of Ezra
and these other important
dignitaries in going to Jerusalem, was
to restore the worship of God
that was fast becoming defiled.
Ezra's Restoration
When Ezra and his retinue went to Jerusalem
from Babylon, they
went with a royal decree from
the king of Persia -- Ezra had the
power he needed to carry out
the reform. The decree gave him
authority not only to
establish the true religion in its purity,
but also he had governmental
orders to "appoint magistrates and
judges which may judge all
the people that are beyond the river
(in Palestine), all such as
know the laws of thy God; and teach
ye him that knoweth them not.
And whosoever will not do the law
of thy God and the LAW OF THE
KING, let judgment be executed upon
him with all diligence,
whether it be unto death, or to
banishment, or to
confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment"
(Ezra 7:25, 26). In other words Ezra was going to Jerusalem
not
only as a priest of God to
reestablish the religious worship, but
also to establish law and
order by rebuilding Jerusalem as a
Jewish capital city.
Why was the king of Persia so interested in
the Jews' religion
and why did he want Jerusalem
to be rebuilt and inhabited? The
answer is plain.
The Bible records how Esther, a Jewish girl
from the tribe of
Benjamin, became Queen of
Persia, and Mordecai, her uncle, became
Prime Minister of the kingdom
(Esther 2:17; 10:3). Esther was
married to King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) who ruled according to Persian
reckoning, from 485 to 465
B.C. The king under whom Ezra was
appointed to rebuild
Jerusalem was Artaxerxes I -- the son of
Xerxes. Esther was still, undoubtedly, the Queen
Mother, when
Ezra left for Jerusalem in
457 B.C. Thus we see that there was
considerable Jewish influence
in the king's palace at this time.
No wonder Ezra was given such
responsibility by the Persian king.
He had power from the king to
perform the needed restoration.
Ezra's personality and
authority had a tremendous effect on the
people.
The real intent of Ezra was to establish the
Law of Moses as
the constitutional law
throughout Judea (Herford, "Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 33) -- to
make Judea a model state within the
Persian Empire -- one
adhering to the law of Moses. The laws
of
the king were to be few,
dealing mainly with taxation. Herford,
the Jewish scholar,
continues, "The Persian rulers, living far
from Judea, seldom interfered
with the internal affairs of their
Jewish subjects, and were
content to leave their public business
in the hands of the governor
of the province. If the royal taxes
were paid, and order
maintained, the Jews might organize their
own life as a community in
the way that seemed best to them"
(ibid. p. 45). This was the policy of the Persian rulers for
the
two centuries they governed
Palestine. This gave the Jews ample
opportunity to settle down
firmly in Palestine and to practice
their religion without undue
molestation.
Jews Had Married Foreign
Wives
The first thing Ezra found upon his arrival
in Palestine was
that most of the people
possessed only a nominal religion. The
Temple services were not
being conducted properly and a great
number of the people had
intermarried with foreign women. Ezra,
in no uncertain terms, warned
the people that these very acts
were violations of the Law
that caused their forefathers to be
carried into captivity (Ezra
9:5-7). Upon hearing this, many of
the people covenanted before
God to disentangle themselves from
their foreign wives (Ezra
10:2-5). However, we find that not all
of the people were so willing
to do this. Some became quite
obstinate. It took about 13 years to get all the people
to
forsake their own ways and be
obedient to the Laws of God.
The reason that the Law had commanded the
Jews not to marry
with the heathen is that the
natural tendency of a person is to
lean towards the religion of
the wife or husband. Solomon even
set up heathen idols in
Jerusalem and throughout Israel to please
his pagan wives (I Kings
11:4). And because the Law specifically
commanded the Israelites not
to marry heathen women or men
(Exodus 34:15, 16), Ezra
commanded the Jews to repent of their
erroneous ways and to begin
keeping the Law. (See also Deut.
7:3.)
A paramount issue in the mind of Ezra was
the establishment in
Palestine of the civil Law as
given by Moses. In other words, he
was determined to see that
the Jews obeyed the commandments of
God as revealed in Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Within these four books are
found the basic spiritual
commandments of God, plus
many basic laws and statutes of a civil
nature for the governing of
the physical nation of Israel. Also
within these books are the
ritualistic and ceremonial laws of
purity and the sacrificial
ordinances that formed such a
distinctive part of the Law
of Moses that by New Testament times
the term "Law of
Moses" often became a special and exclusive term
for the sacrificial
ceremonies and physical rituals (Acts 13:39;
15:5). Ezra was commissioned by God to teach the
people ALL
these laws -- from obedience
to the spiritual laws to the
observance of physical
rituals.
Ezra was fully qualified in education,
political power and
divine favor to accomplish
the job of establishing the Law of
Moses as the law of the land.
"To place the Torah (the Scriptures) in
the position of
supreme authority in Judaism,
and to win the people to that
recognition and acceptance of
that supreme authority was what
Ezra set out to do" (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 37).
And, we find that Ezra
succeeded in transforming the Jews from a
nominal Mosaic religion to
the real thing. It took, however, the
help of Nehemiah to finally
and fully implant the Law of Moses as
the law of the land.
Nehemiah Comes to Jerusalem
Nehemiah was a Jew who was a high government
official in the
Persian kingdom (Neh. 2:1-8). After
learning of the plight of
the Jews in Palestine and the
difficult time Ezra was having
getting the Jews to obey the
laws of Moses, he resolved to do
something about the
situation. Being in close communication
with
the king of Persia and in
good favor with him, he petitioned for
the right to become governor
of the province of Judea, directly
under the king himself. The petition was granted!
Ezra, who had also gone to Palestine in an
official capacity,
was not the governor of the
province. He acted more as a civil
servant of the king. But Nehemiah came with much more power. He
went to Jerusalem as governor
of the whole province of Judea.
Upon the arrival of Nehemiah in Artaxerxes' twentieth year,
Ezra's position was greatly
strengthened. Nehemiah was as much
inclined toward getting the
people back to God as was Ezra.
Nehemiah and Ezra both worked
together in harmony towards
accomplishing their
goal. And accomplish it they did! They
established the Law of Moses
as the law of the land, they set up
the Temple service in proper
order and they made the people put
away their foreign
wives. They established meeting places
where
the law was preached and
expounded. The ordained priests were
judges, teachers, and
administers of the government. This was
a
phenomenal task to accomplish
among thousands of Jews who were
not always in favor of the
law. But it was done.
Jews Sign a Covenant With God
Ezra and Nehemiah brought all of the leaders
of the people,
the priests, Levites, and all
the principal men, and had them
sign a covenant that they
would henceforth obey the laws of God.
In the covenant they signed,
they all agreed to perform seven
things. These articles of the covenant were
mandatory: 1) They
were to keep all the laws,
statutes, judgments and commandments
of God; 2) not to intermarry
with the heathen; 3) to keep the
Sabbath holy; 4) to observe
the Sabbatical year; 5) to pay the
annual third of a shekel for
the upkeep of the Temple; 6) to
supply wood for the altar in
the Temple; 7) to pay all the tithes
that were commanded in the
Law (Nehemiah 10:28-39).
The leaders signed the covenant on behalf of
all the people.
Consequently, all the Jews
who lived in Palestine, solemnly
entered into this
covenant. They all pledged to carry out
its
requirements.
Before this time, the people were content
with a nominal form
of religion, but after the
surge of spiritual zeal and
determination of Ezra and
Nehemiah, with the Persian monarch
backing them up, the people
took on a new outlook towards the
truth of God. There arose a new kind of constitutional
government -- a government
which had as its laws the Law of
Moses. It was a kind of Church and State government,
under the
authority of the Persian
kingdom, but with its own schools,
colleges, synagogues, court
houses and Supreme Court. With this
kind of central government
established in Judea, the result was a
religious unity not known
since the days of Joshua. No wonder
that Ezra, the principal
figure of the time, was called the
"second
Moses." This was a new beginning in
the history of the
Jews.
The Great Assembly
The convening of these Jewish elders was of
great importance.
This assemblage was actually
a religious and political body of
priests which was, under the
leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah,
empowered by God to maintain
the obedience of the people to the
Law of Moses for that and
future generations.
This organization was known as "The
Great Assembly." It was
an assembly comprised of Ezra
and Nehemiah, two of God's chosen
ministers, along with all the
principal priests of the Jews.
This assembly was the ruling
institution to guide the religious
life of the Jews. It was the religious supreme court. It was
the center of authority in
regard to education and regulating the
priests and Levites in
teaching the people the Law of Moses. In
effect, the Great Assembly
was the governing body of the Jewish
people in Palestine.
This assembly initiated by Ezra and Nehemiah
has often been
called by the Greek name
"The Great Synagogue." The
word
"synagogue" in
Greek means ASSEMBLY. This is the name
most
modern writers use when
referring to this authoritative body of
priests. But whether the name Great Synagogue or Great
Assembly
is used, it represents the same
institution.
"According to the most ancient
tradition, this assembly or
synagogue was styled GREAT
because of the great work it effected
in restoring the divine law
to its former greatness, and because
of the GREAT AUTHORITY AND
REPUTATION WHICH IT ENJOYED" (Cycle.
of Bib., Thee., and Ecc. Lit., vol. x, p. 82).
This assembly actually represented the
executive, judicial and
legislative congress of the
Jews. It was convened to insure the
observance of the Law of
Moses. From history we know that it
accomplished its task. It brought the people back to the Law of
Moses, and established that
Law as the constitutional law of the
land.
Some of the decisions of this Great Assembly
have had
far-reaching effects -- even
unto our present age. It is
necessary that we learn about
this organization established by
God under the supervision of
Ezra and Nehemiah.
Members of the Great Assembly
The Jewish historians are united in telling
us that there were
120 members in the original
Great Assembly ("Berakoth," ii, 4;
"Megillah,"
17b). All of these members WERE PRIESTS
(Herford,
"Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 59). There were no
laymen in this
authoritative assembly.
The president or ruler was the High
Priest. According to
rank, this should always be
the case. However, when the Great
Assembly was organized by
Ezra and Nehemiah, the High Priest,
Eliashib, did not meet with the Assembly. He did not entirely
agree with the covenant that
the Great Assembly made binding.
See Nehemiah 13:4-7.
He did not agree with the specific part of
the covenant which
commanded all Jews to give up
their Gentile wives. His grandson,
Manasseh, was married to a
very important Gentile woman, of which
more will be said later, and Eliashib did not necessarily want
this particular union to be
broken. Because of this attitude, he
was rejected from having a
part in the Great Assembly. Later on,
however, the High Priests did
assume their proper place as head
of the Assembly.
The rest of the Great Assembly were priests
of varying rank
occupying different positions
within the institution. Their jobs
were to carry out the actual
work of the Assembly while the High
Priest would supervise and
oversee.
These priests were the leaders of the Jewish
nation at the
time of Ezra and Nehemiah,
about 440 years before Christ. They
and their immediate
successors were responsible for many weighty
and authoritative decisions
that affected the whole mode of
Jewish life, and, in reality,
settled a very important question,
the effects of which reach
unto our own day.
We shall see in the next installment, how
this Great Assembly,
with the Spirit of God
guiding them, put together the Scriptures
of the Old Testament. Our Old Testament comes to us because of
the work of this Great
Assembly!
Good News
March 1961
Vol. X, Number 3
Is JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
Which books belong in the Old
Testament? What about the
Apocrypha? In this fourth installment you will learn how
and by
what authority the canon of
the Old Testament was determined.
by Ernest Martin
THE LAST installment revealed how Ezra and
Nehemiah
reestablished God's
Government in the Old Testament church.
The central authority in Palestine to carry
out that
government has often been
called by the Greek name "The Great
Synagogue." The word "synagogue" in Greek means
ASSEMBLY. This
is the name most modern
writers use when referring to that
authoritative body of priests
established by Ezra and Nehemiah
(Neh.
10). But whether the name Great
Synagogue or Great
Assembly is used, it always
represents the same institution.
We shall see in this installment how this
Great Assembly, with
the Spirit of God guiding
them, put together the Scriptures of
the Old Testament. Our Old Testament comes to us because of the
work of this Great Assembly!
What the Great Assembly Did
The firm reestablishment of the religious
and political
government in Palestine was
accomplished by Ezra and Nehemiah.
They convened the Jewish
elders for the purpose of signing and
officially sealing a covenant
to keep God's commandments. It
brought about the inauguration
of a constitutional government in
Palestine. THE CONSTITUTION WAS THE LAW OF MOSES!
Both Ezra and Nehemiah were at this covenant
-- signing, with
the leaders of the Jews, to
acknowledge THE WRITTEN LAW OF MOSES
as the law of the land -- as
their constitution. All the Jewish
leaders, except a very small
minority, happily covenanted to
perform the requirements of
the Law. In consequence of this, the
people put away their foreign
wives, started tithing, established
proper Temple services and
began to keep God's Sabbath!
This is the real beginning of the religion
of Moses after the
Babylonian captivity. And it was the true religion of Moses, no
additions or subtractions!
New Controversy Arises
In the previous installment we found that Eliashib, the High
Priest at the time of Ezra
and Nehemiah, did not countenance the
decision of the Great
Assembly in regard to the putting away of
foreign wives. One of his older grandsons was involved in
such
an illegal marriage. This grandson, Manasseh, was married to one
of the daughters of Sanballat the Horonite -- a
Gentile.
Had Manasseh been married to an ordinary
woman of no repute,
it probably would not have
made a great deal of difference. But
he was married to the daughter
of Sanballat who was governor of
the northern province of
Samaria. Sanballat
was an influential
government official of the
Kingdom of Persia.
The grandson of the High Priest of the Jews
being married to
the daughter of the governor
of Samaria offered a type of
alliance between the two
peoples. This presented a delicate
political situation. If Manasseh repudiated his wife, in order
to keep the Law, this
friendly relationship would undoubtedly
have ceased.
There were a few other Jews along with Eliashib and Manasseh
who felt that this marriage
should not be terminated even if the
Law of Moses and the decision
of the Great Assembly commanded it.
So, Manasseh openly rebelled
against God's Government -- the
constitutional law -- defying
Ezra and Nehemiah and the Great
Assembly.
When Manasseh refused to adhere to the Law,
Nehemiah, who was
governor of Judea,
excommunicated him from the Jewish society and
banished him from the country
(Neh. 13:23-31).
Manasseh was exceedingly indignant over the
excommunication.
He especially was angered
because he would have become High
Priest of the Jews upon his
father's death, had he remained
faithful to the Law and had
not been excommunicated. In lieu of
this, he, and some of his
Jewish sympathizers, even some of the
priests, left Judaea and went northward to Samaria.
Samaritans Enter the Picture
The Samaritans, who nominally adhered to
some points of the
Law of Moses, only as it
suited their fancy, readily accepted
these renegade Jews. The Samaritans had no scruples over
marrying Gentile wives, for
they themselves were Gentiles who had
been placed in central
Palestine about 250 years before by the
Assyrians.
With the arrival of Manasseh in Samaria, Sanballat, his
father-in-law, sympathized
with him because he had been deprived
of the opportunity to be High
Priest among the Jews. But
Sanballat had cunningly devised plans to honor his son-in-law
for
his rebellion against
Nehemiah and the Great Assembly.
Since the Samaritans had no temple in which
to worship,
SANBALLAT PETITIONED THE
PERSIAN GOVERNMENT DO GRANT HIM
PERMISSION TO BUILD A TEMPLE
FOR THE SAMARITAN PEOPLE. Because
it was the general policy of
the Persians to allow their captive
nations to worship their own
gods, this permission was granted.
It was the design of Sanballat
to build this temple and
install Manasseh, the son of
the Jewish High Priest, as the High
Priest of the
Samaritans. This plan was carried out.
The Samaritan temple was built on Mount Gerizim in Samaria and
Manasseh received his
schismatic priesthood. This is the
beginning of the Samaritan
religion.
Manasseh's Further Rebellion
The first act of Manasseh after being
installed as the
Samaritan High Priest was to repudiate
the true Temple of God
located on Mount Zion in
Jerusalem. He did this by maintaining
that the Temple should be
located on Mount Gerizim and not in
own position among the
Samaritans and perhaps to gain some of the
Jews in Judaea
to his side.
In maintaining that the Temple should be
situated on Mount
Gerizim, he encountered, however, an embarrassing situation.
Throughout the writings of
the Old Testament prophets were the
clear prophecies that the
Temple of God should be located only on
Mount Zion in Jerusalem
(Isaiah 2 and Micah 4). The prophecies
concerning this fact were so
conclusive, so decisive, that it was
impossible for Manasseh to
reconcile his temple being located on
Mount Gerizim
with the statements of the prophets.
Realizing that the writings of the prophets
and many of the
Psalms specifically taught
just the opposite from what he was
endeavoring to maintain, he
seized upon the only alternative to
seemingly justify his temple
being on Mount Gerizim. His way out
of the dilemma was to
formally REJECT THE WRITINGS OF THE
PROPHETS. To do this, he had to represent them as the
uninspired
opinions of men.
As a result of this, Manasseh acknowledged
that the only books
which were really the
inspired words of God were the books of
Moses -- the first five books
of the Old Testament. The reason
he accepted this portion of
the Old Testament was that in this
section there was no direct
mention of the necessity of having
the Temple of God on Mount
Zion in Jerusalem. By accepting only
the first five books of the
Bible and none other, he put his own
authority ahead of the Word
of God.
With Manasseh ruling as the Samaritan High
Priest and finally
claiming that only the books
of Moses were the inspired word of
God, the situation called for
drastic action by Ezra, Nehemiah
and the Great Assembly. Here
was a new temple built in Samaria,
and Manasseh loudly
proclaiming that all the Jews in Judaea were
in error.
Something had to be done about this
situation.
Ezra and Nehemiah knew it was possible that
there might be an
internal disruption of the
Jewish society that they were
developing in Judaea, unless a determinate and authoritative
counter-action could be
launched against the falsehoods of
Manasseh and his heretical
followers, especially since many of
his ideas were being
subversively planted in the minds of many
Jews in Judaea. The people had to know who was right,
Manasseh
-- or Ezra and Nehemiah!
The Great Assembly Settles
the Question
Under the divine inspiration of Almighty
God, Ezra and
Nehemiah with the Great
Assembly convened to settle the matter.
These two authoritative
servants of God, along with the ordained
priests of God, were given
the responsibility of assembling the
inspired books of the
prophets and holy men of God. Their task
was not to write the books,
for they were already written. They
had to assemble the already
acknowledged inspired books into one
book in a final order.
Thus, we read: "To erect a wall of
partition between the Jews
and these apostates (Manasseh
and his followers), and to show the
people which of the ancient
prophetical books were sacred ... the
men of the Great Synagogue
(Assembly) compiled the canon of the
prophets" (Cycle. of
Bib., Thee. And Ecc. Lit., vol. x, p. 83).
The Canon of the Old
Testament
That Ezra, Nehemiah and the Great Assembly,
under the divine
inspiration of the Spirit of
God, compiled the books of the Old
Testament is the universal
acknowledgment of all early Jews and
Christians (ibid., vol. ii,
p. 75).
All of the Old Testament books, remember,
WERE ALREADY
WRITTEN. The task of the Great Assembly was merely to
put them
together into one book in
proper order! And this they did!
It has been thought by some modern critics
that Ezra and the
Great Assembly may have
sanctioned only the Law of Moses, the
first five books. This is decidedly not the case! The very
reason the canon of the Old
Testament had to be defined at this
time was that the renegade
Jew, Manasseh, erroneously maintained
that the first five books of
Moses were the only inspired books.
He, out of his own vanity,
rejected the inspired books of the
Prophets and Psalms. These books were already as much a part of
God's Word as the Law of
Moses.
It was not necessary to OFFICIALLY proclaim
the Law of Moses
AS BEING INSPIRED FOR IT HAD
ALREADY LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED AS
GOD'S WORD. See II Kings 22:8.
It was, of course, God's purpose that all
the writings of the
Prophets be transmitted to
those of future eras in final and
unchangeable form. The books of the Prophets, the Psalms and the
other books were now
officially established, properly placed in
the canon and PROCLAIMED as
the authoritative Word of God.
Proofs that Canon was
Compiled Under Ezra and Nehemiah
We have the testimony of Josephus, the
Jewish historian, that
the complete Old Testament
was finally settled and established in
the days of Artaxerxes, king of Persia ("Against Apion," I, 8).
By this, Josephus meant that
the Old Testament canon was
completed in the days of Ezra
and Nehemiah, for these two men of
God lived in Artaxerxes' time.
Josephus also mentions that there had not
been any prophet who
had left any writings from
the time of Artaxerxes until the New
Testament Period
(ibid.). Even the writer of Maccabees
recognized that up to his
time the inspired prophets had ceased
with Malachi. "And there was great stress in Israel [in
168
B.C.], such as there had not
been SINCE THE TIME WHEN THE
PROPHETS CEASED TO APPEAR TO
THEM" (I Macc. 9:27). Without men
of God in a prophetical
office, it was impossible to have
inspired writings. It is therefore plain that Josephus, who was
one of the leading Pharisees
of his day, and other prominent
Jews, believed the canon of
the Old Testament was completed under
Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Three Divisions of the
Old Testament
When Ezra and Nehemiah compiled the Old
Testament books they
placed them in three general
divisions. These are known as the
Triparte Divisions. The
first division was called THE LAW, and
consisted of the first five
books. The second was called THE
PROPHETS. The third division was called, in Christ's
day, THE
PSALMS, because this division
commenced with the book of Psalms.
Thus, the inspired Old Testament, from
Genesis to II
Chronicles (the Hebrew
order), was divided into three divisions
-- THE LAW, THE PROPHETS, and
THE PSALMS. This arrangement of
the books has always been
reckoned by the Jews as having had its
origin in the time of Ezra
and Nehemiah (Ryle, "Canon of the Old
Testament," p. 252;
Angus, "Bible Handbook," p. 568).
There is
no question about this fact.
Historical References to the Triparte Divisions
There are several early references which
show that the Old
Testament was divided into
the Triparte Divisions. One notable
mention is that of Sirach's grandson -- a Jewish religious leader
who lived in the second
century BEFORE Christ. He says in his
prologue to the apocryphal
book, Ecclesiasticus, that the
recognized Scriptures of
official Judaism were those books found
in "The Law,"
"The Prophecies," and "The Rest of the Books."
This is a clear reference to
the authoritative Triparte Divisions
established by Ezra and
Nehemiah.
You will perhaps notice that the grandson of
Sirach did not
use the name "The
Psalms" for the third division.
This is easily
explained. This third section did not have a proper name
in the
time of Sirach. It became popularly called "The
Psalms" by the
Jews of Christ's time because
that particular book introduced the
division. This is clearly indicated by Philo, a Jew who
lived a
few years before Christ. He said that the Triparte
Divisions
were then being called
"The Law," "The Prophets," and "The
Psalms" ("On the
Contemplative Life," 3). Later, in
the third
century A.D., however, the
Jews began to refer to the third
division as "The
Writings." This designation has
been used by
the Jews up to our own times.
Christ Sanctions the Triparte Divisions
It is important to realize that the Jews
accepted only the
books within the Triparte Divisions as inspired. No other books
were ever recognized as being
canonical. The Apocrypha were
never accepted. But regardless of the beliefs of official
Judaism, we have the
testimony of much greater authority, telling
us of what books the inspired
Old Testament consisted. That
witness is Christ Himself --
the very One who inspired the
prophets of the Old Testament
(See Colossians 1:15-17).
After the resurrection of Christ, we are
told in the Gospels,
He began to teach His
disciples many important truths from the
Scriptures. On one occasion, mentioned in Luke 24:45,
Christ
referred to "THE
SCRIPTURES" of the Old Testament and about the
prophecies concerning
Him. What books did Christ mean by the
expression, "the
Scriptures"? What was the Old
Testament to Him?
Notice what Christ Himself
related:
"And He said unto them, these are the
words I spake unto you
while I was yet with you,
that all things must be fulfilled,
which were written in THE LAW
OF MOSES, and IN THE PROPHETS, and
IN THE PSALMS, concerning me.
"Then opened He their understanding,
that they might
understand THE
SCRIPTURES" (Luke 24:44, 45).
Yes, the inspired Old Testament Scriptures
for Christ
comprised those books found
in "The Law, The Prophets, and The
Psalms" -- the Triparte Divisions.
These were the very books
compiled by Ezra and Nehemiah,
and the very books which have come
down to us today in the King
James Version. We can assuredly
know that OUR OLD TESTAMENT
is the complete Old Testament of God.
Christ has told us this in
the plainest of words.
The Arrangement of the Old
Testament Books
You will notice that the Old Testament in
the King James Bible
begins with the book of
Genesis and ends with the book of
Malachi. However, in the original authoritative
arrangement of
the Old Testament books by
Ezra and Nehemiah, this was not so.
The Jews have never approved
the King James arrangement because
ITS ORIGIN WAS IN EGYPT. About 250 years before Christ there was
a Greek translation made of
the Hebrew Old Testament. This has
become known as the
Septuagint Version. The translators of
this
version decided to CHANGE THE
ORDER of the books. Our King James
Version follows the Latin
which had this erroneous Egyptian
arrangement of the books in
it. The Latin translations followed
the Septuagint Greek
translation made in Egypt. The
Septuagint
does not follow the original
Hebrew order established by Ezra and
Nehemiah.
When the Jews of official Judaism recognized
the corruptions
in the Septuagint Version,
they completely repudiated it. Notice
how the early Jews looked on
this translation: "The day on which
the translation of the Bible
into Greek was made was regarded as
a great calamity, equal to
that of the golden calf" ("Sopherim,"
i, 7). "The
day on which it was accomplished ... was
commemorated as a day of fasting
and humiliation (ibid.).
The Septuagint Version translators did not
take away or add to
the books of the Old
Testament, but they did disrupt the Divine
order of the books and
faultily translated much of the original
Hebrew into Greek
("Prologue to Sirach").
It will be profitable for you to know what
the authoritative
order of the Old Testament
books really is. And notice that
originally, before printing,
the number of scrolls were 22 -- now
subdivided in the King James
Version into 39.
The LAW:
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy
The PROPHETS:
1) Joshua & Judges
2) I & II Samuel &
I & II Kings
3) Isaiah
4) Jeremiah
5) Ezekiel
6) The Twelve:
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
The WRITINGS:
1) Psalms
2) Proverbs
3) Job
4) Song of Songs
5) Ruth
6) Lamentations
7) Ecclesiastes
8) Esther
9) Daniel
10) Ezra & Nehemiah
11) I & II Chronicles
Notice that the first seven books are the
same as in our King
James version, but afterward
there are considerable changes. You
will notice that the
so-called "Minor Prophets" -- from Hosea to
Malachi -- are not really the
last books of the Old Testament.
These Minor Prophets really
belong in the center. The last books
are actually I and II
Chronicles.
This authoritative arrangement of the Old
Testament books is
the one which the official
Jewish community has always recognized
as authoritative.
Other Books Rejected
Let us clearly understand that the books of
the Apocrypha and
all other spurious books
NEVER found a place in the official
Triparte Divisions of the Jewish Old Testament. All these
"outside" books
were totally rejected by the Jews. You
will
recall that Josephus, the
Jewish priest and historian, who
represented the beliefs of
official Judaism in the days of the
Apostle Paul, said that the
Jews NEVER accepted any other books
as inspired other than those
compiled in the days of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
"It is true," says Josephus,
"our history has been written
since the time of Artaxerxes [the time of Ezra and Nehemiah] very
particularly, BUT HAS NOT
BEEN ESTEEMED OF THE LIKE AUTHORITY
WITH THE FORMER [writings] OF
OUR FOREFATHERS, since that time"
("Against Apion," I, 8).
Yes, the last prophet to write an inspired
book was Malachi --
a contemporary of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
Christ Used Only the Inspired
Old Testament
Another proof that Christ used only the
Scriptures recognized
by official Judaism is the
fact that He never once quoted from or
alluded to any of the
Apocrypha or other spurious books. Had
He
made even the slightest
indication that the sources of His
doctrines were from these
unrecognized books, the Jews would have
vehemently countered Him with
all their intellectual might. They
would have loudly and
persistently pointed out to the people that
Jesus could not possibly be
the Messiah, for He was making use of
uninspired books. But the Jews NEVER had an opportunity of
accusing Christ of such
things. They railed Him for going
contrary to the doctrines of
the Jewish denominations of His day,
but they never criticized Him
for using uncanonical books. The
silence of any Jewish censure
on this point IS DEFINITE PROOF
that Christ utilized only the
inspired books in the official
Jewish Old Testament as the
Scriptures.
Further Witness From the New
Testament
We have further evidence throughout the New
Testament that
Christ and the Apostles
recognized only the books of the Jewish
Version as the complete Old Testament. Notice how it is taken
for granted, in so many parts
of the New Testament, that the Jews
had the "Scripture"
(John 10:35; 19:36; II Pet. 1:20), "the
Scriptures" (Matt.
22:29; Acts 18:24), "Holy Scriptures" (Rom.
1:2, II Tim. 3:15), "the
Law" (John 10:34), "the Law and
Prophets" (Matt. 5:17;
22:40), and the Law, Prophets and Psalms
(Luke 24:44). All the New Testament writers recognized the
Jews
to have had the complete Old
Testament.
Paul was also careful to let the Romans know
that unto the
Jews, "WERE COMMITTED
THE ORACLES OF GOD" -- the Old Testament
(Rom. 3:3; 9:4). Paul was fully aware that the oracles of the
Jews were the inspired books
of the Jewish canon -- the same
books that are in our King
James Version today.
It is very clear, from secular history, and
especially from
the Word of God, that we have
the complete Old Testament. ALL
OTHER BOOKS NOT FOUND WITHIN
THE BIBLE as we have it are entirely
worthless for teaching true
doctrines, and are to be completely
rejected in this
respect. The Apocrypha, and all other
books,
are the writings of men, not
of God.
With the canonization of the Old Testament
Scriptures, the
Jews of this time entered
into a period of prosperity and
happiness. They were keeping the Law and being taught by
the
Great Assembly. This period from about 430 B.C. to 331 B.C.,
until the overthrow of the
Persian Empire by the Greeks, can be
called a time when the Law of
Moses was adhered to by the people.
We are now compelled to look to a period
later than the time
of Persian control for the
origin of the confused and mixed-up
condition of Judaism. The next installment will plainly reveal
the source from whence Jewish
denominationalism arose.
Good News
April 1961
Vol. X, Number 4
Is JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
When was the Old Testament
completed? Who authorized the
building of synagogues in
Judea? In this fifth installment you
will learn how the Jews
continued under the Government of God to
the time of Alexander the
Great.
by Ernest Martin
THE canonization of the Old Testament by the
members of the
Great Assembly was the real
stabilizing factor in the religious
life of the Jews. Ezra and Nehemiah bound upon the people the
Law of Moses as the
constitutional law of the land. And the
Great Assembly, after the
deaths of Ezra and Nehemiah, enforced
THIS SAME LAW in every
respect.
Life Under the Persians
Even though Judea was properly a province of
the Persian
Empire, the Jews maintained a
semi-independent community. Since
the days of Ezra, the
Persians had shown extraordinary
consideration to the
Jews. "God ... hath extended mercy
unto us
in the sight of the kings of
Persia" (Ezra 9:9).
"The Persian rulers," says Herford, "living far from Judea,
seldom interfered with the
internal affairs of their Jewish
subjects, and were content to
leave their public business in the
hands of the governor of the
province. If the royal taxes were
paid, the order maintained,
the Jews might organize their life as
a community in the way that
seemed best to them" ("Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 45).
The Persians had rule over Palestine until
331 B.C. -- for
about one hundred years after
Ezra and Nehemiah. During this
entire period, the Jews were
allowed full freedom to practice
their own customs and
traditions. This Persian period was
especially propitious to them
because they were allowed to
observe the Scriptures as
ordained of God (Kent, "History of the
Jewish People," p.
224). And during this period the Law of
Moses
was kept!
At this time, the Jews were under the
direction of the High
Priest, the president of the
Great Assembly, and the other
authoritative priests who
comprised its membership. No religious
splits or schisms were
tolerated and all the people were kept in
obedience to the laws of the
Old Covenant. This peaceful
condition in Palestine led to
many advances in the social and
religious life of the Jews.
The Priests Teach the Truth
of God
The canonization of the Old Testament, and
the establishment
of the Law of Moses as the
constitutional law brought about the
necessity of teaching the law
to the people on a grand scale.
Ezra had brought back with him from Babylon
a good number of
priests to add to the 4,000
who had come back from the Babylonian
captivity at an earlier time
(Ezra 8:17-20). These priests were
brought back to Palestine in order
to assume their position as
religious teachers of the
people, for the Bible had ordained that
priests were to teach the
people the laws of God (Lev. 10:11;
Deut. 24:8; 27:14,
etc.). The book of Malachi, written
immediately after the return
of Ezra and Nehemiah, records what
these priests were ordained
to do. "For the priest's lips
should
keep knowledge, and they
should seek the law at his mouth; for he
is the messenger of the Lord
of hosts" (Mal. 2:7).
Because the Law of Moses had become the law
of the land, it
became the priests' job to
teach the law. These commands required
meetings every Sabbath in all
the villages and towns around
Judea. It was these Sabbath services that finally
merged into
regular synagogue services.
In time, all the areas within Judea began to
build their own
synagogues. In some of the larger areas, a body of
priests would
take up residence and have
charge of the synagogue. Before the
Babylonian captivity,
synagogues had existed throughout Israel
and Judah (Psa. 74:8), but because all these previous synagogues
had been completely destroyed
by the invading armies of the
Assyrians and Babylonians,
the Jews had to start afresh after
their return from Babylon to
build completely new synagogues.
This fact has led some
commentators to erroneously assume that
synagogues had their first
development ONLY AFTER the Babylonian
captivity, and that they were
not in existence before. This,
however, is not true! These new synagogues which were built in
Palestine, were certainly
built from scratch. But there had been
synagogues before.
Buildings for religious assemblies are
essential in every age
and dispensation. It was impossible for all the Jews throughout
Judea to journey each Sabbath
to Jerusalem and to the Temple in
order to learn of the law and
to worship God in holy convocation.
The people had to have
instruction by the priests every Sabbath
in their own
communities. The proper instruction of
the Law of
Moses could only be
accomplished by the establishment of
synagogues throughout the
land. And, under the benevolent rule
of the Persians, with peace
and safety everywhere, there is no
reason to doubt that
synagogues dotted the land from one end to
the other (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 58).
Not only did the synagogues offer
opportunity for worship of
God on the Sabbaths, but we
are informed in a Talmudical
reference that Ezra ordained
the priests to hold periods of
religious instruction on the
regular market days of the week --
Mondays and Thursdays
("B. Kamma," 82a, b). From this evolved
the custom of having
instruction in the Law on those two days of
the week. This custom was even carried down until the
time of
Christ.
Priests and Levites in
Authority
It is plain that the people during this one
hundred year
period under the Persians had
adequate instruction in the Laws of
God -- not only on the
Sabbaths and Holy Days, but even on two
market days during the
week. The priests were kept busy in the
occupation of teaching the
people the Law. For their helpers the
priests had the regular
Levites who gave them proper assistance
in teaching the people. These Levites really did much of the
actual teaching, and the
priests were the supervisors. It was
impossible for the limited
number of priests to do all the
necessary duties. For that reason, a good deal of the help in
teaching, judging, being
dieticians and, in a limited way, being
policemen, fell to the
Levites.
In effect, the Levites represented the
professional class
among the people. They were under the authority of the priests,
however, who were the
responsible organization for the over-all
well-being of the nation
(ibid., p. 59). The real leader of the
whole nation was the High
Priest, who was actually the head of
state being the leader of the
Great Assembly.
The Great Assembly was the one organization
that was the
governing authority. This religious assembly, as previously
pointed out, was composed of
the chief priests of the land with
the High Priest as official
president and over-all ruler. All
members of this authoritative
assembly in the Persian period were
priests AND PRIESTS ALONE (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 28).
"For the priests were the actual
leaders of the community,
since they alone were
recognized by the Law (Deut. 17) as its
official teachers and
competent interpreters" (ibid., p. 28).
These priests were not
elected by the people to hold a high
office in the Great
Assembly. They assumed this position by
heredity, as ordained by God
(Deut. 17). Actually, no one but
the priests, according to the
Law of God, could teach or direct
the people in their religious
life. This is the reason why the
Great Assembly was composed
exclusively of the priests, with the
High Priest being the
recognized leader.
With the canonization of the Scripture and
the establishment
of synagogues throughout the
land, a problem confronted the Great
Assembly. In order to teach the Law of God, it was
necessary
that the priests and Levites
have copies of the Scriptures. Up
to the time of the
canonization, books were not made with ALL
twenty-two scrolls of the Old
Testament combined together.
Many Scrolls of Scripture
Made
Now that the Scripture had been authoritatively
assembled, it
became necessary to
distribute the complete word of God. The
synagogues needed the Holy
Scriptures as did many individual
priests. So, it fell the lot of the Great Assembly to
remedy
this situation. They had the responsibility of seeing that
many
scrolls of Scripture were
made and distributed to those who were
in authority to teach the
Word of God. And, too, they had to be
extremely careful and make
sure that only individuals who were
thoroughly qualified would
undertake such a sacred task of
copying the Scriptures. Such a job could not be entrusted to
just anyone, lest from
inexperience or carelessness the
transcription was not an
exact reproduction.
It became obvious that the only body or men
who were qualified
to do such a work were the
members of the Great Assembly
THEMSELVES. It was necessary that the new scrolls be
perfect and
that each scroll be
sanctioned by these authoritative priests.
This led the Great Assembly
to assume the task of copying the
Scriptures. They assumed this occupation sometime not
long after
the deaths of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
From this time forward, the members of the
Great Assembly
became known as "Sopherim." The
word "Sopherim" in Hebrew
signifies
"counters." "They were called 'Sopherim'
because they
COUNTED all the letters in
the Torah [the Scriptures] and
interpreted it" (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 44).
In order to have an accurate transcription
of the Scriptures,
the Sopherim,
the members of the Great Assembly, counted each
letter on each section of a
scroll. They made sure that when
they copied the letters onto
a new scroll, that there would be
EXACTLY the same number of
letters on the new section as had
existed on the old. To do this, they had to COUNT each of the
letters on the new scroll
several times to make certain that the
exact number was transcribed.
This method of copying the Scriptures was
followed by later
Jews until the invention of
the printing press. In fact, about
eight hundred years AFTER
Christ, this method was so highly
developed among the Jews that
they knew the middle letter of each
book in the Bible, and, even
the middle letter of the whole
Bible. There were many nonessential features
developed from this
method of counting the
letters of the Scriptures. For those who
may be interested in some of
these features, see Ginsburg's
"Introduction to the
Hebrew Bible" (this book is now out of print
and would be found only in
some of the larger libraries).
Sopherim Taught the Law
Once the members of the Great Assembly
became the copiers of
the Law (the Sopherim), we find the two names synonymously
referring to the ONE group of
priests. To speak of the Sopherim
was to speak of the Great
Assembly, and vice versa (Herford,
"Talmud and
Apocrypha," pp. 44, 45). For
convenience's sake, we
will refer to these men by
the name most used in history -- we
will call them the Sopherim. The term
"Sopherim" denotes that
the one major job of the
Great Assembly was to copy faithfully
the Scriptures, and teach
these Scriptures to the priests of
lower rank who in turn would
teach the people. Their lives were
centered in the study of the
Scriptures and in teaching the Law
of God. This was, after all, the occupation that God had
ordained for the
priests. They were also to regulate the
religious life of the
people. And, history shows that the
members of the Great
Assembly, the Sopherim of Persian times,
following the examples of
Ezra and Nehemiah, carried out their
commission with fidelity.
Sopherim Interpreted Scriptures Correctly
We read in the Scripture that Ezra
"read in the book in the
law of God DISTINCTLY, and
GAVE THE SENSE, and caused them [the
lay people] to understand the
reading" (Neh. 8:8). When Ezra
taught the people, he would
read from the Law of God and then
GIVE THE SENSE OF IT, that
is, he would give the true explanation
of it so the common people
could understand what God meant from
the Law.
This is what any true minister of God will do. All that is
necessary to understand God's
Word is to have it properly
explained by dedicated
teachers who know the Scriptures
thoroughly. A true minister of God will allow the
Scripture to
interpret Scripture. This is the only way of arriving at the
truth of God's Word. This is the reason the World Tomorrow
program and the Plain Truth
magazine interpret Scripture with
Scripture. This is exactly
what Ezra and his successors, the
Sopherim, did! They
simply expounded the Law of God, the
Scriptures. They did not make up their own ideas about
Scripture
teaching. They taught the Word of God, AND IT ONLY!
This manner of teaching the Scriptures, and
which is the only
proper way, is known among
the Jews as the MIDRASH-FORM! The
word Midrash
means "to comment." And the
term "Midrash-form"
designates that manner of
teaching which depends ONLY on the
written Word of God for
doctrines -- letting the Bible explain
itself.
The reason this type of teaching has a
special designation
among the Jews is because
they later had DIFFERENT METHODS OF
TEACHING which did not rely
upon the Word of God. And, it became
a later custom to refer to
the true type of teaching, which
expounded or commented on the
Scriptures, AND THE SCRIPTURES
ONLY, as teaching in the
MIDRASH-FORM.
This Midrash-form
is the type of teaching that the Sopherim
used, for they were following
Ezra's example of reading in the
Scriptures and then giving
the sense or the meaning so the common
people could understand. This is the method of teaching that
began with Moses and was
exclusively used from his day and
throughout the period of the Sopherim. For it
was, and still is,
the only proper way to teach
the Word of God (Herford, "Talmud
and Apocrypha," p. 47).
"The Midrash-form
was supposed to be that in which Moses had
originally taught the Torah,
and to use that form was called
'TEACHING AFTER THE MANNER OF
MOSES'" (Ibid., p. 47).
The later Jews, as previously mentioned,
came to the place of
teaching religion in an
entirely different method than "after the
manner of Moses" and the
Sopherim. We
will see that they did not
utilize the Midrash-form as the ONLY METHOD OF TEACHING.
However, Ezra and the Sopherim, following the example of Moses,
taught exclusively in this
correct form. They never departed
from teaching directly from
the Word of God. No other form of
interpretation was used or
allowed!
Sopherim Complete Final Additions to the Old Testament
The Sopherim,
being the successors of Ezra and Nehemiah as
well as being the custodians
of the Scriptures, were responsible
for adding the final portions
to the Old Testament. While they
were in authority among the
Jews, they added a few names to
certain genealogical tables
in order to bring them up to date.
In I Chronicles 3:17-24 and
Nehemiah 12:10,11, there are recorded
lists of certain men. The last mentioned of these men lived just
before the coming of
Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.
Notice I Chronicles 3:17-24. There is mentioned a sixth
generation after Zerubbabel. This
last generation would have
lived about the time of
Alexander the Great. Nehemiah 12:10,11
refers to Jaddua
the High Priest who was alive when Alexander the
Great came to Palestine
(Josephus, "Antiquities of the Jews," xi,
8, 4). Thus, the names were added to the
genealogical tables by
the Sopherim
just before the coming of the Greeks in 331 B.C.
This shows plainly that the Sopherim, who were established
about 440 B.C., were in
authority for a period just over one
hundred years -- until 331
B.C. And also that the Old Testament,
as we have it today, was made
into its final form by the Sopherim
with the addition of a few
names to the genealogical tables,
about 330 years BEFORE the
birth of Christ!
The Sopherim had complete authority for doing this. They were
the proper custodians of the
Law and ordained of God for this
purpose.
What All This Means for Today
It must be emphasized that the Sopherim were all priests --
there were no laymen among
them.
"In the days of the Sopherim,
when the High Priest was the
head of the community, and
when the teachers under his leadership
formed an official body
vested with authority to arrange all
religious matters in
accordance with the Law as they understood
it, the knowledge of the Law
was limited to the priests who were
the ONLY OFFICIAL
TEACHERS. On the one hand, the priests
who
were in possession of the Law
and tradition of the fathers
considered the teaching and
interpreting of the religious law as
their priestly
prerogative" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic
Essays," p.
197).
This priestly authority was in accord with
the Word of God.
The priests had been ordained
to be the teachers of the people in
religious matters. No layman was permitted to assume this
authority. As long as the Sopherim
remained as the official body
among the Jews, this
direction of God was adhered to. And
during
the entire period of the Sopherim -- from the days of Ezra until
the coming of Alexander the
Great -- the Jews were keeping the
Law of Moses. However, in 331 B.C., when Alexander came to
Palestine and defeated the
Persians, the whole complexion of
Palestine government changed.
The Greeks, unlike the Persians, did not
allow the Sopherim to
hold their authoritative
position among the Jews. In fact, after
331 B.C. the Sopherim disappear from history as a body of priests
directing the religious life
of the people. The whole
organization was dismantled
by the Greek conquerors.
The coming of the Greeks brought a complete
change in
practically every mode of
life in Palestine. With the Sopherim
taken away from their
position of authority, the Scripture
teachings ceased being
enforced. A whole new way of life was
forced upon the Jews.
The next chapter will elucidate what
happened in this very
important period in Jewish
history!
Good News
May 1961
Vol. X, Number 5
Is JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
At last we come to that
shocking period in Jewish history when
"Judaism"
commenced. Here is how Greek tradition
replaced the
Law of Moses in the third
century before Jesus' birth.
by Ernest Martin
THE ONE hundred years following Ezra and
Nehemiah can properly
be described as a time of
peace and prosperity for the Jews
(Graetz,
"History of the Jews," vol. i, pp. 406,
407). The Jews
had established themselves
firmly in Palestine -- in every
section of the province of Judaea. They were
observing the Law
of Moses in its
entirety. It was the constitutional law
of the
land.
The Great Assembly, established by Ezra and
Nehemiah, was the
head of Jewish state under
the Persian governor. This great
religious assembly of priests
directed the people in observing
the Laws of Scripture. The priests saw that the people had
proper religious instruction
every Sabbath in the local
synagogues scattered
throughout the land. The children were
educated in the elementary
schools that were attached to the
synagogues.
As long as the Jews were under the authority
of the Persian
Empire, they were allowed to
carry on their own religious customs
without interference. The Persians seemed to care little how the
Jews worshipped God as long
as the tax was being paid and a
respectable amount of loyalty
was being shown to the governor and
king. The Jews were disposed to keep the good
graces of the
Persians by submitting to
their benevolent rulership.
The extraordinary goodwill that the Persians
had for the Jews
came to a sudden end in 332
B.C. At that time, Palestine -- a
part of the Persian Empire --
was conquered by a rising young
Empire in the West -- the
Empire of the Greeks!
Alexander the Great
Beyond the western frontier of the Persian
Empire, while the
Jews were enjoying their
peaceful existence in Palestine, a young
general was preparing an army
for the conquest of Persia and the
East. In 334 B.C., after amassing an army of
considerable
strength, Alexander the Great
swept over the Hellespont and into
Persian territory.
Moving with such rapidity, and with such
remarkable successes,
Alexander the Great in 10
short years conquered the Persian
Empire and all of civilized
Asia to the Indus River, as well as
Egypt on the south. The Jews, because of this, came under the
domination of the Greeks.
A New Way of Life --
Hellenism
With the coming of the Greeks, a whole new
manner of life was
brought into Palestine and
among the Jews. Under the Persians,
the Jews had been allowed to
observe the Law of Moses with the
Great Assembly (the Sopherim) as their religious leaders. But
this was all changed with the
advent of the Greeks.
Alexander the Great was steeped in the belief
that the Greek
way of life was the only
suitable one for mankind to follow. He
was imbued with the
enthusiasm of infusing the culture and
society of the Greeks among
all the nations he had conquered.
And Palestine was no
exception.
"Hellenism" is the term to
describe the belief in practicing
the manner of life of the
Greeks -- to imitate every phase of
Greek society, its politics,
domestic life, philosophies,
religions, etc.
The basic philosophy behind Hellenism was
this: EVERY MAN HAD
THE RIGHT TO THINK FOR
HIMSELF ON ANY MATTER AS LONG AS THERE WAS
NOT A REAL DEPARTURE FROM THE
CUSTOMS THAT WERE ESSENTIALLY
GREEK.
This philosophy -- freedom of thought or
individualism --
which is seemingly altruistic
in principle, resulted in myriads
of confusing and
contradictory beliefs among the Greeks in every
phase of life. Every man was allowed his own ideas about the
sciences, the arts, laws AND
ABOUT RELIGION. So varied were the
opinions among the Greek
scholars in the various fields of study
that individuals took pride
in contending with one another over
who could present the
greatest "wisdom" and "knowledge" on any
particular subject.
The Greeks sought wisdom in order to
understand the world they
lived in and the reasons for
life. And their confusion of
beliefs resulted from the
fact that their ideas came from their
own rationalizing -- their
philosophies represented almost EVERY
HUMAN IDEA.
Here was the beginning of the philosophy of
individualism -- a
product of Hellenism.
When the Greeks came to Palestine they
brought all their conflicting
secular teachings as well as their
many religious doctrines, all
of which were prompted by the
individual philosophies of
men.
It would be unfeasible to even attempt an adequate
description
of the manifold religious
cults among the Greeks, or of their
heathenistic doctrines.
Their various religions and religious
beliefs were the man-made
products of the philosophy of
individualism. Practically every religious belief capable of
being devised by the human
mind was found in pagan Greece. In
their religious beliefs
"we find ghosts and spirits and nature
gods, tribal religions,
anthropomorphisms [gods in human form],
the formation of a pantheon
[a temple for the worship of many
pagan gods], individual
religion, magical rites, purifications,
prayers, sacrifices [animal,
vegetable and human] -- ALL ARISING
FROM THE COMMON STOCK AND THE
SUCCESSIVE PHASES OF RELIGIOUS
HUMANITY" (Harrison,
"Religion of Ancient Greece," pp. 12, 13).
Many of their doctrines and
customs will be relevantly discussed
in future pages of this
thesis.
Hellenism Spread Throughout
Alexander's Empire
Wherever Alexander or his successors went,
they carried with
them an intense desire to
Hellenize all nations. They took with
them Greek society and
imposed it upon all their captive peoples.
They spread Hellenism from
one end of the new Empire to the
other. Palestine was as much infused with the New
Greek culture
as any other nation.
The Greeks considered it their right to
govern in the way they
deemed most suitable. In consequence of this, the Greeks
disbanded the official Sopherim, the religious guardians of the
Law of Moses. They would not tolerate the Jews being taught
a
different way of life from
their own. Hellenism was established
throughout the whole of
Palestine.
Sopherim No Longer in Authority
It is not known how the Greeks dismissed the
Sopherim from
their official capacity as
teachers of the Law. But within a
score of years after the
coming of the Greeks, the Sopherim
disappear from history as an
organized body having religious
control over the Jews. It is obvious that the Greeks took away
the authority of the Sopherim and forbade them to teach. Whether
this was done forcibly or by
peaceful methods remains a mystery.
But it is definitely known
that their authority was very soon
taken away.
Without the religious guidance of the Sopherim, many of the
Jews began to imbibe the
customs and ideas of the Greeks which
were inundating the
land. The Greeks were establishing their
whole society firmly in
Palestine and all the Empire.
"With the change from Persian to Greek
rule, Hellenism made
its influence felt, AND CAME
POURING LIKE A FLOOD into a country
which had known nothing of
it. THERE WAS NO ESCAPE FROM ITS
INFLUENCE. IT WAS PRESENT EVERYWHERE, in the street and
the
market, in the everyday life
and ALL THE PHASES OF SOCIAL
INTERCOURSE" (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 77).
When
the Sopherim were removed from the scene, along with
the
teaching of the Law of Moses,
and this new culture substituted
for the Law, we can
comprehend why the Jews began to absorb many
elements of Hellenism. The Jews had no one to guide them in
understanding the Law of
Moses, except a few isolated teachers
here and there who had no
authority as the Sopherim.
It will soon be shown that after a few years
of this
influence, the people
literally came to a state of religious
confusion. Some were endeavoring to keep a form of the
Scripture
teachings, but with Hellenism
everywhere, it became almost
impossible to keep the true
form of the Law of Moses. The Greek
way of life was entirely
different from that promulgated by the
Scriptures, and the two were
not compatible.
The human opinions of the Greek poets and
philosophers, as
well as the doctrines of the
various heathen sects of the Greeks,
were propagated among the
Jews. Almost everything the Greeks
brought to the Jews was
antagonistic to the Laws of God and,
without the religious
guidance of the Sopherim, many of them
began to tolerate these
innovations and even, as time progressed,
to take up many of the Greek
ideas and customs themselves.
Alexander Recalls a Vision
Josephus, the Jewish historian, records an
interesting
incident concerning Alexander
the Great when he had conquered the
Palestine area and was about
to enter the city of Jerusalem. He
was met on the outskirts of
the city by Jaddua, the High Priest,
with many inhabitants of
Jerusalem. The High Priest was bedecked
in his priestly robes and
leading the procession of people who
met Alexander.
Upon seeing the High Priest and the
procession following him,
Josephus says that Alexander
recalled a dream he had had
previously in which such a
procession was seen with a person
dressed in exactly the same
attire of the High Priest leading it.
Alexander reckoned that his
dream was a sign to leave the
inhabitants of Jerusalem
alone. He entered the city peaceably
with the High Priest and
offered a sacrifice to God. Afterward,
he was shown the prophecy of
Daniel 11:2-3, which revealed that a
mighty king from Greece would
conquer the Persian Empire.
Josephus says that Alexander
recognized that Daniel was writing
of him. After reading this prophecy, Alexander became
very glad
and gave favors and gifts to
many of the Jews. See "Antiquities
of the Jews," xi, 8, 5
& 6.
The prophecy of Daniel had more to say of
Alexander and his
Empire. In Daniel 11:4 we read: "And when he
[Alexander] shall
stand up [be in his power],
his kingdom SHALL BE BROKEN, AND
SHALL BE DIVIDED TOWARDS THE
FOUR WIND of heaven ..." This is
exactly what happened! Upon the death of Alexander, his Empire
was divided into FOUR SECTIONS. Each section was headed by one
of Alexander's former
generals: Cassander, Lysimachus,
Seleucus
and Ptolemy.
The Palestine area fell to the Grecian
Ptolemy of Egypt.
However, the Seleucid kingdom
on the north also laid claim to
Palestine and had loyal
troops stationed within the area.
Neither kingdom was willing
to concede that the other was the
sole ruler of this territory.
In order to firmly secure Palestine to
himself, Ptolemy of
Egypt in 320 B.C. attacked
the Seleucid garrisons stationed in it
and conquered the
country. However, the Seleucids took it
back
in 315 B.C. But again, the Battle of Gaza in 312 B.C.
gave
Palestine back to
Ptolemy. There were many more skirmishes
between these two kingdoms
until the year 301 B.C. At that time,
the Greek government of Egypt
took final control of Palestine and
maintained that control for a
little over one hundred years --
until 198 B.C.
Life Under Greek-Egyptian
Control
This one hundred year period of
Greek-Egyptian domination is
very important as a period in
the religious history of the Jews.
This is the period that great
and significant changes took place
in the religious life of the
Jews.
While in this period of Egyptian control,
the effects of
Hellenism upon the Jews were
extremely great. What had been
started by Alexander the
Great was brought to its greatest degree
of perfection among the Jews
during this one-hundred-year period.
The customs and traditions
that had been handed down by the
Sopherim were completely overshadowed by the Hellenistic
culture
of the Greeks as promulgated
by the Egyptians. In plain
language, the Jews during
this period of Egyptian control, by the
sheer force of environment
and circumstance, surrendered
themselves to Hellenistic ideas
and ways of life.
"During the comparatively quiet rule of
the Ptolemies [the
Egyptians], Greek ideas,
customs, and morality HAD BEEN MAKING
PEACEFUL CONQUESTS IN
PALESTINE. Their own inherent
attractiveness, and the fact
that they were supported by the
authority of the dominant
race, cast a glamour about them [the
Jews] which made the severe
religion of Jehovah [to Hellenistic
minds], the simple customs
and the strict morality of the Jews,
seem barren and
provincial. All the other peoples of
Palestine
Hellenistic Greek was the
language of commerce and polite
society. Greek literature was widely studied. Greek manners
were the standard throughout
southeastern Palestine" (Kent,
"History of the Jewish
People," pp. 320, 321).
Everyone in Palestine was affected by the
new Hellenistic
culture. The Ptolemies of
Egypt were anxious, following the
example of Alexander the
Great, to see that manners of the Greeks
were implanted throughout
their Empire. All phases of life
connected with Hellenism were
being practiced in Palestine during
this period.
"It is safe to say that NO ONE, HIGH OR
LOW, who was living in
Judea in the period which
includes the whole of the third and the
beginning of the second
century B.C., WHOLLY ESCAPED THE
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISM
..." (
77).
Egyptian Rule Comes to an End
In 198 B.C., the Seleucid Kingdom on the
north again came into
Palestine and drove out the
Egyptians.
The rulers of THIS kingdom were equally
Hellenistic in their
beliefs as were the
Egyptians. However, the new ruler
expected
the Jews to follow their ways
-- and only their ways -- of
interpreting Hellenism. Only the Hellenism that supported the
aims and customs of the
Seleucids was allowed to exist.
Many of the Jews, after a century of
Hellenistic influence,
accepted this new enforcement
of Seleucid Hellenism. About the
only difference between the
Egyptian Hellenism and that of the
Seleucids was in the national
aspect. The Seleucids demanded
loyalty to THEIR rule and
THEIR customs. The whole Hellenistic
system was as much in effect
among the Seleucids as with the
Egyptians. In fact, if anything, the Seleucids were
stronger in
their Hellenistic
convictions.
"A passion for Greek costumes, Greek
customs, and Greek names
SEIZED THE PEOPLE. Large numbers were enrolled as citizens of
Antioch [the capital of the
Seleucid Kingdom]. Many even
endeavored to conceal the
fact that they had been circumcised.
To the horror of the
faithful, HELLENISM SEEMED TO BE CARRYING
ALL BEFORE IT ... To
demonstrate that he had LEFT ALL THE
TRADITIONS OF HIS RACE
BEHIND, Jason [the High Priest himself]
sent a rich present for
sacrifices in connection with the great
festival at Tyre IN HONOR OF THE GOD HERCULES" (Kent,
"History of
the Jewish People," pp.
324-325).
It is remarkable the extent of the paganism
that the Jews were
observing at this time. So strong did Hellenistic beliefs
become, that the High Priest
himself was offering sacrifices to
pagan gods. Because of this a reaction began to take
place among
some of the Jews. Some of them could not bring themselves to go
as far as the High
priest. However, the vast majority had
fallen
under the sway of the
Hellenism of the Seleucids as they had
under the Egyptians.
The Prophecy of Daniel
The eleventh chapter of Daniel is the
longest single prophecy
in the whole Bible. It deals with events from the time of Daniel
right up to the end of this
age. The prophet Daniel in this long
prophecy foretold that the
Persian Empire was to fall. It was to
be conquered by a mighty king
from Greece (v. 3). That king was
Alexander the Great. In the height of his glory he was to die
(which Alexander did in the
thirty-third year of his life) and
his kingdom was to be divided
into FOUR divisions (verse 4).
This happened exactly as foretold.
The prophecy continues the foretelling of
Palestinian history
by revealing in verse 5 that
two of these four kingdoms would be
fighting over Palestine for
many years. Daniel calls the
respective kingdoms,
"the king of the south" and "the king of the
north." These two
kingdoms were specifically the Egyptian kingdom
(Ptolemies)
on the south, and the Seleucid kingdom, on the north.
This prophecy shows, over 300
years in advance, the exact
political conditions in
Palestine during our period of
discussion. History proves that this prophecy gave the
precise
state of affairs that did
exist.
Daniel did not stop in verse 20, however,
concerning the
political situations in
Palestine. In verse 21 Daniel speaks
about a "vile
person" who was to arise in the kingdom of the
north -- the Seleucid
kingdom. This person was to be most
wicked
and was to cause many
terrible indignities to the Jews. Verses
21 through 39 describe the
activities of this man. And, the
prophecies concerning him
were fulfilled to the letter. This
king of the north -- the vile
person -- was Antiochus Epiphanes.
Antiochus Epiphanes
Appoints Jewish High Priest
In the year 175 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes obtained the throne
of the Seleucid kingdom, and
thereby assumed control of
Palestine.
When Antiochus took over the Seleucid
kingdom there was a
reaction between several of
the priests in Jerusalem who were
contending for the position
of High Priest among the Jews.
Jason, the brother of the
reigning High Priest, persuaded
Antiochus Epiphanes
to permit him to be High Priest in his
brother's stead. Because of the large sum of money he offered
for the honor, Antiochus
transferred the priesthood to Jason.
The position of High Priest
had dwindled to more of an
aristocratic political
honor. There was little regard paid to
the Law of God by these High
Priests. Most of them were outright
Hellenists. See Cyc. Bib. Theo.
and Ecc. hit. vol. i, p.
271.
About three years later, however, a Jew,
Menelaus, of the
tribe of Benjamin (not from
Aaron), offered Antiochus Epiphanes a
larger bribe than Jason, and
he was named High Priest instead.
Because of this, Jason fled
beyond
refuge.
Many of the Jews thought that Jason had been
unjustly deprived
of his priesthood. A good number of the Jews in Palestine began
to take sides -- between
these two men -- some were for Jason and
others for Menelaus. So hot did tempers become between these
factions that a good deal of
violence broke out between them.
Actually, those on the side
of Jason were fighting in rebellion
against the recognized
authority that Antiochus Epiphanes had set
up. The High Priest, Menelaus, had been given his
position by
the Seleucid government --
even though Menelaus had bribed
Antiochus into giving it to
him -- and fighting against this
authority constituted
fighting against the dictates of the
Seleucid Kingdom. See "Antiquities of she Jews," xii,
5, 1-5.
The Jewish War for
The Jewish war for independence from the
often been called the Maccabean Revolt.
Some people have hastily
assumed that this revolt was
begun because the religious Jews
wanted to rid Palestine of
the pagan influences that had been in
the land for one hundred
fifty years or more. However, such was
not the case. The Jews, on the whole, had accepted
Hellenism to
a major degree, as had all
the countries of the Eastern
Mediterranean region. It was not the desire to eradicate
Hellenism from Palestine that
prompted the Maccabean Revolt,
surprising as that may seem.
"The one rebellion which had been
recorded in history as
directed against Hellenism,
that of the Maccabees in Judea WAS
NOT, in its origin, A
REACTION AGAINST HELLENISM. From the
contemporary or almost
contemporary accounts in I and II
Maccabees it is clear that HELLENISM HAD PROCEEDED FAR INDEED,
AND APPARENTLY WITHOUT
PROTEST, before the insurrection began.
VIOLENCE STARTED in
consequence of rivalry between equally
hellenized contenders for the high priesthood, AND RELIGION WAS
NOT AN ISSUE" (Hadas, "Hellenistic Culture," p. 43).
The revolt began when fighting broke out
between the Jews on
the side of Jason, the
deposed High Priest, and those on the side
of Menelaus, the High Priest
appointed by Antiochus Epiphanes.
It infuriated Antiochus that
many of the Jews began to take sides
against his appointed
official -- in fact, against the
government! When a good number of the Jews gathered to
the side
of Jason, the real reason for
the revolt, the desire for
independence from the
Seleucid yoke, began to be voiced.
Religion did not enter in the
controversy at first, for Jason was
as Hellenistic in his beliefs
as Menelaus. The insurrection
began as a POLITICAL REVOLT
for independence from the Seleucid
Kingdom.
"The Maccabean
uprising, at least in its initial stages, WAS
NOT AGAINST HELLENISM BUT FOR
NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE" (Goodspeed,
"The Apocrypha," p.
xiv).
Religion Becomes A Factor
However, religion was later brought into the
matter. In order
to get the whole of the Jews
in a revolt against the Seleucids,
the dissenters began to point
to the heathenistic beliefs of the
Seleucids and of Menelaus the
High Priest, claiming that such
things were anti-Jewish. Thus, the rebels brought religion into
the issue, which they
reasoned would serve as a mark of
distinction between the Jews
and the Seleucids. So, in various
quarters the cries went up
that the government was proclaiming
policies that were
fundamentally anti-Jewish -- especially to the
religious customs of their
forefathers.
In 168 B.C., Antiochus Epiphanes,
while endeavoring by war to
take over the Egyptian
government, was forced by the Romans,
after a humiliating
experience, to withdraw from Egypt and to
forget his plans of
conquering that country. On his way back
to
Antioch, his capital to the
north of Palestine, he determined to
put an end to the rebellion
that was beginning in Judaea.
Because the issue of religion had been
brought up in the
insurrection, and because
many of the rebels were proclaiming
that their struggle was for
religious freedom, Antiochus
Epiphanes in a maddened frenzy, determined to obliterate any
vestiges of the religious
customs of the Jews! He boldly
repudiated God and entered
the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicated
it to the pagan god
Jupiter. He set up an idol which he called
the "lord of
heaven" but which is referred to in the Bible as the
"abomination of
desolation" (Dan 11:31). He also
offered swine's
flesh on the Holy Altar and
polluted the Temple with all the
indecencies he could
perpetrate. He even turned the Temple
into
a center of prostitution.
Notice some of the things commanded by
Antiochus Epiphanes in
his desire to exterminate any
semblance of the commands of God.
We find that many innocent
Jews who had no thoughts of rebellion
suffered many indignities as
well as the guilty.
"By royal decree, the observance of the
SABBATH or of the
SACRED FEASTS, and practicing
the rite of circumcision, WERE
ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN UNDER
PENALTY OF DEATH. ALL COPIES OF THE
LAW WERE DESTROYED. Heathen altars and temples were erected
throughout Judaea, and every Jew was compelled in public to
sacrifice to idols, swine's
flesh or that of some other unclean
beast, AND TO PRESENT
CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT HE HAD CEASED TO
OBSERVE THE LAWS OF HIS
FATHERS" (Kent, "History of the Jewish
People," pp. 328, 329).
All women who had their sons circumcised
were publicly marched
around the city of Jerusalem
and then thrown from the high walls
to their death. One group of people who fled to a cave near
Jerusalem in order to keep
the Sabbath service were surprised and
committed to the flames. Such things were everyday occurrences
against the Jews who failed
to abide by the decrees of Antiochus
Epiphanes. (Margolis, "History of the Jewish People,"
pp. 137,
138).
Judas Maccabeus
Because of the outrages of Antiochus Epiphanes, many of the
Jews became more than ever
desirous of independence from the rule
of the tyrant. Among them was Judas Maccabeus
and his four
brothers. They abhorred the actions of this crated
ruler from
the north, and not desiring
to put up with the abuses that were
being done to the Jews, they
fled for refuge to the mountains of
Judaea. While there,
they gathered together many more of the
dissenting Jews and formed an
army. Their vow was to exterminate
the foreigners from Judaea.
After a series of successful skirmishes,
these men gathered
more and more Jews to their
cause. Surprisingly, in three short
years (by 165 B.C.) they had
defeated the Seleucids to such an
extent that, for all
practical purposes, their desire for an
independent autonomous Jewish
state was realized. The Maccabees
became the leaders of this
new state.
Why the Maccabean
Revolt?
It should be remembered that this revolt of
the Jews was not
at first a matter of
religion. The main reason for the
insurrection was to establish
an independent Jewish state.
"The Maccabean
uprising, at least in its initial stages, was
not against Hellenism BUT
RATHER FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE. And
when independence, real or
nominal, was secured, the object of
the Maccabean
principality was to hold its head up among other
principalities that had
arisen out of the ruins of the Seleucid
Empire; there was NOTHING
LIKE AN ANTI-GREEK PROGRAM" (Goodspeed,
"The Apocrypha,"
pp, xiv, xv).
The majority of Jews had not been anxious to
depart from their
Hellenism. What they wanted primarily was their freedom
from the
foreign yoke. The matter of religion was really invoked to
get
the people united in one
common cause -- to drive the foreigner
from
get back to the Law of
God. And religion only became a major
issue when Antiochus Epiphanes voiced his anti-religious decrees.
The Jewish historian, Moses Hadas, adequately describes the
situation during the Maccabean Revolt.
"The standard of religion was raised in
the countryside, and
then served to rally the
people to the cause. It was only after
religion had become the
battle cry of the rebels that Antiochus
IV [Epiphanes]
issued his decrees against the observance of
central religious rites, and
it is highly significant that as
soon as the anti-religious
decrees were rescinded the pietest
group [the religious people]
withdrew from the fighting. The
object of the Hasmonaean [Maccabean] rulers WAS
NOT TO PROTECT
RELIGION ... but to maintain
a sovereignty ... among others which
were being carved out of the
weakened Seleucid empire"
("Hellenistic
Culture," p. 43).
After independence was realized, the
Hellenistic element still
remained among the Jews. They had been so wedded to its
influence for so long that it
was an impossibility to remove that
influence from them. We will read more of this next month!
Good News
June 1961
Vol. X, Number 6
The TRUE Reason WHY the Jews Rejected
Christ
Why didn't the Jews
understand the prophecies of Christ's first
coming? Why weren't they ready to receive the Holy
Spirit on the
day of Pentecost? The answer will surprise you!
by Herman L. Hoeh
EVER since the time of Adam man has rebelled
against the
government of God. As the Supreme Ruler of the universe, God has
DECREED that 6000 years be
allotted to man to decide for himself
whether he will voluntarily
submit to the Government of God and
keep holy the TIME He made
holy.
Man universally has rejected God's rule, His
authority, His
holy days. But God has not been idle in human affairs.
What God Has Been Doing
What GOD is doing these 6000 years very few
recognize.
Now is not the time God is trying to save
the world. He is
rather calling out of the
world a select few whom He chooses. To
us He reveals Himself, His
Will and His Purpose. But we must
VOLUNTARILY choose to obey
Him -- and to keep holy the days He
set apart.
In the days of Moses God first organized His
Church and
revealed to them His
Plan. To keep that Church in the knowledge
of that Plan, the Eternal
ordained seven annual festivals. These
festivals pictured the seven
steps in carrying out God's Plan.
When the Old Testament Church departed from
celebrating these
festivals, they lost the
knowledge of the Plan. This is exactly
what had happened to the Jews
in New Testament times! The Jews
did not understand the
prophecies of the first coming of Christ
because they were not keeping
the one festival (Passover) which
pictured that Christ was
coming FIRST as the paschal lamb. They
knew He would come LATER --
at the close of 6000 years of history
(pictured by the Feast of
Trumpets) -- as the conquering King!
The Jews knew five out of the seven steps in
God's Plan
because they still observed
five out of the seven festivals. But
the two festivals on which
they had become confused and divided
pictured the very part of
God's Plan which they had lost! The
Passover pictured the coming
of the Messiah as the passover lamb
-- to bear our sins (I
Corinthians 5:7). Having changed the day
of the true Passover the Jews
cut themselves off from their God.
To change the day, to neglect
it, is SIN. And sin cuts one off
from God. Hence they were unable to recognize the true
gospel
when it came to them through
Jesus Christ. They were not
expecting Christ, the
Messiah, to come as a man to bear the sins
of the world.
They were expecting only a conquering
king. Had they been
celebrating the true Passover
on its right day, instead of
confusing it with the Feast
night of the days of Unleavened
Bread, they would have known
that their Messiah would first come
as a man to bear the sins of
the world!
No wonder the Jews crucified the Saviour! They had
forgotten
the true Passover!
How important it is that we today keep this
day so we do not
forget what Christ has
already done for us!
And no wonder they did not receive the gift
of the Holy
Spirit. They were not properly keeping the day of
Pentecost
which pictured the coming of
the Holy Spirit. Only those who
were correctly observing
these two days knew that the Messiah had
come, who He was. Only THEY were ready to receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit.
It seems almost no one has really grasped
the true reason why
the Jews rejected Christ and
ceased to be the Church through whom
He could work in spreading
the gospel.
It is only because we today keep these days
-- all of them --
that we today know all the
steps in God's Program.
Why Jews Lost True Dates for
Passover and Pentecost
It is time we understand WHY the Jews forgot
to properly
celebrate Passover and
Pentecost. Here is an important lesson
in
CHURCH AUTHORITY -- GOD'S
GOVERNMENT -- which we today need to
understand!
Granted the Jews preserved the Sacred
Calendar. Granted that
the Jews celebrated five of
seven annual festivals on the correct
date according to the Bible
and the Sacred Calendar.
Why, then, did the Jews, who to this day
have preserved the
true calendar, celebrate
THEIR passover and THEIR pentecost
on
different days from those
plainly stated in the Bible?
The Jews in Judaea
in Christ's day celebrated their passover
one day later than did Jesus
and the Galileans. The Pharisaic
Judaeans also ceased to COUNT fifty days to determine the day
Pentecost is to be
celebrated. Why? How did the Jews become
confused, divided?
What happened to CHURCH AUTHORITY?
Here are the facts!
Most Jews today celebrate THEIR pentecost -- or feast of
first-fruits -- on the sixth
day of the third month, Sivan.
According to Jewish tradition
the day of Pentecost no longer
needs to be counted. Their pentecost
falls on a fixed day of the
month, no matter what day of
the week it occurs!
Yet Moses was inspired to write that
Pentecost has to be
counted (Lev. 23:15). Unlike every other annual festival,
Pentecost does not fall on a
set day of the month. It falls,
rather, on variable days of
the month, but on a specific and
invariable day of the week!
The Jews in New Testament times became
divided as to the
correct time for celebrating
this festival. Sadducees, who were
mainly priests, still
continued to count fifty days long after
Pharisees, who were laymen in
high places, fixed the festival on
Sivan 6. Why?
Because NO AUTHORITY was exercised to keep
unity in the Jewish
community in New Testament
times!
The apostles and faithful Jews in Galilee
and throughout the
world alone continued to
celebrate Pentecost on a Monday, a fixed
day of the week.
Also, Jesus and the Galileans observed Passover
on Nisan 14,
the correct day. The Jews in Judaea
celebrated it one day late,
on the night of the Feast,
the 15th of Nisan or Abib. Today the
Jews do not really keep any passover. They
observe only the
Feast. This is the real reason why the Jews as a
nation forgot
their God!
Now let us understand how it all
happened. How the Jews
became mixed up in their
thinking. How people today can fall
into the same snare when they
begin to use individual human
reason on matters that
pertain to the whole Church and hence are
the responsibility of the
ministry through which Christ governs
His Church.
First, let's take the date of the Passover.
Why Different Passover?
Did you know that scholars are as much
divided about the date
of the Passover today as were
the Jews in Christ's time? Even
some in the Church of God
DURING THE SARDIS ERA OF THE CHURCH
became divided on this
question.
The reason for every such confusion is the
lack of the
Government of God. The New Testament Church replaced the Old
Testament Church because the
Jews in Christ's day had not
spiritually yielded to the
Government of God. They followed
their own traditions.
Centuries later, when Jesus Christ could no
longer use the
Sardis Era of the Church, He
raised up THIS WORK -- the
Philadelphia Era of the
Church of God (see Revelation 3).
We are not divided today because we follow
the Government of
God. "Thou ... didst keep my word," says
Jesus of THIS Church
today (Rev. 3:8). We obey the Bible. We follow the example of
Jesus. We do what He says. We submit to His government in the
Church. Christ IS AND WILL EVER REMAIN the Head of
this Church.
He has promised it!
Now consider the facts of history -- why the
world generally
believes that Christ died not
on the Passover, but on the Feast
-- and who it is that first
caused the world to believe this
fable.
Did you know that it was Pope Leo -- the
first absolute Pope
-- who originated the idea
that Christ died on the 15th of Nisan,
not on the 14th, as the Bible
makes plain? The same power that
worked through him had
already worked through the Jews and led
them to deny that Christ is
our real Passover! Jesus said of the
Jews: "You are of your
father the devil." And the world has
followed his lies ever
since! The devil wants people to deny
Jesus is the Christ. And one of many ways is to delude them into
thinking that Jesus did not
die on the Passover, Nisan 14.
Pope Leo lived four centuries after the time
of Jesus Christ.
Here is what led up to his
idea that Christ did not die on the
true Passover. The Christian world was divided as to the
date
for Easter, which they had
adopted from the pagans. Leo proposed
to settle it. In so doing he wanted to stamp out the true
passover altogether. To
do so he had to make the Christian world
believe that Jesus died on
Nisan 15, not 14. "At the same
time,"
declare Schaff
and Wace on page 56 of "Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers," vol. xiv,
"also was generally established, the opinion
so little entertained by the
ancient authorities of the Church --
one might even say, so
strongly in contradiction to their
teaching -- that Christ
partook of the passover on the 14th of
Nisan, that he died on the
15th (not on the 14th, as the ancients
considered) ... In the letter
we have just mentioned, Proterius
of
the Pope officially approved
the contents of the letter about 440
A.D.
And that is why the world believes what it
does today!
But notice the plain evidence of Scripture
now.
The Testimony of Scripture
The Scripture is our final authority. No man has ever been
given any authority to
replace it with human tradition. Here is
what we find.
In Luke 22:8 we read: "And he (Jesus)
sent Peter and John,
saying, Go and prepare us the
passover that we may eat." And in
the last part of verse 13 we
find: "And they made ready the
passover." Now
continue with the next two verses: "And when the
hour was come, he sat down,
and the twelve apostles with him.
And he said unto them, With
desire I have desired to eat this
passover with you before I suffer."
THE NEXT MORNING OF THIS SAME DAY (a day
begins at sunset),
Jesus Christ was brought to
trial and crucified. Late the
afternoon of the same day,
shortly before sunset, Jesus was
buried. And in Luke
inspired Greek Text:
"And it was preparation day; a sabbath drew
on." Note that it was A sabbath
according to the original Greek,
not "THE sabbath" as in the King James Version.
The women returned home, rested that sabbath following the day
of preparation (Mark 16:1),
then -- two days after the Passover
-- purchased and prepared
spices and -- notice Luke 23:56: "And
rested THE sabbath day according to the commandment."
Here is the weekly sabbath
mentioned. It was not one day
after the preparation, nor
two days after, but three days after
that preparation day on which
Jesus was killed. This plainly
proves that Luke knew that
Jesus was crucified on the day before
an annual sabbath.
Since Leviticus 23 and many other scriptures
prove that the
15TH OF NISAN IS AN ANNUAL
HOLY DAY, Luke plainly makes the
crucifixion on the day before
-- that is, on the 14th of Nisan.
Both Matthew and Mark agree
with Luke, yet critics would have us
believe that Luke had Jesus
crucified on the 15th, an annual
sabbath, the first holy day of the seven-day Festival of
Unleavened Bread!
Plainly Jesus ate the Passover on the eve of
the 14th of
Nisan, was seized, tried,
crucified and buried on that same day,
and was in the tomb on the
15th -- that annual sabbath which
followed the Passover.
The record of the apostle John agrees
perfectly with this. In
fact most critics acknowledge
that John places the crucifixion
record on the 14th. They think the other three gospel writers
place it on the following day
-- thus CONTRADICTING one another!
But there is no
contradiction. Matthew, Mark and Luke
all agree
with John in plainly stating
that the day following the
crucifixion was a sabbath.
No Leaven Used with Passover
What the critics cannot get straight in
their minds is that
the Passover was also a day
when Unleavened Bread was eaten. The
Passover was always to be
eaten with unleavened bread (Exodus
There were seven days during which no leaven
was to be seen
anywhere in Israel -- this is
during the Feast of Unleavened
Bread. But also the 14th of Abib
the children of Israel were to
eat only unleavened bread
with the passover and to use that day
as a preparation in putting
out all leaven and getting ready for
the feast of seven days which
followed. So there were EIGHT DAYS
in all during which
unleavened bread was eaten -- one day with
the passover
and seven days with the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
That is why Matthew, Mark and Luke speak of
the Passover as A
DAY of un-leavened
bread! It was not the first day of the
FEAST
of Unleavened Bread, but the
first of eight days on which
unleavened bread was eaten.
(In the King James Version the word
"feast" is
improperly inserted in Matthew 26:17.
Notice that it
is in ITALICS.)
Also observe that Matthew records the
conversation of the
Jews' plot to kill
Jesus. They said: "Not on the feast
day, lest
there be an uproar among the
people." (Mat. 26:5).
There is absolutely no shred of evidence
that Jesus was
crucified on the 15th of
Nisan. He was killed on the 14th as our
Passover Lamb -- on the very
day the Passover Lamb was always
slain. The Jews purposely avoided killing Jesus on
the Feast --
the 15th.
But now we must read John 18:28. On the morning of the 14th
of Nisan the Jews refused to
enter the judgment hall of the Roman
governor, Pilate. Why? Lest they should be defiled, but that
they might eat the passover."
So the Jews from Judaea
had not eaten THEIR passover yet!
They were not observing it at
the same time the Galileans ate it.
Remember that Jesus and the
disciples were from Galilee. Jews in
Christ's time -- those who
lived in Judaea -- kept THEIR passover
one day later than did Jesus,
His disciples and the Galileans in
general. Why did they do so? Where did the custom originate?
Why were the Jews in Judaea observing their passover
on a
different day of the month
than were the Jews living in Galilee?
Even Josephus, the Jewish historian,
acknowledges that the
Judaeans were celebrating the Passover at a different time
than
it was celebrated by
Moses. Notice what Josephus wrote about
the
Passover.
Confession of Josephus
Here is his account of the exodus. "In the month ... which is
by us called Nisan ... on the
fourteenth day of the lunar month
sacrifice ... which we slew
when we came out of Egypt, and which
was called the Passover ...
The feast of unleavened bread
succeeds that of the passover, and falls on the fifteenth day of
the month, and continues
seven days." (From "Antiquities of the
Jews," book III, chapter
x, § 5.)
How plain.
The Passover is the 14th and the seven days which
follow are the Feast of
Unleavened Bread.
Josephus repeats the account of the Exodus
in "Antiquities,"
book II. Notice how he words the account here. "But when the
fourteenth day was come, and
all were ready to depart, they
offered the sacrifice ... Whence it is that we do still
offer
this sacrifice in like manner
to this day, and call this festival
PASCHA, which signifies THE
FEAST OF THE PASSOVER; because ON
THAT DAY God passed us over,
and sent the plague upon the
Egyptians; for the
destruction of the firstborn came upon the
Egyptians THAT NIGHT"
(chap. xiv, § 6). This was the 14th!
And on what day did they leave Egypt! "They left Egypt,"
declares Josephus, "on
the fifteenth day of the lunar month"
(chap. xv, § 2).
This agrees perfectly with Numbers
33:3. "And they departed
from Rameses
in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the
first month: ON THE MORROW
AFTER THE PASSOVER the children of
Israel went out ..."
Remember that Josephus plainly records that
the Feast of
Unleavened bread was
celebrated for ONLY SEVEN DAYS following the
Passover on the 14th of
Nisan. Yet Matthew, Mark and Luke show
that it was customary to
refer to the day of the Passover as the
first of eight days of unleavened
bread. Did Josephus also speak
of eight days of unleavened
bread, including the Passover?
Indeed! In memory of the exodus he said to the Jews
"keep a
feast for eight days"
(book II, chap. xv, § 1).
Sometimes the entire eight-day period was
called "The Days of
Unleavened Bread," and
sometimes it was all called "The
Passover," as in Luke
22:1.
If the Jews once knew that the sacrificing
of the Passover
lambs occurred on the eve or
beginning of the 14th of Nisan,
"between the two evenings,"
at dusk, and that God passed over
them THAT NIGHT -- the 14th
-- and that they left
15th of Nisan, why did the
Jews in Judaea in Christ's time
confuse the events and
celebrate the Passover one day late?
The answer has never been understood by the
critics and the
scholars. Here is what happened. Also read the series on
JUDAISM by Ernest Martin in
this issue.
After Ezra and Nehemiah
The Jews who returned under Ezra and
Nehemiah correctly
observed the festivals
according to the law. They began each
day
at sunset. This custom continued until the Persian
period of
rule over Palestine ceased.
Then came the Greeks. New ideas began to be introduced.
Judaism developed. It was a mixture of the Law of Moses and
"Hellenism" -- as
Greek culture introduced under Alexander the
Great after 333 B.C. was
called. The eleventh chapter of Daniel
tells us of the history of
the Jews in Palestine for the next
three centuries. First, Palestine was to be under the control
of
the King of the South. The King of the South was the Ptolemaic
line of Greek rulers in
Egypt. The Egyptians -- under the rule
of a Greek dynasty -- began
to force their particular brand of
Hellenism upon the Jews in
disbanded. The Jews were forced to take up the ways of
the
heathen -- and that included
CHANGING THE TIME WHEN THE DAY
BEGINS. Any encyclopedia will reveal that the
Egyptians began
their days with SUNRISE, not
sunset. They therefore commenced
each day about 12 hours later
than the time God appoints.
So notice what would happen to the
celebration of the
Passover.
Jews began to neglect the law. The majority soon began to
celebrate Passover in
accordance with the Egyptian measurement of
time. They therefore had to change the time for
celebrating the
Passover to meet the new
custom of reckoning a day from sunrise
to sunrise. Originally the Passover was celebrated at
sunset,
beginning the 14th of
Nisan. But according to Egyptian
reckoning
THAT SUNSET would not be the
beginning of the 14th, but midday of
the 13th lunar month!
By Egyptian reckoning the 14th of a month
began at sunrise, 12
hours late!
The dusk period "between two
evenings" on the 14th OF AN
EGYPTIAN DAY would therefore
occur at the END of the 14th and the
beginning of the 15th day of
a month as God reckons time! When
this pagan method of time
reckoning was forced on the people, the
Jews in Palestine began to
celebrate the Passover at dusk on the
middle of the 14th day OF THE
EGYPTIAN MONTH, 24 hours too late.
It was in reality the
beginning of the 15th day as God reckons
time!
And that is how the custom began of
celebrating the Passover
at sunset one day late. But the story does not end here.
The True Day Later Restored
At the time of the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ the Jews had
restored the beginning of a
day to its proper point. The
Galileans also restored the
Passover, but the Judaeans were
celebrating THEIR passover on the 15th of Nisan!
What happened is this. After the Hellenized Egyptians were
driven out of Palestine the
Hellenized Syrians dominated
Palestine until the Maccabees. The Maccabees were zealous Jews
who drove out the Gentiles
about 160 years before Jesus' birth.
They were able to restore
some of the practices of Moses, but
they still compromised with
the Gentile customs which the Jews
had been practicing for
generations under Greek, Egyptian and
Syrian influence. The Jews restored the beginning of a day to
sunset. But what were they going to do with the time
of
celebrating the Passover?
The Jews in Galilee, in the north of
Palestine were far less
influenced by Egyptian and
Hellenic influences. They restored
the beginning of each day to
sunset and restored the Passover to
its proper time at the
BEGINNING of the 14th of Nisan. But the
Judaeans, who lived in and around Jerusalem and southern
Palestine refused to change
the custom of celebrating Passover in
the middle of the Egyptian
day at dusk -- one day late.
The Judaeans
decided to restore the day to begin at sunset.
But they refused to change
the hour for celebrating their
passover. The
traditions of the elders were too strong.
The
Judaeans henceforth decided to kill the passover
lambs and to eat
them at the same time of day
they had been doing under Gentile
Egyptian rule! And that is how the Jews in Judaea began to
celebrate their passover at the end of the 14th and the beginning
of the 15th day of
Nisan! And by so doing they rebelled
against
the government of God.
Jews Admit It
In 1948 I wrote to the Hebrew Union College
in Cincinnati,
Ohio, asking them for
information on this very subject. The
librarian replied to me that
in Christ's time the Jews were
divided over the Passover celebrations.
The Jews, he wrote, had
just recently (just before
Christ) restored the beginning of a
day to sunset. The Galileans, he admitted, had consequently
restored the Passover to the
beginning of the 14th as originally
celebrated. But the Judaeans
decided to continue their practice
of killing the lambs one day
later, at the beginning of the 15th
so as not to change the
customs they had followed while under
Egyptian rule. If their elders had done so, they reasoned,
they
would continue to do so!
What Happened to Feast of
Pentecost
The same conditions led to the celebration
of Pentecost on the
wrong day.
When the Greeks removed the Jews in the
Great Synagogue from
authority over the community,
the problem arose as to who should
determine the Feast of Firstfruits. Since
there was no fixed
authority, many of the Jews
decided it would be better to have a
fixed day of the month rather
than be in doubt. Thus the Jews
adopted the practice of
designating Sivan 6 as the day of
Pentecost, fifty days after
the Passover. But Pentecost is not
fifty days after the
Passover. It is fifty days after the day
on
which the wave sheaf is cut
-- and that always occurred on the
first day of the week
following the only weekly Sabbath which
occurs during the Feast of
Unleavened Bread.
Notice Leviticus 23:11. "On the morrow
after THE Sabbath the
priest shall wave it" --
means the WEEKLY Sabbath. Otherwise
there would be no reason to
count which day of the month
Pentecost occurs.
Here is the proof!
Since the day the wave sheaf is cut could
fall on Abib 20 (if
Passover is on Monday), or on
Abib 18 (if Passover is on
Wednesday), or on Abib 16 (if Passover is on Friday), or on Abib
22 (if Passover is on the
weekly Sabbath), you can easily see why
Pentecost has to be counted.
In these four illustrations (for Passover Abib 14 can only
fall on these four days of
the week, beginning the evening
before, of course), Pentecost
-- which is celebrated fifty days
AFTER THE DAY the wave sheaf
is cut and always falls on Monday --
will be Sivan 11 or 9 or 7 or
13 respectively. That is why
Pentecost must be counted.
There was no repentance among the Jews any
more than there is
today in the professing
Christian world. There was no obedience
to God. There were only the traditions of men! And the critics
even to this day refuse to
accept the plain words of Scripture
that Jesus celebrated the
Passover at its proper time on the eve
of the 14th of Abib -- the very day He was crucified. Carnal men
uphold the tradition of
the Bible! The truth of God they refuse. They hate God's way.
They refused to keep the
Feast of Firstfruits -- Pentecost -- and
that is why they were rejected
as a nation.
Since 70 A.D. the Jews have also ceased
altogether to observe
the Passover. Today they make a pretense of keeping only
the
Feast of Unleavened
Bread. At the feast they have a lamb
bone on
the table as a solitary
reminder of the original Passover which
God commanded Moses. Is it only the true New Testament Church of
God which rightly celebrated
Pentecost, and the Passover on the
eve of the 14th of
Nisan! "Do this," said Jesus
"in remembrance
of me." Are you really doing it?
Good News
July 1961
Vol. X, Number 7
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
The beginning of the
Sanhedrin, the origin of the "traditions of
the elders," the
usurpation of authority by laymen -- these are
discussed in this
installment.
by Ernest Martin
IN previous installments we followed the
Egyptian rule of
Palestine until 198 B.C. In that year the Syrian kingdom on the
north invaded and conquered
the
in government from Alexandria
to Antioch in Syria -- and the
resultant establishment of
the Syrian way of life in
meant that a readjustment had
to be made in the Jews' manner of
living inherited from the
Egyptian Hellenists.
The Syrians were Hellenists as much as the
Egyptians were but
there was quite a difference
in their mode of observing it!
The Religious Anarchy Ends
When the Syrians assumed control of
fully conscious that
something new was taking place. It was
this
contrast between the Egyptian
Hellenism they had been used to and
the Syrian Hellenism which
they were now obliged to follow, that
shocked a few Jews into
becoming cognizant that another way of
life was possible -- their
old way of life -- living by the Holy
Scriptures! The Jews knew the Scriptures plainly did not
recognize either form of
Hellenism. New interest in God and the
religion of Moses began to
revive.
Beginning of Sanhedrin
This new interest in the religion of their
forefathers caused
some of the Jews to reflect
on the past in order to ascertain how
their forefathers had been
governed in their religious life.
They recognized that from the
time of Ezra and Nehemiah to
Alexander the Great, the Sopherim had been the religious leaders
and teachers of the
people. The Sopherim,
remember, had
disappeared from the scene --
Simon the Just was the last of
them.
Understanding that some organization like
the Sopherim must
exist if there was to be
religious unity and the people properly
taught the Law, the leaders
of this new revival decided to meet
in council with one
another. Its avowed purpose was to
direct
those who were desiring to
live according to the Law of their
forefathers. This council became known by the Greek name,
THE
SANHEDRIN.
It is not clear when the Sanhedrin first
began meeting. It
must have been just a short
time after the Syrians came into
Palestine, perhaps about 196
B.C. or immediately thereafter
(Lauterbach,
"Rabbinic Essays," p. 207).
--------------------
PHOTO CAPTION: A map of Palestine during the time of
Hellenistic
influence.
--------------------
The influence of the Sanhedrin was not great
at first. Not
many of the Jews recognized
its authority or adhered to its
injunctions. Yet, with its establishment, we can say that
outright religious anarchy
came to an end, even though the
majority of the Jews were
still greatly affected by Hellenism.
Fanatical Zeal of Syrian
Hellenists
When the Syrians subdued the Egyptians in
Palestine in 198
B.C., they brought to the
Jews their own ideas concerning
Hellenism. To the Syrians there must be nothing that
rivaled
their way of thinking.
Egyptian Hellenists had allowed the Old
Testament to be used.
The interpretation of it,
however, must be by Greek methods -- it
had to be Grecianized. Thus, we have the Septuagint Version.
BUT THE SYRIAN HELLENISTS
WOULD NOT ALLOW THE OLD TESTAMENT EVEN
TO BE IN EXISTENCE. Only Greek ways were allowed. No form of
individual or nationalistic
religion was allowed to exist that
conflicted in any way with
the doctrines of the Syrians.
The outstanding advocate of this philosophy
was the Syrian
king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who ruled from 175 to 164 B.C.
Antiochus Epiphanes
was a Hellenist enthusiast, proud of his
Athenian citizenship and bent
on spreading Hellenic civilization
throughout his domains. He built various temples to Apollo and
Jupiter. He observed, and commanded his subjects to
observe, all
the pagan Greek festivities
to the heathen gods. So fanatical
was he in his zeal to implant
his beliefs on all others that some
of his contemporaries called
him HALF-CRAZED (Margolis, "History
of the Jewish People,"
p. 135). He let nothing hinder him from
realizing his desires.
A large number of the Jews readily accepted
the newly
established Syrian doctrine
of complete surrender to the
philosophies of
Hellenism. Most of the Jews were
thoroughly
accustomed to much of the
Greek culture anyway, and it was no
hard thing to transfer
allegiance from the Egyptians to the
Syrians.
Yet, by the time of Antiochus Epiphanes other Jews had also
begun to take a new interest
in religion -- the religion of their
forefathers. This new concern for religion was beginning
to
spread among the Jews of
Palestine.
When Antiochus Epiphanes
heard that some of the Jews were
rejecting his doctrines of
total adherence to Hellenism, he began
to persecute many of
them. The persecution inevitably caused
more Jews to side with the
cause of religion. This stubbornness
of the Jews infuriated
Antiochus. He then began -- in a fit of
demoniac insanity --
widespread persecution, committing heinous
indignities against all those
who would not conform to his ways.
Not all the Jews were in disfavor with
Antiochus. Many of the
wealthy and influential
families, and specially many of the chief
priests, wickedly supported
Antiochus in his wild schemes. As
the persecution grew more
intense, a great many of the common
people went against
Antiochus. The result of this unparalleled
persecution by this madman
inevitably brought a further
quickening interest in the
Scriptures. Many began to take up
arms against the
Syrians. The cry went throughout the
land that,
in reality, this was a
RELIGIOUS WAR and that the Jews were
fighting for their Law and
their God. This belief boosted
renewed interest in fighting
against Antiochus. See page 15 of
the May issue for a detailed
description of the atrocities that
made Antiochus so hated by
the Jews.
Judas Maccabee
The Jews, in order to band themselves
together against the
Syrians, came to the side of
Judas Maccabee and his four
brothers. An army was formed for two purposes: 1)
defeating
Antiochus Epiphanes
and 2) driving out the Syrians from
successful battles, in
succeeding decades, this Jewish army
managed to accomplish both things! Antiochus' armies were
defeated in 165 B.C. and by
142 B.C. the Syrians were completely
driven from the land. Practical independence for the Jews
resulted.
Religious Authority
Re-established Among Jews
With the defeat of Antiochus Epiphanes in 165 B.C., the
religious history of the Jews
enters a new phase. The Sanhedrin,
which had been feebly
established some thirty years before, was
now OFFICIALLY DECLARED THE
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AMONG THE JEWS OF
PALESTINE. Being in virtual control of the land, the
Jews were
in position to re-establish
the religion that had been in a state
of decay for so long.
Now, for the first time since the period of
the Sopherim, they
had independent religious
authority. The Sanhedrin took the
place of the Sopherim in directing the religious life of the
people. But, this governing body of men was to be
greatly
different from the priestly Sopherim.
During the period of religious anarchy
before Antiochus
Epiphanes, a fundamental change took place in the attitudes of
the priests. Many of the priests were outright Hellenists
and
steeped in the pagan
philosophies of that culture. Not only
that, many of them had sided
with Antiochus Epiphanes against the
common people during the Maccabean Revolt.
Such activities
caused the common people to
be wary of the priests and their
teaching. There was a general distrust for anything
priestly at
this time.
A few priests had not allied themselves with
Hellenism and
Antiochus Epiphanes. But the large majority, in one way or
another, were not faithful to
the religion of their forefathers.
This general lack of trust for the priests
led most of the
common people to disapprove
of their re-assuming their full
former role of being
religious authorities. Only those
priests
who had not been openly in
favor of Hellenism were sought and
allowed to take their former
positions. The common people could
not bring themselves to
entrust the other priests with the right
to help regulate the
religious life of the Jews. Only to
these
faithful priests were
committed chairs in the new Sanhedrin
(Lauterbach,
"Rabbinic Essays," p. 209).
Non-Priestly Teachers Assume
Authoritative Positions
Under Egyptian control, within the period of
the religious
anarchy,
individuals here and there endeavoured to study the Scriptures in
a personal way. Without official teachers, the study
obviously
had to be personal and in
private. The fact that a few
independent students of the
Law existed is proved by the few
learned men who came to the
fore with the establishment of a
Sanhedrin. We are further assured of this when we
realize that
this new Sanhedrin, organized
about 196 B.C., was composed of LAY
TEACHERS as well as some
priests.
"The study of the Law NOW BECAME a
matter of private piety,
and as such WAS NOT LIMITED
TO THE PRIESTS" (Lauterbach,
"Rabbinic Essays,"
p. 198).
This private study, without proper guidance
from recognized
authority such as the Sopherim were, brought about some
surprising results.
(This is the same condition that happened in
the Protestant
Reformation. Many lay teachers arose, because the Bible
was made
available by the printing
press, and many confusing and
contradictory divisions arose
amongst those who were coming out
of the Catholic Church.)
Many of these Jewish teachers, likewise,
because of their
independent private study in
the Scripture, were not in unity on
many of their teachings. And, too, many of these teachers were
variously affected by
Hellenism.
"We shall therefore be not far from the
truth if we represent
the Sanhedrin, in the years
from its foundation down to the
outbreak of the Maccabean Revolt, as an Assembly of priests and
LAYMEN, some of whom inclined
to Hellenism while others opposed
it out of loyalty to the
Torah" (Herford, "The Pharisees," p.
27).
The differing degrees of Hellenic absorption
among the
teachers, mixed with
independent study of the Scripture, brought
about a new variety of
opinions. And, in the discussions that
followed to determine which
opinions to use, the LAY TEACHERS
claimed as much right to
voice their views as the priests. The
lay teachers were assured of
the common people being behind them.
"At the beginning of the second century
these non-priestly
teachers already exerted a
great influence in the community and
began persistently TO CLAIM
FOR THEMSELVES, as teachers of the
Law, THE SAME AUTHORITY
WHICH, TILL THEN, THE PRIESTS EXCLUSIVELY
HAD ENJOYED" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 28).
Such privileges that the lay teachers were
usurping to
themselves would never have
been permitted while the Sopherim,
the successors of Ezra and
Nehemiah, were in authority. The Law
of Moses, which God had
directly commanded him, clearly enjoined
that the priests, with their
helpers the Levites, were to perform
the functions of teachers,
not just any layman who would presume
to do so.
Some of these priests were in the Sanhedrin
and were willing
to re-establish the religious
life of the people, in accordance
with the directions in the
Law. But the new laymen, who had now
also become teachers of the
Law because of their independent
study, were not willing to
give up this new power they had
acquired. Human reason insisted that they were as
competent to
teach the people as the
priests.
Lay Teachers Reject Sole
Authority of Priests to Teach!
When the Sanhedrin was re-organized after
Antiochus Epiphanes,
the lay teachers exhibited
more power than ever before. The
priests, who were under a ban
of discredit before the Maccabean
Revolt, were even more so
afterwards. The lay teachers
repudiated the claim that the
priests had an exclusive right to
be in authority.
Lauterbach says
that these lay teachers "refused to recognize
the authority of the priests
as a class, and, inasmuch as many of
the priests had proven
unfaithful guardians of the Law, they
would not entrust to them the
religious life of the people"
("Rabbinic Essays,"
p. 209).
This privilege, of assuming the role of the
priests, was not a
complete usurpation of every
prerogative of the priests. They
still were the only ones
allowed to perform the ritualistic
Temple services, etc. No lay teacher ever thought of taking over
this exclusive position of
the priests.
But from the time of the re-establishment of
the Sanhedrin,
after the Maccabean
Revolt, the lay teachers became the important
RELIGIOUS LEADERS.
Sanhedrin Faces Many New
Problems
The establishment of the Sanhedrin was
recognized as a
necessity in order that there
could be a resumption of some form
of the religion of Moses.
"The members of this Sanhedrin took up
the interrupted
activity of the former
teachers, the Sopherim, and, like them,
sought to teach and interpret
the Law and to regulate the life of
the people in accordance with
the laws and traditions of the
fathers. But in their attempt to harmonize the laws of
the
fathers with the life of
their own times, THEY ENCOUNTERED SOME
GREAT DIFFICULTIES" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 105).
The people were keeping so many new customs,
not observed by
their forefathers, that the
members of the Sanhedrin became
perplexed over what to do.
It was not easy to find support from the
Scriptures which
might condone some of the
practices of the Jews at this time.
The members of the Sanhedrin
began to look for ways of JUSTIFYING
the people, rather than
following the Scripture commands to
correct them (Deut. 32:1-47).
"Many new customs and practices for
which there were no
precedents in the traditions
of the fathers, and NOT THE
SLIGHTEST INDICATION IN THE
BOOK OF THE LAW, were observed by the
people and CONSIDERED BY THEM
AS A PART OF THEIR RELIGIOUS LAWS
AND PRACTICES" (ibid.,
p. 195).
The majority of the teachers in the
Sanhedrin came to the
conclusion that the proper
thing to do was to find some way to
authoritatively justify these
new customs. They were well aware
that they could not go to the
Scripture for their support. This
presented a troublesome
situation to the Jewish teachers.
"The DIFFICULTY was to find a sanction
in the Torah for the
new customs and practices
which had established themselves in the
community ..." (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 66).
The only commands the Jews had from God in
this matter were
clearly negative. "Learn not the way of the heathen"
(Jer.
10:2).
"Take heed to thyself that thou be not
snared by following
them [the heathen] ... and
that thou inquire not after their
gods, saying, How did these
nations [the heathen] serve their
gods? EVEN SO WILL I DO LIKEWISE" (Deut.
12:30).
How to avoid these plain Scripture commands,
and get these new
customs sanctioned as proper
religious observances? The teachers
thought it would have been misadventurous to tell the people who
wanted to retain these
customs the simple commands of the
Scriptures. The people were not about to give up these
new
customs. The teachers were assured of this.
What,
then, did the teachers do to finally get these new
religious customs and
practices authorized and as having the
sanction of God? They came out with a most ingenious fiction
which shows an amazing and
clever display of human reasoning.
Teachers Pronounce Heathen
Customs Jewish in Origin
The conclusion of the Jewish teachers may
surprise you. They
merely taught that all the
customs and practices which the Jews
were now observing were
actually Jewish in origin!
"They reasoned this: It is hardly
possible that FOREIGN
CUSTOMS AND NON-JEWISH LAWS
SHOULD HAVE MET WITH SUCH UNIVERSAL
ACCEPTANCE. THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF OBJECTION ON THE PART OF
THE
PEOPLE TO SUCH CUSTOMS
VOUCHED FOR THEIR JEWISH ORIGIN, IN THE
OPINION of the teachers"
(Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 211).
The Jewish teachers told the people that it
was simply not
possible for them, being
Jews, to have inherited any heathen
custom or practice!
Since the Jewish teachers accepted these
customs as actually
being Jewish in origin, it
became necessary to carry the theory
just a little further. The theory went like this: Since the
customs were supposedly
Jewish, then they must have been taught
by the prophets and the
teachers of
himself! That is how the customs and practices of the
Jews,
which in reality they had
inherited from the heathen within the
period of religious anarchy,
were falsely termed the "traditions
of the fathers" --
handed down from Moses, the prophets and
teachers of old!
These traditions Jesus condemned.
There was, however, one difficulty for the
Jewish teachers to
overcome in this
interpretation. There were no such
customs and
practices as these mentioned
in all of Moses' Law nor in any
other part of the Scripture.
This did not dampen the spirit of the Jewish
teachers! They
also had an answer for
this. They maintained that these customs
were not put down in written
form, and because of this, were not
found in the text of
Scripture. "These customs were
handed down
ORALLY from Moses," was
their assertion! "They were passed
by
word of mouth from Moses
through every generation."
By assuming that there was an Oral Law,
called the "traditions
of the fathers," this
freed the Jewish teachers from having to
appeal to the Written
Scripture for evidence to back up their
statements.
"Accordingly, the teachers themselves
CAME TO BELIEVE that
such generally recognized
laws and practices MUST HAVE BEEN old
traditional laws and
practices accepted by the fathers and
transmitted to following
generations IN ADDITION to the Written
Law. Such a belief would naturally free the
teachers from the
necessity of finding
SCRIPTURAL PROOF FOR ALL THE NEW PRACTICES"
(Lauterbach,
"Rabbinic Essays," p. 211).
These
traditional laws -- the Oral Laws -- were not from Moses
nor any of the prophets. There is not a single reference in the
Scripture that Moses gave the
Israelites any Oral or Traditional
Laws that were to be handed
down along with the Written Word.
The Bible states just the
opposite. It plainly says that Moses
WROTE THE WHOLE LAW IN A
BOOK. There was no such thing as an
Oral Law of Moses.
Notice:
"And it came to pass, when Moses had
MADE AN END OF WRITING
THE WORDS OF THIS LAW IN A BOOK,
UNTIL THEY WERE FINISHED, that
Moses commanded the Levites
... saying, TAKE THIS BOOK OF THE
LAW, and put it in the side
of the ark of the covenant of the
Lord your God, that it may be
there FOR A WITNESS AGAINST THEE"
(Deut. 31:24-26).
Moses wrote the Law in a book. And it was this written Word
of God that was to be a
witness against the Israelites for future
generations, not any
so-called Oral Law.
Notice this confession of Dr. Lauterbach:
"These traditional laws naturally had
no indication in the
Written Law and no basis in
the teachings of the Sopherim,
BECAUSE THEY DEVELOPED AFTER
THE PERIOD OF THE SOPHERIM" (ibid.,
p. 206).
In other words tradition originated in the
period of the
religious anarchy, when the
Egyptians were in control of
"The reorganized Sanhedrin had to
reckon with these NEW LAWS
AND CUSTOMS, NOW CONSIDERED
AS TRADITIONAL because observed and
practiced by the people FOR A
GENERATION OR MORE" (ibid., p.
206).
We should not suppose that this theory of
the origin of the
Traditional laws was
wholeheartedly accepted by all the teachers
and members of the Sanhedrin.
Some Teachers Disapprove of
New Interpretation
"The theory of an authoritative
traditional law (which might
be taught independently of
the Scripture) WAS ALTOGETHER TOO NEW
to be unhesitatingly accepted
... THE THEORY WAS TOO STARTLING
AND NOVEL to be
unconditionally accepted" (ibid., p. 211).
The Jewish teachers who were the most prone
to accept the new
fictional interpretation were
the lay teachers. Some of the
priests were not quite sure
this was the way of handling the
situation. They maintained that the Sopherim
of old had always
relied upon the Scripture,
and that they would never have
countenanced such
interpretations which completely side-tracked
the Word of God.
"In their [the priests'] opinion, the
main thing was to
observe the laws of the
fathers as contained in the Book of the
Law, because the people had
pledged themselves, by oath, in the
time of Ezra, to do so. If changed conditions required
additional laws and new
regulations, the PRIESTS and RULERS were
competent to decree them
according to the authority given to them
in Deut. 17:8-13"
(ibid., p. 209).
The priests, as a whole, declared that the
Scripture was the
only necessary code of laws
to obey.
"This apparently simple solution
offered by the priestly group
in the Sanhedrin DID NOT FIND
FAVOR WITH THE LAY MEMBERS OF THAT
BODY" (ibid., p. 209).
The lay teachers, who outnumbered the
priestly group, claimed
the only way of reconciling
these new customs with the Scripture
was to recognize them as Oral
laws handed down from Moses.
They began to formulate methods of
explaining how these laws
were ordained by Moses and
transmitted to the Jews then living.
Their explanations were not
true, but they deliberately taught
them anyway.
Lauterbach says
that these lay teachers of the Sanhedrin
devised the "methods for
connecting with the Law all those new
decisions and customs which
were now universally observed by the
people, THUS MAKING THEM
APPEAR as part of the laws of the
fathers" (ibid., p.
210). Notice, THEY MADE THEM APPEAR as
if
they were actual traditions
of Moses!
Clever Answers to Opponents
The lay teachers had an answer for almost
every question that
an opponent might ask them
concerning the validity of these
Traditional laws.
If one would mention that Deuteronomy 4:2
forbade the addition
to the Law, the lay teachers
would readily admit that fact but
staunchly affirm that the
recognition of the Traditional laws was
not adding to the Law of
Moses. They claimed these laws
originated with Moses and
represented the complete revelation
that God gave him (ibid., p.
44).
If some opponent would voice the truth about
the recent origin
of these laws, the lay
teachers merely declared that the laws
were actually Mosaic but had
been long forgotten and had just
been recalled and
reintroduced (ibid., p. 45).
And when someone would prove beyond question
that these laws
were nothing more than pagan
practices, Lieberman paints out that
in such cases the JEWS COULD
MAINTAIN THAT THE HEATHEN WERE
FOLLOWING JEWISH PRACTICES
AND NOT VICE VERSA" ("Hellenism in
Jewish Palestine," p.
129).
Such
interpretations were absurdly extreme, completely
unjustified and utterly
false! How they managed to palm off such
fallacious interpretations as
actual truth can be understood only
if we recognize that THE
PEOPLE WANTED TO RECEIVE THIS ERROR.
With the people behind them,
the lay teachers could teach about
what they wished.
"Certain religious practices,
considered by the later teachers
as part of the traditional
law, or as handed down by Moses,
ORIGINATED IN REALITY FROM
OTHER, PERHAPS NON-JEWISH SOURCES, AND
HAD NO AUTHORITY OTHER THAN
THE AUTHORITY OF THE PEOPLE WHO
ADOPTED THEM" (ibid., p.
241).
With the acceptance of these new customs and
practices we can
date the true beginning of
Judaism as a religion! The
opportunity of returning to
the Law of Moses was rejected. From
that time forward, about 150
years before Christ, we become
familiar in history with the
real Judaism -- a religion which the
apostle Paul calls the
"Jews' religion."
(To be continued next issue)
Good News
August 1961
Vol. X, Number 8
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
The Pharisees seize authority
from the priests, the "traditions
of the elders" replace
the Bible, laymen claim to be prophets --
these surprising facts are
discussed in this ninth installment.
by Ernest Martin
THE last installment revealed how laymen
came to power through
"Judaism" -- how
they called pagan customs the "traditions of the
elders."
Now see what occurred in the century just
before Christ's
birth.
Innovation of Precedents
Which Helped Form Judaism
The acceptance of the "traditional
laws," supposedly handed
down from Moses, placed the
lay leaders in a position of power
and authority among the
people. It was the people themselves who
had inherited the many new
customs, and when the lay leaders
condoned the customs,
claiming them to be Jewish in origin, the
people looked upon the lay
leaders with honor and respect.
The lay leaders were quite aware that there
was no truth in
their assertions that these
new customs came from Moses. But in
order to please the people
they deliberately propagated this
falsehood. In consequence of their newly found
authority, the
lay leaders set themselves up
as ultimate teachers in matters
pertaining to every phase of
religious activity. In the matter
of accepting the customs
inherited from Hellenism, they
maintained their prerogatives,
as religious authorities, to
decide which of the customs
to accept and which ones to reject.
"No one except the recognized teachers
could say what the
tradition contained" (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 68).
Of course, the customs to which
the People were most wedded were
necessarily accepted.
Many of the priests in the Sanhedrin
objected to the lay
leaders' assumption of power
and especially of their raising to
divine law the new customs
from Hellenism. The priests were also
obstinate in their belief
that the authority to rule should be
accorded to them alone, for
they properly maintained that they
were the descendants of Aaron
and the only ones recognized by
Scripture to be in authority
to rule over the people. But the
lay leaders would not concede
to the priests' demands, and they
had the majority of the
people behind them. Too many of the
priests had deserted to
outright Hellenism in the anarchial
period and the people were
still wary of their tactics.
The Pharisees and Sadducees
The differences of opinion between the lay
leaders and the
priests caused a permanent
breach between these two groups. The
lay leaders, with the
religious Jews on their side and believing
in the traditional laws,
gathered themselves together into one
major group. The priests, on the other hand, who tended to
agree
with one another, gravitated
into another group.
This breach between the two leading
religious factions among
the Jews was the beginning of
two prominent New Testament Jewish
sects: the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. The lay leaders
comprised the Pharisaic
group. Most of the priests represented
the Sadducees. Members from both groups remained in the
Sanhedrin, but they were
almost always divided on policy.
It is
not to be supposed that the whole Jewish population was
anxious to get back to some
form of religious observances after
the period of religious
anarchy. The great majority of people
were not overly interested in
religion. As stated before, 95% of
the Jews in Christ's time
were not members of the Jewish sects.
This lack of real interest in
religion among the Jews in New
Testament times had its
origin within the period of religious
anarchy.
THE JEWISH PEOPLE AS A WHOLE NEVER RECOVERED
FROM THE
CONDITION THAT EXISTED WITHIN
THAT ANARCHIAL PERIOD. There was,
of course, a limited amount
of religious compunction, but not
enough for the whole nation
to become members in the sects of
Judaism.
The Pharisees, however, did have on their
side those Jews who
were religiously inclined,
but the majority showed varying
degrees of indifference to
the religious squabbles among the
Pharisees and Sadducees.
Josephus, the Jewish historian, has this to
say about these
Pharisees and Sadducees:
"The Pharisees have delivered to the
people a great many
observances by succession
from their fathers, AND ARE NOT WRITTEN
IN THE LAWS OF MOSES; and for
that reason it is that the
Sadducees reject them, and
say we are to esteem those observances
to be obligatory which are in
the written word, but are not to
observe what are derived from
the tradition of our fathers. And
concerning these things it is
that GREAT DISPUTES AND DIFFERENCES
have arisen among them, while
the Sadducees are able to persuade
none but the rich, and have
not the populace obsequious to them,
but the Pharisees have the
multitude on their side" ("Antiquities
of the Jews," XIII, 10,
6).
Pharisees Repudiate Sole
Authority of Priests to Teach Law
A major decision of the Pharisees was that
of rejecting the
sole authority of the priests
to be the religious authorities.
The Pharisees admitted that
the priests were the only ones with
the right to perform the
ritualistic services in the Temple. But
other than this minor role in
directing the religious life of the
people, the priests
henceforth had little to do, religiously
speaking. The Pharisees came to RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES as
the only
real religious leaders.
In assuming the religious leadership, the
Pharisees reasoned
that they were taking the
place of the priests whom they
considered unfit to govern
the people on account of their
rejection of the traditional
laws.
Pharisees Reckoned Themselves
as Prophets
Upon appropriating to themselves the
religious authority among
the Jews, the Pharisees
thought themselves also competent to be
the ultimate judges
concerning all religious questions. This
gave them, so they reasoned,
the right to speak in the name of
the Eternal even as the
prophets of old had done.
"IT IS CERTAIN that they [the
Pharisees] regarded themselves
as the SUCCESSORS OF THE
PROPHETS, and that not merely in fact
BUT BY RIGHT" (Herford, "Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 71).
The Pharisees contended, by their own
statements, that they
had been given the spirit of
prophecy as had the prophets of old.
They had already accepted the new customs as
divine law -- and
they reckoned that only
individuals under the influence of the
Spirit of God could do such
things! In the Jewish Talmud, a
compilation of Jewish
writings from the days after Alexander the
Great to about 400 years
after Christ, there are several
statements of these early
Pharisees in regard to their belief
that they had the same
authority as the prophets. In the
talmudical tractate called "Baba Bathra,"
in section 12a, we read
this: "PROPHECY WAS
TAKEN FROM THE PROPHETS AND WAS GIVEN TO THE
WISE [the
Pharisees]." To this remark is
added: "AND IT HAS NOT
BEEN TAKEN FROM THESE."
others in the Talmud:
"The relevance of this passage ... is that
the Rabbis [the Pharisees]
felt that they had, NO LESS BUT EVEN
MORE THAN THE PROPHETS,
DIVINE AUTHORITY FOR WHAT THEY TAUGHT,
and that this was given to
them after the time when the prophets
ceased to function. It was the way of expressing the belief that
the REVELATION DID NOT CEASE
with the extinction of prophecy"
("Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 72).
The audacious Pharisees considered their
laws and commandments
as having more weight than
those of the Prophets! That divine
revelation did not cease with
the prophets, but was now in action
in the Pharisees as
well! They were confident that what they
were teaching -- even though
in so many cases it did not agree
with the plain and simple
commandments of God as revealed in
Scripture -- was divine
teaching as prompted by the Spirit of
God.
The Pharisees felt that God was
"revealing Himself now as He
had revealed Himself to the
prophets, AND SPEAKING NOT ALONE IN
THE WORDS OF AN ANCIENT TEXT,
but in words which came FROM THE
HEART AND CONSCIENCE OF MEN
who felt His hand laid upon them to
'guide them into all
truth'" (ibid., p. 69).
Notice this!
The Pharisees came to the place of believing
that God did not reveal
Himself in the Scriptures alone --
"speaking not alone in
the words of an ancient text" -- but that
He was actively revealing His
present truth to the Pharisees
through influencing their
hearts and consciences! You can
imagine what unlimited
authority this gave the Pharisees among
those who accepted their
beliefs.
By appropriating the role of modern
prophets, they maintained
the right of free prophetic
utterance. That is, they claimed the
prerogative to speak the
current will of God without the
necessity of appealing to the
Scriptures. They did not believe
they had to be shackled to
the teaching of the Scriptures!
This opinion gave the Pharisees extreme
latitude. They
believed, as Herford puts it, "IN THE CONTINUOUS PROGRESSIVE
REVELATION OF GOD, AND THAT
HIS AUTHORITY WAS MADE KNOWN IN THE
REASON AND CONSCIENCE OF
THOSE WHO SOUGHT TO KNOW HIS WILL, AND
NOT ONLY IN THE WRITTEN TEXT
OF THE TORAH [the law of God]"
("Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 73).
The ideas and beliefs of the Pharisees
originated in their own
minds!
The Pharisees claimed that the Holy
Scriptures alone were NOT
SUFFICIENT to give the
complete truth of God -- especially since
environmental conditions
change. To the Scriptures, they
claimed, had to be added the
so-called traditional law (which
they determined to be the
Word of God).
There are Churches today who claim the same
prerogative. The
Roman Catholic Church, for
example, does not derive its authority
from the Bible. It rejects, in many cases, the plain teaching
of
Scripture to proclaim its own
church doctrines.
"THEY [THE PHARISEES] UPHELD THE
AUTHORITY OF TRADITION AS
SUPERIOR TO INDIVIDUAL
INTELLIGENCE, and taught that no Scripture
should be of unauthorized, or
private, interpretation" (Conder,
"Judas Maccabaeus," p. 203).
It is indeed amazing to what extent the
Catholic Church
parallels the actions of the
Pharisees in this matter.
New Doctrines Taught
Independent From Scripture
With the "feeling" that they had
the spirit of God guiding
them, the Pharisees began to
make more laws and commandments of
their own, without appealing
to the Scriptures.
The first Pharisee we have record of who
began to teach new
commandments of his own,
without any Scripture basis, was Joseph
ben Joezer. This Pharisee lived at the time the majority
of the
Pharisees erroneously
accepted the traditional laws as the "Oral
Law of Moses."
Joseph ben Joezer made three new laws completely independent
of Scripture. In fact, what he commanded was not only
independent of Scripture but
WAS NOT EVEN PERMITTED BY THE LAW OF
GOD. His commandments in themselves were not
earth-shaking
violations, but they were
only the beginning of a new trend.
His first law permitted the Jews to eat an
insect related to
the locust family which all
Jews previously had considered
unclean! Also, he permitted the Jews to eat of the
liquids of
the slaughtering place
(apparently blood, etc.). This, of
course, was contrary to many
Scriptures (Lev. 3:17, etc.). His
last commandment concerned
the touching of a dead body. He
permitted persons to be
ritualistically clean even if they were
in constant contact with
individuals who had become unclean by
touching a dead body (Lev.
these new laws, which
permitted people to do what had been
previously forbidden in the
Law of God, he was named by his
contemporaries "Joseph
the Permitter."
"Joseph is called 'the Permitter,' evidently because in all
three decisions he permits
things that were formerly considered
forbidden" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 219).
These three new commandments were not the
only ones to be
enacted by the
Pharisees. The action of Joseph the Permitter was
the setting of a precedent! His commandments were a little
reluctantly received at
first, but the reluctance did not last
long. From that time forward a FLOOD OF NEW
COMMANDMENTS began
to come forth from the
Pharisees.
These new laws, which Jesus called the
commandments of men
(Mark 7:7), the Pharisees
called by the Hebrew name "Halachah."
This Hebrew word in English
means "rule" or "decision."
It
denoted a new rule of
decision of the Pharisees. The term
"Halachah"
(or sometimes the plural "Halakot") will be
used in
succeeding parts of this
thesis series to denote the human
commandments of the
Pharisees.]
Now notice what
commandments ("Halachah") of Joseph the Permitter. "The Mishnah
[a part of the Talmud]
records three halachahs which were
declared by him ... but which
evidently met with some objection
and gave occasion to his
colleagues to call him 'Joseph the
Permitter.' This was
because ... he was able to declare THAT to
be allowable WHICH TILL THEN
HAD NOT BEEN ALLOWABLE, SINCE NO
INTERPRETATION OF THE WRITTEN
TEXT [the word of God] HAD BEEN
FOUND WHICH WOULD JUSTIFY HIS
CONCLUSION" ("Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 67).
These new Halachah
of Joseph the Permitter were not customs or
habits that had been inherited
from the days of the religious
anarchy. Or, to put it another way, these were not
laws which
the Pharisees claimed to be
part of the traditional laws from
Moses. These NEW LAWS were nothing more than
commandments
originating in the mind of Joseph
himself. Notice what
Lauterbach says:
"It is therefore evident that these Halakot ... were not older
traditional laws transmitted
by Joseph as a mere witness, BUT
JOSEPH'S OWN TEACHINGS. HE WAS THE ONE WHO 'PERMITTED' AND HE
DESERVED THE NAME [the Permitter]" ("Rabbinic Essays," p. 218).
Pharisees Adopt Precedent of
Joseph the Permitter
Because Joseph the Permitter
was one of the chief leaders
among the Pharisees
immediately following the Maccabean Revolt
(168-165 B.C.), other Pharisees
immediately followed his
authoritative example and
made new commandments or Halachah on
their own. This method of teaching was not
whole-heartedly
accepted by all Pharisees
immediately. It took about a
generation to establish the
new method of teaching firmly among
the Pharisees.
If the majority of Pharisees agreed with the
new commandments,
they would then be accepted
as the Word of God -- even if the
commandments taught just the
opposite from the teaching of the
Scriptures. IT ALL DEPENDED UPON WHETHER THE PHARISEES,
AS A
WHOLE, THOUGHT THE NEW
COMMANDMENTS WERE NECESSARY FOR THE PEOPLE
TO OBSERVE.
This practice gave rise to the theory that
new rules -- though
contrary to Scripture -- had
to be established to meet the needs
of the changing times! Notice Herford's
summary of this whole
situation:
"The lead which Joseph ben Joezer had given WAS
FOLLOWED, but
only gradually; and though
the theory of the Unwritten Torah [the
traditional laws] was finally
accepted and worked out to its
furthest consequences, as
seen in the Talmud, yet those who most
firmly maintained it WERE
QUITE AWARE OF THE WEAKNESS OF ITS
FOUNDATION. They knew that it cut the connection between
the
halachah [the rules of the Pharisees] and the written Torah
[the
Scriptures], and THEY KNEW
THAT IN APPEARANCE, AT ALL EVENTS, IT
GAVE THE TEACHERS FREE SCOPE
TO TEACH WHAT THEY THOUGHT FIT"
(Herford,
"Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 68).
Pharisees Viewed Scriptures
as Out of Date!
Because the Pharisees considered themselves
Prophets and able
to give the CURRENT will of
God, they reasoned that in many cases
the CURRENT will of God may
be completely different from His will
as expressed in past
times. They maintained that many of
their
new teachings, which were
clearly contrary to the written Word of
God, were actually the
PRESENT will of God. This is one of the
reasons the Pharisees taught
new commandments without Scripture
proof!
The Pharisees were confident that as times
changed and when
the people would be under new
environmental conditions that
certain of the Laws of God,
as revealed in the Scripture would,
of necessity, become obsolete
and have to be changed. And,
feeling that they had the
power of prophets, they felt no
compunction about teaching
new commandments to meet the needs of
the time, regardless of
whether those teachings contradicted the
Word of God or not.
Herford shows us
that this was the very attitude of the
Pharisees:
"The written Torah was good for the age
in which it was given,
or in which it was first
read; BUT THE WRITTEN TORAH ALONE COULD
NOT SUFFICE FOR LATER
AGES" ("Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 113).
With this attitude concerning the Scripture
the Pharisees
could always maintain that
God's will had changed in the matter
-- that He had revealed His
present will to the Pharisees.
This is the very same philosophy that is
pervading our modern
Christianity! How many times do we meet with statements
from the
learned theologians of the
various Christians' sects saying the
same thing today? Almost everyone feels that the Bible IS OUT
OF
DATE -- IS OLD
FASHIONED. Millions assume it is
impossible to
keep God's laws and
commandments in this "modern" age.
Let us
clearly understand that the
Bible IS NOT OUT OF DATE. It can be
obeyed, and in fact, it had
better be obeyed! Let us not be like
the Pharisees who rejected
the Scripture. They received the
stern rebuke of Christ. Let us, on the other hand, OBEY -- live
by -- every word of God (Matt.
4:4).
From this time forward, we see the
development of the
Pharisaical Judaism of New
Testament times. All the many arduous
and burdensome laws
concerning the Sabbath -- the laws of washing
the hands, pots, pans, etc.
-- laws regarding fasting -- and
myriads of others had their
development in the minds of the
Pharisees between the year
165 B.C. and the coming of Christ.
Once we understand the basis upon which
popular Judaism in the
days of Christ was founded,
we will understand why Christ so
severely condemned the
practices of the Pharisees and of the
other sects!
(To be continued next issue.)
Good News
October 1961
Vol. X, Number 10
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
This tenth installment
reveals the truth about the Jewish sects
in
by Ernest Martin
ALL the sects of Judaism in the New
Testament period had their
roots within the time of
religious anarchy after the death of
Alexander the Great. That was the time the Egyptians and then
the Syrians dominated
When these foreign elements came into
with them their respective
cultures -- their forms of Hellenism.
Every phase of life was
affected by Hellenism. Nothing escaped
its influence. That attractiveness of the new culture was
overwhelming. The Jews accepted it almost as readily as any
of
the countries of the East
which had been conquered by Alexander
the Great.
Now let's continue this series.
Sects of Judaism
"Because the Jews represent the major
non-Greek element in the
eventual fusion it is
important to observe that their reaction to
Hellenism was INITIALLY NO
DIFFERENT from that of other non-Greek
peoples" (Goodspeed, "The Apocrypha," p. xiv).
The Jews, after the peaceful introduction of
Hellenism by the
Egyptians, accepted it almost
totally. And not the least
affected by this acceptance of
Hellenism were former religious
beliefs of the Jews. Changes were made in the Jewish religious
services. The foreign influence was so strong and the
religious
inclination so weak that the
period had been called, as we have
before mentioned, a time of
religious anarchy.
The very basis of Hellenism was the
philosophy of
"free-thinking";
the right of the individual to think and reason
for himself. This philosophy of individualism was accepted
by
the Jews. The Jews, like their Egyptian rulers, began
to think
on their own in regard to the
arts, sciences, religion, etc.
As with Hellenism in Greece, Syria and
Egypt, so in Palestine,
the INDIVIDUAL and HIS
OPINION became important to the educated.
The study of Scripture, when
indulged, became more of a private
matter and of individual
interpretation, as it is commonly done
today, rather than of
collective interpretation from an
authoritative body, like the Sopherim were. In
most cases the
Scripture became interpreted
according to the prevailing custom
of viewing everything in the
light of Hellenistic
"enlightenment."
We find that during the period of religious
anarchy there
arose a number of individuals
endeavoring to teach the
Scriptures. These men were almost wholly laymen -- the
priests,
on the whole, thought it not
necessary to bother themselves with
teaching or studying the
Scriptures of their forefathers. At the
end of the anarchy, we find
these individual laymen establishing
themselves, with a few of the
faithful priests, into a body of
religious authority among the
Jews. However, when these men came
together they brought with
them many varying opinions of the
Scriptures they had learned
in independent study. Some of the
laymen and priests had
accepted much of the Hellenistic ways of
teaching as well as many
Hellenistic customs and practices.
There were some teachers,
however, who were less inclined towards
Hellenism. Yet all these teachers in one way or another
were
influenced with
Hellenism. There is no doubt of this (Herford,
"Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 77).
The differences of opinion among these
various teachers
finally evolved into the real
beginning of the sects of Judaism.
All of the sects can be shown
to have had their origins within or
immediately after the period
of religious anarchy. And it is
also important to indicate
that ALL the sects which came out of
that anarchy had some form of
Hellenism attached to their
beliefs. In fact, the various sects of Judaism can be
categorized according to the
amount of apparent Hellenization
that each sect absorbed. There were some sects which embodied
much of the Hellenistic
spirit; others a moderate amount; but
hardly one which absorbed
little.
It will be profitable to briefly survey the
sects of Judaism
which existed in the days of
Christ. It will be obvious that
none of them were keeping the
true and unblemished Law of Moses.
The Truth About the Essenes
The first sect to be dealt with will be the Essenes. This
group is placed first because
they represent the sect which
consumed the greatest amount
of foreign doctrine.
"Greek culture must have had a POWERFUL
INFLUENCE upon
Palestine since the time of
Alexander the Great -- it was not
repressed until the Maccabean rising -- it is only natural, if we
find ACTUAL PROOF OF THIS
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISM IN THE CIRCLE OF
THE ESSENES" (Schurer, "The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus
Christ," sec. ii, vol.
ii, p. 218).
There were certain religious customs and
beliefs of the Jewish
sect of the Essenes which were totally Hellenistic in origin.
For one, Josephus tells us
they accepted the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul
("Antiquities of the Jews," xviii, 1, 5).
He mentions this foreign
belief of the Essenes in several places.
Notice:
"For their doctrine is this: That
bodies are corruptible, and
that the matter they are made
of is not permanent; but THAT THE
SOULS ARE IMMORTAL, AND
CONTINUE FOR EVER ... And IS LIKE THE
OPINIONS OF THE GREEKS, that
good souls have their souls beyond
the oceans, etc."
("Wars of the Jews," II, p. 11).
Josephus goes on to say, speaking of the
doctrine of the
immortality of the soul:
"And indeed the Greeks seem to me TO
HAVE FOLLOWED THE SAME
NOTION" (ibid.).
Notice that Josephus says that these Essenes taught their
doctrine as did the
Greeks. This doctrine is certainly of
foreign origin, for no such
doctrine is found in the Scriptures.
"According to him [Josephus], the Essenes had always professed
the PUREST DOCTRINES OF GREEK
PHILOSOPHY concerning THE
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL"
(Renan, "History of the People of
Israel," vol. v, p. 56).
This particular teaching IS OF ITSELF PROOF
OF THE INFLUENCE
OF FOREIGN PHILOSOPHIES (Schurer, "The Jewish People in the Time
of Jesus Christ," sec.
ii, vol. ii, p. 214). And further, he
says:
"If then only one sentence which he
(Josephus) says concerning
the anthropology of the Essenes is true, IT IS CERTAIN THAT THEIR
DOCTRINE OF MAN IS DUALISTIC,
i.e NON-JEWISH" (ibid.).
There is absolutely no doubt that the Essenes had accepted the
doctrine of the immortality
of the soul directly from Hellenism.
This doctrine is completely
foreign to Scripture.
Other Heathen Doctrines
The Essenes also
adhered to the doctrine of asceticism -- the
doctrine of perennial
self-denial of even the good things of
life. This belief as a continuing custom is
entirely alien to
the teachings of the
Scriptures. However, such practices were
common among certain Greek
sects and Egyptian philosophies
("Encyclopaedia
Britannica," 11th ed., vol. ii, pp. 717, 720).
Because of this peculiar belief (which was
condemned by the
Apostle Paul in Colossians
2:23), the Essenes developed
themselves into monastic
orders and repudiated marriage ("Wars of
the Jews," II, 8,
2). In no place does the Scripture
command an
individual to withdraw into a
monastery or nunnery and live a
life of celibatic
asceticism. In fact, the New Testament
commands a person NOT to
deliberately withdraw himself from
society (I Cor. 5:9-10) and it teaches that marriage is entirely
honorable and holy (Heb.
13:4).
Essenes Worshipped Toward Sun
While the Temple was on earth, the
worshippers of God prayed
facing the Temple in
Jerusalem (I Kings 8:28, 29). Daniel
prayed
three times a day in this
manner (Dan.
Jerusalem was designed
symbolically, from its origin, to be the
residence of God, and the
people were to sacrifice at the Temple
and pray toward it.
The Essenes,
however, omitted two requirements of God which
were obvious violations of
Scripture. They refused to sacrifice
at the Temple, or anywhere
for that matter; and they did not face
the Temple when they
prayed. They worshipped and prayed
TOWARDS
THE SUN! ("Wars of the Jews," ii, 8,
9.) This act was strictly
forbidden in the Scriptures
(Ezekiel 8:15, 16), but nevertheless,
the Essenes
turned their backs on the Temple and prayed towards
the sun.
Relative to this esteem of the sun by the Essenes, Schurer
writes that this clearly
"leads to the conclusion, that they were
in real earnest IN THEIR
RELIGIOUS ESTIMATION OF THE SUN.
However this may be, the very
turning to the sun in prayer WAS
CONTRARY to Jewish customs
and notions, which REQUIRED THE
TURNING TO THE TEMPLE and
expressly repudiated THE DIRECTION
TOWARDS THE SUN AS
HEATHENISH" ("The Jewish People in the Time of
Jesus Christ," sec ii,
vol. ii, p. 213).
To this, Schurer
adds:
"Thus are we more and more driven to
the view, THAT FOREIGN
INFLUENCE COOPERATED IN THE
FORMATION OF ESSENISM" (ibid., p.
214).
Essenism Was Extreme Pharisaicism
It must not be supposed that Essenism, or any of the sects of
Judaism, were completely
heathen in doctrines in all respects.
This was not the case! What existed was a combining or a
blending of pagan doctrines
with certain teachings of the
Scripture. The Essenes kept
the Sabbath, circumcision, and many
of the other customs common
to the Jews. They also kept many of
the traditional laws of the
Pharisees. We are told expressly by
Schurer (ibid., p. 209) that the rigid religious legalism of
the
Essenes and their punctilious care for ceremonial cleanness,
were
genuinely Pharisaic in
origin.
The Essenes were,
however, not a part of the popular Pharisee
sect. They were entirely separate and on their
own. They may,
however, have represented a
group that began as a division of the
Pharisaic sect and broke away
early after the religious anarchy
ended. For even though there were many doctrinal
differences
between the two sects, there
were certain similarities. Schurer
again tells us: "Essenism then
is in the first place MERELY
PHARISAICISM IN THE
SUPERLATIVE DEGREE" (ibid.).
The sect of the Essenes
were actually more rigorous and
exacting (if that were
possible) than the Pharisees as a whole.
They even went beyond the
Pharisaic commandments in regard to
being ritualistically clean.
"The Essene
completely separated himself from the multitude
and formed exclusive
societies, in which similarity of
disposition and endeavour afforded the possibility of realizing
the ideal of a life of
absolute ceremonial cleanness" (ibid., pp.
210, 211).
Thus, this extreme Pharisaicism
led to asceticism and their
other peculiar customs that
most Jews completely disavowed. The
Essenes went quite a bit farther than the Pharisees in
accepting,
outright, many of the customs
of the heathen they learned while
under Hellenistic influences.
"The doctrines of the Essenes were, however, tinged by FOREIGN
INFLUENCE. In their neglect of the Temple sacrifices,
and in
their condemnation of
wedlock, THEY DEPARTED from the full
observance of the Law ...
THEY ALSO APPROACHED THE EGYPTIAN
SCHOOL in their allegorical
interpretation of many parts of
Scripture" (Conder, "Judas Maccabaeus,"
p. 210).
There is no question that the Essenes were recipients of many
pagan doctrines -- and many
of them came from Egyptian Hellenism.
Schurer again tells us that Essenism
represents "a Judaism of
quite peculiarly blended
ultra-Pharisaic and Alexandrian views
[and] appears in alliance
with Pythagoreanism [a pagan
philosophy] AND WITH MANY
RITES OF EGYPTIAN PRIESTS" (ibid., p.
208).
It is clear that Egyptian Hellenism, the
Greek philosophies
inherited by
doctrines. Their teachings were certainly far from those
of
Moses.
"So Essenism
can be understood ONLY WHEN REGARDED AS A
BLENDING OF JEWISH AND GREEK
IDEAS" (Ency. Biblica,
col. 2011).
The Truth About the Pharisees
Like the Essenes,
many of the Pharisees had adopted the pagan
belief in the immortality of
the soul ("Wars of the Jews," II, 8,
14). This doctrine is plainly recognized by
scholars, as has
been shown above, to have come
from heathenism, not from
Scripture.
However, it seems as if the Pharisees were
not willing to go
as far as the Essenes in its complete pagan interpretation. Some
of the Pharisees seem to have
had certain reservations concerning
the new doctrine. Josephus, himself a Pharisee and thoroughly
acquainted with their
doctrines, makes a vague distinction
between the Pharisee belief
and that of the Essenes. He says the
Pharisees believed in an
"immortal vigour" to be in the body;
while the Essenes
believed outright in the "immortality of the
soul" ("Antiquities
of the Jews," xviii, 1, 3 & 4).
There seems to have been doubts in the minds
of some Pharisees
in regard to this
doctrine. However, it appears certain
that
most of them believed in it,
but with varying degrees of
interpretation.
Of course, the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul is not
taught in the Scripture. In fact, the Scripture teaches just the
opposite. For example, we read in Ezekiel 18:4,
"The soul that
sinneth, it shall die."
See also verse 21. Clearly, a
soul can
die! And also, the New Testament teaches that only
Christ has
now immortality -- no other
man has (I Tim.
Who Were the Apocalyptists
In the second installment of this series mention
was made of
other minor religious sects
which have been called by our modern
historians by the name Apocalyptists. The
name denotes those who
supposedly reveal
"hidden truths" or "secret doctrines."
There are extant several books written by these
minor sects,
or perhaps only by
individuals, which show their peculiar beliefs
or their prophetical
expectations. These sects certainly
differed from the major
groups of Judaism. And they assuredly do
not represent any large
religious movements among the Jews.
"The Apocalyptic literature certainly
represents an element in
the Judaism of its time, BUT
IT WAS AN ELEMENT OF VERY MINOR
IMPORTANCE compared with
those [the Pharisees, etc.] in which lay
the real vitality and
strength of Judaism. It is a fundamental
mistake to suppose that the
Apocalyptic literature can explain
what Judaism really stood
for, in that or any other age"
(Herford,
"Judaism in the New Testament Period," p. 11).
The writings of these few individuals or
religious sects were
completely rejected by the
Jews. Some of the reasons for their
rejection by the other sects
is because they were obviously
contradictory with one
another in many ways; they were at
variance with the popular
teaching of the Scriptures.
All of the writings of these Apocalyptists were written DURING
or sometime after the period
of the religious anarchy. Some were
written even as late as the
First Century A.D.
Their teachings on the whole, while having a
Jewish basis,
reflect men's opinions and
ideas which were absorbed from
Hellenism. The teachings of the various books are
extremely
diverse. Strong elements of Hellenism are found in
some, and in
others to a lesser degree (Ency. Biblica, col. 2010, 2011).
There is no question that some of their
teachings, even the
manner in which some of them
wrote, were directly influenced by
Egyptian and Syrian
Hellenism. Their teachings represent
those
of some individual teachers
who, after the religious anarchy,
began to teach their own
religious beliefs independent of the
Pharisees, but nonetheless,
equally as erroneous.
"Traces of Syrian Hellenism, which had
been implanted among
the less educated masses,
endured, and the victorious Judean
people [after the successful Maccabean Revolt] harbored a growing
semi-Hellenized crowd who had
NEITHER GRASPED THE PURE HEBRAIC
FAITH nor received the pure
Hellenic spirit. This populace
[certain leaders among them]
FOSTERED THE APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
WITH ITS FANTASTIC AND YET
SOMEWHAT MATERIALISTIC SPIRITUALITY,
which, while it was largely
an expression of the Hebraic mind and
a development of the
prophetic vision, SHOWS A MARKED IMPRESS OF
FOREIGN DOCTRINE" (Bentwich, "Hellenism," p. 335).
The principles behind the apocalyptic literature
are an
infusion of certain Jewish
beliefs with Hellenism. All of the
writings of these minor
sects, or perhaps only individual
writers, were quite varied
and contradictory.
"The aspect that that literature
presents is of so diversified
a character that it is
difficult to combine all the DIFFERENT
ELEMENTS into one connected
whole" (Schurer, "The Jewish People
in the Time of Jesus
Christ," sec. ii, vol. iii, p. 1).
Were These Groups Akin to the
Essenes?
Because so many of the doctrines of the
writers of these
various books seem to show a
near kinship to certain Essenistic
beliefs, some scholars have
endeavored to show that the authors
were undoubtedly part of that
group ("International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia,"
vol. i, p. 164).
This may well be the case.
Josephus mentions that the Essenes were fond of keeping "secret"
books that related doctrines
only the initiated could know ("Wars
of the Jews," ii, 8,
7). At least we are assured that these
sects who wrote the various
apocalyptic books were closer in
doctrine to the Essenes than any other religious group among the
Jews. They were not Pharisees; this much is
certain!
"Those who really do know the Pharisaic
literature, INCLUDING
ALL THE GREAT JEWISH
SCHOLARS, agree in the view that the
Apocryphal and Apocalyptic
writings represent a type (or types)
of Judaism DIFFERENT from the
Pharisaic type" (
in the New Testament
Period," p. 123).
The Truth About the Sadducees
The Sadducees completely rejected the
traditions of the
elders. They maintained that the Scripture alone was
sufficient
for religious truth (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 209). In
this connection, the
Sadducees were certainly right.
The actions of the Sadducees against the
erroneous opinions of
the Pharisees seemingly puts
them in a good light -- as though
they were zealously upholding
the Law of God and His divine
truth. However, the Sadducean
position was not as roseate as it
may appear on the
surface. There were real reasons behind
the
Sadducees' apparent stand for
the acceptance of only the
Scripture, and those reasons
were not always out of honor for the
Scripture or even God.
Can we say the Sadducees respected the
Scripture when many of
the plain teachings of the
Word of God they openly renounced?
They clearly rejected the
Scripture teaching of the resurrection;
they did not believe in
angels nor spirits. Yet the Scriptures
taught these truths! (See Job
14:4; Eze. 37:1-14; Dan. 12:1-3;
Exo. 14:19; Dan. 6:22; I Sam. 18:10, etc.) To reject such
fundamental doctrines as the
resurrection and the existence of
the spirit world, shows that
the Sadducees did not hold the
Scripture teaching in very
high esteem.
Why Sadducees Rejected
Traditions of Elders
It will come as a surprise to many people to
realize that the
reason the majority of
Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic
traditions of the elders,
so-called, was NOT because of a
reverence for the Scripture
and an abhorrence for heathen
customs. Their motive for rejecting these new
religious laws, in
reality, was on account OF
THEIR LACK OF INTEREST IN RELIGION.
They did not care for ANY
MORE religious laws than were
necessary.
It is clearly known that the majority of
Sadducees were not
zealous for religion. Their main interest lay in securing for
themselves political
positions of power among the influential
people in
power more than anything
else. They did not want to subject
themselves to any of the
religious laws of the Pharisees, nor
[even] of the Scripture, as
we will soon see. The Sadducees
represented the
"worldly-minded" sect of the Jews -- not
especially interested in
religion. (Almost every society has had
or presently has such
religious sects, and the Jews were no
exception -- they had their
"Unitarian" sect.)
"They [the Sadducees] saw in the
traditions of the elders an
excess of legal strictness
which they refused to have imposed
upon them, while the advanced
religious views [of the Pharisees]
were, on the one hand
SUPERFLUOUS TO THEIR WORLDLY-MINDEDNESS,
and on the other,
inadmissible by their higher culture and
enlightenment" (Schurer, "The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus
Christ," sec. ii, vol.
ii, p. 41).
The Sadducees simply did not want to be
burdened with more
religious laws. They thought the Laws of Scripture were
certainly enough, without
adding more! And, in fact, sometimes,
if the Scripture did not
teach what they wanted, they would even
disallow it.
"The Sadducees, with the easy
indifference of men of the
world, finding that THERE WAS
QUITE ENOUGH IN THE LAW FOR THEM TO
OBEY, denied that there was
anything obligatory outside the Books
of Moses (Renan,
"History of the People of Israel," vol. 5, pp.
41, 42).
With their rejection of the traditions of
the elders and their
acceptance of only the
Scripture, it is not to be supposed that
they were interested in
getting the people back to the religion
of Moses or in bringing the
people to a proper reverence for the
Scripture. They were willing to accept just what they
had to, in
order to retain THEIR
political positions among the rich and
wealthy of Jerusalem
("Antiquities of the Jews," xviii, 10, 6).
"Their whole doctrinal position GAVE
THEM LIBERTY TO FOLLOW
THEIR DESIRES FOR POLITICAL
POWER AND WORLDLY SATISFACTION.
Hence they had a DEEPER
INTEREST IN SUSTAINING THE POWER OF THE
REIGNING PRINCE [whether
Jewish or Roman] THAN IN MAINTAINING THE
OBSERVANCES OF MOSES"
(Riggs, "A History of the Jewish People,"
p. 111).
While on the surface it may have seemed like
the Sadducees
were a little closer to the
truth, because they maintained that
the Scripture was sufficient
Law to have, yet the fact is, they
were just as far away from
the truth -- even farther! While the
Sadducees blamed the
Pharisees for not adhering to Scripture for
their doctrines, they
themselves were rejecting doctrine after
doctrine of plain
Scripture. They were no more following
the
complete directions of the
Scriptures than were the Pharisees.
Sadducees Reject Other
Scripture Teaching!
Throughout the Scriptures we are distinctly
shown by
prophecies and by examples
that God at certain times intervenes
in the affairs of individuals
and of nations. There are
multitudes of prophecies
which show that God is very soon going
to personally intervene in
the affairs of mankind. See, for
example, the Books of Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
But the Sadducees believed not a word of
this! They believed
that God did not direct the
mind of man in any form or manner --
all things that happened were
he result of man's own doing, God
never intervened!
"And for the Sadducees, they take away
fate [the determination
of God], and say there is no
such thing, and that the events of
human affairs are not at its
[God's] disposal; but they suppose
that ALL our actions are in
our power, so that we are ourselves
the cause of what is good,
and receive what is evil from our own
folly"
("Antiquities of the Jews," xiii, 5, 9; "Wars of the
Jews," ii, 14).
The Sadducees were wrong in this! In the Scripture it shows
that God at times directs
individuals and nations to do certain
duties (Isa.
10:13-15, etc.). Of course, not every single
action
an individual does is being
determined by God (Eccl. 9:11). The
Pharisees, in this case,
understood correctly that God intervenes
in the affairs of mankind
when He considers it necessary for the
carrying out of His plan, but
on the whole, mankind's actions are
his own ("Antiquities of
the Jews," xiii, 5, 9).
The Sadducees certainly did not have belief
in many truths of
the Scripture. By disbelieving in the resurrection,
disbelieving
in the spirit world and also
rejecting the fact that God ever
intervenes in the affairs of
man, they show clearly that they had
little regard for the Word of
God.
"They [the Sadducees] were very nearly
free-thinkers, and in
all cases were men of little
religion, mere worldlings. Their
wisdom was all worldly. The doctrines attributed to them by
Josephus, concerning liberty
and divine Providence [that is, the
lack of divine Providence],
are interpretations or compromises
after the Greek fashion. For them all [the Sadducees] this was
only an attempt to reduce the
supernatural to its minimum, a
process for eliminating
God" (Renan, "History of the People of
Israel," vol. v, p. 40).
As pointed out by Schurer:
'"THEIR INTERESTS WERE ENTIRELY IN
THIS WORLD, AND THEY HAD NO
SUCH INTENSIVELY RELIGIOUS INTEREST
AS THE PHARISEES"
("The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus
Christ," sec. ii, vol.
ii, p. 39).
Brief History of the
Sadducees!
When religious authority was again
established among the Jews
after the period of religious
anarchy, the Pharisees were anxious
for the people to start
living a religious life, even though they
brought into their religion
many of the new customs from
Hellenism. However, the majority of Sadducees made no
real
attempt to return to
religion. They certainly saw no reason
for
accepting the many new
customs as extra religious duties to
perform.
The majority of Sadducees were priests (Cycl. of Bib. Thee.
and Ecc.
Lit., vol. ix, p. 238) who had been ordained of God to
teach the people the
Scriptures. The forefathers of the
priests,
the Sopherim,
were entirely faithful in their appointed task.
But the majority of priests
after the period of religious anarchy
MADE NO ATTEMPT to teach the
people the Scriptures. One of the
main reasons for their attitude
was because most of them had been
out-and-out Hellenists! (Herford,
"Talmud and Apocrypha," pp.
77, 78). Among all the Jews in Palestine, the priests
had become
the most Hellenistic.
After the religious anarchy, when the lay
leaders, the
Pharisees, began to exert an
influence over the people, they
"refused to recognize
the authority of the priests as a class,
and inasmuch as many of THE
PRIESTS HAD PROVEN UNFAITHFUL
GUARDIANS OF THE LAW, they
would not entrust to them the
religious life of the
people" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic
Essays," p.
209).
Thus, many of the priests joined with, or
rather comprised the
sect of the Sadducees, which,
in all principles, rivaled the
Pharisees. The origin of the priestly sect of the
Sadducees was
actually prompted as a
reaction to the Pharisees' taking over
much of the religious control
of the Jewish people. The
Sadducean sect was not formed because of any endeavor on the
part
of the priests to return to
the original Law of Moses; nor did
the priests attempt to gain
the people to accept only the
Scriptures as Law. This sect evolved as merely a reaction to the
assumption of power by the
lay Pharisees.
Many Priests Continue in
Hellenism
After assimilating much of the "higher
culture and
enlightenment" of
Hellenism, the priests were not altogether
ready to disengage themselves
from it. Even after the religious
anarchy, many of the priests
retained their love for the culture.
The Sadducees actually represented the
division of the Jews
which continued a reverence
for the ETHICAL VIEWS of Hellenism.
It is true that they did NOT
hold to the many RELIGIOUS DOCTRINES
of the pagan cults of
Hellenism, but they did retain many of the
social aspects of the
culture. It was almost imperative that
they did, so the Sadducees
thought, for they were in constant
contact with the political
powers in Jerusalem who found it
necessary to adhere to much
of the Hellenistic beliefs in order
to carry on matters of state
with the other countries around.
Thus, many of the priests did
not completely repent of their
secular Hellenism, even
though on the religious side they
acknowledged the Scriptures
as the only Law.
"They [the Sadducees] made, however,
THE OPEN DOOR THROUGH
WHICH GREEK INFLUENCES CAME
BACK INTO THE LAND, and, as another
has tersely said, 'the
antagonism between them and the Pharisees
was really A SECONDARY
VERSION of the old feud BETWEEN THE
HELLENISTS AND THE
HASIDEANS'" (Riggs, "A History of the Jewish
People," p. 111). The Hasideans were
those Jews of the Maccabean
Revolt who maintained a zeal
for religion, and, of course, the
Hellenists were the Jews,
many of them priests, who had no
interest in religion.
It is clear that this comparison is
correct. The Sadducees
were simply the remnants of
the Hellenists who cared nothing for
religion, while the Pharisees
were descendants of the
religionists -- the Hasideans.
"Politically, the Sadducees were, as a
party, OPEN TO FOREIGN
INFLUENCES, and it was
through them THAT HELLENIC CULTURE SPREAD
IN ISRAEL" ("The
Cambridge Companion to the Bible," p. 134).
In other words, the Sadducees were really
secular Hellenists.
Their acceptance of the
Scripture as the only code of Law, even
though they rejected much of
its teachings, was really out of
spite to the Pharisees who
accepted the so-called traditions of
the elders. The Sadducees saw no need of being overly
religious
by the acceptance of
burdensome customs and rites.
"THEIR INTERESTS WERE ENTIRELY IN THIS
WORLD, AND THEY HAD NO
SUCH INTENSIVELY RELIGIOUS
INTEREST AS THE PHARISEES" (Schurer,
"The Jewish People in
the Time of Jesus Christ," sec. ii, vol.
ii, p. 39).
They had no desire to practice real
religion, neither did they
think it necessary to teach
the people the Laws of God. Even
though the majority of
Sadducees were priests, and were ordained
of God to instruct the people
in righteousness, they totally
renounced their
responsibility.
"Such as they were, the Sadducees had
little or no direct
influence upon the mass of
the people, nor did they seek to have.
They made no effort to teach
the people, presumably because THE
THOUGHT OF DOING SO NEVER
ENTERED THEIR MINDS" (Herford, "Judaism
in the New Testament
Period," p. 122).
"We shall perhaps be not far wrong if
we represent the
Sadducees as holding the
ancestral religion MAINLY AS AN
INHERITANCE and NOT AS A
LIVING REALITY ... It is in accordance
with this view that THEY DID
NOTHING TO ENLARGE THE MEANING OR
INCREASE THE INFLUENCE OF THE
TORAH as the Pharisees did" (ibid.,
p. 121).
The Sadducees made no attempt whatever, that
we have record
of, to make the Scriptures
known to the people or to carry out
their God-given function of
instructing the people in the Law.
They did not see the
importance of it! In fact, they were
even
willing to sacrifice the Laws
of Scripture if they could gain
politically from it.
"They were the LESS RESTRAINED BY ANY
RELIGIOUS SCRUPLES from
engaging in public affairs
WHICH INVOLVED SOME AMOUNT OF
COMPROMISE WITH
GENTILES" (ibid., p. 122).
Thus, Schurer
adequately describes the Sadducees as
pre-eminently having "A
RECESSION OF THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE" rather
than a zealousness for the
Scriptures ("The Jewish People in the
Time of Jesus Christ,"
sec. ii, vol. ii, p. 39).
What You Should Remember
About the Sects
It becomes quite obvious, when the truth is
known, that the
sects of Judaism were not
really teaching the Law of Moses. What
all of them had done, in one
degree or another, was to blend many
pagan customs and beliefs,
along with various man-made opinions,
with the Law of Moses and
then endeavored to teach their
contradictory doctrines as
the truth of God.
The Pharisees had accepted many customs of
the heathen as
so-called traditional laws
from Moses. They had also enacted
many of their own
commandments which by-passed the commands of
the Scripture and in fact,
the Pharisaic commands even annulled,
in many cases, the plain
commandments of God.
The Sadducees were disinterested in
religion! The only
reason, in reality, that they
had any connection with religion at
all was because most of them
were priests who had the hereditary
right to minister in the
the religious life of the
people. They maintained their
hereditary religious right
mainly for political purposes in order
for them to more easily
pursue their worldly-minded aspirations,
not out of any desire to
teach the people the truth of God.
The Essenes had
accepted many heathen customs and beliefs
without reservation. Almost all their doctrines were
antagonistic to the Law of
Moses.
The writers of the Apocalyptic books also
show, in varying
degrees, an impress of
foreign doctrines and philosophies. All
of the books are different
from one another and represent the
contradicting opinions of
certain individuals or minor sects.
The writers of the
Apocalyptic books were probably, in one way or
another, connected with the Essenes.
Thus, all the religious sects of the Jews
can be adequately
shown to be schismatic
deviations from the pure and simple Law of
Moses. They were all affected by the beliefs that
were
encountered by the Jews
during the period of religious anarchy
when Egyptian and Syrian
Hellenism were rampant throughout
Palestine.
The combined numbers of the Jews who
belonged to the religious
sects of Judaism, however,
numbered less than 5% of the total
Jewish population of
Palestine in the days of Christ. The
great
majority, the Common People,
were not overly interested in
religion. From the time of the religious anarchy, there
was
never any real collective
religious authority among the Jews like
the Sopherim. All the people went their own ways. The majority
never got back to religion as
during the days of the Sopherim.
Outside of a nominal
adherence to some basic forms of religion,
the masses were not zealously
concerned. And, there can be no
doubt that the confusing and
contradictory examples of the
various sects were
discouraging to the populace. Truly,
Christ
came to a people who had no
shepherd to guide them into the truth
of God (Matt. 9:36).
Good News
November 1961
Vol. X, Number 11
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
This eleventh installment
brings us to time of Jesus -- and
explains how the Jews
attempted to justify their human
traditions.
by Ernest Martin
WE CONTINUE with the story of the Pharasaic doctrines.
Their
teachings represent by far
the major part of Judaism and its
beliefs in Jesus' day. The other sects were of much less
prominence during the time of
Christ, and after the destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. the
other sects virtually disappear from
Judaism. The most important denomination to study is
Pharisaicism -- the heart and core of Judaism.
We found in previous chapters that the Jews
originally used
Scripture to interpret
Scripture. This was and is the only
method to use for a proper
understanding of God's Word. We today
are told to use this very
method if we are to understand the true
doctrines of God. See Isaiah 28:9, 10.
With the introduction of the so-called
traditional laws of the
elders by the Pharisees, a
NEW method of teaching had to be used
in order to teach these new
laws. The Scripture could no longer
be used to teach the new
traditional laws for there was no
indication of them in the
Word of God. The Jews therefore
adopted what has become known
as the "Mishnah-form."
The Mishnah-Form
of Teaching
The word "Mishnah,"
in Hebrew, means literally "second!"
The
Mishnah-form of interpretation means "the
second-form." The true
Scriptural form was to the
Jews the "first-form" or the one used
by Moses and the
prophets. But all of the traditional
laws of
the Pharisees were accepted
by appealing to the new Mishnah-form.
When the Mishnah-form
was used, it was not necessary to appeal to
Scripture for proof; the authority
of the teacher or teachers who
issued new commandments
independent of Scripture was assumed
sufficient to consider them
to be the Word of God.
Mishnah-Form of Interpretation Used Sparingly -- At First!
The first use of the Mishnah-form
by the Pharisees was in
their acceptance of the
so-called traditional laws the customs
inherited from
Hellenism. The Pharisaic leaders were
forced to
recognize these new customs
as proper religious practices, for
they knew the people would
not give them up.
The Pharisees did not first invent the Mishnah-form and then
use it to teach the
traditional laws. Just the opposite
occurred. The acceptance of the new customs from
Hellenism,
without any Scripture proof,
brought the Pharisees to realize
they were teaching IN A NEW
FORM NOT PREVIOUSLY USED. The
Pharisees recognized that
they had begun to use a new method of
teaching by accepting the
traditional laws without Scripture
proof.
"FINDING NO CONVINCING PROOFS FOR SUCH
LAWS IN THE BIBLE, THEY
TAUGHT THEM INDEPENDENTLY OF
SCRIPTURAL PROOF i.e. IN THE
MISHNAH-FORM" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic Essays," p. 229).
Though all the Pharisees agreed that the
traditional laws had
to be accepted, many of them
were reluctant about perpetuating
the new form of
teaching. Many of the early Pharisees
thought
that the use of the Mishnah-form was proper in admitting the
traditional laws into the
religious requirements of the Jews, but
they did not want to see its
indiscriminate use in the future.
It was obvious that the use
of this new form could bring about
multitudes of new traditions
-- all of them without Scripture
proof.
The inevitable happened!
Instead of the Mishnah-form
being discarded after the
traditional laws had been
brought to the place of divine law, its
use was increased. You will remember that Joseph ben Joezer,
called "the Permitter," issued three new laws which were
completely devoid of
Scripture proof. These three laws were
enacted by using the Mishnah-form! His laws
were the first ones
to be enacted after the
traditional law became a part of
Pharisaic belief.
Lauterbach tells
us that many of the Pharisees did not appear
overly enthusiastic when
Joseph ben Joezer
introduced his
teaching in the new Mishnah-form.
"When he [Joseph ben
Joezer] used new methods of
interpretation for the first
time, his colleagues hesitated to
follow him ..."
("Rabbinic Essays," p. 228).
The Pharisees knew full well that it was
wrong to use the
so-called Mishnah-form
for making laws. Even though they had
all
accepted the customs of the
heathen, by using this form, some of
them balked at making further
laws without any Scripture backing
at all. However, this reluctance did not last
long! The very
fact that the Pharisees
considered themselves as having the
spirit of prophecy -- having
the power to teach the current will
of God, gave them incentive
to further utilize this new teaching
occasionally, especially
since they had the precedent of Joseph
ben Joezer. Thus, after the time of Joseph ben Joezer, we find
the Mishnah-form
being used more and more as time progressed.
These subsequent teachings of the Pharisees
were termed
"traditions of the
elders."
By the time of Christ, the Pharisees had
developed the
Mishnah-form so extensively that they were teaching for
doctrines
hundreds of commandments of
men without the slightest backing of
Scripture (Mark 7:7).
"THEY INSISTED THAT THEIR DECISIONS
MUST BE ACCEPTED AS
AUTHORITATIVE ...''
("Rabbinic Essays", p. 235).
If anyone would oppose them, such as the
Sadducees or other
groups, when the Pharisees
taught their laws independently of
Scripture proof, the
Pharisees would haughtily maintain that they
did not need the Scripture to
back them up. They felt they could
teach in the Mishnah-form any time they pleased and needed no
Scripture proofs for their
teachings.
It is difficult to believe that men who
claimed to be the
servants of God would resort
to such deductions. But the
Pharisees did!
AND TODAY THERE ARE MANY CHURCH
DENOMINATIONS CLAIMING TO BE
CHRISTIAN WHICH DO THE VERY
SAME THING. There are millions of
people, calling themselves
Christian, who feel they do not have
to keep the Words of the
Bible, but rather must obey the words of
their religious leaders who
teach many doctrines completely
contrary to the Bible.
There are millions of people in the world
today who are no
better than the
Pharisees. Many church denominations
today use
the same Mishnah-form
of interpretation (not using the Scripture
for their doctrines), just
like the Pharisees did before and
during the days of
Christ. Christ condemned the Pharisees
for
teaching as true doctrines
the commandments of men (Mark 7:7).
The Jews THEN -- as many NOW
-- knowingly taught their new laws
and commandments "ON THE
AUTHORITY OF THEIR OWN REASON AND
CONSCIENCE, AND NOT BY
SEEKING THEIR AUTHORITY IN THE WRITTEN
TEXT [the Bible]"
(ibid., p. 70).
If we are the children of God, we had better
be obeying EVERY
word of God as Christ
commanded (Matt. 4:4).
The Pharisees had their chance to follow the
Scriptures before
they accepted the customs of
the people that had been inherited
from Hellenism. But to please the populace as a whole, they
adopted the new customs and
rejected the Word of God which
commanded them not to do such
things (Jer. 10:1-4).
The Word of
God was rejected, and in its
place was instituted the religion of
Judaism.
Lauterbach tells
us why the Pharisees had to practically
abandon the older method of
teaching that was used by Ezra,
Nehemiah and the Sopherim -- termed the Midrash-form. Notice
what he says:
"The exclusive use of the Midrash-form threatened to endanger
the authority and teachings
of the Pharisees. These
apprehensions caused the
Pharisaic teachers to make more
extensive use of the Mishnah-form and in some cases even to
prefer the same to the Midrash-form. For to
give all the halakic
teachings [new laws] of the
Pharisees in the Midrash-form as
based on Scripture WOULD HAVE
EXPOSED THESE TEACHINGS to the
attack of the Sadducees"
(ibid., p. 231).
In other words, the Sadducees, who were
mainly priests and
maintained that all teaching
should be dependent upon Scripture,
could easily counter the
Pharisees as long as they taught in the
Midrash-form of trying to appeal to Scripture. So, the Pharisees
taught in the Mishnah-form which did not have to rely upon the
Scripture for support.
Pharisees Used Scripture at
Times
The Pharisees would, at times, it is true,
make reference to
certain scriptures that might
seemingly give support to their
independent teachings. In doing so, the Pharisees became
notorious for their methods
of forcing the Scripture to teach
what they wanted it to teach.
When they endeavored to use the Scripture,
the Pharisees
would, in almost every case,
have to stretch the plain meaning in
order to make it mean
something entirely different from the
actual meaning. Using this forced method of appealing to
Scripture opened them up to
further attacks by their opponents,
and it is not surprising that
appealing to the Scripture became
unpopular with the Pharisees.
"If the Pharisees arrived at a certain
decision by means of a
new interpretation, the
Sadducees COULD ALWAYS dispute that
decision by refuting the
scriptural proof offered for it. IT WAS
POSSIBLE for them to argue
that the Pharisaic interpretation was
unwarranted and that the
scriptural passage DID NOT MEAN WHAT THE
PHARISEES TRIED TO READ INTO
IT ... THE PHARISEES WERE WELL AWARE
THAT SOME OF THEIR
INTERPRETATIONS WERE RATHER FORCED, AND THAT
THEIR OPPONENT'S ARGUMENTS
AGAINST THESE INTERPRETATIONS WERE
SOUND" (ibid., p. 232).
This method of reading into the Scripture
what it clearly did
not teach was a method of
interpretation inherited from Hellenism
during the period of the
religious anarchy.
In a book published by the Jewish
Theological Seminary of
America, entitled
"Hellenism in Jewish Palestine," by Dr. Saul
Lieberman, new, startling
information confirms this. Dr.
Lieberman states that the
Greek Law Colleges taught their
students the art of twisting
the law according to the required
aim and purpose (ibid., p.
63). During the religious anarchy,
many Jews attended these
schools. The Greeks took great pride in
being able to make a law
teach what in reality it did not teach.
The Pharisees used this same
method!
"THEY [the Jews] WOULD CERTAINLY NOT
HESITATE TO BORROW FROM
THEM [the Greeks] METHODS AND
SYSTEMS WHICH THEY COULD CONVERT
INTO A MECHANISM FOR THE
CLARIFICATION AND DEFINITION OF THEIR
OWN TEACHINGS" (ibid.,
p. 64). Lieberman informs us that
"RABBINIC LITERATURE
ABOUNDS IN SUCH ARTIFICIAL AND FORCED
INTERPRETATIONS" (ibid.,
p. 63).
He cites an example from the Talmud that
illustrates how
forced interpretations of the
Scriptures were used. An example
is recorded in
"Sanhedrin 17a." It states
that one prominent
Rabbi insisted that no
individual could be admitted to the
Sanhedrin UNLESS HE WAS ABLE
TO PROVE FROM THE SCRIPTURE THAT
REPTILES WERE CLEAN. Of course, the Scripture plainly states
that all reptiles are unclean
(Lev. 11:41-42).
The reason that such fallacious
interpretations were required
of the Rabbis was to see if
members of the Sanhedrin were skilled
enough in the Law, so they
could, if necessary, twist the plain
meaning of the Law to meet
any requirement of a particular case.
Another Rabbi, using the same illustration,
thought that a man
was not qualified to sit in
the Sanhedrin unless he could give a
hundred arguments for
declaring a reptile clean or unclean.
The
Rabbis reasoned that a person
who could accomplish such a task
was qualified to sit in
judgment over others, because, if
necessary, adequate grounds
for acquittal could be given in any
case (ibid., p. 63).
This deceptive skill enabled them also to
EFFECTIVELY give
false grounds for CONDEMNING
THE INNOCENT, as they did in the
case of Jesus Christ!
Pharisees Admit They Left the
Teaching of Moses
The Pharisees were well aware that they were
leaving the
religious teachings delivered
by Moses and the Prophets. Records
are found in the Jewish
Talmud which register many statements of
the early pre-Christian
Pharisees. Notice that their own words
are a witness to the fact
that they were well aware that they
were leaving the ways of
Moses.
In a book of the Talmud called "Temurah," in section 15b, we
have the statement of one
eminent Pharisee. It reads as follows:
"All the teachers who
arose in
until the death of [last days
of] Joseph ben Joezer
STUDIED THE
TORAH AS MOSES DID, BUT
AFTERWARDS THEY DID NOT STUDY THE TORAH
AS MOSES DID."
The statement could hardly be plainer. This is a clear
admission that the Pharisees,
beginning with the days of Joseph
ben Joezer DID NOT STUDY AND
TEACH AFTER THE MANNER OF MOSES.
The Pharisees, from this time
(160 B.C.) stopped teaching the
Word of God as had Moses!
The Pharisees KNEW they were departing from
the truth. They
KNEW that they were enacting
new commandments which had not the
slightest hint of authority
in the Law of Moses! Pharisaic
Judaism, with its innumerable
man-made commandments, was never
the religion of Moses! Judaism represents a departure from the
religion of Moses, and the
Pharisees themselves candidly admit
it.
Let us notice another example from the
Talmud.
Another statement, in Yebamoth
72b, concerns one Eleazar, the
son of Pedat,
who happened to use a Scripture text to refute the
personal opinion of his
opponent, another Pharisee, on a
particular question. The opponent, endeavoring to repudiate the
son of Pedat
in front of the other Pharisees, answered with these
words: "I see that the
son of Pedat STUDIES IN THE MANNER OF
MOSES."
Notice
the plain implication here! If a person
used the
Scripture to prove or to
disprove a particular point of doctrine,
he was contemptuously accused
of teaching IN THE MANNER OF MOSES
-- as Moses did!
The Pharisees were fully conscious of the seriousness
of the
actions they were
taking. They actually knew better! But they
went ahead with their designs
to teach without any Scriptural
support.
"The teachers who introduced the
conception of the Unwritten
Torah [the traditional laws]
... WERE QUITE AWARE OF THE EXTREME
GRAVITY OF THE STEP THEY WERE
TAKING" (
Apocrypha," p. 113).
No wonder Christ rebuked the Pharisees so
strongly. "But woe
unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the
kingdom of heaven against
men: for ye neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer ye them that
are entering to go in." (Matt. 23:13)
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye
compass sea and land to make
one proselyte, and when he is made,
ye make him twofold more the
child of hell than yourselves."
(Matt. 23:15)
Pharisees Enact Multitudes of
Commandments
Without Scripture Support
By the time of Christ, the Pharisees had
made new commandments
numbering into the
thousands. They dealt with every phase
of
religious life among the
Jews. Christ said that these
COMMANDMENTS OF MEN were so
burdensome that they were extremely
difficult to bear, and in
fact, many of them were impossible of
fulfillment (Matt.
23:4). (We will see what some of these
man-made commandments were,
in later installments.)
To show you how multitudinous they were, we
need only turn to
the Jewish Talmud. The English translation of the Talmud, which
contains the major part of
the independent teachings of the
Pharisees, is a huge work
numbering 34 volumes.
Some of the laws recorded in the Talmud were
enacted after the
time of Christ, but the
majority were in existence during New
Testament times. Even the Judaism of modern times is based
upon
these Pharisaic laws. The modern orthodox section of Judaism
adheres almost completely to
these laws recorded in the Talmud.
Later Judaism
The Rabbis, one- to four-hundred years after
Christ, did not
dare discuss the origin of
the traditional laws nor how the
Pharisees came to teach
without using the Scripture. These later
Rabbis knew quite well where
the traditional laws had come from,
but they did not want the lay
people to know that these laws,
which had been falsely taught
to the lay people as coming from
Moses, were not originally
from Moses at all. It would have been
disastrous to Judaism to
teach that the traditional laws were
really not from Moses and
that the commandments of the Pharisees
were nothing more than the
commandments of men, because THE WHOLE
FOUNDATION OF JUDAISM rested
on these fallacious laws.
Thus, among the 34 volumes of the English
translation of the
Talmud wherein are recorded
these traditional laws, there is no
mention whatever of how these
traditional laws came to be
accepted.
"The history of the development of the Mishnah-form REFLECTS
UNFAVORABLY upon the
TRADITIONAL CHARACTER of the Pharisaic
teachings. THIS IS THE REASON FOR THE TALMUDIC SILENCE
ABOUT THE
ORIGIN OF THE
MISHNAH-FORM" (Lauterbach, "Rabbinic
Essays," p.
248).
From this, we should have no difficulty in
understanding why
thousands of Jews were
brought to the truth of Christianity in
the First Century. They were told the truth about the laws of
the Pharisees by the true
ministers of Christ. Once the Jews
came to a knowledge of the
truth in this matter, many of them
abandoned the commandments of
men for the truth of God. This is
one of the main reasons the
Pharisees, and the later Jews, had
such an abhorrence for
Christianity. The acceptance of
Christianity meant the
rejection of the teachings of the
Pharisees in Judaism, and a
return to God and His commandments.
In the next installment we will see how the
Pharisees thought
to ANNUL some of the laws of
God, when it suited their purpose.
Good News
December 1961
Vol. X, Number 12
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
Why were the Pharisees in New
Testament times divided among
themselves? Why did they come to Jesus to ask Him to
settle
disputes? Here is the answer!
by Ernest Martin
PREVIOUS installments of this series have
shown how the
Pharisees and the other chief
leaders of the Jews disregarded the
Word of God. They had accepted customs that came directly
from
heathenism, which the
Scripture clearly commands us not to do
(Jer.
10:1-4). In many cases they knowingly
taught commandments
that were completely contrary
to the plain words of God. They
even ADMITTED that in so
doing THEY WERE LEAVING THE TEACHINGS OF
MOSES.
The majority of these commandments of the
Pharisees were
enacted on the pretext that
they had special divine revelatory
powers from God to reveal to
the Jews His PRESENT will. The
Scriptures, to their
reasoning, could not suffice alone for
teaching the people.
"The written Torah [the old Testament]
was good for the age in
which it was given, or in
which it was first read; but the
written Torah alone COULD NOT
SUFFICE FOR LATER AGES" (
"Talmud and
Apocrypha," p. 113).
This prevailing opinion of the Pharisaic
teachers is manifest
today also in modernism among
Protestants.
Pharisees Make Void God's Law
The Pharisees were confronted time and time
again with many
Mosaic commandments which
they considered impractical in the
society in which they were
living. This led them to a dangerous
conclusion. Since they were living in a later age than
Moses and
because times had changed
considerably, they felt that many of
the Laws of the Scripture had
to be drastically altered or, in
some cases, completely
annulled. The Pharisees saw no reason
why
such alteration or rescission
should not be done, especially
since they convinced
themselves they were in authority to reveal
the CURRENT will of God.
Herford says that
these Pharisaic teachers came to the place
many times of "ACTUALLY
ANNULLING AN EXPRESS COMMAND IN THE
WRITTEN TORAH [the Scripture]
AND REPLACING IT BY A HALACHAH
[their own law] IN ACCORDANCE
WITH A [supposed] HIGHER MORAL
STANDARD" ("Talmud
and Apocrypha," p. 73).
Jesus refers to one Law of God, among many,
that they
completely set aside or
annulled. Notice Mark 7:10-13:
"For Moses said, 'Honour
your father and your mother'; and,
'He who speaks evil of father
or mother, let him surely die'; but
you say, 'If a man tells his
father or his mother, What you would
have gained from me is Corban' (that is, "given to God") -- then
you no longer permit him to
do anything for his father or mother,
THUS MAKING VOID THE WORD OF
GOD through your tradition which you
hand on. AND MANY SUCH THINGS YOU DO" (RSV).
In this case, they had actually annulled a
specific one of the
Ten Commandments of God that
had been given through Moses. They
claimed to have given to God
offerings that should have been used
to help Father and Mother.
We are left in no doubt about the attitude
of the Pharisees in
regard to Moses and his
teaching. If they did not approve of
what Moses taught, they
rejected him! It was just that simple!
Jesus said: "Had ye
believed Moses, ye would have believed me ...
BUT YE BELIEVE NOT HIS
WRITINGS" (John
Actually, the Pharisees had come to the
place of believing it
impossible to keep the civil
Law of Moses. The only thing they
could do, they reasoned, was
either to alter, or disregard, many
of its
"impractical" instructions.
They had no hesitation in
carrying out their
intentions.
"The teachers ... were quite aware of
the extreme gravity of
the step they were
taking. THEY INTENDED TO MODIFY THE
WRITTEN
COMMANDMENT IN VARIOUS WAYS,
and in the course of time ACTUALLY
DID SO IN NUMBERLESS
CASES. YET THEY HAD BEFORE THEM THE
PLAIN
INJUNCTION (Deut. 4:2): 'Ye
shall not add to the word which I
command you, neither shall ye
diminish from it; that ye may keep
the commandments of the Lord
your God which I command you'"
(Herford,
"Talmud and Apocrypha," p. 113).
It is almost impossible to believe that
religious leaders
claiming to serve God would
be so bold as to do such things, but
the Pharisees intentionally
did so.
"This conclusion that the written word
of the Torah MIGHT BE
MODIFIED OR SET ASIDE, OR
EVEN ANNULLED (AS WAS SOMETIMES DONE),
WAS DELIBERATELY DRAWN AND
CONSISTENTLY ACTED UPON by the
teachers who developed the 'halachah' [the new Pharisaic laws]"
(ibid., p. 112).
Why Christ Condemns Teaching
of Pharisees
Is it any wonder that Christ was so
indignant at the doctrines
of the Pharisees? Should we be amazed that He so sharply
rebuked
them?
"Well has Isaiah prophesied of you
hypocrites, as it is
written, this people honoureth me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me. Howbeit IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING FOR DOCTRINES THE
COMMANDMENTS OF MEN. FOR LAYING ASIDE
THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD YE
HOLD THE TRADITION OF MEN ... FULL WELL
YE REJECT THE COMMANDMENT OF
GOD, THAT YE MAY KEEP YOUR OWN
TRADITION" (Mark 7:6-9).
Now that we have the background to the
beliefs of the
Pharisees and their attitudes
regarding the Word of God -- as has
been presented thus far in
this series -- this Scripture should
take on much more
meaning. Jesus was rebuking the
Pharisees as
they had never been rebuked
before. And they needed every bit of
it!
Notice what Christ said elsewhere!
"Why do ye also transgress the
commandment of God by your own
tradition?" (Matt.
15:3.)
"THUS HAVE YE MADE THE COMMANDMENT OF
GOD OF NONE EFFECT BY
YOUR TRADITION" (Matt.
15:6).
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye shut
up the kingdom of heaven
against men: for ye neither go in
yourselves, neither suffer ye
them that are entering to go in"
(Matt. 23:13).
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are
like unto whited
sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful
outward, but are within full
of dead men's bones, and of all
uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous
unto
men, but within ye are full
of hypocrisy and iniquity" (Matt.
23:27,28).
Today's Churches Follow
Pharisees
In contemporary secular Christianity we find
millions of
individuals like the
Pharisees of New Testament times.
Numerous
professing Christian
denominations have MODIFIED the commandments
of Christ; many have SET
ASIDE or DISREGARDED His commandments;
and many of them have
intentionally ANNULLED the commandments of
Christ! Yes, our modern Christian civilization of
this Western
World is in the same or worse
spiritual condition as were the
Pharisees.
The past and present leaders of Christian
churches have
certainly resorted to the
same tactics as did the Pharisaic
leaders. It is time we realize that modern
Christianity has
paralleled the Jewish leaders
of New Testament times in assuming
the prerogative of altering,
overlooking and rescinding the plain
commandments of the
Scripture. Christ, who is the same
yesterday, today and forever
(Heb. 13:8), condemns it! "Howbeit
in vain do they worship me,
teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God ye
hold the tradition of men ...
Full well ye reject the commandment
of God, that ye may keep your
own tradition" (Mark 7:7-9).
Why Churches Modify
Commandments of Christ!
There are millions of individuals today who,
like the
Pharisees, claim to follow
Christ, and yet have modified the
plain and simple commandments
of Christ. Here is one example
among many, to illustrate
this fact.
In Matthew 5:38,39, we read: "Ye have
heard that it hath been
said, An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto
you, THAT YE RESIST NOT EVIL:
but whosoever shall smite thee on
thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also."
This is a classic statement of Christ which
has been modified
by different groups in
numerous ways. Most of the
Christ-professing ministers
today assume Christ meant just the
opposite from what He said in
the above passage. Most reason
that Christ surely could not
mean that you are not to resist evil
people and kill them if need
be! Is this what Christ said? No!
Christ said just the opposite
-- "love your enemies" -- A PLAIN
AND SIMPLE STATEMENT that any
ten-year-old can read and
understand. But today, this command of Christ in
particular is
MODIFIED by interpretations
so that it says just the opposite
from what Christ taught. The Pharisees were doing the same thing
with the Law of Moses!
Let us notice another commandment of Christ
that has been
completely disregarded by the
overwhelming majority of modern
denominations. It is Jesus' command found in John 13:14,15.
"If I then, your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet; ye
also ought to wash one
another's feet. FOR I HAVE GIVEN YOU AN
EXAMPLE, that ye should do as
I have done to you."
How many Christ-professing churches do you
know which follow
this command -- an example
that Christ gave to His disciples?
Very few! Most people have completely disregarded this
command
and example as though it were
not even in the Scriptures. Some
ministers, endeavoring to
explain away the illustration, say that
this was an example for the
original twelve disciples and not for
us today. But notice Matthew 28:19, 20: "Go YE
[the original
twelve disciples] therefore,
and teach all nations, baptizing
them into the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit: Teaching them [all
nations] to observe ALL THINGS
WHATSOEVER I HAVE COMMANDED
YOU ..." The example of foot washing
was commanded to the
disciples, and Christ ordered them to teach
all NATIONS the very things
He had taught them. But again, the
majority of ministers today
are using the same reasons for
disregarding the Scriptures
(i.e., times have changed) as did the
Pharisees in Christ's day.
Take another example. All readers of the Bible, scholars and
laymen alike, are quite aware
that the Sabbath is the day set
aside by God for divine
worship (Gen. 2:1-4; Lev. 23:1-3; Isa.
58:13, 14). The Sabbath day is from Friday sunset to
Saturday
sunset. All true followers of God have kept this day
as the day
of rest and worship. The Jews of Christ's day as well were
observing this day. Christ, Himself, kept the true Sabbath,
having ordained it at
re-creation as a day for the benefit of all
mankind (Mark
the Sabbath, and that day
only, as the weekly day of rest AND
worship. This was the only day which the early Church
observed:
this all competent Church
Histories affirm.
There is no indication, or even the
slightest hint, in the
Scripture that the Sabbath
was to be abrogated and another day
substituted for it. In fact, you might ask yourself the
questions: Just why should
the Sabbath have to be changed?
Wasn't it good enough? Was there something inherently WRONG with
that particular day -- so
that a BETTER had to be found as a
substitute? Just WHAT could make one day BETTER than
another?
And if one day is not
inherently better than another, why should
it be set apart -- sanctified
-- by any other authority than
God's express commands?
But there are millions of people today who
claim to be
following Christ and the
Bible who repudiate the plain command of
God in regard to His holy
day, the Sabbath, by observing another
day. These people are not following the Bible command
but are
rather following the command
of the Roman Catholic Church which
admits that it, not the
Bible, is the author of Sunday keeping.
(See "Who Changed the
Sabbath?" pp. 1-5, Published by Knights of
Columbus, St. Louis, Mo.)
The majority of professing Christians today
assume the Sabbath
command has been
ANNULLED. But it certainly has not been
done
away with IN THE BIBLE. It has only been supposedly annulled by
the Roman Catholic Church and
all the Protestant denominations
which follow her decision in
this matter.
Our Western World is doing today exactly the
same thing the
Pharisees did in New
Testament times. It is about time we
wake
up and get back to the true
faith which was ONCE delivered to the
saints of God (Jude 3).
God's Church today does not add to His
words, neither does it
subtract from them. It is in obedience to His commandments.
"And hereby we do know that we know
Him, IF WE KEEP HIS
COMMANDMENTS. He that saith, I
know Him, AND KEEPETH NOT HIS
COMMANDMENTS, IS A LIAR, and
the truth is not in him" (I John
2:3,4).
Pharisees' Commandments
Considered More
Binding Than Scripture
The Pharisees did not stop with merely
modifying, disregarding
or even annulling
Scripture. They maintained that the
commandments they enacted in
the place of Scripture were of MORE
IMPORTANCE than the Scripture
itself!
"The law of custom was quite as binding
as the written Torah;
nay IT WAS EVEN DECIDED THAT
OPPOSITION TO THE DECREES OF THE
SCRIBES WAS A HEAVIER TRANSGRESSION
THAN OPPOSITION TO THE
DECREES OF THE TORAH"
("The Jewish People in the Time of Christ,"
sec. ii, vol. i, pp. 333, 334).
Now let us go to the Talmud itself and
notice some of the
statements of some of the
early Pharisees themselves. Their
situation in regard to their
own teachings will be obvious.
From the Jerusalem Talmud, Berakoth i, 7, we read: "The
sayings of the elders HAVE
MORE WEIGHT THAN THOSE OF THE
PROPHETS." The elders, in this case, are the Pharisees.
In Sanhedrin xi, 3, it says: "An
offense against the sayings
of the Scribes IS WORSE THAN
ONE AGAINST THOSE OF SCRIPTURE."
They demanded the people
refer to them as spiritual "Father,"
"Rabbi," or
"Master" (Makkoth 24a and Matthew
23:7-10). The
Pharisee teachers even
required the people to reverence them
almost as God Himself. "Let thine
esteem for thy friend border
upon thy respect for thy
teacher, and respect for thy teacher ON
REVERENCE FOR GOD" (Aboth, iv, 12).
"Each Scribe [learned Pharisee] out-weighted
all the common
people, who must accordingly
pay him every honour.
Nay, THEY
WERE HONOURED OF GOD HIMSELF,
and THEIR PRAISES PROCLAIMED BY THE
ANGELS; and in heaven also,
each of them would hold the same rank
and distinction as on
earth. Such was to be the respect paid
TO
THEIR SAYINGS, THAT THEY WERE
TO BE ABSOLUTELY BELIEVED, even if
they were to declare that to
be at the right hand which was at
the left, or vice versa (i.e.
even if they proclaimed doctrines
contradictory to
Scripture)" (Edersheim, "Life and Times of
Jesus
the Messiah," vol. i, p. 90).
Because of the religious authority that the
Pharisees claimed
they had, they in general
demanded the first rank in all
circumstances. "They
loved the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the
chief seats in the
synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and
to be called of men, Rabbi,
Rabbi" (Matt. 23:6,7). The term
"Rabbi" means,
literally, "MY MASTER." It
denotes the personal
ruler or leader of the
people.
Edersheim records
an incident of two great Rabbis who were
complaining because they had
been greeted in the market place by
the common greeting "May
your peace be great" without the added
"My Masters"
("Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," vol. ii, p.
409). "So weighty was the duty of respectful
salutation by [use
of] the title Rabbi, that to
neglect it would involve the
heaviest punishment"
(ibid., vol. ii, p. 409).
The unusual esteem accorded to the Pharisaic
teachers is
purely a product of
Hellenistic influence. The Greeks
maintained
a high reverence for the
scholars, teachers and men of wisdom.
Titles of respect and
reverential honor were used in the Greek
schools for their
teachers. The use of "Rabbi,"
"Master,"
"Father" and
various other exalted titles of the Pharisees was
certainly borrowed from the
examples of the Greeks. A learned
Jewish historian, Moses Hadas, admits that these various customs
of the Rabbis "were
parallel to Greek usages, and shall suggest
that since they were
introduced after the spread of Hellenism
they might have been inspired
by Greek practice. The
extraordinary reverence paid
to learning may be part and parcel
of this same influence"
("Hellenistic Culture," p. 71).
True Christian disciples are warned not to
assume these
exalted titles of
"Rabbi," "Father" or "Master." Such high,
eminent titles of respect are
deserved only by God. He is MASTER
AND LORD. He is the spiritual Father of the
faithful. The
Pharisees had no right to
arrogate to themselves such titles, and
neither does any
minister. Today, however, the majority
of
Christian ministers are
appropriating as a designation the very
names that God says not to
use. How many priests today are
called
"Father"? How many ministers
use the title of "Reverend"
which, in the Scripture, is
used only as a designation of God?
(Psa.
111:9.)
Pharisees Contradict Each
Other
Just before the birth of Christ, many of the
Pharisees had
formed themselves into
institutions, or what became known as
Schools, for the purpose of
study and for counsel concerning the
legislation of new laws. Those who felt one particular way in
regard to new legislation
would assemble with other Pharisees who
believed in a similar vein.
The two major Schools of the Pharisees were
the School of
Hillel and the
Schools, Hillel
and Shammai, gathered together other Pharisees
who believed in many ways
similar to themselves. Both these
Schools issued new
commandments in regard to religious worship.
These two major Schools of the Pharisees
were the rivals of
one another. The points in which they disagreed were
virtually
INNUMERABLE (Cyc. of Bib., Thee. and Ecc.
Lit., vol. ix, p. 472).
It has been supposed that the tendency of
the Hillel School
was to make the new
commandments they enacted less burdensome,
and that the Shammai School made commandments which were heavier
and more burdensome. However, both Schools legislated many
strict and burdensome
commandments, over and above the
requirements of Scripture,
and Edersheim shows that the Hillel
School was even more strict
than the Shammai in some cases ("Life
and Times of Jesus the
Messiah," vol. ii, p. 407).
The commandments of these two Schools
covered practically
every religious practice of
the Jews. They made many ridiculous
and overly burdensome
commandments concerning the observance of
the Sabbath. They enacted strict ritualistic laws
regarding the
washing of the hands, pots,
pans, jars, etc. They also made
numerous ritualistic
regulations regarding the preparing and
eating of foods. Their teachings extended to all phases of
physical worship.
It is rather ironic that these two Schools
were both composed
of Pharisees and yet their
teachings, in so many cases, were
totally at variance with one
another. One School would bring out
a new commandment regarding a
particular religious rite or
custom, and proclaim that the
new commandment was mandatory for
all pious Jews to
perform. In consequence of this, the
other
School would issue a similar
commandment, usually as a rebuttal
and in most cases
diametrically opposite from the other.
"Controversy between these two groups
extended over many
topics and excited
considerable warmth of feeling" (Herford,
"Judaism in the New
Testament Period," p. 160).
As mentioned before: "THE POINTS ON
WHICH THEY DIFFERED WERE
ALMOST INNUMERABLE" (Cyc. of Bib., Thee. and Ecc.
Lit., vol. ix,
p. 472).
Both Schools Vied for
Absolute Authority!
The controversies between these two major
Pharisaic Schools
were undoubtedly sparked by
the desire of both of them to be the
ultimate authority among the
Pharisees.
Edersheim says:
"IN TRUTH, their differences seem too often
PROMPTED BY A SPIRIT OF
OPPOSITION, so that the serious business
of religion became in their
hands one of RIVAL AUTHORITY and mere
wrangling" ("Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah," vol. ii, p.
407).
This was the condition of the Pharisees just
before and during
the days of Christ! Like professing Christianity today, the
Pharisees were in confusion
over their own doctrines. Their
continual arguing among
themselves placed them in embarrassing
positions among the People
and the other religious sects. Yet,
they continued their squabbles
and controversies! Little wonder
many sought to hear Christ.
"MANY, VERY MANY OF THEM [their
controversies] are so utterly
trivial and absurd that only
the hairsplitting ingenuity of
theologians can account for
them: OTHERS SO PROFANE that it is
difficult to understand how
any religion could co-exist with
them. Conceive, for example, two schools in
controversy whether
it was lawful to kill a louse
on the Sabbath" (ibid., vol. ii, p.
407, note 4).
The controversies between these two Schools
were so numerous
and some so vulgar -- that it
is impractical to list them all.
For any who may be interested
in them, a list has been prepared
by Schurer. See his "The Jewish People in the Time
of Jesus
Christ," sec. ii, vol. i; p. 361.
You can imagine what the controversies
between these two
prominent Pharisaical Schools
did to the faith of the people who
were endeavoring to observe
the teachings of the Schools. Who
were the people to
believe? Both schools claimed to be
speaking
the words of God, and yet
they violently disagreed with one
another in almost every
point.
These two Pharisaic Schools were not the
only dissentious
bodies among the Pharisees.
"The Pharisees at this time were
SHARPLY DIVIDED INTO VARIOUS
SECTIONS which were NOT
exhausted by the rival schools of Hillel
and Shammai"
(ABC., p. 841).
"THE PHARISEES WERE DIVIDED INTO MANY
SECTS, and the doctrines
of individual teachers were
often contradictory ..." (Conder,
"Judas Maccabaeus," p. 205).
It is important we realize that no real
creed existed among
the Pharisees. "The
Pharisees WERE NEVER a homogeneous body
possessed of a definite
policy or body of doctrines"
("Encyclopaedia
Britannica," 11th ed., vol. xxi, p. 347).
The differences of opinion among all the
Pharisees, remember,
arose with the making of new
commandments, in the Second Century
B. C., by Joseph ben Joezer, called "The Permitter."
This reminds a person of modern Christianity
with all its
differing doctrines and
conflicting beliefs. And yet, each
church, today, claims that it
is preaching the truth of Christ.
Contradictory Commandments
Called Those of God!
We have the records of some Pharisees who
attempted to
conciliate the differences
between the two main antagonistic
divisions of the Pharisaic
group. But, in their undertaking to
reconcile the groups, they
still had to maintain that both
divisions were truly teaching
the Word of God.
Lauterbach records
an attempt to reconcile the teachings of
the Hillel
and Shammai Schools and still show that both their
teachings were the Words of
God. He refers to a statement in the
Talmud found in Erubin 13b. Lauterbach records:
"A heavenly voice was heard declaring
that BOTH the words of
the
[despite their disagreements]
ARE THE WORDS OF THE LIVING GOD,
but the practical decision
should be according to the words of
the School of Hillel" ("Rabbinic Essays," p. 243, note
78). (The
bracketed portion of the above
quote is Lauterbach's.)
The majority of Pharisees favored the
any other, and this led to
the conciliating parties leaning
toward that particular
School's teachings.
In the Talmud, Gittin
6b, there is another reference, this
time to a Jew named Elijah
[not the prophet] who endeavored to
reconcile the differences
between two Pharisaic teachers. Elijah
is reported "to have
said that GOD DECLARED BOTH THE OPPOSING
VIEWS of Rabbi Abiathar and Rabbi Jonathan TO BE THE WORDS OF THE
LIVING GOD" (ibid., p.
243, note 78).
What nonsense!
"All these utterances were intended to
serve as a refutation
of the attacks made against
the teachings of the Rabbis
[Pharisees] ON ACCOUNT OF
THEIR DISAGREEMENTS" (ibid., p. 243,
note 78).
It was impossible for the Pharisees to
directly admit that one
or the other School was wrong
(or as actually was the case, that
both were wrong). They were forced to concede that both
Schools'
conflicting teachings WERE
FROM GOD.
Hillel School Becomes Most Important
The proneness of the majority of Pharisees
to follow the
decisions of the
Jesus the Messiah," vol.
i, p. 239), finally led to the complete
ascendancy of that
School. It was not until the destruction
of
Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and the
subsequent dispersal of the Jews
from Palestine, that the Hillel School became the paramount
teaching body. During the lifetime of Christ and the Apostle
Paul, the Pharisees were
still divided into the various Schools.
But with the destruction of
Jerusalem, the Jews tended to
solidify their schismatic
groups. Even many of the Jewish sects
became extinct after the
Roman destruction of Jerusalem and most
of the Jews gravitated
towards adhering to the
interpretation. Orthodox Judaism today has for its basis the
teachings of Pharisees who
maintained the commandments and
principles of the Hillel School.
However, in the days just before and during
the life of
Christ, the Pharisees were
still having their rivalries among
themselves. They were teaching their manifold
contradictory
commandments from the various
Schools.
It should not be difficult to understand why
Christ condemned
the Pharisees for rejecting
the commandments of God and for
"teaching for doctrines
the commandments of men." They had
left
the simple and plain Law
which God had given them through Moses
and had replaced it with
their own set of commandments.
The next installment will reveal more
surprising Pharisaic
traditions.
IS JUDAISM
the Law of Moses?
This
thirteenth installment reveals the truth about the Jews' laws which turned the Sabbath from a blessing into
a burden —and how close some today
approach this narrow minded attitude
toward the Sabbath.
by
Ernest Martin
Synopsis:
WE found in the last issue that the Pharisees were divided into
two Schools,
the Hillel and Shammai. The
Burdens Saddled on the People
The many commandments that had been enacted by the
Pharisees from the time of Joseph ben Joezer, "the Permitter,"
until a short time after the destruction of
The Jewish Talmud was written over a period of years from A.D.
200 until about
A.D. 500. The Talmud is composed of two sections: the original Mishnah and a commentary on the Mishnah called the Gemara. The commentary, the Gemara,
is the largest part of the Talmud. Both sections together comprise 34 huge volumes in
the English
translation of the Jewish Talmud!
The Talmud is a vast storehouse of Jewish laws and commandments, plus the discussions and
commentaries on them.
It is not necessary to review the whole of the Mishnah
in order to understand
the spirit behind the Pharisaic commands. Only certain special examples of Jewish teachings
are necessary to
notice. These examples illustrate that the Judaism of Christ's time was not the religion of Moses!
The Perversion of the Sabbath
The basic Sabbath Law of God was not annulled by the Jewish
leaders. However,
it was modified in many, many ways which are only hinted at in the Scriptures.
In the divine Scriptures God does not take volumes of texts to explain what a person's every activity on
the Sabbath should
be. Rather, we find basic and fundamental principles of Sabbath observance. See especially
Isaiah 58:13, 14. But the Jews of Christ's day were not content with Sabbath principles
— the
principles of rest from labor, of having time to study, pray, meditate and go to Sabbath service. They
sought to do what
the inspired Moses and the prophets never thought necessary.
The Pharisees enacted law after law to regulate every single
activity that could
be done on the Sabbath. They discarded the plain principles of the Scriptures. They instituted in
their place, without
any Scripture authority, the cold and formal Sabbath rules of legalistic Pharisaism, in which no real
principles were left—only a maze of exacting and over-burdensome laws.
The Sabbath laws of the Pharisees were part of their erroneous
teaching which
prompted Christ to denounce their binding heavy burdens "which were grievous to be
borne" (Matt. 23: 4). And burdensome they were! And absurd!
Edersheim has this to say concerning these man-devised Sabbath
laws of the Pharisees.
"They will show ... how utterly unspiritual the whole system was, and how it required no small
amount of learning
and ingenuity to avoid committing grievous sin" (Life and Times
of
Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii, p. 779).
There is a direct analogy between the laws of the Rabbis and those
of the Greek
philosopher Plato. The Jewish historian, Moses Hodas,
admits: "The rabbis were men of faith, and their object was the service of
religion, but their method for securing discipline was, like
Plato's, to provide authority for men's smallest actions" (Hellenistic Culture, p. 82). Such laws as
enacted by the Rabbis
were never conceived until after Hellenistic influence had implanted itself strongly in
Let us notice some of their man-made commandments concerning
Sabbath observance.
First of all, the Pharisees
decreed a person
would be guilty of breaking the Sabbath if he carried from one place to another any food which
weighed as mu:h as a dried fig! Only the weight of half a dried fig or an
olive was allowed, otherwise it would be considered, by the Pharisees, as work, and was prohibited (Shabbath, 28a,
70b, 71a).
A person would also be guilty of desecrating the Sabbath, in
their eyes, if he carried more than one swallow of milk or enough oil to anoint a
small part of the body (Shabbath, 76b).
Even to carry a sheet of paper was forbidden (Shabbath, 78a).
If a fire broke out on the Sabbath in a person's home, he could
carry out only the
necessary food for the Sabbath. It was interpreted in this manner: If a fire broke out Sabbath
evening (Friday night
) , the owner could take out enough food for three meals; if the fire
broke out
on Sabbath afternoon, he could take out only enough .food for one meal.
All the
rest of the food had to be left to burn up with the building, for the Pharisees prohibited
putting out such a fire — that would be working and constitute a grievous sin (Shabbath, 115a-
Also, the victim could take out only necessary
clothes. It was permissible, however, for a person to put on a few extra clothes, as long as
they were worn. Thus,
a person could take out some clothes from the burning building, take them off, then go back and
put on more clothes,
continuing until he was unable to reenter the building (Shabbath, 120a).
It would be possible to go on and on with a multitude of similar
examples. But
from these few, the carnal spirit of Sabbath legislation of the Pharisees can be seen.
Christ's Teaching About the Sabbath
Christ taught the Jewish people the true spiritual intent of
the Sabbath. God's
Sabbath is not a burden to man. It is a spiritual blessing. Christ said: "The Sabbath was made
FOR man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27, 28).
To do good works on the Sabbath, however, was forbidden by
the Pharisees.
Notice how they sought to accuse Christ for healing a person on the Sabbath.
"And
He entered again into the synagogue; and
there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day; THAT THEY MIGHT ACCUSE HIM. And He saith unto
the man which had a withered hand, Stand forth. And He saith unto them,
is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days, or to do evil?" (Mark
3:1-4). The Pharisees could hardly
answer the question, and they did
not!
They knew
that they could not say it was right to do evil. But they also knew that their laws forbade doing this kind of good on the Sabbath. So, the Pharisees "held their peace."
The
Washing of the Hands
The
Pharisees had many other burdensome commandments such as the ritualistic
washing of the hands before eating. The Bible
records the attitude of Jesus and His
disciples to these commandments of men.
"Then came together unto Him the Pharisees
and certain of the scribes, which came
from Jerusalem. And when they saw some
of His disciples eat bread with defiled,
that is to say with un-washen hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the
Jews, except they wash, they eat not... Then
the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, 'Why walk not Thy
disciples according to the tradition of the
elders, but eat bread with un-washen hands?'" (Mark 7:1-5).
The Pharisees called this rite a custom of the elders, of
Moses and the prophets. But it was nothing of the kind. Edersheim gives reference
to the fact that the washing of the hands was similar to rites that were used in heathen religious ceremonies (Life and Times of Jesus
the Messiah, vol. ii, p 9, note 2). There
can be no doubt that many of these foolish rites of so-called cleanliness came directly from heathenism during the time the Jews were under the domination of Hellenism. As Lauterbach says:
"Certain religious practices, considered by the later teachers as part of the traditional law, or as handed down from Moses, originated in reality from other, perhaps
non-Jewish sources, and had no authority other
than the authority of the people who
adopted them. This, of course, reflects
unfavorably upon the authority of
the traditional law in general''
(Rabbinic Essays, p. 241).
The first traces of the tradition of washing the hands before meals, in a ritualistic sense (the rite was never intended to be strictly a Mosaic hygienic one), is found in certain Jewish writings having their origin in Egypt immediately following the period of the religious anarchy—about 160 B.C. In the Sibylline Books, there is mention of some Egyptian Jews continually washing their hands in connection with prayer and thanksgiving (Sibyl, iii, 591-593). The Jews in Palestine were also using this new custom. However, Edersheim tells
us: "It was reserved for Hillel and Shammai, the two great rival
teachers and heroes of Jewish traditionalism, immediately before Christ, to fix the Rabbinic
ordinance about the washing of hands
... This was one of the few points
on which they agreed..." (Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii, p. 13).
This particular rite was made into Law just before
the days of Christ. Edersheim continues, concerning this rite: "It was so strictly enjoined, that to neglect it was like being guilty of gross carnal defilement. Its omission would lead to
temporal destruction, or, at least, to
poverty. Bread eaten with unwashen hands was as if it had been filth. Indeed, a Rabbi who had held this command in contempt was actually buried in excommunication" (ibid., vol. ii, pp. 9, 10).
Washing
of Pots, Pans, Cups, Tables
Connected with the religious rite of washing
the hands before meals was the custom of
ritualistically cleansing any article which
might be considered to have ever come in contact
with any unclean thing. The Pharisees were ever meticulous in matters such as this.
They were especially concerned about cleansing
any article that may have been touched or
manufactured by a Gentile.
"They [the Gentiles} should, so far as
possible, be altogether avoided, except in
cases of necessity or for the sake of business.
They and theirs were defiled; their
houses unclean, as containing idols or
things dedicated to them; their feasts,
their joyous occasions, their very
contact, was polluted by idolatry; and there was no security, as if a heathen were left alone in a room, that he might not, in wantonness or by carelessness, defile
the ivine or meat on the table, or the oil or
wheat in the store. Under such circumstances,
therefore, everything must be regarded as having been rendered unclean" (ibid., vol. i, p. 92).
Theirs was a physical, carnal religion —not
spiritual worship.
"Milk drawn by a heathen, if a Jew had not
been present to watch it, bread and oil prepared by them, were unlawful. Their wine was wholly interdicted —the mere touch of a heathen polluted a whole cask; nay, even to put one's nose to heathen wine was strictly prohibited!" (ibid.,
vol. i, p. 92).
Because the Pharisees did not want to take any chances on any of their utensils being defiled, they kept up the meticulous custom of washing their cups, pots, brazen vessels, and their tables (Mark 7:4). Indeed, not only were the Pharisees afraid the heathen might deliberately defile some of their utensils, but even the Common People of the Jews were distrusted and looked upon with disdain by the Pharisees.
"As an Israelite avoided as far as possible all contact with a heathen,
lest he should thereby be defiled, so did the Pharisee avoid as far as possible contact with the non-Pharisee, because the latter to him included in the notion of
the unclean Am ha-aretz [the
common Jew]" (Schurer,
The Jewish People in the
Time of Jesus Christ, sec. ii,
vol. ii, p. 24).
The Common People of the Jews were considered
unclean by the Pharisees
because they did not hold to the strict rules
of the traditions of the elders. Notice
some of the opinions about the Common People
that the Pharisees held, in the Talmud:
"The garments of the Am ha-aretz [the Common People] are unclean for the Perushim [the
Pharisees]" Chagiga, ii, 7).
"If the wife of a Chaber [an associate, member of the Pharisee fraternity] has left the wife of an Am ha-aretz
grinding in her house, the house is unclean if the mill stops; if it goes on grinding, only unclean so far as she can reach by stretching out her hand" (Tohoroth,
vii, 4).
The meaning of the last quotation is that only
the flour that was in arm's reach of the Commoner was unclean, all the rest, which could not be touched by her, out of arm's reach, was still clean.
From these quotations, you can see just how
ridiculous, how absurd the Pharisaic commandments were!
Pharisees
Could Not Associate With Common
People
Even though the Pharisees were the rulers of the
synagogues, and though some of the Common People
consistently attended them, nevertheless, the Pharisees remained aloof socially. The Pharisee was not to invite a common person into his home, nor was he to go into the home of a commoner.
"A Chaber [an associate of the Pharisee fraternity] does not go as a guest to an Am ha-aretz nor receive him as a guest
within his walls" (Demai, ii, 3 ).
You can imagine what this snobbish exclusiveness
of the Pharisees did to the religious zeal
of the Common People. No wonder that most of the
people stayed away from the synagogues ruled by the Pharisees.
The Pharisees looked upon the Common People as
having on them a curse of God since
they did not follow the rules of the
Pharisees. In the New Testament it is
recorded that the Pharisees accusingly
asked an officer: "Are ye also deceived?
Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees
believed on Him? But this people [the multitudes, the Am ha-aretz] who knoweth not the law are cursed"
(John
The example of Christ and the disciples, by
contrast, was one of love and compassion for
the people at large. No wonder many of
the people were beginning to believe on Christ—these
were the Am ha-aretz.
"And He went forth again by the seaside;
and all the multitude [the Common People]
resorted unto Him, and He taught them. And as He
passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus
sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, 'Follow me.' And he arose and followed Him. And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans [tax collectors] and sinners [the ordinary term used by the Pharisees for the Common People] sat also together ivith Jesus and
His disciples: for there were many and they followed Him. And when
the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto His disciples, 'How is it that He eateth
and drinketh with publicans and sinners?' When Jesus heard it, He saith
unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:13-17). Also Matt. 9:9-13 and Luke 5:27-32.
The Pharisees would not have thought for a
moment of going into the home of a commoner
and partaking of a meal with him. That
was just not done! It was the practice of Christ
and His disciples to eat with the Am ha-aretz— the Common
People.
Christ's opinion of the ridiculous and snobbish
commandments of the Pharisees is summed
up in Mark 7:4-8. Notice! "And when
they come from the market [where many Common
People worked], except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups,
and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. Then the
Pharisees and scribes asked Him, 'Why walk not
Thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen
hands?' He answered and said unto them, 'Well
hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying
aside the commandment of God, ye hold the
tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: AND MANY OTHER SUCH LIKE THINGS YE DO.' And He
said unto them, 'Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.'"
Christ
Kept Scripture Commands
Christ taught the disciples to obey the commandments of God and reject the
commandments of men. Actually, Christ came to
restore the Laws of God among a people who
had lost them. The Pharisees had
become blind leaders of the blind (Matt.
"Take heed and beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees." The
disciples, upon hearing this remark of Christ, thought He was talking of leavening that was put in bread to make it rise. Then Christ answered: "How is it that ye do not understand that I spake
it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the
Sadducees? Then they understood how that He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matt.
16:6-12).
Christ came to a Jewish world which, in most
part, had totally left the simple Laws of the
Scriptures. Most of the people were not
really religious at all. The Common People,
over 95% of the population, were truly sheep
without a shepherd.
Christ came into a world which needed Him and His Message. They needed
God's Laws and His commandments restored. God the Father, at the appropriate time, sent His Son into the world to give it
the unadulterated Laws of the Scripture in their
full spiritual significance. Christ not only came to restore the Scripture as the proper guide to the people. He
also came with the New Testament revelation
which gave completeness to the Scripture.
(To be continued next issue)
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
Fourteenth Installment:
Jesus said: "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: whatsoever
they bid you, that do!" What did Jesus mean ? What was "Moses' seat?" What was its authority?—and
what about that authority today?
by Ernest Martin
CHRIST
said: "The scribes and
the Pharisees sit in
Moses' seat: all
therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and- do..!' (Matthew 23:2,3).
Scribes and
Pharisees Sat on Moses' Seat
What did Jesus
mean?
This command has perplexed many people. The
example Jesus gave while on earth was clearly against the
tradition and commandments of the Pharisees. Christ openly
repudiated not a few of them, claiming them as
nothing more than the commandments of men (Mark 7:7).
He rejected, for example, the Pharisaic
commandments when He healed on the Sabbath (Mark
3:1-6). When He and His disciples got some handfuls of grain to eat on the Sabbath day, the Pharisees
told Him He broke their law (Luke 6:1-2).
Christ also rejected the traditions of the elders, which required the ritualistic washing of the hands before
meals (Luke
Does this mean that in some parts of Scripture,
Christ taught His disciples, by example and by
commandments, not to acknowledge the traditions of the Pharisees, and then in Matthew 23:2,3 He
commands them to observe them all? Does this mean that the teachings of Christ are
inconsistent? Not at all! The KEY is to understand the difference between the Jewish traditions and the authority vested in certain leaders when they
sat on Moses' seat.
What Did Christ Mean in Matthew 23?
The teachings of Christ are completely consistent!
He was not commanding His disciples to reject Jewish traditions in one breath and then to obey them in another. Even so, to obey every
single teaching issued by the Pharisees would have
been impossible of fulfillment! Conceive trying to observe one teaching from
the
What, then, did Christ mean?
The important point to note in Matthew 23 is
that Christ told His disciples to obey everything the
scribes and Pharisees issued FROM MOSES' SEAT! These laymen had seated themselves on Moses' seat of authority in place of the Levites.
Even so, they were to be obeyed when acting in that capacity. There was a difference between the ordinary
independent teachings of the Pharisees, which varied
from time to time — and were often contradictory with one another — and the commands, which came from
Moses' Seat. The commands from Moses' Seat did not entail matters of opinion among differing Pharisees, but
rather they involved decisions of community importance, which affected the whole of the Jewish nation. The
commands from Moses' Seat were not enacted
exclusively for the Pharisees, as were
the Pharisaic commands. They were for all Jews. Christ is not telling His disciples to obey the ordinary teachings of the Pharisees,
but He is commanding
them to obey every command that came from Moses' Seat.
What Was Moses'
Seat?
In New Testament times there were two organizations under the Romans,
which were governing the Jews. One was called the Sanhedrin. This body of men has
already been mentioned. The Sanhedrin was the
successor to the Great Assembly, the governing body among the Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Great
Assembly was composed only of priests, but the Sanhedrin, which was established after the period of
religious anarchy, was composed of laymen and priests
alike. The functions of the Sanhedrin were similar in many ways to the older Great Assembly, but
there was one main difference in New Testament times. The Sanhedrin had gravitated to being more or less
a civil Supreme Court among the Jews, while
the Great Assembly had been both civil and religious.
That brings us to the second organization among
the Jews in Christ's time. This organization was
attached to the Sanhedrin, at least in principle, but did not
form an integral part of the Sanhedrin. This was
called the Great Beth Din — which means
in English the Great House of Religious Judgment. This was the religious Supreme Court of the land, while the Sanhedrin was primarily the civil
Supreme Court. There was a major difference between the two. In the Sanhedrin there were represented
both Sadducees and Pharisees, but the Great Beth Din was composed only of the scribes—the authoritative copiers of the Bible—and Pharisees — the most eminent of
religious leaders, the Doctors of the Law. (See Herford, Judaism
in the New Testament Period, pp. 153, 154.)
"The Great Beth Din ... was entirely Pharisaic and composed of 'doctors of the law'" (ibid., p. 153).
There were minor civil and religious courts among
the Jews throughout the land; but in Jerusalem were the Sanhedrin—the
civil Supreme Court, and the Great Beth Din—the religious Supreme Court. Both these organizations were of national
importance to all Jews everywhere (ibid., pp. 153,
154).
"The Great Beth Din, as the final court of
appeal, was undoubtedly a body of experts, the most
eminent and experienced teachers of the time" (ibid., p. 157).
The scribes and Pharisees who sat in this religious Supreme Court — the Great Beth Din—>were
the religious judges over the entire nation of the Jews. When they issued a decision in their official
capacity as members of the Great Beth Din, that
decision was mandatory on all Jews. Thus it was the scribes and Pharisees who were members of the
Great Beth Din WHO SAT IN MOSES' SEAT!
Only very few Pharisees sat in this religious
Supreme Court; the majority of the Pharisees had
nothing to do with its function. This was the organization to which Christ was referring when He commanded
His disciples to observe all they commanded even if their commandments were burdensome and hard to bear. He said to obey all the commands
issued from Moses' Seat!
Only Those in Great Beth Din Sat in Moses' Seat!
We have clear proof from the Jewish history, in
Rosh Hashanah 25a, 25b that only members of the Great
Beth Din were sitting in Moses' chair of authority. What was commanded from the Great Beth Din was, in the Old Testament congregation, of the same authority as
Moses. And, when we understand what kind of decision emanated from this religious Supreme Court, we can easily perceive why
such authority was given to it.
One of the major tasks of the Great Beth Din was to
proclaim each year the proper time for the beginning of the calendar
year. The Great Beth Din had to give their learned and
authoritative approval before the calendar year could officially begin. The mathematical calculations
used to determine when the year began were understood
by many, but the authoritative pronouncement of its beginning had to come officially from the Great
Beth Din—from Moses' Seat.
"It [the Great Beth Din] had entire charge of
the calendar system, and hence became the religious and national center not only of
The Great Beth Din also determined the settlement
of religious matters that were too difficult for individuals to ascertain on their own. It was to this
organization, the Supreme Court—-those in Moses' Seat — that Christ was referring when
He told His disciples and the multitudes to observe all they commanded.
How plain! The decisions of the Great Beth Din
affected all the Jews, and were unlike those
varying and conflicting teachings issued by the various Pharisaical Schools, which were designed mainly for
the Pharisees only to observe.
Why the
Expression: "Moses' Seat?"
The organization of the Supreme Court of Israel
goes back to Moses. He was the first ruler, under God, of a Great Beth Din. Notice Exodus 18:13-26. In this section
of Scripture we find that many of the Israelites were coming to Moses with their various problems. They were
completely overburdening Moses with their many problems—wanting to understand the will of God in particular matters. Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses,
told Moses that the proper thing to do was to ordain local judges (local Beth Dins) over the people and that only the most difficult cases
should be brought to Moses.
"So Moses hearkened to the voice of his
father in law and did all that he had said. And Moses
chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the
people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds,
rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they
judged [in courts] the people at all seasons: the hard cases they
brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves" (Exo. 18:24-26).
This was exactly the same manner in which the Jews
were being judged in the time of Christ. There were the lower courts of judgment for minor questions and
also the Supreme Court —Moses' Seat!
As long as Moses was alive, he sat, under God, in the highest chair in
the Supreme Court. It was he, and the other few leaders of
The Supreme Court did not cease with Moses. Moses
was the first to sit in that highest seat of authority
in the Supreme Court. But after him
were to come others who would assume the same authority—others
who were to sit in Moses' Seat.
Just before his death, Moses ordained that the
Supreme Court be perpetuated in
"If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between
blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of
controversy within thy gates [within Israel]: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up
into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and UNTO THE JUDGE THAT SHALL BE IN THOSE
DAYS, and enquire; and they shew
thee the sentence of judgment: and thou shalt
do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall shew thee; AND THOU SHALT OBSERVE TO DO ACCORDING TO ALL THAT THEY
INFORM THEE: according to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to
the judgment which they shall tell thee, THOU SHALT
DO: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they
shall shew thee, to the right hand nor to the left."
Notice the striking similarity of the language
used by Christ in Matthew 23:2, 3- Following the pattern of Deuteronomy, He said the scribes and Pharisees "sit in Moses'
seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, THAT OBSERVE AND DO ..." Christ is
paraphrasing Deuteronomy 17:10,11!
Yes, as long as the decisions of the scribes and
Pharisees were issued from Moses' Seat—in the capacity of religious judges, making decisions for the whole of the people—all those decisions HAD TO BE OBEYED!
If Christ had told the multitudes and His disciples
to disobey the decisions of the religious Supreme
Court established by God, He would have violated a fundamental teaching of Scripture. Therefore, Christ commanded the people
to respect in every way the decisions, which came from Moses' Seat—all of them!
While Moses was still living, he and the other
elders of Israel formed the Supreme Court, but the
command of God said that the decisions of the judges
"in those days"—at later times— were
also to be observed just as the Israelites
had obeyed the decisions of Moses.
God said that no Israelite was to decline either to the left or to the right from observing the decisions of Moses' Seat.
The next ruler of the Supreme Court after Moses
was Joshua. He was ordained to sit in the same chair of authority as Moses (Deut. 34:9). Many others followed
Joshua on down to Ezra and Nehemiah (Rosh Hashanah, 25a, 25b). And, in the days of Christ, there were
some of the eminent leaders of the Jews also sitting in
Moses' Seat such as Gamaliel who
instructed Paul.
Decisions of
the Great Beth Din
The decisions of the religious Supreme Court
were not the commandments of men enacted by the Pharisaic Schools. The Pharisaic commandments were mainly
intended for the Pharisees themselves or those who desired to follow their ways. But, the decisions of the Great
Beth Din affected all the Jews. The Zealots, Herodians, Sadducees, and other
sects were to follow the decisions issued by the
Great Beth Din.
As long as Jewish Christians attended Sabbath services in synagogues and
were thus part of the religious Jewish
community, they had to obey the Great House of Judgment — the Beth Din. This ceased
when Jewish Christians were forced to flee Jerusalem after Cestias' Roman army surrounded the city in 66 A.D.
Thereafter; Christians in Judaea were forced to live separate from their
Jewish neighbors.
These facts of history show that the authority of
the Great Beth Din always exceeded that of the Pharisaic Schools alone.
The independent teachings of the Pharisees were never issued from
Moses' Seat.
The only authority of the Great Beth Din today is in
the matter of the continual preservation of the written Word of God—the Bible—in Hebrew. God has committed this
responsibility to them as leaders of the Jewish community.
(To be continued next issue)
IS JUDAISM the Law of Moses?
This fifteenth and final installment reveals why the Jews
knew the Old Testament was not to be all of Scripture—and why the Jews rejected Jesus as the Christ when they
knew better!
by Ernest Martin
Synopsis:
IN THE
last installment we discovered that Christ
recognized the authority of the Scribes
and Pharisees when they sat in "Moses'
Seat" — and that "Moses' Seat"
represented the authority that God vested
in Moses. After Moses, God exercised His
authority in the Old Testament Church through judges, then high priests and finally the Sopherim,
under Ezra and Nehemiah.
By the
time of Christ, the Pharisees and scribes— who were mostly laymen, not priests,
and had usurped the authority in the
The KEY
to this enigma is made plain in Scripture. The
scribes and Pharisees usually spoke in their own name —not in the name of Moses. That is why the New Testament constantly states that Jesus taught with authority, "not as the
scribes" (Matthew
But what
if the scribes and Pharisees should err in a
decision? Were the people to obey them then? Of
course! "All therefore whatsoever they
bid you observe, that observe and do!" ordered Jesus! It was God's responsibility to judge those in the Great Beth Din, not the people's. The point is this: as long as God allowed them to exercise that authority,
they were to be obeyed. If God removed them—as He later did, then the people were to follow that new authority which God installed in their place—to carry out His Government.
Now take
an actual example of what did happen
just before New Testament times—and
notice what God required of His people!
Power
to Bind and Loose
Those in
Moses' Seat had authority to make binding
decisions regarding the observance of
Scripture commands. For example, in the
Scripture is the command that every seventh year all debts are to be cancelled (Deut. 15:1-8). God specifically commanded that no one should refuse to lend to a poor brother when the year of release draws near (verses 9-10). But, about fifty years before the birth of Christ there were so many Jews disobeying this command that when the sixth year would come around, the poor
people who needed to borrow money to bring in
their crops (or buy goods) for that working year were forced to go without the necessary money. Virtually
no one would loan out their money in the sixth
year.
Because
the majority of people who had money
would not obey the spirit of the Law and
love his neighbor properly (Deut. 15:9), the
Great Beth Din temporarily suspended the necessity for all debts to be released in the seventh year.
This enactment
was not for the benefit of the rich. It was for
the benefit of the poor who needed to have, and could now borrow, the money in order to earn a living. As long
as the Great Beth Din commanded such a decision it
was as if Moses himself had made it. Even the disciples were
obliged to obey this decision of the
Great Beth Din, for Christ told them to
obey all things whatsoever they bid
you observe.
Such a
decision, however, would not have had to be given by Moses. The reason should be obvious. Moses had both civil and religious
power to command individuals to
loan money to the less fortunate in the sixth
year, if he thought it necessary. However, in the days of Christ, and just before, the civil jurisdiction was not in the hands of the Great
Beth Din—the Romans were in control. Unlike
Moses, the Great Beth Din had only religious
authority over the people, not civil
authority. And the Romans, who had no
sympathy with the Law of God, favored the
position of the creditor who refused to loan money in the sixth year. This prompted most of the Jews who had
money to disregard the Law of God. Because the
Great Beth Din had no authority to force the people to obey it, the Great Beth Din, for the sake of the
poor who needed the money in the sixth year,
temporarily suspended the release of credit in the seventh year until such a time in the future when they could regain their proper civil authority. However, the people who were desirous of serving God were encouraged to maintain this Law and voluntarily release their creditors.
This
particular resolution of the Great Beth Din
was not an independent teaching of the Pharisees or a commandment of men. Schurer tells
us that this authoritative decision, among others, was "a registered declaration" of
the type, which "was deposited among the archives at Jerusalem" (The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, sec. II, vol. 1, p. 363).
The
decisions from the Great Beth Din, which
affected national policy, such as the above decision, were
officially entered in the authoritative
archives in Jerusalem. These decisions
were not the ordinary trivial
commandments of the disagreeing
schools of the Pharisees, which voiced
independent opinions, but were far
more important—these were from Moses'
Seat!
Take
another example.
About
four years before the destruction of
Jerusalem, in about 66 A.D., there were
eighteen decrees issued by the Jewish Great Beth Din, which became mandatory for all Jews to observe. These decrees—issued after great strife in the Court—were entirely anti-Gentile in every way. They demanded complete separation of the Jews from the Gentiles. See Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. I, p. 239.
One of
these decrees made it a sin to offer a
sacrifice to God on behalf of the Roman Emperor.
This repudiation of the Emperor was tantamount
to a declaration of war with Rome. And, four years later the Romans completely destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.
To enact
the eighteen decrees against contact with
the Gentiles, it became necessary for
the leaders of both the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai to
assemble together in order to make these
decisions appear to have the authority
of Moses. Either School alone did not
have power to make such authoritative decisions for all Jews; they only had authority among members of their own groups. But, when the eminent scribes and Pharisees assembled in the capacity of
the Great Beth Din, the decisions were reckoned as being from Moses' Seat and were mandatory for all Jews.
This
situation is very similar to what God's Church
faces today. There are some areas in the southern
United States, and also in South Africa, where human governments prohibit whites from assembling together each Sabbath with Negro brethren. Today is little different from apostolic days just before the destruction of Jerusalem!
Government
in the New Testament Church
Christ
told the disciples even before His death and
resurrection that among themselves
they were to exercise God's government in
His New Testament Church. Notice Matthew
18:15-20.
"Moreover
if thy brother shall trespass against
thee, go and tell him his fault between
thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou
hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then
take with thee one or two more, that in the
mouth of two or three witnesses every
word may be established. And if he
shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church [the authorities in the Church]: but if he neglects to hear the church, let
him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven."
This was
exactly the same procedure used by those
Jews who were sitting in Moses' Seat—in
the Great Beth Din. Remember how Christ said
that the scribes and Pharisees who were sitting in Moses' Seat were binding upon the people heavy burdens which were grievous to be borne? (Matt. 23:4.) Jesus' disciples
did not seat themselves in this authority.
Christ put them there because they had
been tried and rested. They qualified
to sit in positions of authority
in the New Testament Church. Just like those in Moses' Seat, in the Old Testament Church, they were to have power to bind or to loose!
Notice
another of Jesus' commands: "Again I
say unto you, that if TWO of you shall agree
on earth as touching any thing that ye
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in
heaven. FOR WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER IN MY NAME, there I am in the
midst of them."
When the
apostles heard Christ give that remarkable statement, they knew exactly what He meant! He was clearly telling His ministers that they were to carry out Christ's Government over the Church.
The
wording of Matthew 18:18-20 is in itself
proof of this. The Jews leave us historical
evidence, which shows that it took TWO or
THREE members of the Great Beth Din to form a quorum before any binding decision could be made. See Baba Bathra, l60a. The
bare minimum to form a quorum was TWO, but the Great Beth Din always endeavored to have at least THREE present before binding decisions were enacted. Christ gave His
disciples this same requirement.
The
Church Exercises Its Authority
In the
New Testament we have an example where
the leaders in the Church utilized their high
authority that Christ had given them. Christ made a decision through them binding upon all Gentile Christians.
We read
in Acts 15 that a misunderstanding came up between certain members n the Church in regard to circumcision. The matter concerned whether the Gentile Christians were required to be circumcised or not. Some of the Jews who had been converted thought that anyone in the faith should be circumcised, whether Jew or Gentile. (See verse 5.) Others thought it not necessary to burden them with this physical rite. Peter mentioned that God had called the Gentiles into the Church without their being circumcised (verses 7-9). The testimony of Barnabas and Paul was that God had given the Gentiles His Spirit even in their physical uncircumcision (verse 12).
A
decision had to be made in this case. And,
since the Church had been given authority
to bind or loose, a decision was made!
Peter spoke the decision. The Headquarters Church issued the decision. Its chief minister was James, the physical half-brother of Christ (James was
Joseph's first son, while Christ was the firstborn of God the Father). In explaining the decision, James appealed to the Scriptures, "Wherefore MY SENTENCE IS, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turning to God" (Acts 15:17-19).
And
verse 28: "For it seemed good to the
Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things."
The Holy
Spirit was guiding them into all
truth as Christ had prophesied (John
God's
Church today has divine authority to
reveal the will of God in matters of
Scripture too hard for the laymen to decide.
"Verily I say unto you, whatsoever
ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven: and whatsoever ye shall
loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven" (Matt.
Christ
gave this authority to His true Church "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph.
Old
Testament Not All of Scripture!
The Jews
were authorized to guard the three
sections of Holy Scripture that compose our Old
Testament—the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. But the Holy Scripture was not completed with those three sections alone. Four more sections had to be added which would make seven complete sections in all. These four sections comprise the New Testament
Scriptures. It was prophesied in the Old
Testament that more Scriptures were to come when the Messiah made His appearance. Let us understand this clearly!
Moses
Was Lawgiver and Type of Christ
Moses was
a most extraordinary prophet of God. The task that God had given him to accomplish was so great, so important, that Moses
received a designation from God that no other person—except One—has ever received. Even Aaron, being a type of High Priest, was of lower rank. Aaron was, in a sense, the prophet of Moses, and Moses was like God to the people (Exo. 7:1).
Why was Moses given such a high office? The reason is plain! God used him to accomplish something that had never been done before. Moses was commissioned to give the people the written and codified Law of
God. The Law was known before (Gen. 26:5), but it was not completely written in
a book and codified.
God spoke the Ten Commandments with His own mouth (Ex. 20:1). Never had God come to a people with such physical demonstrations of power and glory as when He revealed His Law.
The rest
of the law God commanded Moses to write.
God used only one man to reveal His
civil Laws to the Israelites. That man
was Moses. All subsequent Scripture is based on the laws revealed by God through Moses.
God told
Moses to warn the Israelites that there
was to come another person like
Moses. Notice Deuteronomy 18:15,18,19.
Another
Like Moses
Moses said, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, LIKE UNTO ME; unto him ye shall hearken." Then God
says, "I will raise them up a prophet
from among their brethren like unto thee, and
will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, / will require it of him."
Notice! There was to be another prophet like Moses. In other words, another lawgiver was to
arise. Why was this necessary? Because the people had not been given by Moses the complete spiritual revelation
of God! Isaiah 42:21 prophesied there was One
coming who would "MAGNIFY the Law and make it honourable."
By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, that Prophet still had not come!
In New
Testament times, the Jews were still
looking for that prophet who was to be like a God to
Who Was
That Prophet?
There has been only One individual since the time of Moses to fulfill the role of Lawgiver and God. This One is Jesus Christ! He fulfilled the role of THAT PROPHET to the letter. Even many of the Jews themselves, after observing the mighty works done by Christ, recognized that He was the One like unto Moses. Notice. "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth THAT PROPHET that should come into the world" (John
6:14).
And, by simply reviewing the "Sermon on the Mount" we can easily perceive that Jesus was the lawgiver that was to come. Notice the successive statements of Jesus: "Ye have heard that it hath been said ... but I say unto you" (Matt.
The teaching of Jesus was also to complete the final
written revelation of God—the Bible! Isaiah
Conclusion
Is Judaism the religion of Moses? A simple comparison with the Scriptures and with the Judaism of Christ's day will show, without controversy, that it was not!
Judaism
had its beginnings within the period of
religious anarchy (301 B.C.-165 B.C.). It
represents a combination of certain
Scripture truths with many ideas and customs of
the heathen and the varied opinions of men (Mark 7:7).
Judaism represents an abandonment of the
original Law of Moses, the Law they called
"out-of-date," so they could do as they pleased. But
Christ came to magnify it and make it
honorable!
Let us all, Jew or Greek, Israelite or Gentile, get back to the Bible — the Word of God. Let us reject our human opinions and the pagan customs our society has inherited, and return to God and to His Word. Let us humbly bow before the God of the universe— the God of the Bible—and acknowledge our faults and ask Him for His mercy to bring us back to His precious truths.
"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose ye this day whom ye will serve ... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).
THE END