AUTHORITY OVER TRADITION - LUKE 5.33-39

Development of Pharisaic Judaism - At this point Jesus is in conflict over a specific issue in Judaism. By the first century AD an entire body of traditions had been developed by the religious leaders that was equal to, and sometimes more important, than the Mosaic Law. These are what Jesus referred to as the “traditions of men”. Jesus refused to obey these laws and it infuriated the Pharisees. This was the reason the Pharisees and religious leaders ultimately refused to accept Jesus. (He obeyed Mosaic)

Fence Around the Torah - Around the time of the Book of Ezra, as Jews returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, a school by the name of Sophrim (Soher) 450 BC-30 AD, meaning scribes, arose. The original intent was for this school to teach the people what the law of Moses meant and to prevent them from breaking it again and avoid experiencing judgment and captivity again in the future.

Now, the original Law of Moses or Torah contained 613 instructions or laws including the ten commandments. The goal of the school of Sophrim was to build a fence around the Torah to help the people to not break those laws. This fence contained new rules and regulations. The thinking was the people may break the laws of the fence, but this would keep them from breaking the original 613 laws of Torah. In effect, they were trying to keep themselves from making a mistake, and all it did was make the law much more difficult to keep. They were moving away from the law of God and making up their own laws to protect them from themselves! Quite complicated, indeed!

This logic was called Pilpul, meaning peppery or sharp. What this means is how many nuances can we arrive at from a single statement (law). An example: One of the 613 laws was, “You must not seethe a kid in it’s mother’s milk.” You don’t boil a baby goat in the milk of it’s mother. This was a Canaanite practice of boiling a kid in the milk of it’s mother prior to offering it as a sacrifice to the god Baal. Jews were not allowed to worship and make sacrifices to idols. The original intent of that rule had been forgotten. The question became how do we make sure a kid is never, never, ever, ever, seethed in it’s mother’s milk. From this basis the law became that you could not eat meat with milk because the milk you drank may have come from the mother of the lamb you were eating. Even today, orthodox Jews do not eat meat and milk together. This Pilpul logic created numerous other laws.

There had to be two sets of plates. One for eating meat and the other for eating dairy. Why? What if a piece of cheese was stuck to the plate even after washing. You might put a piece of meat on that plate and when it touches the speck of cheese it contaminates the meat and you have broken the law. Orthodox Jewry is still following many, many laws such as this today. Jesus was not about all these arcane rules and refused to obey them. He was bringing something new--liberty from the traditions of men. The ten commandments are still to be obeyed--but we do not have to concern ourselves with the traditions of men.

Later these laws were followed up by another school called Tannaim (Tana) 30-220 AD, meaning teachers. These laws and the Sophrim became what is know today as the Mishnah. The Mishnah is about 1500 pages. Another school called Amoraim (Amora) 220-500 AD, an Arabic word meaning teacher. This became the Gemara, a massive work of laws. The Mishnah and the Gemara together are called the Talmud.

Jesus came to fulfill the Mosaic Law--not the Talmud. The Mosaic law found in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are the basic laws on which many modern nations are built. Those books, you can say, basically teach how to put the ten commandments into practice in our daily lives. Our ethical system of morals is built on those 613 laws which are common sense--built on love of God and neighbor. This is the law Jesus fulfilled and obeyed--not the traditions of men.

This issue now becomes a key area of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees. It begins with the question of fasting, which the Pharisee’s did twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. They want to know why Jesus’ disciple’s don’t fast like they do. He responds with four statements:

1.You don’t come to a wedding feast to fast. The bridegroom is present so there will be no room for fasting--only after He leaves.

2.You don’t use a new piece of cloth to cover a hole in an old garment. The new piece will shrink and tear the garment. He was telling them He didn’t come to patch up the “holes in the fence of Torah”--He wasn’t fixing the old with new--He is presenting something which is quite different.

3.You don’t use an old wine skin and fill it with new wine. The new wine will ferment and burst the old wine skin. Once again, He is telling them He is presenting something new--not preserving the old traditions of men.

4. No man having drunk old wine will desire the new for he says the old is better--they will reject the new and stay with the old. A second interpretation is that the O.T. law is the old wine, which is what Jesus is fulfilling, and the new wine is the fence of new laws the Pharisee’s have created. It is better to stick with the old which Jesus is fulfilling then drink of the new wine of the Pharisees.

Notes from: The Life of Messiah from a Jewish Perspective by Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum