HHMI Newsgroup Archives
From: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 1997 1:17 AM To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup Subject: A Messianic Jewish Perspective of the Torah From: EbenAbram@aol.c To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com Subject: Re: Did Jesus do away with the Law ??? Shalom Alecheim Perhaps this might clarify for Messianic Jews and Rooters common clarifications and POV of some Messianic Jews. As Eddie pointed out see the reason for usage of 'Some". Enjoy. This is remarkably well written MESSIANIC JUDAISM AS IT IS EXPRESSED IN NEW YORK CITY THROUGH CONGREGATION BETH EL OF MANHATTAN. WebSite copyright 1996 - Congregation Beth El of Manhattan Inc. Use and/or reproduction of materials NOT -FOR-PROFIT is permitted, provided attribution is given. The Bible's Teachings On Jewish Religious & Cultural Practices In The Life Of The Jewish Follower Of Yeshua (Jesus) Of Nazareth. A Position Paper by Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Introduction The simplest statement of why Jewish people who believe in Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth as the Messiah should keep their Jewish religious and cultural identities is because the Bible (Old & New Testaments) instructs them to do so. This truth, taught straightforwardly by Yeshua and all His Shalichim (Apostles, or Emissaries) has not been not taught in the non-Jewish "church" mostly because it does not apply to non-Jews. The confusion of Jewish believers has arisen when they have been taught that all the exact same directives God gave to non-Jewish believers apply to the Jewish believers. This is not the case. Some factions of Christianity teach that any Jewishness is virtually antithetical to a New Testament faith-relationship to God. These factions maintain that for a Jewish believer to hold onto any vestige of relationship to the laws and festivals given by God to the Jewish people or especially the cultural practices of the Jewish people, is to fall under the "Galatians error" and to "come under the law" from which we have been set free. Many further believe for Jewish followers of Yeshua to hold onto any vestige of their cultural identity is to "rebuild the partition wall" between Jewish believers and the "universal church." Both these teachings are wrong scripturally, as you will see further into this paper. At best, what has been prevelant up to the rebirth of the Messianic Jewish synagogual movement since 1970 is that the Church tolerates whatever manifestation of Jewishness is necessary as a tool to bring Jews into the Church. Expression of Jewishness is therefore an acceptable technique for turning Jews into church-goers whose cultural lives meld with the non-Jewish cultural stream of the church-world. Toleration of some degree of Jewishness is at times taught in the church as a viable life-style option among "Jewish Christians." However, the heart and soul of church dogma is that Jewishness is passe, the Torah has no bearing upon our lives except as a reminder of how much we need Messiah, and the quasi-nation called "the church" is a place where Jewish people who accept "Jesus" can forget about all that spiritual bondage they were under as Jews. The premises of this paper are as follows: . The Jewish Messiah did not come to save Jewish people from Jewishness: He came to save us (and all mankind) from sin. . Jewishness is not a spiritual disease of which one is cured when he or she is saved (rescued from sin). . The "Judaizing" against which the New Testament teaches is the doctrine that Gentiles must become Jews in order to be saved. We agree that this is error. . The clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures is that for Jewish believers it is God's directly-stated will that we still practice whatever
of the Torah is able to be practiced, and our adherence to whatever customs of our people (especially religious customs) which are not clearly anti-Scriptural or against the spirit of the Scriptures, should still be practiced. Jewish believers are not saved by their adherence to the Law; however, contrary to popular opinion in the church, they are told nowhere in the New Testament to abandon it. They are, in fact, not given the "liberty" to do so, any more than non-Jewish "Christians" are given the liberty to disregard what the Torah says about moral behavior. Therefore, maintenance of Jewish identity is not a casual option of no consequence for Jewish believers: it is a biblical incumbency of serious import. In order for Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) to fulfill God's desire for their lives, it is necessary that they gain a Scriptural understanding of these issues, unsullied by two thousand years of cultural confusion, or Gentile primacy-of-population in the Body of Messiah. I. What Did Yeshua (Jesus) Teach About The Relationship Of A Jewish Believer To The Torah ("The Law" Or "The Five Books Of Moses")? Yeshua The Messiah taught that as long as the sun and the stars held their courses, not one yod or makkef (the smallest letter or stroke) would disappear from the Torah or the Prophets "until all was accomplished" (Matthew 5:15-17). Concerning the question as to whether His coming and His work were intended to nullify the Torah or the Prophets, He commands us not to think that! The Resurrection cannot be the point at which all was accomplished because the sun and moon are still in the heavens up to this day. Doctrinally, no ground exists for maintaining that these verses mean anything other than what they plainly state. All arguments I have seen attempting to nullify the clear sense of this passage are extensive circumlocutions of the direct statements, or allegorizing of the language. Yeshua meant what is stated here. The least directive of the Torah was not negated by His coming: the curse of the Law was altered by His coming (Galatians 3:13). We are no longer "under the tutor" described in Galatians (a tutor imposes knowledge upon a trainee from the outside, and penalizes him when he errs). Via the New Covenant, we now have the Torah written in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31ff, Ezekiel 36:24ff). We are no longer under the tutor because He is now within us (John 14:17). Since virtually all of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of the New Covenant speak of the Torah being written on our hearts, and our being motivated by the in-dwelling of God's Spirit to "walk in My statutes and obey My ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:27/Jeremiah 31:31ff), I am hard-pressed to see how any commentator upon a practical Messianic theology could posit that the Word teaches us upon salvation 99% of the statutes and ordinances in the Torah are things we can casually discard at will! Some of the statutes and ordinances have truly been rendered impossible by God (because of the destruction of the Temple and the priestly lineage-records); and some cannot be practiced because we no longer live in a Torah-theocracy (eg: we do exact the death penalty for adultery nor impose levirate marriages). We cannot impose the juridical Torah upon a modern non-theocratic, non-Israeli society. However, these are things outside our control and personal ability to choose. Matthew 5 deals with persons advocating the abandonment of the practice of the Torah which is within the reach of Jews living outside of Israel, where all of the Temple-related Torah was not possible to practice in any case. Practice is the issue; hence ... Yeshua went on to say that any person who abandons the practice (and practice is the focus of this paper) of the least of the commandments (mitzvoht) and teaches others to do the same, shall be least in the kingdom of heaven. He seemed to be saying that you will not lose your salvation over an unscriptural relationship to the Torah as a Jewish believer, but you can severely affect your personal destiny! Yeshua's rebuke directed towards a segment of the P'rushim (Pharisees) in Matthew 23:23 is sometimes used to support the notion that Yeshua taught an end to the entire Torah by ending practices like tithing. The passage is a good example of how such Scriptures can be misapplied. Yeshua ended His indictment by calling for an end to hypocrisy, not tithing. His words are clear: "These things (tithing) you should have done, and not neglected the others (justice and mercy). How some theologians have bent those words into an end to the Torah is beyond me. When Yeshua healed on the Shabbat (Sabbath), He did not annul the commandment of the Sabbath; He challenged the rabbinic interpretation of the Sabbath, which had gotten so far removed from the intent of the Torah, that certain rabbinic leaders would not even allow a person to be healed on the day of rest. (Luke 13:14-16) The Spirit of the Sabbath was a day of rest and refreshment according to the Torah, not a day of legalistic bondage and insensitivity. Nowhere does Yeshua teach or example that either abandoning the Torah, or teaching others to do so, is God's will; and since Yeshua was addressing an almost exclusively Jewish audience, His meaning was clear. The rulings of His Shalichim later affirm and expand upon this. II. What Did The Shalichim (Apostles) Teach About Jewish Believers Relationship To The Torah? Did Yeshua's Death and Resurrection Change Things So That New Testament Teaching On This Subject Was Different After Yeshua's Death Than Before It? The Apostles taught (after the Resurrection of Yeshua) that for Jewish believers, it was God's will that they retain their Torah-life and Jewish cultural life which did not conflict with Scripture. What has confused church-going Jewish believers is that the Apostles did dis-obligate the non-Jewish believers from observing either the ceremonial and separative laws in the Torah and the Jewish customs. These edicts are recorded in Acts 15 and Acts 21. Let us examine them here. A. Acts 15 After Paul had won masses of non-Jews to faith in the Yeshua as Messiah (or "Iyaysoos Kristos" as they called Him in the Greek-speaking world), the question was raised as to whether or not the non-Jewish believers had to "become Jews" by being circumcised, adopting the practice of the entire Law of Moses, and observing Jewish ceremonial and festival commandments (Acts 15:5). The Apostles' concluded that God's will was not for non-Jews to become Jews: it was for non-Jews to receive salvation. As long as the non-Jews who believed repented from general immorality and idolatrous practices, they did not need to adopt all that God has given to the Jewish nation by way of covenant obligations. (Acts 15:19-20) The involvement of the non-Jews in Jewish practice is made voluntary in verse 21, citing the availability of Jewish synagogual worship everywhere. Hence, if they wish to practice their faith in a Jewish context they have the means within reach to do so. It is important to note that nowhere do any of the Apostles condemn the existence or the use of Jewish worship practices. This entirely agrees with the teaching of the Torah, for the Torah nowhere provides any mechanism by which a non-Jew can "become a Jew". Biblically, there is no such thing as "conversion," if the word conversion is taken to mean making a non-Jew into an actual Jew. The most they can attain is the standing of what the Torah calls a "ger" (male) or "gera" (female). The definition of such a person is a non-Jew who feels a calling to live in and among the Jewish people, and adopt our ways and practices. While God commands us to treat such a person in a totally non-discriminatory way, He also draws certain limitations upon the ingrafting. One example is that the ger can eat certain foods not permitted to the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 14:21). Non-Jews were permitted to affix themselves to the Jewish nation, and participate in its spiritual inheritence, but they were never made "Jewish" (a blood-descendant of Abraham) by such a choice. B. Acts 21 . Circumcision, The Torah (Law) & Jewish Customs: Asked And Answered While Paul strongly defends the Gentiles from the error of seeking salvation through observance of Jewish custom and rite, he goes out of his way in Jerusalem to disprove rumors that he was "teaching Jews who live among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, not to circumcise their sons, nor to observe the customs (of the Jewish people)." (Acts 21:21) Let us examine this text carefully, for its teaching has immense implications. The doctrine mentioned above which Paul was accused to be teaching is perfectly clear, and has two components: i. Paul was rumored to be teaching Jews who live among non-Jews to forsake the Torah, and even the rite of circumcision given to Abraham by God. ii. Paul was teaching the Jews who live among non-Jews to forsake the customs (or in Greek, the eqesin ethee-seen) of the Jewish people. It is imperative to note that Acts 21:15-25 is a definitive biblical treatment of these doctrinal issues for all time. No matter what seventeen centuries of church practice might say, if the Scriptures teach otherwise, it is the seventeen centuries of tradition which must be abandoned, not the Word of God! The first false accusation was that Paul was teaching Jews to abandon the Torah. If that were Paul's opinion, this would have been the perfect time to state it. The Apostles also could have demanded that Paul make a clear statement to the population of Jerusalem's Jewish leadership that he was standing for a new approach; one in which Jewish customs and even Torah observance were obsolete for Jewish followers of Yeshua ("Messianic Jews"). Instead, the Council of The Apostles makes the exact opposite demand! They tell Paul that these rumors about him must be shown to be false, and they give him a plan to follow which will make a clear demonstration to all of Jerusalem that "... concerning these things which they were told about you are nothing; but that you yourself still walk in order, keeping the Torah." (Acts 21:24) Is there anything unclear about this at all? Does it leave anything to the imagination? Both the issues of Torah observance and Jewish custom are raised, and we are given the opinions of the Apostles, James The Just (or more accurately, Jacob the Tzaddik), and Paul. They all agree without one dissenting voice! Some arguers against an New Testament incumbency upon Jewish believers to retain the Acts 21 inventory say that they are willing (how gracious of them) to observe circumcision because it is "Abrahamic", or pre-dating the Mosaic Law: but the Apostles made no such distinction in Acts 21. They dealt with circumcision (Abrahamic Covenent), the Torah (Mosaic Covenant) and Jewish customs (no covenantal source) in one lump. Clearly, their focus was the preservation of the Jewish faith and national identities in the face of a new phase of the plan of God. However, they also agreed, as per the decisions in Acts 15, that heritage of Israel is not binding upon non-Jews: only the general moral and anti-idolatrous directives given there and repeated in Acts 21:25. There is, therefore, perfect harmony between the teachings of the Yeshua and His Apostles: they all agree upon this point: Messianic Jews are not to cease to observe what Torah is possible to observe, and they are not to abandon their Jewish culture for another culture when they become believers in Yeshua. There is no unclarity to these teachings at all. I have actually heard some sources in the church, in order to justify the prevailing church-view towards "Judaizing", accuse Paul and the Apostles of "slipping into 'man-pleasing'" here, and that this was not a "good decision" by them. They were just giving in to their Jewish side, and that the church developed into a better understanding of these issues: an understanding which abolishes all the things Yeshua said He did not come to abolish, says Yeshua's crucifixion fulfills "all things" and entirely ignores the timing statement Yeshua put in His support of Torah (it would endure as long as the sun and moon in the heaven held their places in the heavens), and contradicts all that the Apostles decided in two momentous councils held in Jerusalem! This view is very hard to support biblically, and it is even harder to support historically, as you will see in the next section. III. What Does History Have To Say About The Life-styles Of The Jewish Followers Of Yeshua In The Era After Yeshua and The Apostles Lived? In the writings of Iraeneaus, a 2nd-century Messianic leader who was taught by a student of the Apostles themselves, tells us of the Apostles and the First-Century Messianic Jews, or "Nazarenes" as the were called: "They themselves continued in the ancient observances: the Apostles scrupulously acted in accord with the dispensation of Mosaic law." AGAINST HERESIES III:23:15 Is that not perfectly clear statement? History outside the Bible records that the Apostles acted just as Acts 21 says they did: they did not abandon either "Moses" (the Torah) or "the customs" (of the Jewish people), nor did they teach others to do so. In this they were following The Master's (Yeshua's) teaching in Matthew 23:2-3. Further on this point, the 4th-century historian Epiphanius records about Yeshua's first-century to third-century followers ... "They are mainly Jews and nothing else. They make use not only of the New Testament, but the Old Testament of the Jews; they do not forbid the books of the Torah, the Writings or the Prophets. So they are approved by the Jews, from whom the Nazarenes do not differ in anything... except they believe in (Yeshua as the) Messiah." PANARION XXX:18, XXXIV:7 So, Scripturally and historically the view that Jewish believers in Yeshua should retain the bulk of their religious and cultural heritage is on completely established ground. The view advocating or casually permitting Jewish believers to abandon Jewish practice and identity is not. It is simply confusing God's directives towards believing non-Jews with God's directives towards Messianic Jews. The decrees in Acts 15 and Acts 21, as well as Paul's behavior whenever he was ministering to his own people, leave no room for doubt as to what the responsibilities of a saved-Jew are. No Jew is saved by the Law, but no Jew is authorized to casually abandon it, nor teach others to do so. This comes from the mouth of Yeshua, Himself. (Matthew 5:17-19) DISCLAIMER . The aforementioned conclusions do not translate into an advocacy for Jewish believers to swallow talmudic Jewish practice whole! I advocate the "SEA" test. S = Scriptural. Is the practice in question biblically based, extracted, or advised? E = Elevating. Does the practice help spiritual life or hinder it? A = Authentic/Accurate. Is the practice carefully or carelessly undertaken? Is it being practiced in such a way as to engender a view of Messianic Judaism as scholastically and culturally respectful of Jewish life and culture; or does it taste of casualness, shallow research, and/or lack of acquaintence with Jewish history and traditional practice? If the practices pass the SEA test, they are probably in the sphere of practices a Messianic Jew or Messianic synagogue should embrace. While there is no desire in any Messianic leadership fo which I am aware to make mandatory the observances of Messianic assemblies denominationally, there is a sincere desire in many Messianic leaders to see the amount of spiritually life-radiant, credibly and authentically Jewish practice increase among the synagogual movement's adherents. IV. Why Does "The Church" Often Teach That Against The Doctrines Above By Saying That To Maintain Either Torah-Pratice or Jewish Culture Is To "Come Under The Law", and That "Judaizing" Is "Rebuilding The Partition Wall"? The simplest answer to that question is to point out that almost all of "the Church" is non-Jewish. The things they are saying do indeed hold true FOR THEM: if anyone were to teach non-Jews that in order to be saved, or to walk out their salvation correctly, they need to be circumcised (men only, of course) and/or to practice the ceremonial and covenental laws in the Torah, they would be wrong. That would indeed be bondage. It would be creating a separating wall between such non-Jewish believers and the rest of the Church. However, this teaching, which is entirely correct for non-Jewish believers, is entirely incorrect for Jewish ones. The New Testament never teaches anywhere that Jews are, upon accepting Yeshua, to abandon even one iota of Torah practice which is possible to observe. It teaches the exact opposite, and historical sources outside the Bible completely confirm the accuracy of this statement. The Church's error has been to apply God's directives concerning them to the Jews. Let us examine this error in detail, and see what truth the Scriptures hold forth. The Heart Of The Error Can Be Seen In How Galatians Is Misinterpreted The primary error I have encountered in my years in the ministry is well-embodied by the standard view of certain passages in the book of Galatians. In his Letter To The Galatians, Shauel (Paul) writes to address a problem: some mis-informed Jewish believers from Israel visited Galatia and told the non-Jewish Galatian believers that if they did not become Jews by circumcision and bypractice of the entire Torah, they were not truly saved (Acts 15:24). THIS is what "Judaizing" truly is, and it is wrong and it is bondage. However, to apply this edict concerning Gentiles to the Jewish people is to entirely ignore the rest Galatians, as well as the rest of the New Testament! Galatians 3:28 is often misapplied by reciting the first part of it, and not examining its entire sense: "There is (in the New Testament dispensation) neither Jew nor Greek ..." is chanted to say that there are now no differences between Jew and Gentile, and that all differences in religious practice and national identity should therefore be done away with. Yet, the passage does not end there. It goes on to say " ... there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Messiah Yeshua." If we were to apply the same logic as most of the church uses in the first line to the rest of the verse, then it would naturally follow that since there is no longer any difference between slave and free, all the workers in any company can now go straight up to the executive suite and sit down in the President's chair, kick back their feet on the desk , and light up one of his best cigars. Further, if there is no longer any difference between male and female, then any saved person may now enter the locker-room of the opposite sex any time they wish! Of course, the worker mentioned in the first example will be fired, and the locker-room visitor in the second example will go to jail. Why? Because Galatians is not saying that these differences no longer exist or have meaning in the real world ... Paul was writing that these things mean nothing with regard to how a person gets saved! Jew, Greek, master, worker, male, female all get saved the same way: by repenting from sin and turning in faith to God to receive atonement through the finished work of Yeshua The Messiah. Galatians does not teach that Jewishness is wrong or bad. It teaches that Non-Jews are not required to adopt the mandates upon the Jewish people in order to receive salvation. V. Did God Nullify "Kosher" In Peter's Acts 10 Vision? No, God did not. When people have cited this passage (Acts 10:9-28) to support the idea that New Testament life is devoid of any Torah observance, they treat this Scripture very carelessly, and ignore what it states clearly. Peter had a problem left over from his days as a rabbinically observant Jew (and he was such, as Acts 10:14 tells us clearly!): he still had the rabbinic pattern of entire separation from contact with Gentiles imbedded in his heart. Even though God had called Peter as an apostle specifically sent to the Jewish people and NOT to Gentiles (Galatians 2:7-8), God wanted him to have a heart of mercy towards the Gentiles and not regard them as unclean. If Peter had understood Isaiah 49:6ff more clearly, perhaps this whole episode might have been unnecessary, but it seems that only Paul understood from the start of his Messianic life that God had a heart for the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1-8) as God said in Isaiah 49. So God spoke to Peter in a vision, in which all kinds of non-Kosher animals were before Peter, and a voice came telling Peter to eat some of this "trayf" (non-Kosher food). We are told by Peter that he "pondered the vision to understand its meaning", and when he arrived at an understanding of what God was trying to tell him, he states the message for us clearly: "You know it is (rabbinically) unlawful for a Jewish man to keep company with Gentiles: but God has shown me that I should not call ANY MAN common or unclean." Acts 10:28 What Peter's vision meant (10:17) is that Jews are not to regard non-Jews as inherently unclean, or even common (Hebrew = hol, for lower, unholy use). Messianic Jews are to fellowship with non-Jews ... but that does translate into abandoning our culture and adopting theirs! It cannot, when Messiah and all His Apostles taught against doing that very thing! This passage is never explained by Peter or anyone as nullifying the kosher laws for Jews! When Paul talks about issues of freedom related to this in Romans, he simply lays down the principle that a believer should not wound a brother or refuse fellowship to him by making food an issue. This is a common manner of relating to mitzvoht in the Torah ... putting people ahead of ceremonial principles. The rabbis have a maxim called "P'kuach Nefesh" or the "rescue of a soul," which permits any law to be broken if a life or soul is rescued by such breakage. We get glimpses in the New Testament of the apostles walking in this "freedom" [Romans 14:13-23, Galatians 2:12], but these exceptions made for the sake of fellowship can in no way be established as a new rule to abandon kashrut entirely, and dine on lobster freely at whim! Again, to do so would be to directly contradict the teaching of Yeshua in Matthew 7 and the Apostles in Acts 15 and 21. VI. Didn't Yeshua Declare "All Foods Clean" In Mark 7:19? Doesn't That Teach A Nullification Of Kosher Laws, and hence, The Torah? This passage cannot teach a nulliication of the Torah or it would be a direct contradiction of Yeshua's statement in Matthew concerning "nullifying even the least of the Torah commandments, or teaching others to do so." The end of the passage has been translated in some versions of the Bible "Thus He declared all food to be clean." but that is not what the greek text says. The words "Thus He declared" do not appear IN THE GREEK TEXT of the New Testament! Those words are added by many modern church-translators to convey the doctrinal position that Yeshua was nullifying Kashrut (biblical kosher law). The Greek text simply says: "kai eis ton afedroma ekporeuetai katharizon[one] panta ta bromata" "and into the drain (intestine) it (digested food) goes out (of the body) purifying all the food" Yeshua was simply teaching that eating foods without ritually washing one's hands before eating had no power to defile your spirit. That was the context of this teaching, by the way, and not the laws of Kashrut. The issue of kosher never even entered into this discussion. I am sure I do not need to spend large amounts of time defending a doctrine based on words which have been ADDED to the text of Scripture. (For an excellent treatment of this issue, I heartily recommend the paper on Jewish Practice by Dr. John Fischer of Menorah Ministries, in Florida.) I have seen arguers for disobligation from Kashrut attempt to say that the sense of this passage concerning hand-washing cannot be "confined" to its direct sense; it can and should be expanded to include kashrut.. I must disagree. The first rule of hermeneutics (biblical exposition) is "It says what it says." To expand this principle beyond hand-washing with no direct ground, in a quasi-rabbinic kal v'chomer (lower to higher premise) reasoning, is unjustified. One could as easily reason that because a man is allowed in the Torah to nullify his daughter's rash vows, all people can at all times nullify all their vows. We cannot nullify things of greater force (directly written Torah, like kashrut) because things of lesser legal force (man-originated customs, like ritual hand-washing) have been shown to be unnecessary. This is hermeneutically and logically unsound. VII. Are You Telling Me That As A New Testament Believing Jew, I Need To Buy And Use Two Sets Of Dishes, Eat Only Foods From Kosher Markets, and Observe All The Rituals That Orthodox Jews Do? No, I am not saying that. Just as Yeshua did, we also must make a distinction between Scripture and tradition. I, as a Messianic Jew, keep Biblically kosher. I do not eat pork, shellfish, fish with no scales (like shark) or any of the other foods which the Bible directly tells me I, as a Jew, should not eat. I do not have to keep all the Talmudic kosher rules, many of which are not directly based upon Scripture, but upon the Talmudic rabbis' opinions. For example: I have no problem with a cheeseburger, because I do not see any prohibition in the Scriptures to eating milk and meat together: I see only one commandment not to boil a calf in its own mother's milk (Exodus 23:19), and I do not believe that fulfilling that commandment means never allowing milk and meat to touch.
Return to
Newsgroup Archives Main Page
Return to our Main Webpage
�2011
Hebraic Heritage Ministries International. Designed by
Web Design by JB.