Posted on 09/25/2003 9:18:42 AM PDT by Greg Luzinski
Jewish leaders continue to decry Mel Gibson’s forthcoming Jesus movie for supposedly threatening to whip up anti-Semitism. Due out next April, "The Passion" identifies Jewish priests as instigators of the crucifixion. Maimonides, too, in his Mishnah Torah, affirms Jewish involvement in Jesus’ execution — which must make the greatest of medieval Jewish sages an anti-Semite, too.
But the film I’d like to see produced that would really make some Jews nervous, while teaching a healthy lesson: an honest depiction not of Jesus’ death, but of his preaching. The Christian Bible makes clear what was probably the main theme of his sermons. It is a theme that many liberal rabbis, to their discomfort, would feel obliged to endorse.
Today’s secular historians generally assert that Jesus was a loyal adherent of Pharisaic (rabbinic) Judaism. They argue against the conventional Christian understanding that Jesus radically critiqued Judaism. On this, the Christians are right.
True, Jesus is repeatedly quoted in the gospels as embracing Torah observance (e.g., Matthew 5:17-18). He must have accepted certain broadly defined mitzvot like the Sabbath and Temple sacrifice, because his followers were still practicing these commandments just after his death.
What Jesus rejected was the oral Torah that explains the written Torah. Essential to rabbinic Judaism, this notion of an oral Torah recognizes the Pentateuch as a cryptic document, a coded text. It posits that the Bible’s first five books were revealed to Moses along with a key to unlock the code — for a lock is never made without a key.
This oral tradition was passed from Moses to the prophets to the rabbis, later to be written down in the Mishnah and Talmud. At least that’s the theory presented in the first chapter of the Mishnah’s tractate Pirke Avot, a theory that still animates traditional Judaism.
On point after point, Jesus derides not the written Torah but its orally transmitted interpretations. He does so on matters like the details of Sabbath observance (no carrying objects in a public space, no harvesting produce or use of healing salves except to save a life), donating a yearly half shekel to the Temple, refraining from bathing and anointing on fast days like Yom Kippur, hand washing before eating bread and praying with a quorum.
Stated this way, laundry-list fashion, such commandments from the oral tradition might seem like trivialities, as they did to Jesus. But from the constellation of such discrete teachings there emerges the gorgeous pointillist masterpiece of Torah — not merely "the Torah," the finite text of the Pentateuch that the Christian founder accepted, but the infinite tradition of Judaism as a whole, reflecting God’s mind as applied to human affairs.
For Jesus, oral Torah was a manmade accretion without transcendent authority. He tells a group of Pharisees, "So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God," citing Isaiah. "In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men" (Matthew 15:7-9).
Elsewhere, "Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens hard to bear" (Luke 12:46).
From this position, it was a logical next step to that of the apostle Paul, who abrogated the Torah altogether, oral and written. Abandon the former and you’ll soon abandon the latter.
A phenomenally charismatic person, Jesus mocked the Jewish establishment of his day and was adulated by a following from Galilee, the region where he conducted his brief ministry, famous in this period (as professor Geza Vermes shows) for the ignorance of the local populace. Knowing no better, loathing Pharisees as their own teacher did, they thought Jesus uniquely had Judaism all figured out.
Sound familiar? Reform ideology has always viewed oral tradition as being pretty much nothing more than the "precepts of men," while the Conservative movement increasingly understands it as a human creation, "hard to bear." Having grown up in a Los Angeles-area Reform community, I can testify that most Reform and Conservative temples impart a level of lay education that is approximately Galilean. As radio commentator Michael Medved has memorably said, the majority of Jews in our country know little about Judaism other than that it rejects Jesus.
Yet when it comes to the oral Torah, most American Jews follow Jesus without know it.
Mr. Gibson, please consider making another movie, a prequel about his career before the crucifixion showing how much Christianity we have unwittingly absorbed.
Torah indeed necessitates rejecting Christianity, but that means rejecting also the Christian view on the most fundamental of concepts in all Judaism: oral Torah. A Jesus movie about his life as a preacher would be a good dose of reality, if unpopular with our beloved Jewish leaders — not, come to think of it, unlike the film that Gibson will give us next year.
David Klinghoffer’s new book is “The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism” (Doubleday, 2003).
Au Contraire
By the way, this proves far more than you want it to prove. When Pope St. Victor attempted to excommunicate the Eastern Churches over the date of Easter, not one person said "You don't have the authority to do that!". All acknowledged the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome. But he was persuaded by St. Irenaeus to be tolerant and to "follow the moderation of his predecessors",ie, the earlier Popes(even though Ireneaus agreed with Pope Victor about the date of Easter).
So the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome wasn't even questioned in 190 A.D.
The sun, the moon, and the stars shine, the waves roar, and the LORD God of Israel sustains the nation of Israel despite the envy, wrath, and unbelief of the Gentiles.
Ok, so you're saying that Ignatius of Antioch doesn't believe in the True Presence? I quoted him above, and I said before, he recieved his doctrine from the Apostle John. That the Didache, written around seventy, doesn't teach about the real Presence? That Clement of Rome, writing in about 70 A.D.(according to Anglican scholar John A.T. Robinson), doesn't mention the "Sacrifice of the Altar" in his writings?
If that's not early, what is? Did the Church go off a cliff within the very generation of the Apostles? If so,then maybe you'd better consider the words of Gamaliel: "And now I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this purpose or this work is from men, it will be destroyed..."
And neither does sola scriptura! Many evangelicals have erred in assuming this, and that's how you end up with people like Robert Tilton and Benny Hinn.
The rule of faith (regula fidei, as taught by Iraneus) holds that scripture is authoritative but must be taught from the context of the church and its creeds. For example, Benny Hinn teaches a "name it and claim it" doctrine and is pretty shaky on the idea of the Trinity, too. If he were to teach under the rule of faith, then he would drop these false doctrines like hot potatoes.
If you understood what sola scriptura really meant and read the fathers, you would understand it, too, and would realize how far the Catholic church has strayed from what the church taught for the first several hundred years of its existence.
you would realize that the writings of the Fathers I quoted show that the Early Church had a Sacramental Theology, and that they recognized the Primacy of Rome
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the primacy of Rome, despite what the Magisterium wants you to believe, only dates from the middle of the second century and didn't fully develop until Pope Leo I.
But if The Catholic Faith isn't the one true faith, than nothing is.
The Catholic church is a Christian church but doesn't have a monopoly on things. It is also in serious need of correction.
Read what Paul wrote to the Church at Rome in Romans 11:
17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root,
18 do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.
19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in."
20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.
21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.Paul specifically warns the Church at Rome (!!!!) that it should not be arrogant and that He will not spare them if they slip into error. Yet the Church at Rome claims infallibility for itself -- talk about the height of arrogance!
Yep, they sound like Classical Reformed Theologians to me. Plus, they never drank or smoked, so that adds force to your argument.
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Yeah, his quote here wouldn't pass muster at a Magisterium-oriented Catholic seminary:Let them [the Donatists] demonstrate their church if they can, not by the talk and rumor of the Africans; not by the councils of their own bishops; not by the books of their disputers; not by deceitful miracles, against which we are cautioned by the word of God, but in the prescript of the law, in the predictions of the prophets, in the verses of the Psalms, in the voice of the Shepherd himself, in the preaching and works of the evangelists; that is, in all canonical authorities of the sacred Scriptures. (De Unit. Eccl. 16) (On the Unity of the Church, 16, quoted in Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971], p. 159.)
Yeah, Romans is one big screed directed at those statue worshipping, arrogant Papists. Thanks for opening my eyes on that one!
I believe in the Primacy of Rome because not only is it a Scriptural doctrine, but it was affirmed by the Early Church. It did not originate with Pope St. Leo; that is a very old Protestant polemic, and there isn't a single reputable historian who would argue that point.
Care to point to where I'm wrong or do you just want to continue with meaningless smart-aleck remarks? Does Paul warn the Church of Rome not to be arrogant lest it fall into error or does he not? If he does (which is the plain meaning of the verses), then all of Rome's claims to infallibility fall apart.
I know, so what's your point? Note that I wrote that the idea of primacy began sometime around the middle of the second century.
Really? Show me?
I posted about a dozen quotes of the Fathers that show they believed in distinctly Catholic doctrines. You haven't answered one. Instead, you use Paul's letter of the Romans to try to show he was writing something that somehow applies to the doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith-the very Faith that Paul himself held.
The Epistle to the Romans does not prove that the Catholic faith is not true. Period. You're misusing Scripture here. And who was he writing to, the Bishop of Rome, who Jesus Christ gave the Keys to? "Look, Peter, the Lord gave you the power of binding and loosing, He gave you primacy, He gave you the keys, but don't you dare use them or that would be arrogant!". Yup. That's always how I've understood Romans.
Some did and -- here's the rub -- many didn't. Indeed, the farther you go back, the less likely you are to find any mention of most (not all) of these things. You got it right about the forgiveness of sins through the ministry of the church but you're way off on the rest and it wouldn't take much research on your part to prove it to yourself.
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