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).
"Roma locuta, Causa Finita"-
"Rome has Spoken, the Case is Closed"-
St. Augustine, Fourth Century A.D.
Jerome also taught that the apocryphal books should not form a part of the canon. Why is Jerome wrong there but right in addressing Helvidius?Besides, Jerome's argument doesn't stand up when it is examined closely -- Mary and Joseph were truly husband and wife, not putatively, as Jerome argues. And the old "Jesus' brother and sisters were really his cousins" argument is specious, too, not only because of the scriptures, but because of contemporaneous church and secular documents which, for example, describe James as the physical half-brother of Jesus.
The problem is that Catholics want to claim that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation yet they do not wish to prove that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation, especially the early church.
They were Christian. I'll provide answers to you this evening -- my lunch is over.
I have a huge set of the writings of the Fathers, and they all believe in what the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church believe in to this day. James White, an anti-Catholic apologist, has wrenched some texts out of context and tried to "prove" what you seem to be saying. But he failed miserably, especially if you have access to the Fathers writings and can see the proper context, their other writings, etc.
It certainly can.
Can you point me to a single tradition from the early Apostolic church that states it?
It depends on how you wish to define "early Apostolic church."
The surest way to assess the beliefs of early Christians is their liturgical and devotional practice.
The Dormition is one of the oldest feasts of the Church and no one ever claimed to have physical relics of Our Lady - which many places certainly would have if they believed that she had been buried like a normal person.
How about papal infallibility?
There is a well established Scriptural argument for this teaching as well.
Are you aware that it resulted from a church dispute less than 1,000 years ago and that initially the papacy rejected it (until it was decided that it might be convenient on occasion)?
This is the most deceptive distortion of the history of this doctrine I have read recently. Congratulations, I guess.
None of that disproves the ancient belief among Christians in Purgatory, the Papacy, etc. As far as the Inquistion goes, yeah, not our best moment. But the destruction of monasteries and church properties, and the burning of "witches", doesn't exactly put Protestantism at it's infancy in the very best light either.
Whether or not you testify to their "swellness", you can't erase their truth.
And then there's that ugly thing called the inquisition; shhhh - be vewy vewy quiet - I'm hunting pwotestants.
The Inquisition wasn't in the business of hunting anyone, let alone Protestants. Especially since the Spanish Inquisition was founded 40 years before Martin Luther put up his flyer.
And, at one time, weren't there actually three Popes (one in France, one in Italy, and one appointed by another council)?
No, there was one legitimately elected Pope and two pretenders to the office.
Compared to the policies and judicial processes of the Protestant kingdoms, the Spanish Inquisition was a shining exemplar. Catholics are always too quick to accept the Protestant version of history on this matter.
How do you explain this passage:
Matthew 23
1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you.
Matthew 23:1-3
You'd see it in the Bible if you weren't using Luther's abridged version. By what authority did Martin "Bible Alone" Luther remove five books from the Bible?
Jerome believed that the deuterocanonical books did not deserve the same prominence as the protocanonicals. He was overruled by his ordinary, and he presented a translation of them for liturgical use.
Besides, Jerome's argument doesn't stand up when it is examined closely -- Mary and Joseph were truly husband and wife, not putatively, as Jerome argues.
Jerome made his case from the same Gospels you have in front of you and he drew a different conclusion than the one you assert.
And the old "Jesus' brother and sisters were really his cousins" argument is specious, too, not only because of the scriptures, but because of contemporaneous church and secular documents which, for example, describe James as the physical half-brother of Jesus.
No secular documents exist naming James as the "physical" half-brother of the Lord.
No "church" documents exist which attest this physical link either.
The problem is that Catholics want to claim that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation yet they do not wish to prove that all of what they call apostolic teaching was held by every generation, especially the early church.
Teachings are rarely defended until they are challenged. It is incumbent upon those who deny orthodox doctrines to demonstrate that such notions that Our Lady was not a perpetual virgin was widely-held in the Apostolic era.
The point of view that the Church which emerged from persecution in the early 300s was a radically different in its beliefs from the Church which preceded it is not readily defensible.
Side note: I've just recently jettisoned the notion of sola scriptura and am considering converting to Eastern Orthodox (after fifteen years as non-denominational Protestant type).
Well, when men like Polycarp, Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch profess belief in Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist, in Mary as Mother of God, and other doctrines, it makes me take notice. Especially since every one of these men knew some of the Apostles, and Polycarp was the disciple of John the Evangelist. I was a Protestant when I first encountered Christ. It was through the Fathers that I came to see that Christ's Church in primitive times believed what the historical Churchs of East and West believe, and that's why I'm a Catholic today.
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