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To: wideawake
Semantic tricks won't save your argument. Or your soul.

I'm not the one playing semantic tricks. I'm not the one adding words to what is written. I've backed my position with quotes. You haven't. God sent Jesus to preach repentance and to show/instruct people how to follow Torah properly.

Matthew 3
2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 3:
8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

Matthew 4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 9:13
But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Matthew 11:20
Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:

Mark 6
11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent.
13 And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.

Mat 23:23
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier [matters] of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

He placed 'moral' law above 'ceremonial' law.  This is why some 'thought' that he 'broke' the law.  You have to remember that Jesus taught in a period of transition, during the development of different schools of interpretation in Judaism. It is inevitable that there would be variant interpretations of the Law as recorded in the Gospels. With the Pharisees, Jesus accepts the Law of the Sabbath; he differs only in the interpretations of that law as found in the Oral Law. The Oral Law detailed the many conditions that allowed for the breaking of the Sabbath.

For example, the Rabbis of the Hillel School of Pharisaism declared that is was permissible to violate the Sabbath to preserve life, that in doing so you violate a Sabbath to ensure the observance of future Sabbaths. This was accepted interpretation by the Hillel Pharisees of which Jesus belonged, but not to the Shammai Pharisees or the Sadducees who were ultra-strict, always adhering to the 'letter of the Law' over the 'spirit of the Law' (Oral Law). It has been said that in elevating the spirit of the Law over the letter of the Law one can understand the minimizing of the ceremonial laws. But it is not that simple according to Jesus. As gentiles, we are not aware that the Oral Law brought a proper understanding to the Written Law if matters were in doubt.

These (least commandments) you ought to have done, without neglecting the others (grave-weightier commandments). In drawing such a contrast, Jesus does not annul the Written Law (613 laws), nor even the ceremonial laws; he only brings priority to the obedience of all the Laws.   Jesus did not stand against the Written Law or Oral Law, nor even Pharisaism, but only against the elevation of the 'letter of the Law' above the 'spirit of the Law'.

Rev 2:19
I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last [to be] more than the first.

Notice that works is mentioned twice.  The 'moral laws' and 'ceremonial laws'.

116 posted on 09/19/2006 4:13:08 PM PDT by ET(end tyranny)
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To: ET(end tyranny)
"Before Abraham was, I AM."

Period.

117 posted on 09/19/2006 7:25:01 PM PDT by wideawake ("The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten." - Calvin Coolidge)
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