Question on Levitical Laws: Why Did God Forbid Blending Threads?

“So, did Jesus wear them?”

As I said before, most of what you say is built on a false premise and is completely irrelevant, since the wearing of them is based on a literal interpretation of several verses from the Old Testament, not a Rabbanical tradition, and not even everyone takes them literally, as even the link I posted mentioned. And, again:

“The Torah demands four times that words of the law be put as signs on the hand and as frontlets (or symbols) between the eyes (or on the forehead). Just what the Torah itself had in mind when these admonitions were set down can no longer be ascertained. They may have implied a demonstrative display similar to that of the mezuzah (with which they are linked in Deut. 6:8-9) or they have been meant figuratively, as was maintained as late as in the Middle Ages by the Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, in his commentary on the Torah.). These commandments, he writes, ‘shall be for you a reminder as if they were written on your hand. They are to be taken [fig] just as in ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart” (Song of Solomon 8:6). At any rate, the custom of writing down some representative laws which could then be worn goes back to ancient days and may be connected with ideas that the wearing would have some prophylactic effect similar to that of amulets, or perhaps would show the wearer’s membership in a sacred community. The Rabbis still had a tradition, however, that made it clear that some regulations pertaining to the tefillin were a post-Torah development, and they held that such rules went back only to the soferim (scribes), that is, to the early teachers of the Oral Law, but no farther.” (W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, page 472)

Your claim is that your tradition is straight from the mouth of Moses, which doesn’t make sense if the tradition on how they should be worn, whether on the arms and forehead, or how long they should be, or when they should be worn, or why they are worn, is different depending on the Rabbi or sect.

Unless they all received different traditions from the mouth of Moses, then the differences cannot be explained. Nor can you justify “evolution” of practices, as you say, since the tradition of Moses would be complete out of his mouth, and not need further completion by others. In that case, it is only later Jewish speculation, and not a commandment of God.

As for Christ, there is also no direct evidence that he wore them, though He did criticize, at least, the manner in which the Pharisees wore them in Matthew 23.

“BTW I wear them in the morning during the morning prayer, like every Jew since the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. “

Whoops!

“Originally tefillin were worn all day, but not during the night (Men. 36b).”

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12125-phylacteries

since the wearing of them is based on a literal interpretation of several verses from the Old Testament, not a Rabbanical tradition, and not even everyone takes them literally,
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Every Jew takes them literally and still wears them. That’s my point.

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“...They may have implied”
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They only “may” have implied to the non-believer, non-Torah-observant-Jew who wrote your website...a quick search of W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary reveals his book is a “liberal Torah commentary” published by a REFORM (ie, non-Torah-from Sinai) group. Worthless in a discussion of believers. If you can’t agree on an initial premise of the Pentateuch being divine, then what the heck can we talk about?

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The RaShBam wore tefillin...

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[My] claim is that your tradition is straight from the mouth of Moses, which doesn’t make sense if the tradition on how they should be worn, whether on the arms and forehead, or how long they should be, or when they should be worn, or why they are worn, is different depending on the Rabbi or sect.

Unless they all received different traditions from the mouth of Moses, then the differences cannot be explained.
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As I said, there is a basic standard (ie, square leather black-painted boxes with 4 parchments in the head and one in the arm compartment...black leather straps, at least on one side, and at lease 7 winds around the forearm, two winds on the lower bone of the index finger, one on the middle bone of the index finger, worn at least for morning prayer and ONLY during daylight hours) this minimum is the unbroken chain. That it has been culturized in different parts of the words’ different Jewish communities is a given, particularly as new techniques (hydraulic presses for a truly perfect square box....Jews don’t shun technology yo!) became available and in cases of “building a fence” around a commandment (a Pentateuch-authorized rabbinic concept of not transgressing a letter of the Written Law.) If you heard G-d and He said Remember my Sabbath....would you want to follow it exactly? What if he didn’t elaborate upon it in the Pentateuch? Does that mean it’s an imperfect document, G-d forbid? We can’t possible observe and remember the Sabbath? We should do what feels Sabbathy? How could I be commanded to wear them as a sign upon my arm and as ‘totafot’ between my eyes if I am not told what they are? What hoops you jump through to deny the objective divine commandments. How can the Pentateuch be divine in your eyes?

Examples of Pentateuch-decreed laws that have no elaboration:
*Tefillin
*Tzitzis.... OBTW see Luke 8:44 and the interlinear translations. Did Jesus wear tzitzis? (fringes) too? I’m assuming he wore tefillin because you won’t say no.
*Taking the beautiful fruit, etc (Lev 23:40) [should I take a shiny apple? Green or red? Why not? How/where should I take it? Why oh why G-d do you ask me to do things I can’t understand or do for You?
*Mezuzzah, as you referenced-—which is still on every halachically-defined doorpost on every orthodox house until today. I have about 15 in my little town house... (Deu 6:9...”..write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates...”)

My contention is that you the literalist refuse to admit how utterly silly it is for a Perfect Creator to give us a Perfect Torah (I’ll even use Pentateuch for you just to be clear) which is so very imperfect and imprecise. It makes zero sense. Highly illogical, Captain. (from a Jew—Mr. Spock, in an unbroken chain of Kohen priests...until his generation anyway, as I don’t see evidence of Jewish children.) You put G-d in a mighty box by asserting that He could not possibly give literal, objective commandments that Jews have always known and followed. Just because you can’t understand it!? That, as opposed to my snarkiness, is the ultimate height of arrogance.

Tell my the seeming absurdity of the commandments isn’t what throws you off. You can’t fathom that G-d wants Jews to do certain ritual things, and gentiles a smaller subset, and that He actually cares that they are performed...perfectly. Why do you think Jews split hairs so much in ensuring that they cover their tuchases in following the commandments?

You made your pitch on the impossibility of Jews following the authentic will of G-d (and your case that you, your church group or sect, lay-leader, or website are right.) So my take is that the evidence I’m sure you’ve come across points to an awesome error on the part of early followers of Jesus’ divinity. You eliminate all of the inconvenient history and revise what needs to be revised. You revise Catholicism in your absolute surety that no one’s tradition is correct but yours.

Did Jesus follow the non-divine commandments? Then changed his mind? That is not a Jewish concept...we don’t shuck G-d’s laws.

“Every Jew takes them literally and still wears them. That’s my point.”

Obviously not, unless by ‘figurative’ you mean another word for literal, as one of the Rabbis who was quoted mentioned. But, either way, you concede it is based on the scripture, albeit a literal view as opposed to the more useful spiritual view, not a rabbanical tradition.

Regarding the spiritual view:

“Despite the long tradition of donning Tefillin, it is quite likely that the four proof texts contained in them were not intended to be taken literally. Exodus 13,9 says And it shall be for you as a sign upon your hand and as a reminder between your eyes in order that the Torah shall be in your mouth. It is clear that this did not mean that the written text of the Torah was to be put in the mouth. And if this was so, then equally the written text was not required to be put on our arms and foreheads. Rabbi Simeon ben Meir (Rashbam), the grandson of Rashi and brother of Rabbenu Tam, took this view. He said that the plain meaning is that it should be as a perpetual reminder as if it were written upon your hand.12.

This understood the passages to teach that putting these words between our eyes meant that we should think about the commandments. And that binding them on our hands meant that our deeds should be carrying out the commandments. Such an interpretation gives the verses a far more important meaning. Instead of being just a command to carry out rituals with little leather boxes when we say our morning prayers, they were now seen as commanding us to carry out God’s teachings in every thing we do in life. As a result the literal interpretation has tended to trivialise some deeply religious verses.
(12.) Rashbam on Ex 13, 9.”

http://orthoprax.blogspot.com/2005/05/history-of-tefillin.html

Again, from the same website, the “innovations” of the teffilin:

The Talmudic Rabbis recognised stages of development in the use of Tefillin. They stated that although the use of Tefillin was a biblical commandment, the precise details of exactly how to carry it out were the work of the later scribes.8. There is also evidence that Tefillin were worn all day.9.
(6.) Tam. 5, 1. (7.) Ber. 12a. (8.) San. 88b. (9.) Men. 36a.

Don’t try to bluff me, fella!

“They only “may” have implied to the non-believer, non-Torah-observant-Jew who wrote your website..”

So not “every” Jew, just some Jews. I was quoting Jewish sources, even though you do not like them. I have no reason to doubt their research, at least on this topic. Its accuracy is self-evident, considering all the different views available on this topic from ancient Jewish commentators.

By the way, an interesting explanation from these verses from the Karaites, one of those groups of Jews whom you’d say aren’t Jewish:

“The message of this story is that it is impossible to live (literally) as a Karaite and therefore we need the “Oral Law” to save us from this savage extinction.

The problem with this myth is that it is simply untrue. It assumes that the Karaites and Sadducees interpret the verse “and they shall be for Totafot between your eyes” as referring to Rabbinic Phylacteries. However, in reality the Karaites and Sadducees never wore Tefillin at all, let alone between their eyes because this is simply not what the verse is talking about. One Rabbinite polemicist asked, ‘How can you Karaites know how to make Tefillin without all the specifications laid down in the “Oral Law”?’. The answer is we can not because the “Oral Torah” made the whole thing up.

The phrase which allegedly commands the donning of Tefillin appears four times in the Torah (Ex 13,9; Ex 13,16; Dt 6,8-9; Dt 11,18). It should be noted that the difficult word “Totafot” which the Rabbis arbitrarily interpret to mean “Tefillin”, actually means “Remembrance”. This is clear from Ex 13,9 (one of the four “Tefillin” passages) which substitutes the word “Totafot” with the equivalent but more familiar “Zicharon” (Remembrance).”

http://www.karaite-korner.org/tefillin.shtml

Which Jew is really the Jew!?

“As I said, there is a basic standard (ie, square leather black-painted boxes with 4 parchments in the head and one in the arm compartment...black leather straps,”

Actually there’s not. The only “standard” you have is a very general practice which may or may not be literal, depending on the Rabbi, which has developed and changed over the centuries.

Nice try though!

“How can the Pentateuch be divine in your eyes?”

Practically gibberish, are you saying that the Bible does not explain how the Sabbath ought to be kept? Why should we desire to keep a sabbath which is the invention of your scribes and Pharisees, over the Sabbath from the holy scriptures?

Your arguments are desperate.

“*Tzitzis.... OBTW see Luke 8:44 and the interlinear translations. Did Jesus wear tzitzis? (fringes) too? I’m assuming he wore tefillin because you won’t say no.”

Actually I already answered the question in my previous post. There is no statement in the scripture that says Christ wore any Tefillin, as I mentioned before. Though presumably he may have worn “fringes” that were not as long or showy as the ones the Pharisees wore. He had criticized them for their vanity and hypocrisy:

“Everything they do is done for people to see: they make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long.” (Matt 23:5).

“My contention is that you the literalist refuse to admit how utterly silly it is”

But you are a literalist. Except you do not stick the teffilin in your mouth, contrary to how you read the first part of the verse.

All you really are trying to prove is that we need the Rabbanical Oral Law in order to figure out HOW exactly to wear them, because, apparently, God worries whether or not the Teffilin was square or a circle.

Luckily I’m a Christian though, and am under the New Covenant. Most of these arguments are, quite honestly, obsolete for me. But they are interesting at least to show how absurd the Kabbalist Jews are.

“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
(Jer 31:31-33)

“. It makes zero sense.”

What makes zero sense are your arguments. As I said, they are all irrelevant, since the alleged command to wear them is from the scripture, not Rabbanical tradition. Your tradition only dictates how it should be done, though the “how”, as your religion concedes, has changed a great deal over time.

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