"But where do you draw the distinction?"
Honestly, you don't HAVE to draw the distinction.
Jesus did all the work for us on Scripture, just as he did all the work for us when it comes to our salvation.
In both cases we just have think about what he said and follow him.
Let me make a substitution. It is a valid substitution, for these purposes, because it conforms to the use that Jesus made. "The Law and The Prophets" to Jews, like Jesus and his audience, MEANS both the Pentateuch and the Prophetic books of the Old Testament. Jews never valued the Ketuvim, "the writings", the third part of the Jewish canon, with the same authority as the Prophets, and all Jews to this day consider the Torah - the Pentateuch - to be The Law, and the most authoritative and holy part of the Bible of all.
I know that CHRISTIANS do not make this distinction, but JEWS DO, and JESUS was a JEW, talking to JEWS. When Jesus says "The Law and the Prophets", what he is saying - again to a JEW - is "The Authoritative Part of Scripture, the Part that contains The Law". Jews do not think that the writings, which is to say the wisdom books, contain any commandments. None. All 613 Commandments are in the Torah. The Torah is The Law. Nothing else in the Jewish Bible is The Law.
Again, I KNOW that Christians, especially Protestants, don't think Leviticus has greater authority than Job, but every Jew who ever existed always has. The Torah is the Law. Job is philosophical writing concerned with The Law, but contains NO law itself. All the Law in the Bible is in the Pentateuch. And where God wants to directly hammer home a point of law and make a warning, he speaks through a Prophet. Thus the authority of the Prophets, which also do not contain one single Jewish Law. ALL LAW is in the Torah. The Prophets ENFORCE the Law, and they're speaking directly for God, as oracles, so have authority. The wisdom books are for reflection. That's what Jews thought, and think, and that's WHY the distinction "The Law and The Prophets" has a specific Jewish meaning. It means THE AUTHORITATIVE, Law Giving and Law Enforcing parts of Scripture, to a Jew.
Think like a Jew for a minute and read Jesus in the Gospels again.
'Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself - that is The Law and the Prophets'.
Remember that the Law and the Prophets are where THE LAW is, and its enforcement. Remember that there was no "Bible" as such in Jesus' day - it was compiled afterwards.
Now let's read what Jesus said again, with Jewish understanding:
'Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself - that is the Authoritative Part of Scripture'
Jesus just told us what the whole Old Testament means, from HIS perspective, and he's God.
Note that Jesus himself actually repeats certain specific commandments. And gives examples of godly moral behavior.
There's no "line" to be drawn in the Old Testament. It's huge. It's a morass. It means precisely two sentences of Jesus. No less, and no more. You can read the whole Old Testament for background, but if you want to know what it means, ALL that means, and the LIMIT on what it means, Jesus said precisely what it meant in the Gospels a couple of times. He renewed the parts of The Law that are binding still, and that cannot simply be absorbed into the lines: don't murder, don't steal, etc. The rest - all of those other rules, meant 'Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all'. That's all God ever meant by them.
You don't have to read all the words. You can read two sentences of Jesus and have the final, authoritative and complete explanation of the ENTIRE Old Testament.
Jesus didn't draw the line. He explained it all. Completed it all. Told us what it all means. If anyone should read it and think it means something MORE (for example, that we must REJECT modern biological science and believe that the dinosaurs are a Devil's trick) has run out on Jesus and run back into Jewish traditions.
What do dinosaurs have to do with 'Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all?'
Nothing.
Dinosaurs aren't Scriptural. Opposing them isn't Scriptural.
Genesis' account of creation is Jewish TRADITION, it's quaint, and it's factually wrong. We needn't dwell on it, and we can make a mess of faith if we fiddle around with old traditions that have no place in the sacred plan.
Genesis means 'Love your neighbor as yourself, and Love God above all.' Jesus said so. Directly. Authoritatively. He was God. He defined the meaning and stated it straight.
We do not have to read the Old Testament at all.
And indeed, if we cannot read it without falling prey to the temptation to sieze onto the old Traditions, which are UTTERLY superfluous, by straining them through our new traditions, we shouldn't read the Old Testament. Or rather, we should, but we should read God's Old Testament, which is a few sentences of Jesus explaining the Scriptures' meaning from God's perspective.
Any reading of the Old Testament that challenges Jesus' two sentence explanation of the entirety of it is wrong, and is falling into the trap of tradition.
So, where do we draw the distinction?
We don't draw any distinction.
We take Jesus at his word, verbatim.
We can read his two sentences.
If we want to, we can then read the 1500 pages of the OT, but we have to remember that the only part of it that is divinely inspired, what it means and ALL it means, from a God's Word standpoint, is Jesus' two sentences. Anything that pulls away from Jesus' two sentences is not God's Word, because God only meant what Jesus said by the whole vast Scripture of the OT.
Jesus said so.
The religion Jesus left us is very simple.
It is not found in voluminous texts.
It is found in prayer, in faith, and in doing what he said to our fellow man. That's it.
Jesus reduced all Scripture to two sentences, and didn't leave a written word himself. We can read what he said in the Gospels, and that is sufficient to answer EVERYTHING.
The rest is execution. And that's hard.
It is in many ways easier to read the OT and develop a new theology, more complicated than Jesus', than it is to go out and give money, time and passion to helping the sick and poor, for instance. But the latter is godly, according to Jesus. The former is trying to reinvent the wheel, and is certain to be a botched hack job. Jesus told us all that the OT means. Why bother wasting time reading it, then? Just read him, accept it, and move on.
Which, again, after you through out the rest of the Old Testement, which is just quaint old myths, why would any Jew or Gentile have any reason to look for a Messiah? If Genesis means little more than a nice old tradition, why expect Isaiah or Jeremiah's prophecies about the coming of the Son of Man to be any different? For that matter, what use is the Gospels? Can they not be just quaint old myths that don't really apply except for moral living? For that matter, what is moral?
Friend, be very careful on the path you are treading. For if you dismiss Genesis, you might as well dismiss the Incarnation. If there was no real fall from grace, no real reason for Jesus to die, then there is no reason to listen to any teaching of Jesus. Dismissing the Old Testament (except for certain passages of the Law) means that Christianity is a lie.
LONG LIVE MARCION!!!!!!
I swear, Marcion could have written your words...For the benefit of Christian lurkers, I will post what the Catholic Church Teaches...
ROTFLMAO