The basic meaning of Torah is instruction. Therefore, the word can apply to any number of writings. It refers to the what we think of as the first five books of the Bible, God’s Torah. It can refer to the Prophets and Writings. It can refer to the Apostolic writings. It can refer to what was known as the Oral Torah. There are many things that can be considered Torah, some of which we commonly think of as the law.
Everyone loves to quote portions of Acts 15, with the exception of v21. I’ve had multiple occurrences of people being completely surprised this verse even exists, because no one wants to grapple with it.
In this verse, the Jerusalem Council explained their reasoning for their decisions by noting that Mosheh was being read in the congregations, i.e. the synagogues, every Sabbath. The implication being the new gentile believers would learn about God’s Torah there with the Jewish community.
So, we have a dilemma. Preceding this verse are what appear to be clear statements that the gentiles are not required to obey Torah for salvation, and rightly so, since that was never the purpose of God’s Torah. It’s also described as a yoke with which they were unable to bear.
It does, however, immediately raise the question, to what Torah and to what yoke do the earlier verses refer? If, as is commonly understood, they refer to God’s Torah, then v21 seems a strange conclusion.
Which brings us back to my original question. Why would the Jerusalem Council commend the gentiles to go to Torah kindergarten?
Thank you for finally posting your claim with clarity.
Now it can be rejected fully. There were two issues at the Jerusalem council that were dealt with.
1. some were claiming Gentiles must be circumcized.
2. whether the requirements of being under the Law applied to gentile converts.
BOTH were rejected. Circumcision was not necessary for salvation and the requirements of the Law were not placed on gentiles.
The council then added 4 items for the purpose of harmony with Jewish converts and for unhindered evangelization to the Jews.
"The reason for these restrictions was this. In the weekly synagogue Scripture readings, teachers of the Mosaic Law had stressed Jewish scruples regarding these matters for generations. Consequently the Jews regarded them as extremely important. If Gentile Christians disregarded the convictions of these Jews, they would only alienate those they hoped to bring to faith in Jesus Christ or to growth in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 8:13).
"If there was ever a good opportunity to say that the Gentiles were under the law this was it; for that would have settled the matter simply and quickly. But the apostles, who were Jews themselves, recognized that the law had no force any longer, and they did not try to impose it.”Absolutely no Torah Kindergarten for gentile converts. Totally false."James was not putting Gentile converts under the Mosaic Law by imposing these restrictions. He was urging them to limit their exercise of Christian liberty to make their witness to unsaved Jews more effective and their fellowship with saved Jews more harmonious."
(TC)
Verse 21 is NOT a command for people to go to what you mislabel as Torah kindergarten.
It’s simply a statement of fact that it exists therefore there’s a basic level of knowledge of what Judaism is about.
Presuming it’s a command to Gentile believers to go to “torah kindergarten”, is twisting Scripture to support an already determined doctrine and doesn’t work that well at that.
Why is that? If one understands the theme of the progressively revealed Holy Writings, and God's foundational purpose of them, one can work through the particular situation that one is facing.
For instance, take the two individuals walking home on the first day of the week after the 33 A.D. Passover festival in Jerusalem, where they are leaving the scene that a Jewish man of great esteem was executed for political reasons, which they did hot understand, nor the strange outcome of it.
On their journey home they became involved with someone they did not recognize, but who was going the same way. He gained their confidence, and in it elicited a summary of the events that was perplexing them. His assessment of their presentation indicated that they were being inept in applying scriptural principles to their problem, then went on to get them onto the right track of thought by starting to show them what the overall theme of the holy writings were about:
"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Lk. 24:27 AV)My FRiend, this is exactly where one starts. The Old Testament is not about the Mosaic Law, it is about the Lord and Savior of rotten humans. The theme of the Holy Writing, as much of them as one has, is that they are about Jesus as Lord and Messiah, and the coming on Earth as well as in Heaven, of His Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace.
Here, Jesus puts that principle to work in developing their acceptance of His Gospel, for which Scripture exists to make known; that is, to show God's plan for saving citizens for that Kingdom from as many of fallen, inherently depraved sinners, descendants of the human that He had created for unceasing fellowship with Him and together with that the joy of just being.
God had--out of that vast population--eliminated most of them, and restarted the world again with just a few individuals acceptable to Him, with the same few rules for behavior that the gentiles acceptable into an organized assembly of spirit-reborn constituents ought adhere. Those four rules left standing were to set boundaries for their conduct. What else could one want?
Of course, up to the Cross-death of Jesus, there were only two kinds of humans in the world, for which God had interposed a fence, and why?
Well that was because once again, with sin and death in the world, a force implicit as influencing the behavior of the numerous descendants of Noah and his family, they pretty much all refused to be bounded by those four rules, superseding and going beyond them, eh?
So God decided to separate out, by a certain choice of a particular strain of DNA, a family, the descendants of Jacob, whom Gd repurposed as Israel, to be His Self-supervised selection of a nation of humans, but giving them a body of Law, to which they were expected to obey. One of those pre-Law requirements was circumcision of all males, a rite of entry into a special relationship with God, supposedly performed on one just after birth.
Actually, that system of rules simply could not be uniformly be carried through for any inherently depraved human, and so it was a great burden for any individual, tribe, or whole nation to follow and please The God Who had imposed it. But God had an approximate yearly solution for this burden, to be executed once a year, on a special Day, and it involved blood sacrifices of innocent animals taking the place of guilty humans whose bloody death for sinning was their sentence for even one error of disobeying God or His Law.
However, if even only one human could be born without indwelling sin in its flesh, and from infancy could live through unto fully mature physical and spiritual adulthood without making even one mistake, that individual could be recognized by the Judge to live forever.
But one possibility then had to be faced: if that person was to be slaughtered to pay for ALL human sinning as a consequence due them all, by that perfected person finishing a perfect life so far, could be an acceptable substitute for any one of them who would accept that change of blame, the painful wrathful torture, and death to be put on another, who wold bestow his eternal life on the human who would gratefully exchange hi/her own eternal suffering for it.
Here's the deal: Jesus did live that life, and his placement on the cross and suffering there being a part of the punishment of torture and death due to someone guilty, when all of the Law had been perfectly observed, that sacrificed human could know the the righteous demands of the God-imposed Law had been completely satisfied, and then from the completion legitimately proclaim to all present both temporally and spiritually, not only to the God of Heaven but also the observing god of this world, that:
"Tετελεσται!"
(That is, "the task stands completed, never to be done again, with ongoing eternal consequences. Furthermore, the Law being fulfilled once and for all time, it is annulled for any living human that allows me to represent him/her before You, the Righteous Judge of All")
That is the solution to the dilemma, my FRiend. Jesus, Savior, Lord, and Kin is The Word Personified, and He is the Purpose of it:
the meaning of "Yehoshua" is "Salvation," and the Gospel based on Hm is: "Jesus saves!"For both Gentile and the new group of humans other than Jews and Gentiles is the Body of Regenerated Servants of Jesus the Messiah and Lord (= true Christians) saved by their trust in /him.