Traditions of Men, Part 2

So, we began with the Soferim scribes, then move on to the Tannaim teachers, and then the Amoraim arrived on the scene. The Amoraim were scholars who “interpreted” or explained” the law. In AD 200 Rabbi Judah Hanassi put all of the oral traditions into writing calling them the Mishnah (the oral laws of the Tannaim) and the Gemara (oral laws of the Amoraim), both of which were then combined into one book called the Talmud.

At the time of Jesus, the Jews had the entire OT in written form. But they gave as much authority to the Oral Law (the Talmud or the oral traditions of the Soferim, Tannaim, and Amoraim) as they did the Mosaic Law (the Pentateuch: The Five Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

And that was their second mistake!

The problem, of course, is that there cannot be TWO final authorities. In such a case where there are two authorities, and where they disagree, then the FINAL authority turns out to be the one you side with.

Where the religious Jews of Jesus’ day sided with the Oral Law against the Mosaic Law they erred. That was the problem Jesus had with them. And the problem they had with Jesus was not that He ever broke any of the Mosaic Laws, for He didn’t. The Mosaic Law was of God and Jesus never broke a law of God. The problem the religious Jews had with Jesus was that He broke their Oral Law or their Traditions. For this, they wanted Him killed.

So, now let's take a moment and look at our first example of a “hedge” law or “oral” law:

Exodus 23:19 “…thou shalt not seethe [boil] a kid [young goat] in his mother’s milk.” [One of the many Mosaic laws to be obeyed according to God’s design, not man’s.]

Using the above Mosaic law as an example, let’s look at why God gave this command in the first place.

The Caananites, and other pagan nations, had occultic rituals that were often used. There was one in which a young goat was cooked in its mother’s milk, then the milk was spread all over the fields, guaranteeing a successful harvest from the gods of the harvest.

But God’s chosen people were to be separate, in every way, from the pagans. Therefore, even though there was nothing inherently wrong in cooking a goat in its mothers milk, God wanted His people, called by His Name, to not even “appear to be doing evil” as the pagans did. So He commanded them not to even COOK the way the pagans did, even if there were never going to spread the milk over their own fields. That was God’s intent. Appearances were and are very important to God, since His people were to be a light to the world, and I believe it is a sign of rebellion is us, when we take too lightly the command to “abstain from all appearance of evil.” 1 Thess. 5:22.

But back to the hedge laws. The logic that the scribes applied to the Mosaic law above went something like this:

Let’s say that you have a few goats running around your front yard, and you decide to have goat this evening as your main course. You also decide to have a nice pudding for dessert that happens to made out of goat’s milk. Now it’s possible, just possible, that the milk you used in the pudding happens to belong to the mother of the goat that you just ate for dinner. It might NOT be that way, but then again it just MIGHT and THEN look at the possibilities! The goat and the pudding [milk] arrive in your stomach at about the same time, and the digestive juices start heating them up [boiling], and there you’ve done it! You’ve boiled a kid in its mother’s milk and we are all going to be sent into slavery!!!!

Rather than risk THAT, let’s design a law that says you cannot even eat a goat [meat] and ingest goat’s milk in any form [dairy] within a certain number of hours, so that we can be assured that the meat has passed through your system before the milk ever arrives there! Now Israel has dietary laws.

BUT…we’ve really got to be careful about this now. WHAT IF:

Tonight you eat goat on a plate, which you wash when you are finished with dinner, and tomorrow night you eat cheese off of that same plate, and even though you washed that plate the night before, you just happened to miss a tiny fleck of meat on it, and you just happen to pick that fleck of meat up with your cheese tonight, and ONCE AGAIN, the meat and cheese meet in your stomach and ONCE AGAIN the kid is boiled in the mother’s milk, the Mosaic law is broken, and we are sent off into SLAVERY! We MUST have separate eating utensils! One set of dishes for meat products, and one set of dishes for dairy products.

Are you beginning to see how there came to be 1,500 “hedge” or secondary laws for one Mosaic law? Much less all the other “hedge” laws that were set into place!

This all sounds a bit preposterous, but it is very real. Try reading the Talmud or Mishna for yourself and you will see how difficult it is to understand, much less follow, all the dos and don’ts. I am not wanting to treat the makers of the “hedge” laws with any disrespect. I do understand the motives behind the “hedge” laws, but I also understand how man has a way of “fixing” the things of God to make them even better, that instead causes the things of God to be lost. And, in an effort to make sure no one sins, man is very good at applying so many secondary laws that the main law is obscured and forgotten.

Hope I haven’t lost you in all this background information, but it’s important for us to understand. As I have said before, often we do things that we don’t even understand the reason for, and sometimes these are things we can’t find basis for in the bible. These could be just “traditions” we our following, but we are responsible to verify that the “traditions” we follow are biblical and of God, not the traditions of men. Next week, we’ll look at one of the “traditional” laws Jesus broke. And why He did it.

Source references:

http://www.seedofabraham.net/kosher.html

http://www.house-church.org

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/talmud_&_mishna.html