Loading...In my upcoming course “Finding Moses” I’ll be discussing the final four books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) (for more information, see: Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch – Bart D. Ehrman – New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com).
Apart from the opening chapters of Exodus, these books are not well known to most Christians, even those on fairly good terms with the New Testament. I’ve known many a reader who was determined to read the entire Bible from beginning to end, but who quit early into Leviticus. In part that’s because these books are both hard to understand and difficult to see as interesting when not explained. A huge chunk of them is made up of the laws given to Moses (almost the entire second half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, a good chunk of Numbers, and most of Deuteronomy). How can reading a bunch of antiquated laws be interesting?
Of course, many (MANY!) Christians just love to cherry pick these laws in order to define morality in the modern world, choosing the ones that suit their preferences (e.g., on “homosexuality”) but ignoring most of the others (not just “Sabbath” and eating pork, but tons of others. Wearing a shirt made out of two kinds of fabric is just as forbidden as same-sex sexual relations but, well, that don’t signify any more!) (and why? Hey, it’s “common sense!”) (But if that’s your view, it means the BIBLE is not your guide but your “common sense”) (which, by the way, is a sense that is not entirely common….)
In any event understanding the laws of the Jews is indeed very important, and — spoiler alert — it can actually be interesting with some guidance. And so I’ll be talking about all that in my course.
One of the things I’ll be dealing with is how widely the Jewish law in general is misunderstood by most Christians today (and throughout history). Here is how I discuss the matter in my book, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press).
The Overall Conception of the Law (and Occasional Misconceptions)
There are widespread misunderstandings of the nature and function of the Law of Moses among modern readers—especially within some elements of the Christian tradition. Many conservative Christians think that the Law of Moses is hopelessly detailed and impossible to keep, even though Jews have to keep it for salvation. In this view, it is the Christian gospel that can save people from the condemnation that comes from breaking the Law (which, by its very nature, has to be broken because no one can keep it). Whether or not this view is right theologically, it certainly is not the view of the Law that has been traditional within Judaism. The Law has been traditionally seen as the greatest gift God had ever given his people. Here are instructions from the creator of the universe about how to worship him and how to relate to one another. Nothing could be better.
The Law of Moses may seem extraordinarily detailed to outsiders and in places to be arbitrary and pointless. But every legal code seems extraordinarily detailed and arbitrary to outsiders. Just think of laws that we have in America. Our laws are far, far more complicated than anything in the Hebrew Bible. Just the laws about how to drive cars are amazingly complex and would seem bizarre indeed to someone living in different contexts. Or think of all the laws about what one can or cannot personally consume in terms of, say, liquids, pills, and inhalants. Talk about detailed and seemingly arbitrary!
The Law within ancient Israelite religion, and then later within Judaism, was never meant to be “the way of salvation.” It was never thought that a Jew had to earn God’s favor by doing the Law, and that when she or he failed (as always happened)—it meant being condemned to an eternity in hell. This view very much puts the cart before the horse. In traditional Jewish thinking, salvation has already come to Jews by virtue of their election as the people of God. Keeping the Law was the reverential response to the salvation that God had already provided. People did what God wanted precisely out of gratitude for the favor already showered on them, in loving response to his kind and glorious act of salvation.
This overall conception of the Law is presented in the Law itself, in fact, at the very beginning of the legal section of Exodus—after Israel has reached Mount Sinai, and God begins to speak to Moses— in highly significant and meaningful words:
Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you shall obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:3-6)
Notice the sequence here: first God saved Israel from their slavery in Egypt and “brought” them to himself “on eagles’ wings.” In response, they are to obey his voice and keep the covenant (which he had already made with them). When they do so, they will become a special people before God, “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Failing to do what God demanded, of course, had very serious consequences. But there is nothing in the Law that was outrageously difficult to do—any more than is the case with American laws. It really is not that difficult to refrain from idolatry, murder, and lying under oath, or to slaughter your ox if it gores your neighbor to death.
I think you’re making “salvation” do double duty here. Jews have never understood “salvation” in the Christian sense – salvation from hell. We do understand the idea – though we don’t use the word – in the sense of being saved (redeemed is the usual word) from slavery in Egypt.
It’s also incorrect to speak of the Jews as the “elect” of God – that’s a Christian and even Calvinist concept. We think of ourselves as “chosen” – meaning that we agreed, at Sinai, to worship God and follow his laws in return for his protection. Everyone who follows the 7 laws of Noah is “saved” so to speak.
Punishment for breaking the law (mainly the law against worshiping other gods) meant national disaster in the early Israelite religion. It wasn’t until the Babylonian exile that the idea of punishment shifted to the individual.
OK, I’ve never thought Jews spoke of “salvation from hell”!
I didn’t think so, but the article wasn’t clear (to me, at least).
Enjoyed this post, just have an off topic question!
What’s the historicity between Peters nickname “Cephas”? Jesus gives him the nickname to be the rock of his church, but historical Jesus wasn’t expecting a church, was he? Is this nickname historical, and if so, do we know why it was given to Peter?
The “church” part of it cannot go back to Jesus. It does appear that he gave Simon that nickname (it means the same thing as Peter; his actualy name was Simon); what he meant by it is a puzzle, since in the Gospel traditions Peter seems more like sifting sand than a solid rock.
I see. In 1 Cor 15, Paul mentions Cephas. They could be 2 different people, but surely he would be referring to Simon Peter in this passage, right? Not Cephas, one of the leaders in Jerusalem.
If they are different people then he means Cephas rather than Peter. (Note the other person he singles out is James, another leader in Jerusalem, who prior to the appearance was not a believer. So they may be cited because they are so similar in that respect)
I didn’t know James was not a believer during the life of Jesus!
Yup, it’s pretty clear from the Gospels (most famously John 7:5)
I was just “re-listening” (Audible) to God’s Problem, when you were talking about Israel and being chosen, and after spending 80 years in and around Christianity, I never thought about why God chose the Israelites as his chosen people. Why not some other group? Was it “fair” to all the other people that they weren’t chosen? I know the comment about “fair”, but it still raises a question for me, and no one really has an answer… or do you? 🤔
Lots of people thought/think they ahve been chosen by the divine to be the Elect here on earth — the ancient Romans and many modern
Americans e.g.!
Dear Bart,
Have you ever come across – in any of the early Christian writings- the view that Torah forbidden animals/food laws (no longer valid for Christians) were a kind of divine punishment for the Israelites,as a consequence of their stubbornness, depriving them of animals/food considered permissible for their ancestral Patriarchs?
Thank you so much.
Ah, good question. I can’t recall if Justin makes that claim or not. Maybe someone can tell us.
I think Justin Martyr does make that claim in ‘Agains Trypho’ if I remember correctly
My understanding of the law and following the law, as opposed to being in the “spirit” of things, is that being in the spirit is a lot easier and a lot more pleasant. Take the traffic laws that you mention. I was told growing up, that we follow the law because “we/they said so”. It’s the law & we do what it says.
At one point I thought over all our traffic and driving laws, and I found that I agreed with most if not all of them. I also saw that enables people, including myself, to be a lot safer, and to get where we want and need to go in a lot better fashion. Thinking this through and really looking at it enabled me to be more in the spirit of law and to drive in the spirit of the law. What I’m *doing* is the exact same thing. But it’s a lot easier, more pleasant and my driving experience is a lot more fun.
“In traditional Jewish thinking, salvation has already come to Jews by virtue of their election as the people of God.”
Did the Jewish conception of salvation entail post-mortem outcome (as in most traditions of Christian thought throughout the centuries) as well as earthly salvation (e.g. saved from slavery to the ruling power)? Was it a communal conception (the whole community is saved via election; provided the individuals stay within the community, they remain saved), in contrast to individualism in Protestant Christianity (individual Christians are saved, who can then join in a community of other saved individuals)?
I suspect historically and in the contemporary world, Christians and Jews have quite different conception of what salvation is. Same word, but quite different meaning.
Most Jews didn’t believe in an afterlife; salvation was a matter of being on the right side of God in this life.
Great post. All very true.
Though reading Leviticus may seem a punishment from God, reading it from the vowel-less scroll in a conservative synagogue, memorizing not only the words but the proper cantillation, can be an age-defier excellent habit and a nimble mental acrobatics exercise.
It also requires perfection. The moment one word is mispronounced, the Rabbi, the Cantor , the professional Torah reader and a senior community member, all standing around the reader, will immediately correct her/him. One doesn’t like being corrected in public, so one learns the hell out of those chapters.
Wouldn’t “thou shalt not covet … ” be impossible to keep?
Only if you interpret “covet” to mean “want” or “desire.”
But as part of commandment “thou shalt not covet …” isn’t “want” or “desire” how everyone would have interpreted it?
Nope. For example, it’s not how I interpret it! (It is stronger than “Wow that’s a nice tent; I wish *I* had it….” It’s more like “Wow that’s a nice tent. I need to figure out how to take it”)
ok I see – thanks
“Of course, many (MANY!) Christians just love to cherry pick these laws in order to define morality in the modern world, choosing the ones that suit their preferences (e.g., on “homosexuality”) but ignoring most of the others ([…] Wearing a shirt made out of two kinds of fabric is just as forbidden as same-sex sexual relations but, well, that don’t signify any more!)”
I am thinking back to how I would have responded to this allegation of cherry picking when I was a somewhat conservative Christian. I would have said that if Paul, the very champion of “the end of the law”, nevertheless declared same-sex intercourse a sin and seemed to indicate that it harms the practitioner, then who am I to say I understand Christian morality better than he did? At the same time, I would have agreed that Christians who obsess over homosexuality and list it among the most depraved of all vices are indeed cherry picking.
(My views were also coloured by the fact that I struggled with aspects of my own sexuality, but we don’t need to talk about that.)
Paul also called long hair on men an abomination. He required women to have their head covered in church, and told them not to wear fancy clothes. Should Christians accept that as dogma, too?
A lot of conservative Christians would answer that if something is condemned _only_ by Paul (and not mentioned elsewhere), then he may have been speaking to a particular context, and we should seek to understand the principle he is trying to convey rather than blindly apply everything he says to our own time and place. Whereas if something is condemned in multiple scriptures, from Exodus to the Epistles, then it should be taken as a basic moral principle, binding on God’s people for all time.
(We can ignore the fact that much of what “Paul” says is in the disputed letters, since we are not talking about history but about what conservative Christians believe.)
Well, if Paul needs to be taken in context so does every other writer of the Bible….
As I understand it Bart; Rabbinic tradition holds that the only law that is not easy to do is Deuteronomy 24:19.
“When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.”
I believe it is reported that one, very pious, rabbi had been meticulous in observing the commands of the Law; but having a very accurate memory, could never observe this one, as he had never truly forgotten a sheaf. Until one year at harvest, towards the end of a long life, he was blessed with the awareness that he had left a sheaf in the field, and so might – at last – leave it for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. In gratitude for this culminating offering of divine grace he threw an immense party for the entire village and its neighbours.
I’m not aware of that being a rabbinic concern or it being the only one! Do you have a reference?
I found it in Hyam Maccoby, ‘The day God laughed’. The point being that all the other 612 commands of the Law can be observed by attention; but this command can only be observed by inattention.
I wonder if that’s true. Don’t some people violate teh Sabbath without meaning to? Or allow their oxes to gore a neighbor because they aren’t paying close enough attention?
Tosephta Pe’ah 3:8
“It once happened with a certain Hasid that he forgot a sheaf of corn
which was in the middle of his field. He said to his son: Go and
sacrifice for me a bull for a burnt offering and another bull for a
peace-offering. Said his son: Father, why do you see fit to rejoice
over this duty more than over all the duties mentioned in the Torah?
Said his father: All the other duties of the Torah were given to us by
God to be performed intentionally, but this one comes to us by
inattention, so that if we perform it purposely before God, the
fulfilment of this commandment does not come to our hand.”
Ah, interesting. Of course, the problem is that one rabbinic opinion in any rabbinic writing produces lots of counter-opinions. (!) And as I mentioned, it;s hard to imagine that large numbers of teh commands could not be broken unintentionally…
Please excuse this interjection here, but I have recently been researching 2 Temple history regarding the rise of the different sects. It seems the Sadducees which are who made up the temple priests followed a strict literal reading of the Torah. Where the Pharisees included an Oral Tradition of interpreting the Torah. This explains how the Pharisees believed in eternal life where the Sadducees didn’t. In first century the Pharisees were very poplular among the regular average Jew, and that after the Temple destruction and the Sadducees had no more Temple to be priest in, the Pharisee’s grew and the Oral Tradition expanded (Mishna) and the Sadducees evaporated. Thus the Jews today are the Pharisees of the past but even more reliant on the Oral Traditions.
Possibly so Bart; it may be significant that anecdote is told of a ‘Hasid’; who are sometimes held up in Rabbbinic texts as practicing extravagant observations of the Law.
“The Hasidim were members of the Pharisaic movement who aimed at a standard of conduct higher than the mere fulfilment of the laws of the Torah. Their mode of behaviour was known as middat hasidut (‘the measure of the saints’), and many stories were told about their often unexpected reactions and deeds. Some Hasidim were criticized by the more middle-of-the-road Pharisees as pursuing saintliness at the cost of common sense, as when they neglected hygienic precautions out of faith in God”. Hyam Maccoby, ‘Early Rabbinic Writings’ CUP pp 133-134.
Nevertheless, it does illustrate the difference between ‘not breaking the law’ and ‘observing the law”.
“This passage expresses what later became known as ‘the joy of the commandment’ (simhat ha-miswah),i.e. the idea that the opportunity to perform a good deed prescribed in the Torah should be regarded as a piece of good fortune, rather than as a meritorious act for which one should claim credit. “
“it;s hard to imagine that large numbers of teh commands could not be broken unintentionally…”
As I understand it Bart, from a rabbinic perspective the halakhic prescriptions of the Jewish Sages are exactly determined to prevent any of the 613 commandments of the Torah – mtzvah – being unintentionally broken. In the terminology of the Mishnah (Avot 1.1) halakhic prescriptions are there to ‘make a fence around the Law’.
The classic example of this being the orthodox Jewish complete duplication of milk and meat cookery utensils and equipment. This is derived from the Torah commandment ‘do not boil a kid in its mothers milk’ (Exodus 23:19). The 613 commandments of the Torah are of absolute divine authority; the prescriptions of the rabbis (though authoritative) are not divine absolutes, but fallible human arguments. But anyone observing the rabbinic halakha can be certain of never (even in extreme inattention) infringing an absolute divine command, as by accidentally boiling a kid in its mothers milk.
It’s so strange that Christians view the Law of Moses to be insurmountably detailed. For Jews (at least rabbinical Jews) it’s exceedingly vague, so much so that we need the Oral Law, as recorded in the Mishnah, interpreted by the Talmud, to explain how to follow it. So when it says not to work on the Sabbath, Jewish Law identifies 39 categories of prohibited activities. When it says not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk, we have detailed laws regarding separation of milk and dairy dishes and cookware. And even this is sometimes vague, so we have additional layers of commentary and codification spanning millennia.
Good point. Of course Christians sometimes say that Judaism started *out* as highly legalistic and then just got much worse. (!)
Very interesting and perspective-adjusting post Bart. Thank you for this.
Joel Baden (I’m mentioning him a bit lately) talks about this issue, and mentions the amount of words devoted to a topic and the amount of time covered by those words, as being indicators of what was important to the writers. If you read the creation story or the flood story or Genesis in general, it seems to cover thousands of years and these stories are discussed once (briefly) and then almost never mentioned again. By contrast, the Law Of Moses occupies a very large portion of the OT/HB (as Bart states), going into exhaustive detail, which indicates that these writers viewed these as being extremely important to them. Baden contrasts this with our current position, where this part of the Bible is considered boring and totally ignored, yet we latch onto the things like creation etc., and emphasise those.
Thank You for clarifying your definition of “Salvation” in one of your replies on this post. “Salvation” means different things to different people. Some believe “Salvation from Sin” where one can become sin free. Others believe “Salvation from death” (eternal life). Now your definition of Salvation used in this blog seems to tread on the side of “Salvation from Sin” in the form of “righteousness”.
For the last few weeks I’ve been researching Jewish Life (society) in the 2nd Temple Period. I quickly found that what I was led to believe about the Jews from a lifetime raised in a protestant church was totally misleading. That in fact the “majority” of the Jews of that time were just like the majority of those claiming to be Christians now. They would observe the “holidays/holy days) but otherwise pretty much ignore the Torah in their lives not really knowing/understanding what was in the Torah. Their religion was just an occasional practice of showmanship.
This actually explains “why” John the Baptist was out preaching “repent”. He would have been on TV in todays times… I see a similarity between the early rise of Christianity 1st century and the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s.