World Magazine: Jews and Jesus, by Marvin Olasky, via James White:
Passover and Easter are upon us, and so is a book with a fascinating title and audacious subtitle: David Klinghoffer's Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History (Doubleday, 2005).
On the title's crucial theological point: Mr. Klinghoffer, an orthodox Jew, rightly takes to task the "well-meaning Christian" seeking to improve Jewish-Christian relations by saying that Jesus' teaching was very close to that of the rabbis of the time. He also jumps past "New Perspective on Paul" theologians who do not find "substantial points of disagreement between Jesus and His contemporaries."
Both groups err, Mr. Klinghoffer notes, by not taking into full account the doctrine of the "oral Torah" that was sweeping through Judaism 2,000 years ago: "What Jesus rejected was the oral Torah that explains the written Torah. Essential to rabbinic Judaism, this concept of an oral Torah recognizes the Pentateuch as a cryptic document, a coded text. It posits that the Bible's first five books were revealed to Moses along with a key to unlock the code." That key was purportedly passed on orally throughout the generations.
Christians today learn that the New Testament explains certain previously mysterious Old Testament passages; proponents of the "oral Torah" (written down as the Talmud) claimed the same for their teaching. Jesus said, in essence, sola scriptura, the Bible alone: He allowed His followers to pluck grain on the Sabbath, which was perfectly fine according to the Bible but wrong according to the code. The code said that Jews should not wash their faces on fast days, but Jesus taught the opposite.
As Mr. Klinghoffer notes, "For Jesus, oral Torah was a man-made accretion without transcendent authority. He tells a group of Pharisees, 'So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.' . . . This explains why he felt it was appropriate to teach solely on his own authority, rather than by citing previous sages." Some Christians today believe they have figured out the secret code of Revelation or other books of the Bible. Some Jews 2,000 years ago felt the same way, but Jesus flatly told them that there was no code: Just read and pray to put into practice what God's Word itself declares.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
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In Deuteronomy, it says that all the commandments are easy enough to understand and to do. It's true that after 3,300 years, there are some difficult passages in the Hebrew Bible. But overall, there are no mysteries. And as there are no mysteries, there is no need for an additional Divine teaching to explain them.
It is ironic that an Orthodox Jew essentially admits that there is an equivalence between the New Testament and the Oral Torah. As for the assertion that the Oral Torah was sweeping through the Jewish world, what is the evidence? Pharisees, who claimed the Oral Torah, were by that time a major religio-political party, but they were one among many.
Finally, to the question of why Jews reject Jesus. I suppose the question has been vexing for a lot of Christians. The assertion that it is because of the Oral Torah is not true. Jews who reject the Oral Torah also reject the New Testament, even more so. It's simple, really. Did Jesus teach a new teaching, one not found in the Hebrew Bible? If no, then why follow him? Just follow the Hebrew Bible. If yes, then why should we follow this new teaching, if we already have a teaching that works, and that has stood the test of time, which, by the time he came around, was 1,300 years.