I’ve been working through an English translation of a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew’s gospel, called the Du Tillet manuscript. It is interesting in having a plausible claim to being closely related to Matthew’s original Hebrew autograph on which the canonical Greek version is based. The manuscript was published in 1555, having been confiscated from a Jewish scholar in Rome when the Pope passed an edict banning the Talmud, leading of course to the grabbing of anything in Hebrew, which few Gentiles could read. We know nothing of its prior provenance.
Papias wrote, in the early second century, that “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” If true, that raises a fascinating question about our canonical Scripture being based on an inspired translation, a fact I would certainly capitalise on were I one of those “King James only” people!
From my point of view, I was intrigued to see if there are signs, in du Tillet, of its using more original language than our Matthew, or alternatively evidence of its being derived from the Greek. Certainly, unlike other Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew, it runs close to the canonical text, with no attempt at Jewish polemic against Christianity. One would therefore have to explain why a rabbinical Jew would want to make a Hebrew translation, other than for better understanding in his mother-tongue.
In fact, to my eyes there are several instances of word-choices that are well-suited to the milieu of Jesus, that might present tricky choices in translation to Greek, but which would not be obvious choices in translation back from Greek to Hebrew. So overall, I’m inclined to believe the manuscript casts some useful light on the text, and vindicates Papias, without reducing the authority of our Bibles taken from the Greek.
One complication is that Papias, and other early Christian authors, used “Hebrew tongue” for either Hebrew or Aramaic, and that raises the question of why Matthew would write in Hebrew, when the vernacular of Jesus’s society was Aramaic. It might mean that du Tillet is actually an early translation of an Aramaic original, or, more probably to my thinking, that Matthew, as an apostle of the Messiah, was fully aware of standing in the tradition of the biblical authors as a writer of Hebrew Scripture, for the Jewish Levantine church.
Be that as it may, my particular English translation is the work of a Messianic Jewish rabbi, S. Kyle Moline, which is a positive help in explaining Jewish elements, but sometimes perplexing in that Messianic Judaism has a particular theological structure that differs from mine. That’s all good, of course, in that we learn by having our presuppositions challenged. In particular, Moline’s commentary has a Judaistic attitude to the Law of Moses that seems to reflect the differences between the early Gentile church and the Nazarene believers of Judaea and Galilee, with regard to the Law. At the extreme, Jewish groups like the Ebionites revered James the Just, rejected Paul as a false apostle, and marginalised Peter for apparent compromise on matters of the Law.
My writer doesn’t do that, accepting Jesus both as divine (though disquietingly referring to him, like the Spirit, as “part of God,”) and as mankind’s only Saviour from sin, by faith. However, he regards a major part of Jesus’s work to be teaching us how easy it is to obey the Law if properly expounded by him – and my author often refers specifically to our keeping all 613 commandments, and that this should be every believer’s duty. That he is not simply applying it to Jewish believers is evidenced by his approving mention of Gentiles converting to Messianism from Christian denominations.
Where he’s coming from is shown by his stressing that, for the most part, Jesus agreed fully with the majority Hillel school of the Pharisees against the minority Shammai school, to which he attributes most of the Pharisaic opposition to Jesus in the gospel. He rejoices that the Hillel school won out in Judaism, saying that Jesus’s ministry profoundly affected the direction of rabbinical Judaism subsequently. In other words, his approach to the gospel is very much that all an observant Jew needs to do for salvation is to recognise, and trust, Jesus as the divine Messiah, thus “completing” his Jewishness.
I don’t doubt that there’s some truth in all of this. Jesus did seem to support Hillel’s interpretation more often than not (with the notable exception of divorce), and Jesus’s teaching is so revolutionary that it has influenced all world religions from Hinduism to Islam, not to mention the paganism of Marcus Aurelius. If, as my author suggests, one in seven Judaean Jews had accepted Christ by the time the temple was destroyed, the rabbis’ rejection of Jesus had to include adopting the obvious truths of his teaching as their own.
At the same time, though, we should remember that Jesus was condemned by a Sanhedrin whose Pharisaic majority followed Hillel, not Shammai, and that the Pharisee Saul, a disciple of Hillel’s grandson Gamaliel, persecuted the Church murderously until his conversion.
So, I wonder, is it even possible to obey all 613 commandments of Moses, the exactness of the number implying literal obedience rather than interpretive gymnastics? And does the New Testament require it, even for Jewish disciples? To be sure, Jesus regards the Law as divinely given:
17″Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practises and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-20
Even here, though, there is surely something significant in Jesus coming to “fulfil” the Law, since it implies that we cannot. At the least it suggests that only his grace (not merely his teaching) makes obedience possible, rather than its being intrinsically easy. Indeed, I am struck by Peter’s words at the council of Jerusalem. The question was whether circumcision was necessary for Gentiles to be saved, but Peter, arguing for salvation by faith alone, says:
“Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?” Acts 15:10
The burden was clearly not circumcision itself, which was a rite of infancy, nor (contrary to common error) that the Jews tried to get to heaven by their own strict obedience, but rather the strictness of the Law itself, which Peter seems to have relaxed for himself (Galations 2:14), though thousands of the Jerusalem church remained “zealous for the Law” (Acts 21:20).
But I don’t see how it is even possible, since 70AD, to obey the ritual part of the Law, when there is no temple in which to sacrifice the offerings, nor priest to offer them or even to consult in such matters as the cleansing of lepers or mothers, the purging of mildew, or the making of Nazirite vows. Not only did Jesus proclaim himself as the sole locus of worship, the once-for-all sacrifice, and the effective high-priest interceding at the Father’s throne, but he cursed and condemned the temple in his Olivet discourse, rendering the ritual law necessarily obsolete by its physical destruction.
Another big chunk of the Mosaic law comprises the food laws. But Peter’s vision at Joppa links God’s declaration that the Gentiles are no longer “unclean” with God’s declaration that all the four-footed animals, reptiles and birds he sees have now also been pronounced clean. And, of course, Mark’s gospel makes this an implication of the Lord’s own teaching to Israel itself:
“Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is clean.) Mark 7:19
The logic of this seems to be that, since Christ, Israel is no longer to be set apart from the nations by its unique requirements, but to be reaching out to win the whole world to Christ. And so Peter’s dietary laxness would appear to be applicable to all the rather arbitrary markers of Jewish separation. This would include physical circumcision (which is a nothingburger, in Paul’s eyes, 1 Corinthians 7:19), but also such lesser things as tassels on garments.
Does this not also apply to the Sabbath? As a teenager I was completely convinced about the inapplicability of keeping Sunday as the Christian Sabbath by an article that described this as a “theological confidence trick.” Although one of the two reasons given by Moses for the Sabbath was God’s own rest from creation (the other being Israel’s liberation from slavery), it was not a compulsory provision for the Patriarchs, but only for Israel after Sinai. Even the circumcision that the Council of Jerusalem abolished for Gentiles went back further to Abraham. Paul regards sabbaths as much as a “disputable matter” as food (Romans 14:5-6), presumably with reference to mixed congregations of Gentiles and “Jews zealous for the Law.” And in any case, no low-status Gentile convert would have had the luxury of resting on Saturday, even had they wanted to.
These considerations seem to imply that a large proportion of the 613 commandments are no longer relevant in Christ. And many more are, in themselves, so culturally removed from 21st century life that they can only be obeyed after removing their specifics to find the underlying love-principle. And so nobody puts a parapet around a pitched roof, but might obey building regulationss on bannisters on the same principle; few have the opportunity to return straying cows, but may return their neighbour’s wallet; and the Geneva Convention rightly makes the procurement of wives in battle something only Sharia Law still blesses, not Christianity.
As far as I can see, then, that mainly leaves what used to be called “the moral Law” category, which is essentially commentary on the Ten Commandments, and that in turn is commentary on “Love Yahweh, and love your neighbour,” as has never been disputed in historical Christianity. It’s significant that these are things that Leviticus, for example, universalises to the whole of mankind by saying that the various categories of sexual immorality , and child sacrifice, are the reasons why the land “vomited out its inhabitants,” and would vomit out the Israelites if they followed suit. The Council of Jerusalem enjoins Gentiles to avoid sexual immorality, food offered to idols (for the sake of ex-idolaters), and from blood and strangled animals (for the sake of table-fellowship with Jewish believers).
There is plenty in the New Testament, echoing and amplifying the Old, telling both Jewish and Gentile Christians about shunning idolatry, respect for parents and elders, sexual purity, respect for life and property, and the evil of covetousness. I’m pretty certain such teaching reduces the Law of Moses to the pedagogue who leads us to Christ, the fulfillment of the Law (Galatians 3:24), and gives us insight into living moral lives in all circumstances.
Verse 28 of Galatians applies that role for the Law to Jews as well as Gentiles, though it leaves open the question, now as in the final days of the second temple, of how a Messianic Jewish believer ought to respond, especially if they are living in the State of Israel where Shabbat and other God-given customs are both a cultural unifier and a point of contact for the presentation of the Gospel. The New Testament itself seems to allow for a wide range of convictions here, so I’m not going to criticise unduly my Messianic brother in his particular situation and calling. But I might question whether he really does obey all 613 Mosaic Commandments, as a matter of reason rather than morality.
I’m a bit slow, but it only occurred to me last week that there are most likely no knowingly ‘Jewish’ descendants of the first Christians. Because there was neither Jew nor Greek, and the ‘set apart’ identifying elements were mostly abandoned, who would even know?
Which led to me looking it up and discovering that ‘Messianic Jews’ are a very new thing.
Yes – there is probably some complexity to the question. The Nazarene church became marginalised as the land was “gentilised” after the suppression of the rebellion in 130. Thereafter, the area was a mix of Jews, pagans, with increasing gentile churches, some poor Nazarene fellowships, and even poorer fringe groups like Ebionites.
Later, Arabs (who seem to have been evangelised by Arians) began to migrate, and eventually Arab warlords took over in Jerusalem, and from a mix of Jewish folk and heterodx Christians opposed to Constantinople, forged Islam as a unifying ideology for Arab colonialism.
Therefater Christians of all stripes, as well as Jews, were suppressed until the Crusades (when it was the Jews who were suppressed!).
In the diaspora, as you say, churches were more likely to be mixes of Jew and Gentile, and so taught the less Judaic Pauline form of Christianity. Assimilation was therefore likely, as it was over the centuries for those Jews who converted either voluntarily or, sadly, under compulsion.
It’s probably only since the re-establishment of Israel as a nation that religious Jews have been likely to form a majority of Christian converts in a fellowship. Some unique features were always bound to result from that.
As a child and teenager I was in receipt of a very strict Baptist upbringing. I was taught that I had to follow the moral Law enshrined in the ten commandments. This included the fourth commandment that I should keep the Sabbath day holy; in due course I realised that full obedience to this law required observing it in the manner prescribed by the Law (don’t do any kind of work, and don’t require your employees to do any work; don’t light a fire; don’t gather food; don’t cook; don’t buy, sell or trade). It turned out that even the strictest adherents to this law whom I knew at the time did not follow it to the letter, not even the members of the Lord’s Day Observance Society. This was my introduction to ‘pick and mix’ Christianity – take what you like and ignore the rest.
Eventually I studied the Scriptures for myself (a mistake I keep making) and found that the Law, whilst ‘good’ (according to Paul), was no longer applicable to believers, and that if I chose to adopt any part of it (as a means to righteousness) I was obliged to obey all of it; in this respect there was no clear distinction between the ceremonial Law, the judicial Law and the moral Law – Paul usually lumped them together – so if I was required not to steal I was also required to sacrifice a goat for unintentional sins committed and to stone to death my rebellious son. It was good to discover that I was ‘not under the Law’, difficult as it was to loose myself from the shackles of years of religious indoctrination.
We evangelicals have always had an equivocal relationship to the Law. One week the sermon was “Not under law, but under grace!” and the next taking a lax attitude to it proved you weren’t saved. My liberation came from my first preaching series, on Galatians, when I realised that sanctification as well as justification is by grace.
It’s not that morals and behaviour don’t matter, nor that the Law has nothing to say on them, but that grace working through divinely-gifted faith, in love, produces obedience to God’s will as a fruit, not (primarily) a duty. Which is not really any different than grace working through divinely-gifted faith to produce saving obedience to the gospel message.
Civilisation
It seems to me, from my lowly perspective, that catalysed by deplorables populism then the realisations of the “health emergency” that the previously unimaginable challenging of assumptions is now questioning the whole basis of civilisation. The law can no longer be so commonly rationalised once the assumptions from which it flows are not universally held. I once satisfied myself with the idea “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” proved the inanity of further debate. But the momentum to continue digging has persisted.
Law built on morality. Morality on tablets of stone forbidding killing. Schmitt’s, albeit as new found prominence rather than currently penned concepts, rationalisation of national imperialism, strength, then actual suggestions Judaeo Christianity was not the foundation but the undermining of harmonious sustainable civilisation. Quite apart from Millibands method to ensure we return to cave dwelling this line of thought emerging plus the clear drift toward Malthusian euthanasia perplex me. This is self harm on a level previously unimaginable. An example of which is that allegedly somewhere in Scotland not in a mental institution some institution opined that teenage girls self harming should be given clean blades. This may be hysterical clap trap but the fact I’d repeat it here is worrying!! Perhaps because the Prime Minister of our country does not seem aware that deadly instruments lie in a certain drawer in every house worldwide.
I’m not familiar with Schmitt’s thought (quick primer from the internet just attempted!), but “Judaeo Christianity was not the foundation but the undermining of harmonious sustainable civilisation” seems to go back at least to Gibbons’ Decline and Fall.
The idea that civilisations were harmonious and sustainable before Christianity is arrant nonsense, of course, from the massacres of the Neolithic population movements to the Roman Empire itself, red in tooth and claw, hanging on to a transient power through internal oppression and rebellions.
I heard a remark from Apostate Prophet, an atheist ex-Muslim now gravitating towards Christianity, who is mightily impressed with the words from Moses’s law, to the effect “Do not oppress a foreigner, for you yourselves know what it is like to be foreigners in Egypt.”
That does not sanctify mass-immigration – quite the opposite if such immigration dilutes the practice of such principles. But it is, indeed, a far cry from “Make sure the self-destroyer has a sharp knife.”
I suppose a blunt PM could bring new meaning to someone calling a spade a spade. He is triumphant though that samurai swords may no longer be marketed which sort of proves who’s the sharpest thingy in the drawer?