17) Why Study the Bible Through a Jewish Lens? - Part 3: Reestablishing the Torah and Its Relationship to the Sinai Covenant
Introduction
In exploring the relationship between Jesus, the Torah, and the Sinai Covenant from a Jewish perspective, we embark on a journey that challenges traditional understandings and opens new pictures of insight. For many, the idea that Jesus came to cancel the Torah is a deeply ingrained belief, yet a closer examination reveals a different truth. The New Testament provides evidence that Jesus did not intend to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it. Understanding this relationship requires delving into the foundational nature of the Torah, its role in Jewish history, and its continuity in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. This exploration sheds light on the ongoing validity of the Torah and its place as the bedrock foundation of religious revelation. As we delve deeper, we uncover profound insights that challenge and enrich our understanding of faith, covenant, and the teachings of Jesus.
Restoring the Torah and the Sinai Covenant
The Validity of Torah
Once you begin to see Jesus' and the apostle's relationship to the Torah from the Jewish perspective, this can challenge you tremendously, especially if you have been of the mindset that Jesus came to cancel the Torah. As we have already discussed, that is not the case, and evidence from the New Testament backs that up. And if you are hung up on the teachings of Paul as a contrast to the law, hang in there because I will address that momentarily as well.
One thing to remember is that a later revelation does not supplant an earlier revelation. This is by inference of logic. If God is truth and everything He says is true and true forever, He cannot later go back and say, "This is not true anymore!" The Torah comes to the Jewish people through Moses. It is represented by the five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The idea of the Torah is that this is God's revelation or self-disclosure to man. He shows up on Mount Sinai in front of an entire nation that sees Him in the smoke, the fire, the lightning, and the thunder. They all hear God's voice speaking to them, which elevates each and every person there to the level of a prophet, hearing directly from God. This is unusual and unprecedented in the history of humankind. Not until the days when Jesus walked the earth did anything come close to this Godly encounter.
What comes through the Torah and this revelation at Sinai becomes the fundamental basis of the religious revelation of the prophets that unfolds through the remainder of the Old Testament. The subsequent prophets assume what happened at Mount Sinai and what came through Moses is the bedrock truth. Their revelations build upon this truth. It is also no different when we arrive in the New Testament with the teachings of Jesus. The Torah is the foundation upon which all other scripture is built. The Bible as we know it today can be considered Torah, as the word Torah means teaching. The Bible is the teachings of God's revelation. The Torah, however, is the bedrock foundation of all other scripture.
In the Torah, in Deuteronomy 34:10 it says:
And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. (Deuteronomy 34:10-12, ESV Bible)
No other prophets have been like Moses. None of them saw God’s will and revelation as clearly as Moses. Looking back on Deuteronomy, we see a prophetic promise in Deuteronomy 18:
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—(Deuteronomy 18:15, ESV Bible)
So, suppose Jesus is a prophet like Moses. In that case, he's carrying that message of the Torah forward to the Jewish people and, ultimately, through his disciples, to all nations. So, it's safe to say that Jesus and everyone listening to his teachings knew and accepted that the Torah was foundational and that Jesus was that Torah teacher, like Moses. If we want to follow Jesus and understand him better, I think we need to adopt his worldview regarding the Torah.
But what about the Book of Hebrews? Does it not speak against the law and the old covenant? The opening of the book of the Epistle to the Hebrews starts with a very provocative passage that says:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Hebrews 1:1-2, ESV Bible)
These opening lines of Hebrews put Jesus in a line of continuity with the previous revelation, not contradicting the previous revelation. It elevates the teaching of Jesus to the same level as the level of Torah and the teachings of the prophets. If there is a contradiction between these things, that is a problem. In chapter 2, it goes on to say:
Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? (Hebrews 2:1-3, ESV Bible)
Which is to say, if the Torah is solid, and we all agree the Torah is solid, then how much more so should we be paying attention to the one who has spoken to us in these last days? Somehow, we can misread that and assume the Torah is alterable or no longer stands. But that is the complete opposite of what the writer of Hebrews is saying. This is a classic Jewish way of rabbinic teaching called Kal va-homer (Heb. 'light and heavy'), by stating if the first thing is true, then how much more so is the second thing true. If the first thing is false, the whole argument falls apart.
Understanding the Sinai Covenant
Closely related to the Torah is the idea that the Jewish people are still under the covenant obligations of the Sinai covenant. This is a very controversial issue because the Sinai covenant, like the Torah, has been canceled in most Christian churches. The New Covenant is in full effect now, correct? Where does this idea of the Sinai covenant being in effect come from? Really, it comes from a literal reading of the Bible. In Deuteronomy, we learn that Israel must obey God and keep the terms of the Sinai covenant. What are the terms? The laws of Torah. The covenant is the agreement to keep those laws:
“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. (Deuteronomy 28:1, ESV Bible)
“But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. (Deuteronomy 28:15, ESV Bible)
“If” they will do these things (stipulations of the covenant)… all is contingent on Israel’s faithfulness and obedience. Obedience to the covenant brings sanctions, either curses or blessings. These are God’s provisions of the covenant.
The sign of the covenant is the Sabbath and is to be kept forever:
Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.(Exodus 31:16, ESV Bible)
Just like the Abrahamic covenant, the Sinai covenant is ongoing. Covenants do not conflict but work together and build on top of one another. When Israel broke the covenant at Sinai, it did not end God’s relationship with Israel. In their disobedience, God remained faithful to the covenants He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Leviticus 26, it tells us that this is how the Sinai covenant is supposed to work:
“But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. But the land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes. Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, iI will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God. But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.” These are the statutes and rules and laws that the LORD made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. (Leviticus 26:40-46, ESV Bible)
The Torah tells us that when the Sinai covenant is breached, God will still redeem His people and keep His covenant with them based on the covenant He made with Abraham.
Deuteronomy 28 lists blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience to the Sinai covenant. At the end of Deuteronomy 29, it mentions how curses will come upon them when they disobey. They will be uprooted from the land and will experience fury and wrath. Deuteronomy 30 says:
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. (Deuteronomy 30:1-3, ESV Bible)
If they return to God and obey his voice, God will restore their fortunes. We see these blessings and curses play out throughout the Old Testament. Israel does not uphold their covenant obligations, and they are subsequently exiled. During their exile, they return to God, and God pulls them from their exile. What do they do when they realize their mistakes and return to God? They go back to the covenant obligations, the Torah.
The Destruction of the Temple and Exile of the Jewish People in 70 AD
One great example of this Sinai Covenant being continually enforced that often goes overlooked by the Christian church is the New Testament events before the Temple's destruction in 70 AD and their subsequent exile. In the Gospels, Jesus does predict the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and warns of future events that would lead to the Jewish people's exile. We see examples of this in Matthew 24:1-2 and Luke 19:41-44.
Sadly, many Christians interpret Jesus' predictions and warnings to the Jewish people as a sign God will break his covenant with them and will forsake them, replacing them with the true Israel, spiritual Israel, the Christian people. God must have been done with the old system of Judaism, correct? And nothing represents the system of Judaism like the Temple. I mean, it's geographically and ethnically exclusive. It's only in the land of Israel. It's stewarded by the Jews. God was done with it. So he lifted his hand of protection, or he raised up the Romans. However, you view it as demonstrating to the world that they should abandon their religion and jump on with the new things God's doing called Christianity. And in this view, the new thing, of course, was the exact opposite of Judaism. It was not exclusive and ethnically localized in the land of Israel. It was universal. It was not geographically based. Is this the correct interpretation?
Not only is this logic not spelled out clearly in the Bible by Jesus or the apostles, but this logic demonstrates a failure to base our interpretation of the New Testament on truths from the Old Testament. Most Christians will assume the Jewish people are cursed because they failed to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. A close reading of the New Testament demonstrates that the majority of early believers were, in fact, Jewish. In his epistles, Paul also discusses a remnant, the part of Israel that remains faithful to God and his divine will.
God must have been done with the old system of Judaism, correct? And nothing represents the system of Judaism like the Temple. I mean, it's geographically and ethnically exclusive. It's only in the land of Israel. It's stewarded by the Jews. God was done with it. So he lifted his hand of protection, or he raised up the Romans. However, you view it as demonstrating to the world that they should abandon their religion and jump on with the new things God's doing called Christianity. And in this view, the new thing, of course, was the exact opposite of Judaism. It was not exclusive and ethnically localized in the land of Israel. It was universal. It was not geographically based. Is this the correct interpretation?
Another way we could look at the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews is that it was a judgment from God. Interestingly, that view, as harsh as that sounds, is actually a view that's shared by Christians and by much of the Jewish community, theologically speaking. Orthodox Jews have been handed down a tradition from the Talmud that definitely acknowledges that the Temple was destroyed because of God's anger towards the nation of Israel in the first century.
What caused God to be angry? Why did God's judgment fall on the nation and the Temple in 70 AD? And the Christian answer is, generally speaking, because they rejected Jesus. This is problematic and simply not true. Why is it not true?
Number one, it really obscures the fact that the gospel spread around the world, not because of a bunch of Gentile Christians, but because of a bunch of Jews who accepted the testimony of Jesus and, at the expense of their own lives, spread it across the known earth at the time. And they weren't the only ones. It wasn't only twelve men, right?
There were thousands and thousands of Jewish followers of Jesus. By the end of Acts 2:41, 3,000 were added. Acts 2:47 said that people were added to their number daily. Acts 5:14 says that more than ever, believers, multitudes of men and women, were added to the Lord. In Acts 6:7, it reads that the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and many priests became obedient to the faith. And then later in Acts 21:20, when Paul visits, James tells him, you see how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law… And so the idea that the Jews rejected Jesus is a little bit overstated.
The idea that Jews rejected Jesus is wildly overstated; in fact, this is not to minimize that there was severe sin that took place around the crucifixion of Jesus. Bearing false witness in a trial was a big issue. By the way, the term bearing false witness from the Ten Commandments isn't probably about lying. It's probably a technical term about giving a false testimony in the trial. The person who provides a false witness about something will actually get the punishment that the defendant was accused of, that is, being brought against the defendant. And so there's no question that a false witness was brought against Jesus, and that's a severe crime. But it's a crime by those men who did it. It's not a crime by the whole nation. God doesn't work that way.
And that brings me to another point, which is that it assumes that God counts every Jew for all of time guilty of this sin. Plenty of places in the Torah and the prophets speak of this assumption of guilt for the entire nation. It's actually a prominent theme in the Book of Ezekiel. God doesn't do that. That's not a just way to act. God doesn't kill the sons because of the sins of the father. And so not only would we have to accept that God decided to judge the sons for the sins of their father, but it's literally judging the sons for the sins of their father because, ironically, the Temple was destroyed about 40 years after the death of Jesus. Why is 40 years symbolic? Or why did I say it's ironic? Because if you remember back in the wilderness period when that generation sinned, God wanted to purge the congregation of Israel from the sinful generation. How long did he have to wait to purge out that generation of rebels so that he could enter into the promised land with a new group that wasn't guilty of that rebellion? 40 years. So it's interesting that after 40 years, we still have, supposedly, God counting the sin of rejecting Jesus on the entire nation. And if you go through the book of Acts and even through some of the letters of Paul, there are definite statements of Jewish guilt. But the Book of Acts statements are always addressed to those guilty. In the earlier sections of Acts, those who were guilty of killing the Messiah were always Jewish men in Jerusalem who were likely present either at his crucifixion or at the chant of "crucify him." There were very particular men. You won't find Paul going into every diaspora synagogue and telling them all that they're guilty of the death of a Jewish man in the land of Israel. It doesn't even come up.
What caused God to be angry? Why did God's judgment fall on the nation and the Temple in 70 AD? Since the Christian view is ever problematic, let's look at the Jewish view. And the Jewish view has again been handed down from the Talmud. In Tractate Yoma 9b, we find a conversation, and they ask why the first Temple was destroyed? And the first Temple was destroyed for obvious reasons because all the prophets explained this. It was because idolatry, immorality, and social injustice were rampant. That's just the way it was. These men were not devoted to the God of Israel. And it was effortless to see. Then, it raised the question concerning the second Temple. They said that the Jewish people and the nation were unusually devout during the period around the second Temple in the first century. There was a measure of righteousness in the nation that differed significantly from the first temple period. And so the question was, why did God judge the nation and give us over to our enemies and allow for the second Temple to be destroyed?
And the answer, which becomes the punchline of the stories, is called baseless hatred or unreasonable hatred. And some of the sages said the stories we know from that time are that the land of Israel was filled with baseless hatred. Sure, they paid their tithes, and they went to prayers, but they were just hateful people. And it reached the point where God couldn't allow his covenant people, who are called to be a light to the nations, to misrepresent what He's like. He couldn't let them go on like this anymore. And so he brought his judgment. This is the Jewish view of why the Second Temple was destroyed.
Properly seen, this should reveal that God is still very much in covenant with the people of Israel and the descendants of Abraham. And God cares very much about the land of Israel, and God even cares very much about the Temple. All of the language in the New Testament is very positive about the Temple. It's not very positive about how the Temple was being run nor about the Jewish leadership.
But the apostles, after ingesting the teachings of Jesus for three and a half years, still went daily to enter the Temple for prayers when they relocated to Jerusalem after Jesus' ascension. So there's no conflict there. So what we have then with the destruction of the Temple is a sign of God's commitment to maintaining the terms of the covenant, which in itself is a commitment to the covenant. It's not apathy. It's not disregarded. It actually expresses God's promise to continue in the covenant. Therefore, the terms of the covenant are already outlined in the Torah. These covenant terms are already in place, as outlined in Deuteronomy 28-32 and Leviticus 26. And the fact that he's still walking out these terms of the covenant indicates that God is still in covenant with that people.
Then you have commentary in Second Maccabees chapter six, where they talk about how to view God's dealings with the nation of Israel. The author of Second Maccabee says:
Now I urge those who read this book not to be depressed by such calamities, but to recognize that these punishments were designed not to destroy but to discipline our people. In fact, it is a sign of great kindness not to let the impious alone for long, but to punish them immediately. For in the case of the other nations the Lord waits patiently to punish them until they have reached the full measure of their sins; but he does not deal in this way with us, in order that he may not take vengeance on us afterward when our sins have reached their height. Therefore he never withdraws his mercy from us. Although he disciplines us with calamities, he does not forsake his own people. (2 Maccabees 6:12-16, NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha)
With the Jews, He doesn't let their sin get full. He doesn't let it get to that point. He judges the Jews quickly because He's not willing to let them be wholly blotted out as a nation.
And so what about this second temple period? Did we have any prophets that God sent if he was so committed to the covenant? And in this context, I like to highlight the teachings of Jesus. We must emphasize how uniquely the teachings of Jesus address issues of hatred and call the Jewish people to love and forgive one another. He's actually highlighting this to his Jewish brothers, apparently, speaking into this context of baseless hatred. It was just a hateful generation, a very loveless generation. And so he's calling them out specifically.
The Second Temple's destruction represents a judgment from God, and it expresses his ongoing commitment to the covenant. It was because of baseless hatred. The words of that prophet, Jesus the Messiah, who was sent to that generation, calling them to love and forgiveness and turning the other cheek. Jesus called them to bless and pray for their enemies so they wouldn't act like the Gentiles. So that they could be that city on a hill, the light that couldn't be placed under a bushel, and the testimony of what the God of Israel is like would be seen amongst their people. And I think God has essentially decided He won't have it any other way. God will ensure that they are a faithful witness to the nations of the earth concerning His nature. And in that generation, the baseless hatred could not be reconciled with his character. And so we had the judgment.
The New Covenant
When Jesus shows up on the scene, we see him confirming in Matthew 5 that he did not come to cancel the Torah. But what about the new covenant? First of all, the new covenant is not the New Testament. In fact, all of the promises about a new covenant are found in the Old Testament, particularly in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Jeremiah 31 says that the new covenant is God putting the Torah on our hearts, which leads to obedience. And God promised his people that as a result of this new covenant, we would obey his Torah. Ezekiel 36 says a very similar thing, that God will put the Torah upon our hearts and that we will be careful to keep his laws, his Torah.
The new covenant is full of promises to Israel. These promises and blessings are those of the previous covenants: with Abraham, at Sinai, with David, and even with Aaron. The New Covenant completely fulfills all the previous covenant promises combined. Just as the covenant at Sinai did not cancel the covenant with Abraham, nor did the covenant with David cancel the covenant at Sinai, the new covenant does not cancel the previous covenants. Instead, it builds on them and improves on them. It says the new covenant changes people's hearts to ensure that they will keep the old covenant. You see, the Torah is God's righteous standard. God's laws do not change due to the new covenant. It's our hearts that change and give us the ability to walk in faithfulness, as God has instructed.
The big thing we need to understand about the new covenant is that this is the covenant that God will use with his people in the coming messianic age, the age to come. It's the covenant of the coming age, in which God will establish this theocratic monarchy again on earth with Jesus on the throne. So, as disciples of Jesus who have identified him as the Messiah, we're grabbing onto these new covenant future realities that aren't here yet. They will be expressed to the fullest within the age to come.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34, ESV Bible)
As Christians, we do not walk in complete obedience to God's standards of righteousness. Meaning we still struggle with sin. Not everyone knows the LORD. These are future realities. We are not in the New Covenant era yet. In the here and now, we are grabbing onto the language of the new covenant and the hope and faith in the transformation of this new covenant, this spiritual transformation. We're applying a little bit of that future reality in the present age. It is as if we have one foot in the door and one foot outside.
And the apostles talk about how we've received the Holy Spirit as a down payment on this future reality. A down payment implies that the full payment has yet to be made. We're still waiting for that full payment when God's spirit is poured out on all flesh, and the wonders of the kingdom of God will be fully realized.
When we try to say that all of these promises of God and the new covenant are fully realized in this age, that theology becomes Realized Eschatology, a concept we will explore further in future modules. Although it sounds good, it is not how the writers of the Bible explain these things.
Should Gentiles Follow Torah?
If the Bible demonstrates the ongoing validity of the Torah and the Sinai Covenant within this current age, then that would imply that the Jewish people are still obligated according to that covenant to continue Torah observance. What about the Gentiles? Really, there are two groups of people placing their trust in God by the time we get to the writings of Paul in the New Testament. We also see a distinction between these two groups in the New Testament. Paul says:
Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. (1 Corinthians 7:17-19, ESV Bible)
This idea of living the life assigned to you is at the heart of distinction theology, a term coined by First Fruits of Zion. But what about what Paul says in Galatians:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28, ESV Bible)
The context of Galatians 3:28 is Paul is arguing against those promoting circumcision and adherence to the Mosaic law as necessary for salvation. There is no distinction regarding salvation, being saved on the day of judgment. All believers, whether Jews or Greeks, males or females, etc., are justified by faith in Christ and are united in him. This contrasts how you walk out faith, which is what Paul references in 1 Corinthians 7:17-19.
And to be clear, not all of God's commandments in the Torah apply to Israel equally. There are commandments for priests, and there are commandments for a farmer, and there are commandments for women, and there are commandments for men. There are commandments about living in the land of Israel and living outside of the land. There are commandments for Jews and non-Jews living within the Jewish community.
The question regarding the Gentile's relationship to the Torah appears in Acts 15. This was the question of whether the Gentile disciples of Jesus needed to become Jewish and keep the law of Moses. This is also much of the argument in the book of Galatians and Romans. What Acts 15 highlights is that if the Gentiles are going to be with the Jews in their communities and they are going to be having fellowship with them, then we need to figure out what that looks like. And so they turned to the Torah and looked at the commandments that apply to a category of people called the stranger in your midst or the stranger among you. In Hebrew, it's the Ger toshav, the stranger dwelling among the gates of Israel. And the apostles in Acts 15 said these commandments would be a good place to start.
One of the beautiful things that Acts 15 does is connect the nations to the Jewish people and bring them into that presence. It causes this place of learning and growth for the nations as they continue to mature in their faith.
As our reading of the Bible relates to Distinction theology, I find it ironic how the conversations in the first century have shifted over the years. In the New Testament, we see the discussion centered around the idea that the Gentiles should become like the Jews to be in proper standing with God. Fast forward to today, where most Christian churches will argue the opposite, that the Jews need to become like the Christians to be in proper standing with God. An interesting shift indeed.
Summary
In conclusion, the journey through the Torah, the Sinai Covenant, and their relationship to Jesus offers a profound reexamination of foundational beliefs. Far from canceling the Torah, Jesus affirms its validity and fulfills its teachings. The Torah's enduring significance as the bedrock foundation of religious revelation underscores its timeless relevance. As we navigate the complexities of faith and covenant, we are invited to embrace a more profound understanding that transcends traditional boundaries. In adopting this understanding, we find ourselves on a path of discovery, illumination, and transformation, guided by the eternal truths of the Torah and the teachings of Jesus. The following study will look at "Recognizing the Jewishness of Paul."