A New Testament Look at the Oral Torah
The ongoing significance of the Torah comes with an important caveat: we must remember that the Torah is intrinsically tied to the nation of Israel, having been entrusted to the Jewish people. While both Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua may feel eager to embrace the Torah, there can be a hesitation to recognize the role of Jewish tradition and authority in interpreting it. We often prefer to interpret the Torah on our own terms, without engaging with Judaism, but that’s not how the Torah was meant to function.
The Apostle Paul states that the "giving of the Torah" belongs to the Jewish people (Romans 9:4), affirming that the Torah is uniquely theirs. When God entrusted the Jewish people with the Torah, He also gave them the responsibility to interpret and apply its commandments. In this role, Israel serves as custodians of the Torah. Judaism refers to this stewardship and responsibility over the Torah as the "Oral Torah."
To keep things simple, we have been using the words Torah to mean the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Traditional Judaism sees the five books of Moses as only half of the Torah, that is, the Written Torah. In addition to the Written Torah, Judaism teaches the authority of the Oral Torah, the other half of the Torah. The Oral Torah clarifies and interprets the Written Torah.
WRITTEN TORAH: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
ORAL TORAH: Jewish legal tradition interpreting the laws of the Written Torah.
Judaism has embedded the specific application of most of the Torah’s commandments within its traditions. For instance, while the Torah instructs the Jewish people to sanctify the seventh day of the week, it does not explain how to determine which day is the seventh. Without the continuity of Jewish tradition preserving this reckoning, it would be impossible to observe the commandment with certainty. In the same way, the people of Israel have preserved and passed down the context and practical application of many laws that would otherwise remain unclear. The Written Torah often assumes a broader knowledge base and practices already in place among the Jewish people.
Moreover, the Torah entrusted the sages, elders, and priesthood with the responsibility of interpreting and applying its laws. Our Master Yeshua affirmed the authority of their rulings and interpretations. One clear example of Jesus affirming the authority of the Jewish leaders’ rulings can be found in Matthew 23:1-3. In this passage, Jesus addresses the crowds and His disciples, saying:
"The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice."
In this statement, Jesus acknowledges the authority of the scribes and Pharisees to teach and interpret the Torah, as symbolized by their position on "Moses' seat," which was a metaphor for their role as interpreters of the law. By instructing His followers to observe what these leaders teach, Jesus affirms the legitimacy of their interpretations of the Torah.
However, He also criticizes their failure to live out what they teach, which highlights His concern with their hypocrisy, not their authority to interpret the law itself.
This passage supports the idea that Jesus upheld the authority of the Jewish leaders in their role of interpreting and applying the Torah, even while calling for integrity in their actions.
These rulings formed an unwritten body of case law, passed down from generation to generation by the disciples of the sages. Over time, this combination of national practices and legal rulings became what we now call the Oral Torah—a vast body of Jewish law.
During the time of the apostles, the term "Oral Torah" had not yet been coined. Instead, the apostolic writers referred to this extensive body of traditional law and legal interpretations using earlier, broader terms such as "traditions of the elders," "traditions of the fathers," or simply "traditions." They also used phrases like "custom of the Jews," "custom of the law," "the customs Moses handed down," and "the customs of our fathers" to describe these longstanding traditions.
The rabbis teach that God originally gave this additional legislation to Moses, who then "transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the men of the great assembly" during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The men of the great assembly, in turn, passed these traditions on to the rabbis and their disciples.
In the early second century, the renowned Rabbi Meir undertook the daunting task of recording the vast body of oral tradition in writing. His work was continued by Rabbi Judah the Prince, a wealthy and prominent distant relative of Yeshua, who completed what Meir had begun. Rabbi Judah created a monumental, foundational written version of traditional legal material known as the Mishnah. The term "Mishnah" means "repetition," reflecting how this material had been preserved through generations of oral transmission and memorization. Rabbi Judah completed this work around 200 CE, and it quickly became the cornerstone of Torah study for Jewish communities worldwide.
During the days of the Master, however, the Oral Law remained oral. In those days before codification, competing traditions were, indeed, just traditions, variously practiced, accepted, and argued. In fact, for most people, even the Written Torah was oral. They did not possess a copy of a Bible. They memorized text, and there was not a clear distinction in most people's minds between Oral Torah and Written Torah.
The Mishnah contains explanations of and expansions on the Written Torah's laws. The need for such explanations and expansions is self-evident. The Written Torah contains numerous commandments that require more information if they are to be observed. For example, the Torah commands Israel to write the Word of God on the doorframes of their houses and on their gates, but it omits the details of how to accomplish this. What passages of the Scripture are to be written? How are the words to be written on the doorframes?
These types of details are elements that the Written Torah assumes its readership already knows or understands. But that assumption breaks down after thousands of years of separation from the original context. The Oral Torah endeavored to preserve those original traditions and pass them on along with the Written Torah.
Many commandments require additional information and details. The great medieval Jewish commentator Maimonides points out that while Israel is commanded to build booths and live in them, no instructions are given regarding the specifics of how to build such a booth. In his introduction to the Talmud, he writes, "Just as we see that the general principles of a commandment were told together with their details and specifics at Sinai, so too, the general principles, details and specifics of all the commandments were told on Sinai." Traditional Judaism holds that Moses wrote down the commandments, but passed on the explanations of the commandments orally:
It should be understood that every commandment that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to Moses our Teacher, peace unto him, was given to him together with its explanation. God would tell him the commandment, and afterwards He would give its explanation, its substance, and all the wisdom contained within the Torah's verses. (Maimonides' Mishneh Torah quoting Sifra Leviticus 25:1)
Judaism, therefore, holds that the Oral Torah carries almost the same authority that the Written Torah carries. The sages who lived after the compilation of the Mishnah accepted it as the new standard definition of Torah Judaism. In their various schools and academies in Babylon and Israel, they set to work studying and arguing over the Mishnah. Various rabbis told and retold the oral traditions that they had received from their masters. Those traditions sometimes contradicted the Mishnah, resulting in more arguments to try to reconcile with the Torah. In the process, the rabbis traded in old parables, amusing anecdotes, pieces of antiquated laws, rabbinic proverbs, customs, folklore, and superstition. Their conversations and arguments were written down as commentary on the Mishnah called Gemara, which means "completion." The Gemara completes the Mishnah because it adds the oral traditions and proof texts and arguments that the Mishnah omitted. In that sense, it completes the Mishnah.
Two prominent schools of sages, one in Israel and one in Babylon, independently produced written Gemara on the Mishnah. The academies in Israel compiled their Gemara on the Mishnah in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, generating a collection called the Talmud Yerushalami, i.e., the Jerusalem Talmud. The Babylonian academies compiled their Gemara on the Mishnah to form the even more copious collection called the Talmud Bavli, i.e., the Babylonian Talmud. The word Talmud means "study." The Talmud, in both versions, is the culmination of nine hundred consecutive years of Bible study-from the first sages quoted in the Mishnah to the last rabbis quoted in Gemara.
MISHNAH: Collection of oral tradition constituting the Oral Torah.
GEMARA: Rabbinic commentary and discussion on the Mishnah.
TALMUD: Compilation of Mishnah with Gemara.
Judaism has a biblical basis for the legislation transmitted in the Oral Torah. Deuteronomy 17:8-13 grants Israel's judges and teachers the authority to make legal rulings and instructional interpretations based upon the laws of the Written Torah. Their rulings clarify and apply the Torah. In this way, the Written Torah grants the community leaders in each generation the power to make authoritative and binding decisions for how the Torah is to be lived out and practiced. These rulings are also considered Oral Torah.
Admittedly, the concept of an oral tradition as old as Moses does seem to make sense. Much of the Oral Torah is ancient and some of the contextual implications it provides could well go back to the generation of Moses. The majority of the teachings of the Oral Torah, however, are inferences and extrapolations created by the sages and the rabbis in their attempts to clarify and explain the Torah.
Before we completely throw out the Oral Torah and all its traditions of men, we need to point out that Yeshua retained the authority of Jewish tradition and legislation. He lived in a Jewish world. He engaged in practices derived from both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. He did this deliberately and with intention. For example, before eating, He always blessed God. The Written Torah commands us to bless God after we eat. Only in the Oral Torah do we learn to bless God before we eat. At His last Passover Seder, He poured wine and shared it with His disciples, even investing significant Messianic symbolism into that Passover cup. The Written Torah, however, says nothing about wine at Passover. Only the Oral Torah mentions the tradition of serving cups of wine as one of the elements of the Passover Seder meal.
Numerous other examples could be cited, but a careful reading of the Gospels makes it clear—Yeshua kept and endorsed traditional Jewish law. This is obvious from the things He did, the things His disciples did, and the traditions the early believers kept. Yeshua firmly endorsed traditional Jewish authority when He told His disciples "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe" (Matthew 23:2-3).
If Yeshua told His disciples to obey the Pharisees and Jewish tradition, why was He always arguing with the Pharisees?
When reading the Gospels, we need to remember that, in the days of Yeshua, the Oral Torah had not yet been codified. Nearly two centuries lie between Yeshua and Rabbi Judah the Prince who compiled the Mishnah. Five centuries stretch between Yeshua and the completion of the Talmud. In the days of the Master, the Oral Torah was still emerging. Importing that fully developed Oral Torah into the first century creates an anachronism. This explains why we see Yeshua arguing the specifics of how to apply Torah much as the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud argued with one another. In a typical Talmudic argument, Rabbi So-and-So forbids something, but Rabbi Such-and-Such permits it. These arguments constitute most of the Oral Torah. Yeshua was a part of that context, arguing with the sages just like the famous Hillel argued with Shammai.
Gospel readers sometimes assume that Yeshua's arguments with the Pharisees indicate that He rejected Jewish tradition. Yeshua did argue with the religious leaders of His day, but His arguments were about the order of priority, not about the legitimacy of Jewish tradition. He warned people about swallowing camels while straining out gnats. Both are unclean, neither one is kosher, but concern about straining gnats out of the soup should not so preoccupy a person that he fails to notice the soup is actually camel soup.
For example, the Pharisees kept the Jewish tradition of tithing mint, dill, and cumin--items not mentioned in the Written Torah's laws of tithing. Yeshua praised the Pharisees for being so scrupulous and observing the tradition, but He chastised them for doing so at the expense of the weightier matters of the Torah—justice, mercy, and faithfulness:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23-24)
Almost all of Yeshua's arguments with the religious authorities involve a question of misplaced priorities. For example, first-century Judaism had an obsession with ritual purity. Yeshua argued that purity of the heart, i.e., moral purity, should be a higher priority. Yeshua told the Pharisees, "The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man" (Matthew 15:18-20).
Yeshua argued that compassion for human beings and concerns for human dignity should take precedence over ceremonial concerns. When He went to heal a blind man, He spit in the dirt and mixed the spittle with the dirt to make mud, even though it was the Sabbath. He used the mud to heal the man on the Sabbath. When He healed the cripple, He told him to pick up his mat and carry it. All of those acts—even the very act of healing on the Sabbath day-violated ceremonial prohibitions for the sake of prioritizing compassion for human beings.
In Mark 7, a delegation of Pharisees found Yeshua and His disciples enjoying lunch. The disciples were breaking bread and eating. The Pharisees observed that the disciples had not performed a ritual hand washing before eating. Once again, Yeshua objected to the Pharisees prioritizing a ceremonial tradition over and above human dignity—this time the dignity of His own disciples.
The Torah requires priests to ritually wash their hands before handling or eating the sacred foods, such as bread made from sacred gifts of first fruits. Some Pharisees had a tradition that applied that same standard to everyone. According to their tradition, every Jew (or at the least, every Pharisee) should wash his hands, like the priests, in order to eat his bread in a state of ritual purity.
The reasoning behind the tradition of ritual hand-washing before eating can be derived from the Torah. In the Torah, human beings can become unclean and even ritually contaminating. For example, someone who has touched a corpse becomes unclean and anyone he touches thereafter will also be rendered unclean. In Leviticus 11:32-38 and Numbers 19 the Torah tells us that otherwise clean food can be rendered unclean when contaminated by ritual defilement.
The Pharisees took these basic biblical concepts and combined them for what would seem to be a logical conclusion. Touching bread with unclean hands renders the bread unclean." According to that interpretation, an unclean person handling otherwise clean food renders that food unclean and thereby unfit for consumption. Thus, if you were unclean (for whatever reason) and went to eat a peanut-butter sandwich with unclean hands, that sandwich would be rendered unclean by your touch. The Pharisees regarded that peanut-butter sandwich as unfit for consumption. One opinion in the Talmud says, "Whoever eats bread without first washing his hands is as though he eats unclean food; as it is written, 'In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food.”
If that quotation represents something similar to the conviction of the Pharisees in Yeshua's day, we can understand their shock and disappointment that Yeshua's disciples did not wash their hands according to the traditions of the elders. They could only regard such an abrogation of the religious norm as a strike against His legitimacy. Clearly the man's disciples were not of a Pharisee-caliber.
But does the Torah really require bread to be ritually clean? No, it does not. Not unless it is part of the Temple services or served as a sacred gift to the priesthood.
So they asked Yeshua, "Why don't your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders?" The Hebrew word halachah, "legal application," literally means "the walk." Halachah refers to the specific laws that instruct a person on how to practically walk out the commandments. An argument over how one is to obey a certain commandment or tradition can be called a halachic argument. The Oral Torah determines the halachah.
HALACHAH: Legal rules and applications for practicing the commandments.
The Pharisees were concerned that Yeshua's disciples did not follow the halachah according to the tradition of the elders; namely, washing their hands before eating so that the bread was not rendered unclean by touch. Yeshua defended His disciples by engaging in a sort of halachic argument, the likes of which constitute the seemingly endless pages of the Talmud. He replied with a quote from Isaiah by which He suggested that the Pharisaic requirement of eating bread in a state of ritual purity was a misplaced priority:
Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: "This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men." Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. (Mark 7:6-8).
The Pharisaic scruples over hand-washing before eating were not commandments of the Torah; they were only a traditional application. Yeshua knew that obsession with ceremony can serve as a substitute for genuine faith and obedience. He scolded the Pharisees for pursuing ritual purity instead of moral purity. He told them they had set aside the commandments of Torah in favor of their own traditions-specifically, they set aside the prohibition on shaming another person for the sake of their tradition concerning hand-washing.
Jewish tradition and Jewish thought are a rich part of the Torah heritage, but they are not a disciple's source of identity, nor are they a substitute for obedience to the Word. The disciple of Yeshua must always be careful to keep his priorities straight and place the weighty matters of the Torah first.
As explained above, God gave the Torah into the hands of Israel. The Jewish people are the wardens of the Torah, and the Oral Torah represents that stewardship.
Like the Torah itself, Oral Torah applies differently to Jews and Gentiles. Jewish believers should consult Jewish law for determining halachah. That's what it's there for. It's supposed to help you walk out the Torah.
For the most part, the Oral Torah has little to say to Gentile believers. It provides a few broad outlines for Gentiles, but its legislation primarily concerns itself with the application of Torah for Jewish believers. Even so, Gentile disciples will find the oral tradition to be a source of wisdom, godliness, and practical instruction on all matters of Torah.
Some commandments are difficult to obey or understand without the help of tradition. Others are impossible without the clarification tradition provides. Without a common authoritative tradition, we would have no forum for unity. It would be every man for himself. For example, imagine the situation that would ensue if everyone thought they were personally responsible for determining the annual calendar. Everyone would end up celebrating the holy days on different days. The same mayhem would apply to every commandment. Everyone would be responsible for making up his or her own personal religion.
At the same time, a person should be careful with Jewish tradition. It's easy to misapply it and misinterpret it. For example, Yeshua asked the Pharisees, "Why do you break the commandments of God for the sake of your tradition?" (Mark 7:8). The guiding principle we learn here is that the Written Torah (the Word of God) should always take priority over rabbinic tradition. If a certain custom ever contradicted the Torah, we would need to discard it.
For example, the tradition of lighting Sabbath candles before dark on Friday nights does not contradict the commandment of God. Instead, it helps us honor the Sabbath, sanctify the Sabbath, and keep the Sabbath holy. By requiring Jews to light Sabbath candles before the Sabbath begins, the Oral Torah protects the Jewish people from violating the biblical prohibition against lighting a flame on the Sabbath. So we see that the tradition has a solid biblical footing. If a person finds candle lighting to be a meaningful part of welcoming the Sabbath, he or she can do so in full confidence. The steady flame of the Sabbath candles can bring warmth to homes and hearts as we celebrate the Sabbath in honor of the Light of the World.
On the other hand, the tradition of lighting Sabbath candles sometimes becomes an end in itself. I have often seen Sabbath candles lit well after the Sabbath has begun on Friday night. When that happens, the commandment of God (not to light a fire on the Sabbath) is set aside for the sake of tradition (lighting Sabbath candles). The tradition, originally meant to protect us from lighting a flame on the Sabbath day, has been misapplied.
Does this mean that to observe the Torah you need to study the Mishnah and the Talmud and halachic discourses? Not at all. That's a job for a rabbi. It's not your job to know all of that. If that was necessary, most people would feel crushed under the sheer weight of the literature. The Mishnah is as dense as a forest. The Talmud is as vast as the sea. Halachic codes of law are tedious and hopelessly obscure to the uninitiated.
This can be compared to civil law. To get around in society without going to jail, you need to know a few basics about civil law, what's legal and what's not legal, but no one expects you to be a lawyer. There might be times in your life when you do need to know some matter of law in greater detail, but when that happens, you hire a lawyer. That's what lawyers are for. Rabbis are, more or less, religious lawyers (among other things).
You don't need to be a Torah scholar to observe the Torah. If you do have questions about specifics, consult your local Messianic Jewish rabbi, or if that's not an option, you might want to consult a few basic books about Judaism. For the most part, that should not be necessary, but it's nice to know where you can get your questions answered when you have them.
A person should not let the weight of Jewish law and Oral Torah discourage him from taking the first steps in Torah observance. For example, suppose you wanted to start keeping the Sabbath. If you waited until you understood all the traditional rules and prohibitions, you would never keep the Sabbath. When it comes to keeping Torah, something is always better than nothing. Do the little bit that you do know to do, and the LORD will bless you in that. Never let yourself feel as if your observance is inadequate because it does not meet the standard of Jewish tradition. The LORD receives everyone who sincerely serves Him from a pure heart, regardless of conformance to traditional standards.
As we approach Torah and Jewish tradition, remember that the goal of Torah is Messiah and the kingdom. As long as we keep our eyes firmly upon the Living Torah, we will be able to find an appropriate balance between the authority of the Written Torah and the directions of the oral tradition. We need look no further than Yeshua. As disciples of the Master, we are imitators of Yeshua. He is our Torah, and His ways are our halachah. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher.