Monday, January 20, 2014

Should Christians Keep the Torah?

I was asked in an email about this issue and here is my response. I thought that some of you might like to read it.
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Hi M,
I would be happy to answer your question. When I am teaching about this topic I point out to people that there are two things to keep in mind when reading the New Testament. 

First, it would have never occurred to the early Jewish followers of Yeshua (Jesus) that God would expect Jews to stop obeying the Torah. Why would the God of Israel expect Israel to stop its faithfulness to the Sinai covenant? It does not make sense. In fact, we see quite the opposite. There was an expectation, or maybe assumption, that gentiles coming to faith in Yeshua would also convert to Judaism, because this was their paradigm. The radical and momentous decision made in Acts 15 is that God was doing something new with the gentiles and therefore they should not require gentiles to take on Torah observance. 

I am convinced that this was the reason for the giving of tongues. The Jewish followers needed a clear and outward sign from God that the gentiles were saved without first becoming Jews. This is why you see the repeated reaction of surprise (Acts 10:45; 11:18)

Paul, therefore, seems to argue against the Torah but what he is really arguing against is expecting gentile Yeshua-followers to take on these practices. He argues that if this is required then you are saying that the cross did not have efficacy to save; clearly in his view a great distortion of the Besorah (Good News).

Second, the traditions and rules of the Pharisees was a novelty in Yeshua's day. They had not been around for very long. They were very popular with the people, however, especially in Judea. What the Pharisees did was brought the ritual practices of the Temple to ordinary everyday Jews. Their argument was that all Jews were priests since Israel was a kingdom of priests and therefore all of life needed to be treated as holy, not just the priestly activities in the Temple. Their ideas were not held by all and there was much controversy about these practices. Consequently there is a mix of practices by first century Jews and hence among first century Jewish followers of Yeshua. Notice that Yeshua is asked why some of his followers do not wash their hands before they eat. This implies that some did, and it also implies that Yeshua did!  

Paul, therefore, seems to be arguing against Torah laws when in fact he is dealing with these issues of ritual purity in the context of a community made up of Jews from varying types of backgrounds and practices and gentiles. When he talks about clean and unclean food he is not debating whether Jewish believers should eat pork not, but whether people of these various backgrounds can come together in communal fellowship when some a very stringent in their table purity practices and others are not.

It is my contention, along with most in our movement, that Christians are not expected to take up Torah observance; in fact to require it would be against God's will. But neither are Jews free from this covenant. Christians are certainly free to take up some of the practices as long as they see that they are doing this out of freedom and desire to relate to their Jewish brethren and not out of obligation.

I hope that this brief explanation helps. If the book you are reading is by David Rudolph it is a good resource. I have not the read the book but have studied under him and he is very knowledgeable. Another book that I would highly recommend is "Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism" by Mark Kinzer. He lays these issues out in much more detail than I have done here.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Shalom,
isaac

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