Thoughts Spawned by a Rabbi

So I have been listening to this podcast by Rabbi Mintz in New York. They are very interesting. The class is a study in the history of Jewish and Rabbinic Law. I have learned a lot and been very interested. It has been interesting in the way an art gallery full of replica paintings would be interesting. It is like seeing an origional and yet not having the same depth or character as the origional. I mean no disrespect. It is after all a study of the history of Law not of Yahwey. What the Jewish law makers set out to do after the period of the judges, kings and prophets was to take the torah and explain it. They did this through the Talmud and the Mishnah. These documents set out general explanations of the law found in the pentatuch (the first five books of the Old Testament- their only testament or covenant). What happened was, they Jewish community, after returning from exile, no longer had prophets to tell them what God wanted. They had a temple where they could sacrifice to him, but all they had to live by was the previous prophetic message, the law of Moses, and the oral tradition (said to be handed to Moses on Sinai and passed on orally). The early pharisees, the predisesors to the Rabbi's, would take a law like "You should keep the Sabbath holy", and they would say, "Ok, we understand that we need to keep the Sabbath holy, and that we are not to work on the Sabbath, but what constitutes holy and work." The Talmud and the Mishnah are authoritative works that define these types of open ideas. The Mishnah was created in the early 200's ad and it is the written oral tradition, the Talmud came shortly after and it is a commentary of sorts on the Mishna, it not only contains the tradition, but seeks to define the tradition even more by presenting differing Rabbinical arguments. An example of a law in the Torah that needed this kind of definitive process in more recent years is that they were not allowed to start a fire on the Sabbath, this was considered work. So, in modern days the Rabbi's argued and debated whether or not you could flip a light switch or not on the Sabbath, because when you flipped the switch they were not sure whether you were starting a fire or not. These laws are the replicas I spoke of in my annalogy. We are quick to dismiss this kind of legalism, but it comes out of a deep respect for God, it comes out of trying not to overstep what God has commanded. But as Jesus would say, you uphold your traditions and forget the great things of God's law, love and mercy. At the time of Jesus these laws were still in an oral form and you would go to a Rabbi to get his take or argument, his "Talmudic" type saying. When Jesus comes he takes the oral tradition and the teachings of the Rabbi's and turns them of their heads. He says in Matthew 23 some harsh words concerning they way they handle the law of God, vs 23-24:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."
You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. It is such beautiful imagery and such fierce words. Jesus is attacking a not just a tradition, but something they believe to come from God on Sinai with Moses. He might as well have spit in their eyes. But, that is not the point of what I am saying although I do like to watch a good fight. What I am saying, I guess what struck me about listening to this Jewish Rabbi talk. Was just how little any of it had to do with God himself. The whole enterprise became so focused on the law that it forgot the lawmaker. It became so rigid in principles it set out that it could not conceive of a God who went beyond their principles. The tradition was to be fluid, it was to change with it's context, but it was always about the tradition, never about God, not really. I mean, that is what most of the prophets are screaming out. That is what Jesus came to rail against. This is why we needed a new covenant, because in the old, the law that was to only be a school teacher became the stumbling block... Anyway. This was very interesting to me, hope it makes sense. It is very long, and probably needs editing to make sense seeing as how it is 7:14 in the morning, but alas, I am to lazy and I figure you can grasp my meaning without me fixing my mode... Hah, I hope so anyway...