“Judaism” Is It the Religion God Gave to Moses?
Part 9
The Pharisees seized authority from the priest, the "traditions of the elder" replaced the Bible and the Laymen claimed to be prophets.
THESE SURPRISING FACTS ARE DISCUSSED NOW!
The last issue revealed how laymen came to power through "Judaism"--how they called pagan customs the "traditions of the elders." Now we will see what occurred in the 4th century just before Christ's birth.
There were certain precedents which help form Judaism. The acceptance of the traditional laws, supposedly handed down from Moses, placed the lay leaders in a position of power and authority among the people.
Because the people had accepted many new customs inherited from the pagans, the lay leaders condoned the customs, claiming them to be Jewish in origin, the people looked upon the lay leaders with honor and respect.
The lay leaders were aware that there was no truth in their assertions that these new customs came from Moses, but in order to please the people they deliberately propagated these falsehoods. Because of their newly found authority, the lay leaders set themselves up as ultimate teachers of religion. They accepted the customs inherited from Hellenism, they maintained the prerogative, as religious authorities to decide which customs to accept and which ones to reject. “No one except the recognized teachers could say what the traditions contained” (Herford, Talmud and Apocrypha, Pg.68). The customs to which the people were most wedded were accepted.
Some of the priest of the Sanhedrin objected to the lay leaders' assumption of power and especially of their raising to divine law the new customs from Hellenism. The priest were also obstinate in their belief that the authority to rule should be accorded to them alone, for they properly maintained that they were descendants of Aaron and the only ones recognized by Scripture to be in authority to rule over the people. The lay teachers would not concede to the priest's demands, and they had the majority of the people behind them. Too many of the priests had deserted to outright Hellenism in the anarchial period and the people were still wary of their tactics.
The Pharisees and Sadducees. Differences of opinion lay between the lay leaders and the priests caused a permanent breach between these two groups. The lay leaders with the religious Jews on their side and believing in the traditional oral laws, gathered themselves into one major group. On the other side was the priests, who tended to agree with one another, gravitated into another group. This breach between the two leading religious factions among the Jews was the beginning of two prominent New Testament Jewish sects: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The lay leaders became the Pharisaic group. Most of the priest became the Sadducees. Member from both groups remained in the Sanhedrin, but they were almost always divided on policy.
The whole Jewish population was not anxious to get back to some form of religious observance after so many years of religious anarchy. Remember that 95% of the Jews in Christ's time were not members of the Jewish sects. They had no real interest in religion in New Testament time.
"The Jewish people as a whole never recovered from the condition that existed within that anarchial period." There was a limited amount of religious interest, but not enough for the whole nation to become members of the sect of Judaism. The Pharisees, did have on their side those Jews who were religiously inclined. But the majority showed degrees of indifference to the religious bickering among the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Josephus the Jewish historian, has this to say about these Pharisees and Sadducees: "The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, and are not written in the Laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the traditions of our fathers. And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side" (Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, 10,6).
Pharisees repudiate sole authority of Priests to teach the law. A major decision of the Pharisees was that of rejecting the sole authority of the priests to be the religious authorities. The Pharisees admitted that the priests were the only ones with the right to perform the ritualistic services in the Temple. But other than minor role in directing the religious life of the people, the priests had little to do religiously speaking. The Pharisees came to recognize themselves as the only real religious leaders. When taking on this role of religious leaders, the Pharisees reasoned that they were taking the place of the priests whom they considered unfit to govern the people on account of their rejection of the oral traditional laws.
Pharisees reckoned themselves as Prophets. Upon appropriating to themselves the religious authority among the Jews, the Pharisees thought themselves also competent to be the ultimate judges concerning all religious questions. They assumed the right to speak in the name of the Eternal even as the prophets of old.
The Pharisees had already accepted new customs as divine law and they reckoned that only individuals under the Spirit of God could do such things. In the Jewish Talmud, a compilation of Jewish writings from the days after Alexander the Great, to about 400 years after Christ, there are several statements of these early Pharisees in regard to their belief that they had the same authority as the prophets. In the Talmudical tractate called Baba Bathra, in section 12a we read this: "Prophecy was taken from the Prophets and was given to the Wise (the Pharisees). To this remark was added: "And it has not been taken from there."
Herford, deduces from among the Talmud: "The relevance of this passage...." is that the Rabbis (the Pharisees) felt that they had, no less but even more that the prophets, divine authority for what they taught, and that this was given to them after the time when the prophets ceased to function. It was the way of expressing the belief that the revelation did not cease with the extinction of prophecy" (Talmud and Apocrypha, pg. 72).
The audacious Pharisees considered their laws and commandments as having more weight than those of the Prophets! That divine revelation did not stop with the prophets, but was now in action in the Pharisees as well. They were confident that what they were teaching---even though in many cases, it did not agree with the plain and simple commandments of God as revealed in Scripture--was divine teaching as prompted by the Spirit of God. "The Pharisees felt that God was revealing Himself now as He had revealed Himself to the Prophets, and speaking not alone in the words of an ancient text, but in words which came from the heart and conscience of men who felt His hand laid upon them to guide them into all truth" (ibid., pg. 69).
The Pharisees came to the place of believing that God did not reveal Himself in the Scriptures alone--- "speaking not alone in the words of an ancient text"---but that He was actively revealing His present truth to the Pharisees through influencing their hearts and consciences! This gave the Pharisees unlimited authority among those who accepted their beliefs!
Because they said their role was to be modern prophets, they maintained the right of free prophetic utterances. They claimed the prerogative to speak the current will of God without the necessity of appealing to Scriptures. They did not believe they had to be shackled to the teachings of the Scripture. This opinion gave the Pharisees power. As Herford says, "They believe in the continuous progressive revelation of God, and that His authority was made known in the reason and conscience of those who sought to know His will and not only in the written text of the Torah (the law of God)" (Talmud and Apocrypha, pg. 73). These ideas and beliefs originated in their own minds!!
The Pharisees claimed that the Holy Scriptures alone were not sufficient to give the complete truth of God. To the scriptures, they claimed, had to be added the so-called traditional oral laws (which were determined to be the Word of God). Some Churches today claim the same prerogative--the Catholic Church and Judaism and does not derive its authority from the Word of God. In many cases it rejects the direct teachings of the Bible to proclaim their own church doctrines.
The Pharisees claim: "They (the Pharisees) upheld the authority of tradition as superior to individual intelligence, and taught that no Scripture should be unauthorized or private interpretation" (Conder, Judas Maccabaeus, pg. 203). It is amazing to what extent the Catholic Church parallels the actions of the Pharisees in this matter!
The Pharisees taught new doctrine independent from Scripture! They felt they had the Spirit of God guiding them, so the Pharisees began to make more laws and commandments of their own, without appealing to Scripture. The first Pharisee recorded who began to teach new commandments of his own, without any Scripture basis, was Joseph ben Joezer. He lived at the time the majority of the Pharisees erroneously accepted the Traditional laws as the "Oral Law of Moses." Joseph ben Joezer made three new laws completely independent of Scripture. What he commanded was not only independent of Scripture but was not even permitted by the Law of God.
His first law permitted the Jews to eat an insect related to the locust family which all Jews previously had considered unclean. He also permitted the Jews to eat of the liquids of the slaughtering place (apparently blood, etc.). This was contrary to many Scriptures. "It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood" (Lev. 3:17). His last commandment was about touching a dead body (Lev. 11:27, 31). He permitted people to be ritualistic clean even if they were in constant contact with individuals who had become unclean by touching a dead body. Even though he made all these new laws that permitted people to do things God had previously forbidden in His Laws, Joseph was called "Joseph the permitter" by his contemporaries. "Joseph is called "the Permitter,"evidently because in all three decisions he permits things that were formerly considered forbidden" (Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, pg. 219).
These three new commandments were not the only ones to be enacted by the Pharisees. The action of Joseph the Permitter was the setting of a precedent! His commandments were reluctantly received at first. But the reluctance did not last long. From that time forward a flood of new commandments began to come forth from the Pharisees. These new laws were called the commandments of men by Jesus. "Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:7). The Pharisees called these new commandments "Halachah." Meaning: "rule" or "decision." It denotes a new rule or decision of the Pharisees.
Notice what Herford says about these new commandments (Halachah) of Joseph the Permitter. "The Mishnah (a part of the Talmud) records three halachahs which were declared by him...but which evidently met with some objection and gave occasion to his colleagues to call him "Joseph the Permitter." This was because...he was able to declare that to be allowable which till then had not been allowable, since no interpretation of the written text (the word of God) had been found which would justify his conclusion" (Talmud and Apocrypha, pg. 67).
These new laws of Joseph the Permitter, were not laws inherited from the days of religious anarchy, they were not laws claimed to be from the traditions of the Moses---these new laws were from the mind of Joseph himself. "It is therefore evident that these Halakot....were not older traditional laws transmitted by Joseph as mere witness, but Joseph's own teachings. He was the one who `permitted' and he deserved the name (the Permitter)" ( Lauterbach's, Rabbinic Essays, pg. 218).
Pharisees adopt precedent of Joseph the Permitter. Joseph was the chief leader among the Pharisees immediately following the Maccabean Revolt (168-165 B.C.), so other Pharisees immediately followed his authoritative example and made new commandments or Halachah on their own. This method of teaching was not whole-hearted accepted by all Pharisees immediately. It took a generation to establish the new method of teaching firmly among the Pharisees.
If a majority of Pharisees agreed with the new commandments, they would then be accepted as the Word of God---even if the commandments taught just the opposite from the teachings of Scriptures. It all depended upon whether the Pharisees, as a whole thought the new commandments were necessary for the people to observe. This practice gave rise to the theory that new rules---though contrary to Scripture---had to be established to meet the needs of the changing times.
Herford says: "the lead which Joseph Ben Joezer had given was followed, but only gradually; and though the theory of the "Unwritten Torah" (oral traditional laws) was finally accepted and worked out to its furthest consequences, as seen in the Talmud, yet those who most firmly maintained it-- were quite aware of the weakness of its foundation. They knew that it cut the connection between the halachah (the rules of the Pharisees) and the written Torah (the Scriptures) and they knew that in appearance, at all events, it gave the teachers free scope to teach what they thought fit"(Herford, Talmud and Apocrypha, pg. 68).
Pharisees viewed Scriptures as out of date! The Pharisees considered themselves prophets and able to give the current will of God. They reasoned that in many cases the current will of God may be completely different from His will as expressed in times past. They maintained that many of their new teachings which were clearly contrary to the written Word of God, were actually the present will of God. This is the reason the Pharisees taught new commandments without Scripture proof!!
The Pharisees were confident that as times changed and under new environmental conditions that certain Laws of God, as revealed in the Scripture would of necessity, become obsolete and have to be changed. They felt they had the power of the prophets, so they had no compunction about teaching new commandments to meet the need of the time, regardless of whether those teachings contradicted the Word of God or not!!
The attitude of the Pharisees was shown by Herford, "The written Torah was good for the age in which it was given, or in which it was first read; but the written Torah alone could not suffice for later ages"
(Talmud and Apocrypha, pg. 113). With this attitude toward Scripture, the Pharisees could always maintain that God's will had changed in the matter--that He had revealed His present will to the Pharisees.
This same philosophy is pervading our modern Christianity. Everyone feel the Bible is out of date--its old fashioned! Most assume it is impossible to keep God's laws and commandments in this modern age. The Truth of the Bible can never be out of date. Truth is always true! It can be obeyed and it can never change. Don't be like the Pharisees and reject God's Word for the traditions of man. We must learn to obey and live by every Word of God. "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4).
In the next issues, we will see the development of Judaism and the teachings of the Pharisees in the times of the New Testament. We will examine all the burdensome laws concerning the Sabbath, the laws of washing the hands, pots, pans, etc.--laws regulating fasting and many other traditions that developed in the minds of the Pharisees. When we understand the basic facts upon which Judaism was founded, we will know why Christ severely condemned the practices of the Pharisees and other sects.
(To be continued in the next issue of the Prove All Things"). Information for this article was taken from the Good News Magazine, July 1961, published by Ambassador College. We encourage you to read the original article titled "Is Judaism the Law of Moses?
It is not the Church of God, In Truth's, intention to degrade the Jewish people. It is our intention to show and prove that Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament, just as Catholicism is not the true religions of Jesus Christ!
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