Fulfillment of the Law

ROBBERT VEEN

Fulfillment

of the

Law
This edition 2005 @ by R.A. Veen

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To Noëlle
 …..…..TABLE OF CONTENTS……….
PREFACE.............................................................................13

INTRODUCTION....................................................................15

A. JESUS AND THE LAW IN MARK...........................................17

CHAPTER 1 JESUS AND THE JEWISH LAW...............................18

CHAPTER 2 FULFILLING THE LAW (MATTHEW 5).....................26

CHAPTER 3 JESUS AND JEWISH ORAL TRADITION IN MARK......31

3.1 THE JEWISH TRADITIONS....................................... ..............................32
3.2. MARK’S RESPONSE TO THE TRADITIONS................................................. .....38
3.3 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL DEBATE...............................................43
3.4 IS JESUS REJECTING THE ORAL TRADITIONS?..............................................48
CHAPTER 4 THE ISSUE OF VOWING: KORBAN........................53
4.1 THE CONFLICT OVER VOWING IN MARK......................................... .............54
4.2 THE EARLY JEWISH DEBATE ON VOWING.................................................. ....56
4.3 RESULTS: THE MEANING OF MARK 7.................................... ....................60
CHAPTER 5 THE SABBATH LAW (MARK 2 AND 3)...................64

CHAPTER 6 REDEMPTION AS HEALING (MARK 9)....................76

B. JESUS AND THE LAW IN MATTHEW....................................80

CHAPTER 7 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (MATTHEW 5 – 7)....81

CHAPTER 8 SCRIBAL HERMENEUTICS OF THE TORAH (MATTHEW

18)......................................................................................93

CHAPTER 9 RABBINIC AUTHORITY AND THE CHURCH (MATTHEW

23)....................................................................................100

CHAPTER 10 JESUS AND JEWISH LAW..................................108

C. JESUS AND THE LAW IN THE LETTER OF JAMES.................116

CHAPTER 10 THE LETTER OF JAMES.....................................117

CHAPTER 11 THE PAULINIST FRAMEWORK...........................124

CHAPTER 12 CASUISTRY AND MORALISM.............................129

 12.1. RUDOLPH BULTMANN AND NEW TESTAMENT ETHICS...................................130
12.2 THE CASE FOR CASUISTRY............................................................. ....135
CHAPTER 13 JAMES’S DEBATE WITH PAULINISM...................142
13.1 FAITH AND WORKS........................................................................ ..143
13.2 THE MEANING OF FAITH.......................................... ..........................146
13.3 THE REAL DEBATE BETWEEN JAMES AND PAUL...........................................150
CHAPTER 15 JAMES AND THE EARLY CATHOLICISM OF CLEMENT
.........................................................................................157

CHAPTER 16 LAW AND OBEDIENCE AS CONSTITUENTS OF FAITH

.........................................................................................161

CHAPTER 17 CONCLUDING REMARKS..................................165

BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................172
PREFACE

This book contains in essence two chapters (3 and 6) of my disser-

tation, entitled “The Law of Christ” (Maastricht, 2000) that have
been reviewed and only slightly altered. In that dissertation, I tried
to make the case for a different type of Christian ethics that took
Jewish casuistry as a model for applying the Torah to the daily lives
of Christians. A revision and separate publication was necessary in
part, because these chapters had not been available as a separate
statement – which they are. I have left out most of the scholarly ma-
terial that was in the footnotes. It is not necessary to understand my
proposals and it is still available in the text of my dissertation.

The present book makes in effect a single statement: that Matthew

and James present us with a form of Christianity that tries to remain
a partner of Judaism in its attempt to obey the Torah of Moses. I
hoped to show that the new understanding of the Jewish back-
ground of the New Testament might contribute to a different way of
doing Christian ethics.

I appreciate the fact that much more needs to be said in order to

make the case for a renewed Christian casuistry along Jewish
lines. To think “legally” about moral issues is not a popular under-
taking in our post-modern era, that prefers emotional consensus to
a debate on principles. Yet I believe from my studies both in ethics
and Rabbinic Judaism that the Christian witness to the Kingdom of
Christ in this world could benefit greatly from Jewish moral and leg-
al hermeneutics.

Robbert Veen

HUIZEN, Christmas 2005

Introduction

In 1982 Mennonite theologian and pastor John Toews presented his

design for a theology of law in the New Testament that would be able to
provide us with a biblical method of doing Christian ethics. In his view, the
Torah should again have a role to play in ethics, precisely because all the
evidence in the New Testament suggests that Jesus took a far more fa-
vorable view of the Torah and the Jewish way of deducing moral rules of
behavior than had been acknowledged by the Reformation. His position
might be summarized as follows:
In the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Torah is normatively inter-
preted for the community of Jesus’ followers, who affirm His messianic
position, and the nucleus of this interpretation is the love of God and
neighbor.
From this thesis, we can deduce a number of implications, some of which
I will try to explore in this book. If the above thesis is valid, how did it
come about that the Christian Churches ignored this central position of
the Torah? What doctrine took the place of the Torah in grounding Christi-
an ethics? And how did we arrive at the almost insurmountable schism
between the demands of the Kingdom and the exigencies of ordinary life
in the modern state? Is a Christian primarily a citizen with a specific reli-
gious attitude? Or is he a citizen of the Kingdom of heavens, that awaits
the return of Christ while living in the remains of an old order, destined to
fade away?
It seems to me to be necessary to look with a fresh mind at the New Test-
ament evidence, the epistle of James and the gospels of Matthew and
Mark, to establish a biblical answer to these questions. After all, in mod-
ern Christianity, there seems to be no place for the concept of a true
obedience to the Torah as an integral part of Christian ethics. The New
Testament seems to leave us with a pair of conflicting positions on this is-
sue.
Which is the real Jesus? The Jesus who apparently abrogates the food
laws in Mark 7 by “declaring all foods clean,” annuls the Sabbath, invalid-
ates the Korban law and the laws of vowing in general, and rejects the in-
stitution of the Temple? Or is it the Jesus who in Matthew 5:17 declares
that He “did not come to abolish the law and the prophets” and expects a
higher righteousness of His disciples than that of the Pharisees, implying
a greater obedience to the Torah? Is it the Jesus who has become the
“end of the law” in Romans 10? In what sense then could we argue that
the New Testament teaches that the messianic era starts with the abroga-
tion of Mosaic Law?
I will first present the difference in opinion between the gospels of Mat-
thew and Mark. I will try to establish that Mark is a writer that focuses on
Jesus as the Healer, which goes beyond issues of Torah-obedience. Mark
represents a point of view on Christ that is perfectly suitable for a mission-
izing Church in its contact with a pagan world. Matthew, though writing
later than Mark, in my view has tried to reconstruct the original gospel by
presenting Jesus in a Jewish context that is more congruent with Jesus
own reality as a Jew in first century Palestine. In a third section I will try to
show, that the letter of James presents us with a clear view on a mode of
discipleship and a form of Christian ethics, that includes obedience to the
Torah.
The aim of this book is fairly modest. By using some of the available
sources on the Jewish background of Christianity, I want to make the
case that Christians should start to think again about the meaning of the
Torah and its Jewish interpretation for the way we act as Christians in this
world. The point I am trying to make therefore is a preliminary one. It
defines a program of reinterpretation of Christian ethics in the light of our
knowledge of the Jewish background of Jesus that will give us more spe-
cific ideas of what a Christian ethics should look like. Though I dislike the
terminology, it might be fair to say that this book is a plea for a specific
form of “legalism”. Devising a mode of discipleship in our time, in which
ancient biases against Jews and the Old Testament are set aside, is nev-
ertheless to me a fascinating undertaking that might make our witness in
this world efficient by making it more apparent and specific.
A. Jesus and the Law in Mark
Chapter 1

Jesus and the Jewish Law

Who is the “real” Jesus? The Jesus of Mark or the Jesus of Matthew? If
Church practice early and late can be considered at least part of the an-
swer, the “real” Jesus obviously is that of Mark. The Christian Churches
do not hold to laws of ritual purity nor do they abide by the various food
laws, including those Noachide laws dealing with blood and the strangled
that apparently had been adopted by the Jerusalem council under the
joint authority of James, Peter, and Paul (Acts 17).
For the same reason, if Pauline doctrine can be considered part of the an-
swer and if it is in strict continuity with Jesus’ teaching, then Jesus must
have been abolishing the law, since established exegesis has it that Paul
surely did. Even Peter is portrayed as being the recipient of a divine vis-
ion in which impurity barriers between Jews and gentiles were lifted (Acts
10). Church practices then and now, and various texts in the New Testa-
ment, speak urgently in favor of the image of Jesus of Nazareth as the
one who abolished the law.
On the other hand, Matthew might have been speaking from within a part
of the Christian Church to whom the recognition of an ongoing validity of
the law was still important. To Jewish Christians a continuing role of the
law must have been quite self-evident. The difference of the images of
Christ in Matthew and Mark must then be due to the difference between
two separate patterns of early Christianity, which we most often identify
according to ethnic boundaries as Jewish and gentile Christianity. Read
like this, Matthew’s position on the law might then have been a redaction-
al input as well as that of Mark, both obscuring the “real” Jesus behind
their own theological needs.
To modern Christians, this issue is not without importance, but it does not
confront us with an obstacle that needs to be solved in order to make pro-
gress. We must first accept that the “real” Jesus cannot be found behind
the texts we have, as we must accept equally that we are left to do our
work with the canonized text. We have to find our way through a maze of
conflicting pieces of evidence amongst incongruent images of Christ, both
between and within the given text.
Is there a way to ease this burden? We might start with accepting the
canon as such, as the given material to work with, defining our burden as
finding the unity or the center of the whole of the text that the Church con-
sidered Sacred Writings. The canon is not a practical list or a divine revel-
ation, but it implies a historical perspective and a way of reading Scripture
that was current in the early Church. Matthew was put first in the order of
gospels for a reason. It was supposed to be the basic and grounding view
of Christ. Mark could not set it aside, nor could Paul contradict with im-
punity the basic position of the gospels. The gospels had particular au-
thority because they represented the living voice of Christ who was the
Lord of the Church and the consensus of local Churches or Church
groups.
However, from our modern point of view the New Testament is in many
ways a product of conflicting positions. James was in conflict with Paul on
the issue of justification; Peter and Paul had their quarrel about the status
of gentile Christians in the Church; the gospels of Matthew and John
seem to depict quite a different Jesus. All of this is reflected in the texts.
Should we harmonize them into one consistent picture? Side by side with
the historical decision to adopt four gospels instead of the shortened ver-
sion of Luke that Marcion and Arius had proposed in the 2nd and 4th cen-
tury, there was the effort to harmonize the gospels into a synoptic vision
of events. The conflicts between them were noticed and seen as problem-
atic. Therefore, the conflicts among the New Testament writings had to be
smoothed out by a meta-narrative that did not allow inconsistencies to be
understood as formal contradictions.
Harmonization, the smoothing out of differences, became the dominant
hermeneutic strategy. E.g., if Luke said something that is not in John,
both events must have happened at different times. The differences
between Paul and James should be attributed to different emphases in
the same overall gospel-story. If John mentions a date different from the
other gospel writers, then he purposely deviated from the historical truth
to make a point. In a modern approach, we would read differently. We
surmise that the differences are part of different theological appreciations
of the apostolic traditions that the gospel writers were working with, or re-
flect the different contexts in which their congregations had to deal with
those traditions. In such a case, when the contradiction cannot be ex-
plained away, theological intent supersedes descriptive accuracy.
Since the Reformation placed so much emphasis on the interpretation of
the gospel by Paul, a new problem arose: that of harmonizing Jesus’
statements in the gospels with the letters of Paul. Matthew e.g. could be
harmonized with Paul by using a double strategy: (1) Matthew was either
writing about a preliminary position that Jesus took because at that time
the gospel was still meant to reach Israel or (2) Matthew’s text, with its
emphasis on “doing the Law” had to mean something else, i.e. it had to
be spiritualized. One of the ways of doing that, was to speak about the
demands of the law as a prerequisite of accepting the gospel. Jesus was
actually showing us to what degree we had merited punishment in order
to guide us to divine grace. That strategy resulted in a near dismissal of
Matthew’s own intent.
That is particularly apparent in the case of the great stumbling block that
we find in Matthew 5:17, the massive affirmation of the law and the proph-
ets that is contained there. It was generally accepted that the passage
was about the meaning of Christ’s death in the light of His resurrection,
which was the real fulfillment of law and prophets. To be able to fulfill the
law meant that Jesus was the One that the law and the prophets had pre-
dicted, and the higher righteousness demanded of Jesus’ followers could
be equated with the righteousness imputed to sinners. The Matthew pas-
sage however becomes equivocal in this way of reading, involving a
double-entendre at the moment it was uttered.
From our present understanding of the Jewish context of early Christianity
we can ask a different question. Perhaps already in the era of the forma-
tion of the canon, the Church had forgotten what it actually meant to “fulfill
the law” and not to abolish it?
Perhaps the early Church already employed a reading strategy that made
it possible to circumvent the massive affirmation of the Torah’s validity? To
fulfill might have come to mean to supersede, by the end of the 2nd cen-
tury. Paul’s post-resurrection theology, after having reached the status of
primary framework, could then become the foundation of all Christian
theology. Jesus’ affirmation of the law was read from hindsight as a stage
in a progressive revelation. His effort to build a new Israel had failed and
was first present in a new shape in the apostolic preaching of Peter and
James, and then given up halfway through the book of Acts to be focused
finally on Paul’s mission to the gentiles.
It is this meta-narrative of the replacement of Israel by the Church that al-
lowed for the harmonization strategy to work, in essence dividing pre-
from post-resurrection theology (whereas in fact all of the New Testament
in its redacted state is post-resurrection reflection). It is then set in the
framework of Jesus’ preaching of the gospel of God’s kingdom to Israel
first, and only after they rejected His message could the complete gospel
of freedom from the law be explained to gentiles and Jews alike. The
placement of Matthew with its massive law-affirmation as the first of the
canonical gospels is the decisive act on which we need to base our un-
derstanding of its practical status.
The canonical stature of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, including the
massive affirmation of the continuing validity of the law in Matthew 5, is a
barrier to any contemporary attempt to formulate a law-free gospel, even
if based on the gospel of Paul or his followers. It is necessary to leave a
formidable tradition of reading the gospel behind us.
Even in modern readings of the gospel however, this ancient bias against
the Jewish character of the gospel is present. Rudolf Bultmann can state,
e.g., that Jesus’ teachings are ”a major protest against Jewish legality
(Gesetzlichkeit), i.e., against a piety that sees the will of God expressed
in the written law and the tradition that explains it.”1 Such a piety would try
to achieve God’s acceptance through a painstaking effort to comply with
the law’s demands. Religion, law, and ethics were not separated in Phar-
isaic doctrine, so that civil law became a divine institution and divine law
was handled as civil law.
That position in his view must lead to casuistry, where legal institutions
that have lost their force because of changing circumstances need to be
kept alive because they are considered of divine origin and must be adap-
ted to the new circumstances by an artificial process of interpretation.
“The consequence of all of this is that the real motivation for the moral act
has become perverted.”2 Obedience is in that case seen as something
formal and the question of why a moral act is commanded cannot be
asked; the principle of retribution (Vergeltung) is the primary motivational
force. In such a legal discourse, religious ethics cannot achieve a radical,
real obedience from the heart.
Jesus’ intent was, according to Bultmann, to bypass the codified law and
the cultic requirements and present the case of a radical, moral obedi-
ence beyond legalism. God demands what is morally good in every situ-
ation anew. The moral relationship becomes the pure divine requirement,
beyond legal, ritual and cultic law, to respond authentically to Gods pres-
ence.
The antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount would in fact portray such a
moral requirement versus the religious and legal dictates of the rabbis.
The behavior of man cannot be determined by legal rules; it would leave
a person a sphere of freedom outside of Gods imperative that the law
could not deal with. Bultmann equates the halakhic system of the Phar-
isees (a way of understanding obedience as a “way of life”) with this legal-
ist distortion of Torah-obedience.
Even a casual reading of Sander’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism, written
in 1977, should teach us differently. The themes of God’s grace, election,
the ”direction of the heart,” the minor relevance of the aspect of retribu-
tion, and the great emphasis on moral attitudes beyond the strictures of
the law - all present in early Jewish law traditions - are shown to imply the
precise opposite of the legalist, cultic, self-centered righteousness that
Christian scholarship attributed to Judaism in the thought of Bultmann. In

1 R. Bultmann (1953), p. 10.

2 Ibid.
our Churches, we have not really begun to draw the consequences from
this revolution in our way of thinking.
With a more realistic picture of 1st-century Judaism, our image of Jesus’
opposition to it must change, and with that, our appreciation of the role of
the Torah in Christian ethics must also change.
At the present, after several decades of new research into the Jewish
context of Jesus’ preaching, we can no longer ignore the continuity
between Jesus’ statements and those of his Pharisaic contemporaries.
Liberal theology did so. Where Jesus states like the Pharisees, that God
rewards full obedience, Bultmann does not hesitate to point out that be-
hind the idea of reward lies the promise of redemption to those who
obeyed for reasons other than the reward. Jesus’ use of the concept of
reward is thereby given a theological depth to counteract the possibility
that obedience for reward perverts the ”moral motivation.”
However, such a sympathetic reception of language that opposes Bult-
mann’s own intuitions is not given to the Pharisaic teachers. The assump-
tion is that the theological evaluation of the Pharisees, as presented by
some readings of the gospel context, provides us with enough clues to
accept in Jesus a statement that is virtually identical to a statement made
by His Pharisaic contemporaries and still affirm such a statement by Je-
sus and reject that of the Pharisees.
All of the explanations of Jesus’ original gospel by Bultmann are determ-
ined by his opinions about Pharisees. They are context-derived and
biased in as far as they generalize from the gospel-accounts and do not
offer an explanation for the intent behind the Pharisees’ position beyond a
notion like their “zeal for the law.”
I will endeavor to show that the intent behind some of the Pharisees’ dis-
puted rulings can be reconstructed with some certainty, not in a concrete
historical fashion, but by locating the “pattern of religion” (Sanders) in-
volved, and that this actually throws an important light on the meaning of
Jesus’ saying and the reasons behind it.
According to Bultmann, Jesus does not reject the authority of the Old
Testament, but distinguishes critically among its diverse commandments
(which only mean that he has a specific hermeneutic) and has a sover-
eign attitude towards it. This last point is of course of primary importance.
The relationship between the authority of the Torah and the authority of
the Messiah is a vital issue.
However, how can Bultmann claim that this sovereign attitude is without a
doubt (1) attributable to Jesus Himself? After all, Bultmann discriminates
between Jesus’ sayings and Gemeindebildung (redaction within the con-
gregation and for the latter’s needs), because the image of Jesus as
standing above the law is part of the confession of Jesus as the Messiah.
If it is part of the apostolic interpretation of Jesus’ gospel, it cannot revoke
Jesus’ own sayings with regard to the authority of Torah. And (2) how can
Bultmann claim that, even given this sovereign mode, Jesus actually did
abrogate the law, over against the evidence of Matthew 5:17, which at
least in the primitive Church was held to be authoritative?
When it suits him, Bultmann can claim that words that deny both Jesus’
rejection of tradition and Torah are actually part of the Gemeindebildung,
whereas words that reject the Torah must be authentic. A case in point is
the expression in Matthew 5:17, where Jesus states that He did not come
to abolish the law. Bultmann has this to offer: “...in comparison with other
words of Jesus and taking His actual behavior into account this cannot
possibly be a genuine saying of Christ; it must be a Gemeindebildung
from a later age.”
We beg to differ, and the reason is precisely this: that Bultmann rejects it
as genuine because he interprets it as (close to) an affirmation of Phar-
isaic legalism. If, however, one can interpret the affirmation of Torah not
as a form of legalism, but as something common to all strands of
Palestinian Judaism, there is no problem. It certainly cannot be denied
that Jesus was a Jew. The solution to the problem need not be the hypo-
thesis that Matthew wrote for a Judaizing congregation, nor the introduc-
tion of a semantic framework in which ”to fulfill” suddenly becomes con-
nected to Pauline Christology. There is no real hindrance to accept that
there was enough in Pharisaic Judaism that could be adopted and adap-
ted both by Jesus and by the early Church.
That there is a problem with the absolute nature of this affirmation of
Torah in Matthew 5 should lead us into the opposite direction. Precisely
the incongruence between the position of the Church and this saying
must mean that it is attributable to Jesus, by the standard of critical meth-
od that what is in conflict with what can be expected must therefore be
genuine.
Notwithstanding his general rejection of a favorable attitude towards the
law in Jesus, Bultmann accepts that Jesus did not abrogate fasting in
Mark 2, did not speak out against the Temple cult and did not reject the
Old Testament. The redactional stage of Matthew 5:17, in that sense, re-
mained in continuity with Jesus’ own attitude, even if it derived its position
from the lack of criticism rather than from an actual position that Jesus
had expressed.
The impact of the saying is, however, greatly reduced to a general ac-
ceptance of the Old Testament as sacred literature, and reduced further
by its attribution to a Judaizing congregation, history of form and redac-
tion history are given the final say over the matter.
The assumptions behind Bultmann’s position therefore lead him astray
here, as we will show by looking at the relation between gospel context
(reflective stages) and (reconstructed) logion context.
It is clear that a saying as recorded in Matthew 5:17 is a real hindrance to
accepting the law-free gospel as something that derives from Jesus, and
not from the pagan majority Churches and their (vulgarized) Paulinism. In
it, Jesus states that He did not come to abolish the law but to uphold (ful-
fill) it. What does this mean?
Chapter 2

Fulfilling the law (Matthew 5)

Now we are somewhat prepared to address the reading strategy that
takes the fulfillment of the law as implying materially the same thing as an
abrogation. What does it actually mean to fulfill the law in a Jewish con-
text? The expression “fulfilling the law” has been taken as the equivalent
of “doing the law,” as in Rom. 2:13. Jesus then came to do the law, to be
in obedience to all its precepts. But the Greek pleroosai stands closer to
the Hebrew lehaqim which means to uphold, to accept as a standard.
That is also how the Aramaic translation of Onqelos takes the Hebrew
(doing, here “the law”) in Deut. 27:26. The translation with “to uphold”
brings it closer to agreement with Rom. 3:31, where Paul states that he is
actually establishing the law (but using a form of histemi, to establish).
Besides, the LXX in 1 K. 1:14 clearly shows that the Greek pleroosai and
the Hebrew word for “fulfill” i.e. establish or affirm were seen as equival-
ents. The prophet Nathan here announces his intent to come to the king
to corroborate the words of Bathsheba. It seems clear that Jesus wanted
to uphold the Law as a standard for obedience in a Jewish sense.
The meaning of the expression is disputed, however. One might argue
that fulfilling the law equals doing it, i.e., obeying its precepts individually.
Jesus would then be saying that he ”does” the law, and Paul can then still
say later that to the Church the law is abrogated because of changed cir-
cumstances: Israel after all did not accept Jesus’ gospel.
The problem is that the Greek has a perfectly simple word for ”doing” the
law. The Greek poiesai is used, e.g., in LXX Deut. 26:16, to translate the
Hebrew for “doing” (‘asah) i.e., obeying the law. That does indeed suggest
that to fulfill means more than to obey or do it. It is hardly likely that doing
and fulfilling were seen as equivalents when the LXX takes such pains to
differentiate the two.
Another way to explain the underlying issue is to make a difference
between doing the precepts of the law and upholding it, i.e., maintaining it
as a standard even when occasional transgressions against it are com-
mitted. That seems to be clear from the Hebrew use of jaqim in Deut.
27:26, where we have the meaning of upholding (as standard) in order to
do. It certainly is the meaning of meqim in MPirkei Avoth 4:9, which
speaks about fulfilling the Torah in poverty. Surely, this does not mean do-
ing all the mitzvoth, but rather affirming their validity. The LXX strengthens
this impression when it translates the same word in Deut. 27:26 with “con-
tinue” (emmenei) and not with fulfill, thereby accentuating the required
persistence in obedience. All of this implies that fulfilling the law goes
beyond obeying it, and that it has a meaning that cannot be harmonized
so simply with Paul’s approach to the law. Or is there a way?
Another, more popular approach involves putting the expression into con-
nection with the so-called “formula quotations” (Erfüllungszitate) that are a
redactional device used by Matthew, where the word for “to fulfill” has the
meaning of “to give them their full meaning.” Law and prophets find their
deepest significance in the coming of the Messiah, specifically in the way
this Messiah acts and instructs His disciples on matters of law. Fulfilling
the Law must then mean that Jesus reveals the true intent of the Torah
and demonstrates it in action. This messianic authority may on occasion
come into conflict with Pharisaic halakah or even with contemporary inter-
pretations of the Torah.
In this case, we take the verb pleroosai to have received its meaning from
Matthew’s Christology. But even here, the basic sense of “fulfill” is to cor-
roborate. The expression does not lead us into the arena of Pauline fulfill-
ment-theology that would imply abrogation at the same time. In Matt.
3:15, the expression “to fulfill all righteousness” is used to mean
something like “to do everything that is demanded by the standard of
righteousness.” To fulfill the law might then be taken to mean to do the
law and uphold it as standard insofar as it, as a written statute, leads to
the fulfillment of the divine demand of righteousness.
We should notice something else in this context. There is no reference to
Jesus as a person who might annul the law here. In stead, we find a
straightforward statement about Jesus’ obedience to and indeed rever-
ence for the Torah.
Furthermore, we can infer from the opposition between katalusai (to an-
nul) and pleroosai that to fulfill does mean to uphold, to affirm its authority.
As a technical term, it denotes a process of interpretation whereby indi-
vidual laws are explained in such a way that they serve the goal of the
whole body of law, i.e., establish justice. Another meaning of the word
that plays into this, is that of completion. When a road is “fulfilled”, it is
possible to reach its destination. The Torah is understood as a road to life,
and fulfilling it might mean to apply it in such a way, that its goal is
reached.
Another approach might be to look more closely at the contents of this no-
tion of fulfilling by trying to figure out what its particular usage might have
been within 1st-century Judaism. Since we are now seeking a pattern of
thought, and not historical dependency, even relatively late texts might
provide us with valuable clues. A passage in BMakkoth 23b-24a might
help us out here. R. Simlai opens a discussion with a statement that God
gave Moses 613 commandments. David summarized (reduced) these
613 to eleven basic precepts in Psalm 15 (24a). The Psalm ends with the
statement: “He that does these things will not be moved.” Now this does
not mean that David annulled 600 commandments, but it does mean that
the manifold of commandments were seen as being derived from a lesser
number of major commandments, that could be regarded (a) as basic eth-
ical requirements and (b) as fundamental ways of interpreting and doing
all other commandments. Beyond that, (c) anyone who was able to per-
form these commandments with the fundamental concentration on doing
God’s will that was required (what the Rabbis called “kawanah”) would
merit the world to come. So the eleven moral demands David enumerated
(which are not all part of the list of 613) form the basis of obedience to all
of the 613 precepts.
Rabban Gamliel then remarks that only someone who can practice all of
these precepts can merit the world to come, but he is refuted: the text
simply states “these,” i.e., any of these, and does not say “all of these.”
So the merit of the world to come is already earned by practicing merely
one of the ethical requirements mentioned by David with the required
concentration, and it will be that obedience (which does not imply a rejec-
tion of the other 613 commandments) which brings salvation.
At the end of the passage, Amos 5:4 is quoted as indicating that obedi-
ence to God (“And seek me and you shall live”) is the fundamental “ethic-
al” requirement that will bring salvation. The Gemara refutes this by quot-
ing Rav Nachman b. Isaac as saying that this ”seek Me” effectively in-
cludes all the 613 precepts and can therefore not be called a “reduction.”
The Gemara then offers another text: Hab. 2:14, “the righteous will live
through his faith.” It is not difficult to see how similar in reasoning, though
different in result, this is from the text we have in Romans 1:16, 17. Could
it not be that fulfilling the law is functionally the equivalent of a fundament-
al ethical requirement, as well as a hermeneutical perspective within
which the precepts should be applied?
To fulfill the law must then mean to uphold it by effectively obeying it in
accordance with its most general principle, expressed in and as the sum-
mary of the law. Matthew now expresses the righteousness that is the in-
ner standard of the law as written statute as the double commandment
upheld in a specific community.
In Matthew’s version, this most general principle involved (1) the basic
principle and hermeneutic perspective of the law as explained by Christ,
i.e., love for God and neighbor, and more particularly the nature of the
eschatological community as defined by the introductory Beatitudes; (2)
the authority of the Messiah to formulate absolutely binding halakhot
while at the same relegating the formal rabbinic authority to the com-
munity “assembled in His name.” (Matthew 18)
The messianic authority as shared by the Church is in fact in itself a sign
of the new Messianic era. In this respect, the anti-Pharisaic address in
chapter 25 serves as a corollary to Jesus’ Messianic status, because it
shows that the rabbinic decisions were being made by men. These men
were unable themselves to “fulfill” the law in many respect. They were
shown to be the opposite of Jesus as the one who through His death had
shown the ultimate sacrifice in the service of God and His fellow-men,
thereby ultimately demonstrating the absolute authority He had used in
matters of law-exegesis.
Chapter 3

Jesus and Jewish oral tradition in Mark

If Jesus did not abrogate the law what then was His teaching about its
use for His disciples? We must turn now to the difficult question of what
Jesus really taught about the Mosaic law and of what consequences this
has for the shape of Christian obedience.
First, to simply go to the opposite and assume agreement between Jesus
and the Pharisees on major issues of law, based for the most part on si-
lence, is a dangerous enterprise. There is more than enough positive
evidence to suggest that in many cases there was agreement between
Jesus’ position and at least some of the reconstructable early sources of
rabbinic doctrine. In any case, Jesus would certainly have agreed with the
majority of his contemporaries that the Torah contained the decisive revel-
ation of the will of God. However, there are differences. The texts show us
that a different understanding of the nature of God and his response to
the social tensions of his time that made Jesus different in some of his
decisions on Jewish law.
The following seemed necessary in the traditional view for understanding
Jesus’ position vis-à-vis the law:
1Jesus accepts the gospel of John the Baptist that there was only one
way to escape the coming judgment, and that way did not lead through
the Temple and its system of sacrificial atonement. One needs to be bap-
tized and follow the will of God with a new commitment. Jesus’ baptism in
the Jordan implies Jesus’ rejection of the sufficiency of the Temple cult. It
includes an image of God as avenging Judge that soon afterwards is
transformed in Jesus’ own preaching.
2Jesus shows that God is about to renew his marriage vows to Israel.
God, the Bridegroom of Israel, is coming to His people to save them. That
is why there can be no fasting! There is a deep sense of the presence of
God among His people.
3If God is coming like that to His people, then Israel is not identical to the
Kingdom of God. That kingdom was present since the Mosaic law, the
commandments, were given to realize God’s sovereign rule in this world.
What Israel is awaiting is a new kind of presence of God in the midst of
His people without the mediation of the Temple, i.e., directly, forgiving the
sins of all people without condition. That is the reason that Jesus is not in-
terested in matters of holiness and purity.
Jesus looked at the Torah in the light of his particular understanding of
God. Torah had the function to reveal to humankind God’s boundless and
benevolent love for man. Because God had already begun His new king-
dom of divine presence, it was not important to direct everybody’s atten-
tion to the Torah as a rule of life. Not the text of the Torah, but the revela-
tion of God’s love contained in it, was to Jesus the essence of the tradi-
tions of Israel. It seems clear that though this is a different position from
that encountered in mainstream Pharisaism, it does constitute a radical
effort to affirm the validity of the Torah as a vehicle of revelation and the
basis for man’s behavior. The nature and extent of Jesus’ abrogation of
the Torah in its aspect of law could be combined with His statements on
the validity of the Law as vehicle of the revelation of grace.
Is this picture correct? Then we should find a clear rejection of the rab-
binic way of thinking in Jesus’ teaching on the Law. Since the affirmation
of the Torah as Law is the viewpoint that is most often associated with the
Pharisaic approach to Torah, our attention now must shift to Jesus’ con-
nection with the proponents of oral law.

3.1 The Jewish traditions

We must ask what Jesus’ response was to the Pharisaic traditions. Was
He really that far removed from the way the Pharisees explained the law?
We cannot simply identify Jesus with a form of Pharisaism, and the clas-
sical view informs us that Jesus was in opposition to the Pharisaic exposi-
tion of the Torah. We need to examine at least some of the evidence.
The most decisive opposition to Pharisaism in the gospels seems to be
found in Mark 7. Some introductory remarks are needed here. The gos-
pel of Mark is based on Palestinian traditions about Jesus, which account
for most of the sayings, and Hellenistic and Galilean narratives. His main
effort was to provide a consistent narrative that could combine the various
traditions that he had received. The main intent of Marks theology seems
to be linked to a very early type of piety that saw in Jesus the exceptional
teacher, debater, leader, and healer. The debates are constructed in or-
der to show Jesus’ exceptional nature, and they focus less on the con-
tents. Nevertheless, Mark received Palestinian traditions that did focus on
the contents, as is clear in particular from such passages as Mark 2 and
7. It is Marks strategy to use them in such a way, that the emphasis shifts
from the dialogue to a statement about Jesus.
In the same manner, the role of the disciples is portrayed in various ways
as a response to Jesus. The crowds, the disciples, the Pharisees, and
other groups are confronted with Jesus and are astonished or in fear.
(E.g. 1:22, 27; 2:12; 4:41; 5:20, 42; 6:50; 7:37; 9:14; 10:32; 12:17, 34;
15:5; 16:8) The meaning of Jesus’ mission is not presented in a more or
less independent Christology, but through the response of men to the ex-
ceptionality of Jesus’ character and mission.
If we can ascertain that the break with Judaism is a product of the chan-
ging situation of the early Church and its debate with Judaism, we have
thereby shown that Jesus’ own position may have given rise to a variety
of positions on the Torah and, by implication, a variety of positions with re-
gard to what constitutes Christian obedience. The major key in separating
between the oldest traditions and the effort to harmonize those traditions
with current Church-decisions will be the form of the material. If it is
halakhic in nature, we probably have the material that occasioned the
labor of the redactor. Halakhic elements therefore have priority over
Christological material.
Let us examine the issue of the impurity of the hands first, and let us ex-
amine it first of all from a Jewish perspective to see precisely what issue
our chapter 7 of Mark is dealing with.
First we must ask ourselves whether the issue of ritual washing of the
hands was part of a live debate in the 1st century or not. The Gemara3 in
Sabbath 15a quotes Rav Judah (Judah b. Ezekiel, a Babylonian Amora 4
of the third century) as saying in the name of Samuel, who lived one gen-
eration earlier at the end of the 2nd century, that King Solomon had insti-
tuted the ritual washing of the hands. That seems to indicate that the dis-
cussion was settled and the ritual an ordinary part of Jewish life. The
statement about the antiquity of the ritual is then hardly exaggerated.
Sanders, on the contrary, maintains that the issue arose much later, in the
early period of the formation of the Mishnah tractate Yadaim, in his estim-
ate well after A.D. 70, which deals extensively with the purity of the
hands.
The decree that triggered later conflict was, however, at least as old as
the era of Shammai and Hillel, though the same text seems to indicate
that there was initially a difference of opinion amongst them and that the
matter was brought to agreement only afterwards amongst their pupils,
therefore, presuming that the Talmud is historically accurate, also after Je-
sus’ lifetime.

3 “Gemara,” literally: completion. The word refers to the oral discussions on

the body of Jewish Law as they were recorded and collected in the two recen-
sions of the Talmud, the Babylonian or the Palestinian (Jerusalem) Talmud, or to
the whole of the Talmud consisting of Mishnah and Gemara.
4 The authorities in the Mishnah are called “Tannaim,” expounders (of the
law). The authorities that commented on the Mishnah are called Amoraim, teach-
ers (of the law). These Amoraim lived in Babylonia or Palestine from the 3d cen-
tury onward.
In the view of E.P. Sanders, the discussion in Mark 7 is highly artificial be-
cause there was no debate about ritual washing of the hands at that time;
it originates much later, when it is also corroborated by Mishnaic sources.
Hand washing before a common meal (as opposed to a festive meal or
on Sabbath), according to Sanders, was a Pharisaic tradition at most and
not a law; there is hardly any evidence for it in the 1st century; it was cer-
tainly not a uniform tradition; most Jews probably did not abide by it, so it
could not have been a cause for deadly enmity.
Could it have been an original first century debate? James Dunn, dis-
agreeing with Sanders on this question, sees in Mark 7 strong evidence
that the issue washing the hands before meals was already under debate.
In his estimate, the core issue of Mark 7 is indeed a Jewish debate on a
point of law. Dunn more or less accuses Sanders of having introduced the
dogma that there could have been no conflict between Jesus and the
Pharisees about halakah. Mark 7 would actually show the opposite.
Is it just about a point of law or is more at stake? Is Mark taking a dia-
logue on a point of law out of context to present us with the theological
opposition between the Messiah and the Pharisees? To my mind, it
seems clear that the debate about hand washing is also about something
else. Precisely because in this rabbinic commandment the issue of the
authority of rabbinical enactments and the major drive towards sanctifica-
tion of ordinary life were at stake, it must have been an item of grave con-
flict. The debate between Jesus and the Pharisees was not about wash-
ing hands as such, as James Dunn emphasizes, but about who could de-
cide such an issue and for what reason it could be deemed desirable to
have such a halakah.
What did the rabbis actually say? The Mishnah in Chagiga II,4 states that
hands need to be rinsed before eating unconsecrated food, and the Ge-
mara (18b) explains that this must be for bread, while one need not rinse
his hands before eating fruit, and Mark 7 shows that this must at least
have been valid law in the days before the year 70. The first stage was
most certainly also a debate between Sadducees and Pharisees, the
second exclusively a debate among Pharisaic teachers themselves. In
this context we may make a motivated guess that the historic referent of
Mark 7 seems to belong at least partially to the first stage of the conflict,
and that it is set against the background of the Sadducee conflict because
it is about the authority of the oral tradition; in part, however, it also be-
longs to a much later Christian-Jewish debate, when the ritual itself was
abolished for Christians. The element of the inclusion or exclusion of gen-
tiles is then made into the context of the entire debate. I will go into this
hypothesis in more detail later.
So the core of the debate is probably authentic, and we may identify it as
pre-70, following Dunn’s analysis. Now we must ask the next question:
what was this debate exactly about? The Gemara in Chulin 106a dis-
cusses the custom in a way that makes it clear that the rationale behind
the commandment was secondary in nature. It was an already estab-
lished custom that the Rabbis debated. First, it surely did not originate in
the Torah itself. It was reported that R. Eleazar b. Arach (a teacher,
Tanna, of the 1st century) commented upon a baraita (a Mishnah not
found in Rabbi Judah’s compilation) that simply stated: “It is written: And
whomsoever he that hath the issue touches, without having rinsed his
hands in water, Lev. 15:11, herein, said R. Eleazar b. Arach, the sages
found biblical support for the law of washing the hands.” But the biblical
support they found was derived by a procedure called asmachta, i.e., a
rabbinic ruling was afterwards homiletically linked to a quotation from
Torah without contending that the text actually taught the ruling.
In the text of Torah, the washing of the hands is not a separate act, but
one that results from bathing, in the rabbinic ruling the washing of the
hands becomes a separate injunction, implying that all those who did not
wash their hands are unclean and unfit to partake of the meal. In fact, as
is clear from Hirsch’s commentary on Leviticus 15:115, the text itself im-
plies that the person who bathes also cleans his hands by doing so, and
the hands are mentioned as a meaningful pars pro toto for the body as a
whole, emphasizing that the capability to act was restored in such ritual
bathing. It is clear, then, that an application of Lev. 15:11 to the washing
of the hands before meals presupposes an intent to make the common
meal into an analogy of the priestly meal, which required Levitical purity.
We must note in passing that we follow here the general idea that Phar-
isaic teaching was characterized by the intent of applying Levitical purity
to ordinary life, to “educate the masses in holiness” as was shown e.g. by
Jacob Neusner.6 Neusner expressed the view that the Pharisees contrib-
uted a viewpoint and a method. The viewpoint addressed “all Israel,” and
the method focused upon the sanctification of “all Israel. The Pharisees
contributed to the nascent system after 70 a fundamental attitude that
everyone mattered and an emphasis on the holiness of everyday life.”7
James Dunn mentions the “received wisdom” that the Pharisees at the
time of Jesus were a purity sect. “Their concern was to keep the purity
laws, which governed access to the Temple and participation in the cult,
outside the Temple, to extend the holiness of the Temple throughout the
land of Israel.”

5 Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, translation and commentary,

translated by Isaac Levy, London, Judaica Press, 19762 (1867 – 1878).
6 Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees (1971).
7 Neusner (1995), p. 52.
Secondly, it is also clear that the custom is intrinsically linked to its au-
thoritative source. In the same passage we find R. Idi b. Abin (a Babyloni-
an Amora of the 4th. century) stating that the washing of the hands was
instituted because of the ritual purity of terumah, food consecrated to the
Temple. Hands are considered unclean, but only in the second degree,
meaning that they could not defile common food but could defile consec-
rated food. However, this is valid for priests, and, on the assumption that
the festive meals on religious holidays constituted an analogy to priestly
gatherings, only valid for such occasions. How could it, on the basis of
Torah, be applied to ordinary meals as well?
In fact, only tradition itself could provide a foundation for that, and there
can be a connection between two efforts to give a basis for the ritual: the
one implying the priestly analogy, extending the ritual laws to laymen in
order to sanctify Israel, and the other the sheer fact that it had been
handed down by tradition. Obviously, R. Idi considered compliance with
this rabbinic institution a meritorious act, even if there was no basis for it
in written law. Obeying the rabbis is in itself a form of piety, since it ex-
presses loyalty to the system in which halakah is produced. Therefore,
when the Gemara asks the obvious question “why?” it is understandable
why the younger contemporary of R. Idi, Abaye, is thought to have
answered with a general principle: “It is a meritorious act to hearken to
the words of the sages.” The formal reason for the obedience lies there-
fore in the authority of the sages themselves.
But the sages’ opinion was not fully undisputed. Rab (2nd and 3rd cen-
tury) argued that after a person had washed his hands in the morning,
this would serve him all day if he so stipulated in his mind, if he did not
dirty his hands or render them unclean later. Nevertheless, this opinion
did not survive: it lost the analogy with the priestly requirements and con-
tradicted the specifics of the earlier and already widespread Pharisaic in-
stitution. It implied also a more “material” and rational way of looking at
the issue of impurity or cleanliness. All of this shows that to the third and
fourth generation of Amoraim the only real reason for obedience to the
commandment is the fact that the rabbis instituted it and that they loosely
accepted the priestly analogy as the general motivation for it.
This is shown also by comparison with a related minor issue. In the
Chulin passage we also find mention of the sages instituting the washing
of the hands before eating fruit, and not only before partaking of a com-
mon meal with bread. The reason for that institution is given by the same
R. Eleazar as “reasons of cleanliness.” Raba explains this as meaning
that washing the hands is neither a duty (not a rabbinic enactment) nor a
meritorious act (which though not commanded is an act of piety), but
merely a matter of free choice. What does this say about the washing of
the hands before eating bread? Surely that to some rabbis the washing of
the hands (since ritual defilement cannot be conferred upon the bread) is
intrinsically a matter of free choice or only an issue of cleanliness. Intrins-
ically, the rabbis accept the verdict that Mark 7 pronounces upon the cus-
tom and agree with Jesus’ main principle that there was no real defile-
ment here.
But the result of the discussion in the Talmud is not the abrogation of the
institution of the washing of the hands before a meal where bread is used.
Rabbinic authority makes it a duty on account of that authority itself. As
we have seen, it is a meritorious act when the sages institute it as such.
There is no valid ground for it apart from an analogy with priestly cus-
toms, which to some was not a sufficient reason. The washing of the
hands was a prerequisite only for the priest when he had his meal in the
Temple. So his “preparation” for partaking of consecrated food, terumah,
provides analogous grounds for the washing of the hands of the non-
priest before a common meal. It is an act that strengthens the similarity
between life at home and priestly life in the Temple. And that in itself is a
choice the rabbis made, and which then, because of their status, be-
comes meritorious and a duty. The act itself is an acknowledgement of
their authority and their intent to sanctify life outside the confines of the
Temple. The issue in its final stage in Mark 7 is therefore moved beyond
the question of purity or impurity to become focused on the authority of
the rabbis themselves to build up the Jewish way of life.
The gospel of Mark in its editorial layer very accurately opposes that by
showing Jesus’ authority to reject not only the specific halakhic decision ,
but the system itself. In Mark’s rendering of the conflict, messianic author-
ity clashes with rabbinic authority, even when originally a debate on the is-
sue itself must have been concerned with principles and arguments along
the lines of the debate recorded in the Talmud.
So we can conclude: in the ritual commandment to wash the hands be-
fore eating a complete meal (implying bread), the rationale rests on a
loose analogy with priestly law and ultimately on the fact that it was an in-
stitution of the sages, making what is in itself an “act of free choice” into
an honoring of rabbinic authority and the intent to sanctify life. In this
honoring of rabbinic authority, the acceptance of the basic Pharisaic en-
deavor to make life at home into an analogy to Temple symbolism is im-
plied. Utensils, food, and company at meals must comply with specific
rules for holiness. Obviously, a person who would not comply with this in-
stitution would be excluded from fellowship, since that would involve a re-
jection of rabbinic authority as such. However, the basis for that exclusion
would not be, as we have seen, the fact that such non-compliance consti-
tuted a breach of Torah, but merely disregard for a rabbinic institution.
That changed an “act of free choice,” which might have been prompted by
arguments of cleanliness, into a prescribed ritual.

3.2. Mark’s response to the traditions

We must now ask how early Christianity dealt with this element of Jewish
halakah. Let us take as our primary witness the passage in Mark 7, which
not only deals with the issue of the ritual washing of the hands before eat-
ing bread, but links it closely to another issue of far greater importance,
that of the Korban pledge that overrules the commandment to honor
one’s father and mother. We will deal with the various elements of this
passage in some detail, but with a specific intent: what was the underlying
issue of this strangely verbose and hostile encounter between Jesus and
some Pharisees? How did such a passage function within the Church of
Mark, more specifically, in Rome?
Mark 7:1. And [then] came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain
of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.
Immediately after the report of the failure of John the Baptist’s mission to
Israel we find the extension of the gospel of the kingdom to the gentiles. It
is shown in a symbolic manner in the act of the multiplication of the five
loaves of bread, perhaps referring to the five books of Moses, comple-
mented by prophets and writings (the two fish) combining into the seven
pieces of food that can feed the multitude (the hundreds and fifties of the
Roman army). In the chapter itself, Mark goes on to describe Jesus’ deal-
ings with a gentile woman from outside the boundary of the Holy Land, in-
dicating that, to him, the issue of purity is intrinsically connected to that of
the extension of the preaching of the gospel beyond Israel (verses 24-30).
The mention of bread in chapter 6 and the washing of the hands before
partaking of bread in chapter 7 might form an element of connection
between the passages. we find this passage, whose obvious intent is to
explain the distance between Pharisaic Judaism and the new gospel of
Christ, as that gospel had developed between Jesus’ death and the year
70. The Sadducees are of course not mentioned here, since they did not
agree on this issue with the Pharisees. The latter, as the “cultic” party,
tried to apply rules concerning ritual purity in the Temple to ordinary life, to
extend the sanctity of the Temple to the whole of Israel. The Sadducees
affirmed the primary sanctity of the Temple.
Has it happened? After discussing and rejecting Saunders’ contention
that the incident could not be authentic, James Dunn has argued that Je-
sus’ attitude would of necessity have been far more favourable to existing
Pharisaic regulations. In that case, the passage reflects more the concern
of the later Church. Dunn states as his conclusion that Jesus’ “cavalier”
attitude toward the purity laws might have constituted a threat to the in-
tegrity of the Temple, depending on the level of provocation of the recor-
ded incidents and on the level of concern for purity regulations, which,
though present in all factions of Judaism, might have varied.
So, according to Dunn, the passage reflects Jesus’ own attitude toward
the purity laws and the Korban law mentioned later, because it is doubtful
to him that a gospel written before 70 could have reflected a concern over
purity that had developed much later, as Sanders contends. The issue
must have been pre-70, and therefore an authentic point of debate
between Jesus and the Pharisees, and the latter would probably have
held positions that were not recorded in later collections of rabbinic mater-
ials.
Dunn does not discuss, however, the implications of the fact that Mark is
obviously addressing a Roman audience unfamiliar with these laws, and
that at least the context of the incident, which stresses a clash between
Jesus and the Pharisees, is redactional in nature. Precisely because the
gravity and implications of the issue are dependent on such circum-
stances as Dunn mentions, this contextual element in Mark’s rendering
becomes more important than he gives it credit for. So Dunn is right in
contending that the issue was real in Jesus’ time, but the evidence is in-
conclusive for his implicit affirmation that Jesus’ position was as principled
a rejection of Judaism as the Marcan context makes it out to be8 ().
2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is
to say, with unwashed, hands, they found fault.
A rabbi generally took his meals with his pupils, and in this incident Jesus
might have eaten out in the open with his disciples. Such a meal was re-
garded as an occasion for instruction, since the behaviour of the rabbi
and the implications of their fellowship together were a case of derekh er-
ets, which besides “ways of the land,” i.e., local custom, can also mean
behavior according to a general attitude, from which one might glean how
a person had internalized and expressed Torah in his daily life.
3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash [their] hands
oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.
The expression “all the Jews” betrays Marcan redaction: he is addressing
a Roman audience to whom the expression “the Jews” meant foreigners.
The expression also gives evidence of a relatively late origin of the redac-
tion, because the Sadducees surely did not adopt this habit outside the
Temple. That might be an indication that Sadducee exception to this rule
was deemed unimportant, since around 70 the importance of that faction

8 cf. Dunn [1991], pp. 43-44

diminished considerably.
The expression “tradition of the elders” may mean technically that the in-
stitution was a rule derabbanan, commanded by the sages, and not dir-
ectly present in Torah.9 However, to Mark the expression is equal to that
other expression: traditions of men, whereby the connection with the
Torah and the divine will is completely severed.
That opposition between tradition of the sages and the Torah as an op-
position between the commandments of men vis-à-vis the commandment
of God is the kind of antithesis that early Christianity might have taken
over from Sadducean proselytes, or more likely from Paulinist instruction,
whereas the Sermon on the Mount had to be interpreted with consider-
able liberty to construct such an antithesis. The separation of divine and
human institutions is, after all, a matter of how valid one considers those
hermeneutic rules to be by which general principles command a process
of adaptation and application of rules of Torah beyond their original scope.
In rabbinic Judaism, this came to be expressed formally as the tradition of
the “fathers” who had received Torah in a chain of tradition going back to
Moses himself, who not only received the written Torah, but its interpreta-
tion as well.10 The principle of hermeneutics that opened ways to go bey-
ond the scope of literal exegesis, Sadducee style, was not absent from
early Christianity, as is evident from Matthew 18, which transfers this spe-
cific rabbinic authority (based on Torah, i.e., the institution of the judges
as a select group of experts with moral authority, combined with legal au-
thority in courts of law) to the community of the faithful. Yet, at the same
time, the dispute with the synagogue became entrenched in part in the
contention that the Pharisees followed human reasoning to adapt to
Torah, whereas Christ had restored full obedience to the divine will.
If we can accept, that the antithesis between Torah and human traditions
in the passage is the result of the redaction and has its Sitz im Leben in
the post-70 struggle with the synagogue, we might gain a more positive
insight into the meaning of Christ’s opposition to these “traditions of men.”
After all, the point at issue in verse 13 is not that human traditions and in-
terpretations are invalid in themselves, but that they must be considered
critically with respect to their congruity with the basic commandments in
Torah. In this still unresolved debate about the meaning of the ritual of the
washing of the hands, Jesus may indeed have basically accepted the
Pharisaic effort to transfer the principles of the Temple to the realm of
9 The ‘sages’ or ‘elders’ are never mentioned in a positive sense in this gos-
pel. They are the enemies of Christ (Mark. 11:27; 14:43; 15:1) and they conspire
to kill Jesus in Mark 8:31.
10 Expressed, e.g., in MPirkei Avoth 1:1: ”Moses ‘received’ the Torah from
the Sinai and handed it over to Joshua.”
daily life without favouring an abrogation of that cult itself. After all, as
Matthew 5:22ff. and passages in Luke (2:41-51) and John (5:1; 7:10)
show, Jesus had a positive attitude towards the Temple. The Marcan ac-
count, which shows Jesus to be extremely critical with reference to such
basic cultic issues as impurity, sacrifice, and Sabbath, focuses more on
the effort to apply the Temple’s intent beyond the localized cult and its
sacred place. In Mark 2 e.g. Jesus, in assuming the priestly authority to
forgive sins, does so without reference to the Temple authorities, and bey-
ond the strictures of the cult, but does not set aside the meaning of for-
giveness that the Temple was supposed to enshrine. In this sense, Jesus
differed from the Temple by assuming a messianic-priestly role, but not by
bringing a new insight, let alone by entertaining the notion of abrogating
the Temple cult. He also agreed with the Pharisaic tendency to widen the
sphere of influence of the Temple, but His insistence that this widening in-
volved forgiveness and good works, and not primarily cultic rituals, puts
him more on the side of the Sadducees.
Jesus might very well have offered as his opinion that there was a way of
applying Temple ideals to the ordinary lives of the faithful that was com-
pletely different from this acting out of the cultic drama of purity in ordinary
life with its segregating effects. The Pharisaic solution, in effect, transcen-
ded the cultic boundaries between the priests and the people only to be-
come restrictive or exclusivist again within the fold of those knowledge-
able enough to understand its intricate and detailed halakah. In other
words, the separation between the priestly caste and the people was lif-
ted to be replaced by a new division between the learned and the ignor-
ant.
Jesus’ preaching was understood to be going beyond the Pharisaic solu-
tion. Not human involvement and duty in keeping cultic purity, but God’s
presence amongst His people as forgiving and enabling, was to be made
the pivotal goal of moving the cult into the realm of everyday life. That in
effect changed the perspective on ritual law. The washing of the hands,
therefore, being a paradigmatic case of the transformation of cultic rites
into everyday ritual, could be shown to produce the opposite of what the
Temple as symbol of God’s presence amongst the whole of His people
was supposed to be about. Along these lines, it came to be considered in
Christian circles as a sign of human strictures that kept people from God
instead of leading them to Him. The language of legal decision in which
Jesus probably framed this was soon to be dispensed with, to be re-
placed by a typical hyperbolic and moral formula that belonged to a differ-
ent era and community. However, there is continuity between Jesus’
halakhic rejection of the institution of washing hands before a common
meal and the early Church’s opposition to that practice as a prime ex-
ample of a tradition that diverted attention away from the needs of the
Kingdom.
The issue itself, as to whether the washing of the hands was arguably not
a requirement at all in this case, is not elaborated on, presumably be-
cause that debate was either unknown to Mark, or had already been de-
cided in Mark’s time in the positive (explaining “all the Jews”), or was of
no importance to the Roman reader. There was no need any more to
present the historic kernel of the debate. What was important to Mark’s
gentile audience was that Jesus had raised an issue, which Mark connec-
ted to the hand washing debate and put in the context of the acceptance
of gentiles, that had consequences for the general meaning of such
halakhic traditions. Behind the issue of the meaning of the tradition of the
sages lie others that affected the Church in Mark’s days: the form of
obedience in the messianic age, the relevance of human authority in reli-
gious matters, the status of gentiles, and the status of scripture and hu-
man exegesis, and above all, the status of Jesus Himself as the only au-
thority by which the divine command could be established.
4 And [when they come] from the market, except they wash, they eat
not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold,
[as] the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of couches.
There is some disagreement about the meaning of the words referring to
the utensils. Cups and pots are the earthenware utensils available in
every household and susceptible to impurity with regard to kashrut be-
cause they could absorb liquids, primarily perhaps with reference to the
separation of dairy and meat foods. The vessels of brass can be traced to
the Roman measure sextus or sextarius, about 1.5 pints, the expression
for the contents here being transferred to the utensils holding such quant-
ities. Some manuscripts add the klinoon, which is translated by KJV as
tables, which is hardly correct. The term means “reclining,” so must refer
to the couches used for meals in a Roman setting. It might be construed
as an effort to show by hyperbole how far Jews went in their effort to de-
termine purity issues and to suggest an unfriendly attitude by taking such
a typical Roman piece of furniture as a cause for separation.
Again, there is a possible technical expression here, because the accep-
ted tradition is oftentimes referred to with the expression: he received
(Heb.: qibbel), referring to a tradition of unknown origin, or most often to a
baraita, a Mishnah that is reported in the Talmud but is not found in R.
Judah’s Mishnah.
5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why do your disciples do
not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with un-
washed hands?
The question seems very much to the point if the observance of the rule
was common, but it cannot be ascertained with what intention the ques-
tion was put. The reference to “your disciples” does, however, suggest
that the question was collegial and expressed a genuine concern over the
tradition. It does not contain a rejection out of hand, so it might be con-
strued as part of a still undecided debate. Mark, however, has made the
question stand out in a context where “they,” the “Jews”, designating them
as foreigners to Roman readers, have a particular custom that proves to
be as alien to Jesus as it was unknown and foreign to Romans.
6 He answered and said unto them, Well has Isaiah prophesied of you
hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with [their] lips, but
their heart is far from me.
We have mentioned above the devices used here to set us up for this
sharp rejection of Judaism: (1) the context of Mark 6 and 7:24-30 makes it
clear that the inclusion of gentiles as such is at stake; (2) any possible
hindrance to that comes from the observance of specific customs that di-
vide Jews from gentiles, and implies that gentiles are impure and bars
them from table fellowship (the inclusion of klinoon that is the bed of the
demoniacally possessed indicates that as well); (3) those institutions that
bar communion between Jews and gentiles are a “tradition made by
men,” not divine institutions, which would imply the outright rejection of
those institutions as such, notwithstanding their basis in Torah. So it is
clear: the context of the Marcan redaction transforms a possible straight-
forward discussion about the halakah of the washing of the hands before
common meals into a rejection of the hermeneutic principles, the basic
intent of cultic transmittal of impurity, and the halakhic rulings of Pharisa-
ic Judaism, even including their basis in Torah.

3.3 Reconstruction of the original debate

What then is the rationale behind this transformation? Jesus’ opponents
have first been introduced as a group of Pharisees and scribes who had
gathered to hear him speak, and now they are addressed as hypocrites
because they ask the question on the ritual of the washing of the hands.
What could have possibly provoked this response? This might also have
bothered Matthew, who changes the order of things, first making Jesus
answer the Pharisaic question with a counter-question referring to Korb-
an, and then introducing the theme of the hypocrites and ending with an
explanation to the disciples about the source of defilement.The very fact
of their asking about the ritual must have been enough for Mark. Probably
Mark decided to put the violent rejection of Judaism, including the quota-
tion of Isaiah 29, between the Pharisaic question and Jesus’ dealing with
the issue of Korban, and then he returns to what strikes me as the most
obvious normal response by Jesus to the question of his Pharisaic col-
leagues. Suppose we could read the text like this:

[1]. [Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the
scribes, which came from Jerusalem.
[2] And when] they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled (that
is to say, with unwashed) hands, they [found fault.
[5] Then the Pharisees and scribes] asked him, “Why don’t your dis-
ciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with (un-
washed) [defiled] hands?” [Meaning that the defilement would be trans-
ferred to the bread, and if eaten would defile the man.]
[6] He answered and said unto them,
[15] “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can de-
file him [so bread eaten like this would not defile the man, even if it did
constitute a breach of cultic law], but the things which come out of him,
those are they that defile the man.”
Reconstructed like this, Jesus is deliberately misunderstanding the ques-
tion. But he makes his point clear: defilement is not about a man defiling
the bread, passing on defilement to another, but blue the (moral) defile-
ment of man is the issue. Cultic transmission of impurities in Pharisaic
Judaism deals with objects and ritual acts that instruct man on a moral
level, and that effort entails a relative independence of cultic law, whereas
the intended and ultimate goal of the cult is the moral elevation of man.
One might say that Jesus wants the moral intent behind the cultic law to
be transmitted directly and not by way of a cultic law in itself generalized
to include elements of daily life and function as a learning device. In our
reconstruction, we have omitted the Marcan addition (defiled, unwashed)
that was intended to make his Roman audience understand what this was
all about, and then it becomes clear that the text is held together by the
expression ‘defiled’, and we have removed the redaction in which Mark
puts the longer reply to his disciples and separates it from the reply to the
nations, again a device that emphasizes in this context two things simul-
taneously that are a product of later reflection on the event: (1) the multi-
tude is then again the multitude that was fed by Torah in chapter 6 and
represents the gentiles, and (2) it adds again to the impression that this
teaching is weighty and of great consequence, as in all cases where the
teaching is not understood by the disciples at first, because it refers to a
reality of the Church after Christ’s resurrection.
Now question and answer match each other more correctly. Jesus is tak-
ing issue with one possible application of the law by applying the purity
code to the basic issue of the congruity between the moral condition and
cultic purity. He indeed, as elsewhere, does not address the question dir-
ectly, but indirectly questions the concern that is behind it. “You who con-
cern yourself so much over the purity of the hands because you want to
sanctify ordinary life with the means that are available within the Temple
cult, why not concern yourself more with the purity of the heart that is
symbolized by it and is the final objective of the cultic ritual in the first
place? You should be concerned with the defilement that man can cause
to the world, not with the defilement to which he can be susceptible him-
self. Bread eaten without washing the hands is an outward reality by
which man cannot be defiled in any real sense. “
The rejection of the halakah in this passage is therefore surely on
grounds of principle, but it is not opposed to the oral Torah as such, but to
its use toward keeping man sanctified, i.e., separate, and to the view that
such a preparation for moral life was of such high value that it came close
to being its substitute. To focus on the washing of the hands like this
would lead to lack of concentration on what the intent of all halakah
should be: the safeguarding of obedience to the will of God. In Mark’s re-
daction, the issue very swiftly evolves from this issue into one of the
source of authority and the direction of the guiding principles of faithful liv-
ing. Mark’s redaction is in complete continuity with the text it has incorpor-
ated, but still it provides an interpretation of an internal Jewish debate
between Jesus and the Pharisees that transformed its original context.
Such a contextual tension is still apparent when Mark makes Jesus jump
from the issue of washing the hands to the matter of messianic authority
and the flaws of rabbinic purity laws. Such an appeal to Jesus’ authority
would have been the final word in Mark’s community, but obviously not in
the debate, the story reports on.
From this, we can gain a better perspective on how these issues are con-
nected. It is obvious that the Korban issue represents a case where a re-
ceived tradition makes it possible to use some provision of the law to
avoid obedience to a major commandment. The analogy is clear: if the in-
terpretation of the Torah leads to an authoritative tradition that makes it
possible to break major commandments, then that tradition is not a “fence
around the Torah” as it was intended to be, but a breach of that Torah in
itself. The emphasis on ritual purity, and ignorance of that to which it
refers, is taken as an analogy to the emphasis on the autonomous, inde-
pendent validity of the oral law, and ignorance of the wide intent of the
major commandments that were supposed to be protected by it. (We will
deal with the particulars of the Korban law below.)
The core element of Jesus’ response certainly sounds authentic, and that
does not change when we read it within the context provided by Mark. A
further argument can be that it has been preserved also in the Thomas-
logion 14 as ”For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what
comes out of your mouth, that is what will defile you.” It seems to be an
independent elaboration on a theme also expressed in Q=Luke
11:39=Matthew 23:25 with some variation, but obviously expressing the
same idea: that without an intrinsic connection between the moral condi-
tion and the ritual as such, the ritual becomes an independent act that
may actually hinder the moral achievement that it is intended to bring
about.
We must go a little step further though. In our reconstruction we have for
the moment accepted Mark’s rendering that ”nothing...can defile a man.”
But it must be noted that Mark, in distinction to Matthew, makes Jesus
state a more absolute rejection of defilement of and by food. As Sanders
points out, the Matthean version: “not...but” can imply: “not only this...but
much more that.” The Greek of Matthew is transparently related to a
Hebrew thought-form that moves from a minor issue to a more important
issue, a minore ad majorem, or kal vachomer.11 If the law demands puri-
fication and scrutinous observance in the case of foods that can defile,
how much more in the case of immoralities; if the law is scrupulous in the
case of foods that come from outside, how much more with immoralities
that originate from the heart. Such a kal vachomer is an easily identifiable
structure of Jewish legal thought.
In Mark 7:18 this way of thinking has been changed to: “whatever goes in,
cannot defile.” Matthew makes Jesus say that defilement by foods is not
by itself the whole issue of the law, but, much more than foods, there is
immorality that defiles and renders a human being unclean.12 Mark,
however, makes Jesus say that defilement by food is a non-issue, and the
intent behind upholding such laws leads away from or counteracts the
moral demand. For Mark, the authority of rabbinic tradition is the real is-
sue, and that is why the original elements of the halakhic debate have be-
come materials to be used for that purpose.
Within the text, those materials that accurately report it have been trans-
formed into building blocks for a different kind of case against the Phar-
isees. Accepting food laws and ritual rulings means accepting rabbinic au-
thority and its purpose of sanctifying ordinary life by application of cultic
purity to the common life, and it sets up the knowledgeable rabbis as the

11 This rule of inference from the lighter to the heavier case is based on the
assumption that the law has “the tendency to proportionate its effect to the im-
portance of the cases referred, so as to be more rigorous and restrictive in im-
portant, and more lenient and permissive in comparatively unimportant matters.”
Mielziner, 1894 (19685 ), p.180.
12 Sanders (1993), p. 219.
final authority, at least with respect to the application of these laws. That
contradicts the basic assertion of the Marcan gospel: that Christ is the
messianic Healer of a mankind, including Israel, that is under control of
demoniac forces, that He is the only authority that can explain the will of
God, and that through Him the pagans, without any knowledge of Jewish
law at all, can draw near to the Kingdom of God.
In that context, the utter rejection of rabbinic tradition that is inserted here
must be read on a practical level as an integral part of the effort to main-
tain a law-free gospel for Christians in Rome, who were probably suscept-
ible to the thesis that the Jewish law added to basic Christian faith and
could complete their conversion from idolatry.
7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the com-
mandments of men.
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of
men, [as] the washing of pots and cups: and many other things like that
you do.
This passage is one of the major pillars of the contention that Jesus rejec-
ted, not the Torah, but only a specific trend of the halakah-under-con-
struction at the time, i.e., the oral traditions of Pharisaic Judaism. By ac-
cepting the Torah as such, but interpreting it as an independent and
autonomous guide to ascertain God’s will, Christ gave full validity to the
law, which position could then be interpreted erroneously as a strengthen-
ing of the law’s demand to the point that all would understand that they
were unable to fulfil it. Grace could then intervene within the Pauline gos-
pel to create in man the conditions for God’s spirit to fulfil the law in him
(cf. Romans 8:4). Let us examine the record then.
So, e.g., did Jesus reject the Sabbath halakah in Mark 2 and the purity
laws in Mark 7, together with the Korban rule? In Luke 8:44 it is men-
tioned that he wore the tallit, the tassels on the four corners of a rectangu-
lar garment that were commanded in Deut. 22:12. The cleansing of the
leper is followed by the command to bring the sacrifice prescribed in such
cases (Mark 1:44), and in many other statements, most prominently
among them in Matthew 5:17-20, his affirmation of the Torah is obvious. It
has been stated by Dunn that Jesus did set aside the law itself, e.g., in
the case of the lex talionis (Ex. 21:24), the Mosaic institution of divorce
(Mark 10:2-9) and the basis of the food laws in Mark 7, as we have
seen.13 But, as Dunn concludes, Jesus’ statements here are not seen by
Matthew as an abrogation of the Torah, but rather as a daring and radical
interpretation of it. Dunn’s point is then this: Jesus did not abrogate the
law, but he did change one of the basic presuppositions of the halakhic
13 E.g., by James Dunn (1994), p. 101.
understanding of it. In Dunn’s words: “It was not the law as such or law as
a principle which Jesus called into question. It was the law understood in
a factional or sectarian way. Jesus intended to free the interpretation of
Torah from the dominance of the exclusion of the ‘sinners’ from its realm
of blessing.”14
But would that imply that Pharisaic Judaism’s insistence on the import-
ance of Israel as the elect nation, the land of Israel as the place for God’s
people, the Temple as God’s chosen place of worship, and circumcision
as the sign of belonging to the elect people of God, are part of a factional
and exclusivist interpretation of the Torah? These are the pillars of
Second -Temple Judaism, according to Dunn, which were all broken
down in the course of the development of early Christianity, beginning
with Christ who relativized the Temple and rejected a factional interpreta-
tion of the Torah, but who of course did not cross the border of Israel nor
mention circumcision, which became a problem only later when the gen-
tile component of Christianity began to outweigh Jewish Christians in
number and in influence. The opposition against Pharisaism that Jesus
had waged in the name of the restoration of Israel as one people, united
by their devotion to Torah and God’s impending Kingdom, was taken as
the starting point for the explanation of the inclusion of gentiles into the
Church. A step which in turn highlighted elements of Jesus’ teachings that
were never intended to be the focus at first. The early Christian teachings
on the inclusion of gentiles were divided between the Jewish-Christian
and the gentile-Christian view. The need for affirmation in retrospect of
the Church’s decision to allow uncircumcised gentiles into the Church led
to the redactional framework in which the debate between Jesus and
some Pharisee teachers was set. It was thereby lifted out of its original
context.

3.4 Is Jesus rejecting the Oral Traditions?

What will we then say to Jeremias’s judgment that this passage proves
that Jesus rejected the Pharisaic Halakah in a “radical” way, and that His
reason for opposing it was the inability of that Halakah to maintain the
higher obligation to love one’s neighbour as oneself? In this view, the
whole of the passage is interpreted as the ipsissima vox of Jesus, where-
as we have argued that there is an interplay between a reported debate
and a Marcan interpretation or application for his own time and situation.
Let us look again at some of the evidence. In Mark 7:15 it seems to be
clear that Jesus undercuts the whole system of the law on clean and un-
clean foods. Mark adds that “thus he declared all foods clean.” Sanders,
who understands the passage like this, as an attack on pharisaic halakah,
14 James Dunn, op. cit. p. 111.
therefore rejects it as historically improbable. He holds that “there was no
substantial conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees,” especially be-
cause there is no historical evidence that the Pharisees washed their
hands before an ordinary meal, which the text seems to presuppose. The
same would then of course hold for the statement about the food laws.
This is what E.P Sanders has to say about the passage:
To analyze this section, we shall return to the opening setting: the Phar-
isees criticize Jesus’ disciples (not Jesus himself) for not washing their
hands before meals. Hand washing was a Pharisaic tradition, not a law. In
Jesus’ day, it was not even a uniform tradition. Most Jews did not purify
their hands before meals. Among the Pharisees, some regarded hand
washing as optional; many of them washed their hands only before the
Sabbath meal; they disagreed with one another with regard to whether or
not hands should be washed before or after mixing the Sabbath cup.
Deadly enmity over hand washing is, we think, historically impossible.
Mark 7 moves from hand washing to Jesus’ attack on the Pharisees’ view
of Korban: they declared their property or money to be dedicated to the
Temple so that they would not have to help their needy parents. But this is
an attack on what everyone, especially the Pharisees, would have re-
garded as an abuse. No Pharisee would justify using a semi-legal device
to deprive his parents. Some Pharisee, of course, may have done this at
some time or other. If so, and if Jesus accused him, decent God-fearing,
parent-respecting Pharisees, 99.8 per cent of the party, would have
agreed.15
If this is true, then the passage would reflect a post-70 conflict between
the early Church and the successors of the Pharisees who developed the
Mishnah Yadaim. It would show merely that Jesus debated the issues that
were contemporary with his society and with the group, loosely speaking,
to which he belonged by birth and choice: that of the Pharisees. But how
is that possible? Mark is dated as pre-70, and the debate had to be ex-
plained by Mark to his gentile audience, so even if the former was not
clearly established, the latter would make it unthinkable that a contempor-
ary conflict that gave rise to this passage had to be explained first. If con-
temporary, it would have been recognized from the start. The conclusion
would be that the conflict belonged solely to the Church.
James Dunn therefore opts for a different solution, by arguing that behind
Jesus’ rejection of the Pharisee halakah on purity was not a disdain for
the issue of purity in itself, but a specific change in his view of the social
effect of the various rules it generated. If we disregard the Levitical im-
purity of menstrual blood in Mark 5:21-43, and Jesus’ dealing with a gen-
tile woman from outside the land of Israel in Mark 7, it seems that Jesus
15 Sanders (1993), p. 219.
rejected the social effect of the impurity laws. That in itself could very well
be explained, as Mark did in chapter 7, as legitimizing the abrogation of
the entire system. That also makes it possible to understand that Jesus
was seen as “something of a threat to the whole religious system
centered on the Temple.” (ibid)
If, however, we distinguish between the intent of the original debate
between Jesus and the Pharisees and then see how Marcan redaction
transferred this issue into a new context, as we did above, we might be
able to propose a different solution to the matter. There seem to be four
levels in such a text as this: there is (1) the more or less reconstructable
remnant of an early tradition containing a debate between Jesus and the
Pharisees. There is (2) the redactional context, which derives its motiva-
tion from the contemporary situation of the community for which the gos-
pel was written. Within the final stage there is still (3) the sense of the
quoted material that has been given new meaning in the context of the re-
daction, but which remains a more or less closed whole in itself. And fi-
nally there is (4) the meaning of the final stage of the redaction, in which
all of the identifiable blocks were put together to produce a new meaning
in their new context. In Mark 7, the interplay between three strands of tra-
dition: the hand washing issue, the Korban issue, and the Isaiah-quote
polemic material, makes it even more difficult to interpret the genesis of
the text as we have it.
There has been considerable consensus that Mark 7:15, as part of the
quoted material and as it received meaning from the Marcan context, is
an authentic Jesus-saying, following the rule that statements by Jesus
that express dissent with prevalent Pharisaic views are more likely to be
remembered than sayings which show a congruence between Jesus and
the Pharisees. This so-called “criterion of dissimilarity” has an obvious ap-
plication in this case, since the distinction between sacred and secular
can be considered one of the pillars of 2nd-Temple Judaism, and it is hard
to ignore that this verse rejects its basis out of hand. It would be hard to
say that this verse is inauthentic based on this criterion alone. James
Dunn, however, summed up a variety of counter-arguments:16

1the comparative isolation within the Jesus-tradition makes it probable

that gentile Christian influence sharpened a less radical saying;
2there is also the criterion of coherence: a less radical form of this state-
ment would fit in better with other parts of the Jesus-tradition;
3the criterion of dissimilarity should also be applied for the dissimilarity

16 Dunn (1990), pp. 37-58.

between the statement and early Christian tradition. (For the whole of the
passage seems to be more in conformity with a gentile missionary for-
mula such as we find in Rom. 14:14, nothing is unclean in itself.)
4If Jesus had been so clear on this issue, how is it that the Jerusalem
Church and Peter still had to wrestle with it (Acts 10:14; 11:3)?
5If we compare Mark 7:15 with the parallel in Matthew 15:11, it is more
probable that Mark would add the strong expression (nothing; can) to the
less radical statement than the other way around. (Matthew: it is not what
goes into the mouth that defiles a person; Mark: there is nothing outside a
person that by going in can defile.)
Dunn’s conclusion distinguishes three layers in the text: (1) an original Je-
sus-saying with a far less radical intent than it seems to have within the
redaction by Mark, (2) Mark 7:17-19 reflecting a second layer of reflection
that tried to make a more general point with regard to the issue of purity
and rabbinic authority in itself, and (3) a radicalized, redactional layer,
which consists both in additions to the earlier material (the change to
“nothing and “can,“ making the saying in Mark 7:15 more general, and not
only that, but changing the kal-va-chomer into an absolute rejection of the
ritual laws) and the obvious additions to the material, as in the explanat-
ory note in 7:3-5.The original layer would still imply that before 70 an in-
ternal Jewish debate about the washing of the hands was the context of
the statements. In this debate Jesus took sides, according to Dunn,
against (1) the exclusivist application of the law, in our estimate high-
lighted because of contemporary concerns and maybe selected out from
their immediate context, to which we would add (2) the implied rabbinical
authority, and (3) the motive of sanctification of ordinary life by applying
Levitical regulations to ordinary life. The secondary layer would reflect the
gentile-Christian freedom of the purity laws and its opposition to Jewish-
Christian and/or Jewish teachers who might want to continue the practice.
The tertiary layer would then reflect the outcome of the internal Christian
debate of such issues, presenting it to a gentile audience as an opposi-
tion between Christianity and Judaism as such.
It seems fair, then, to conclude that the passage in Mark 7 shows with
some accuracy the way Jesus’ criticism of halakah developed in the
Christian communities connected with Mark. The internal Jewish debate
about the washing of the hands was sharpened to reflect the early schism
between Jewish and gentile Christians, and that was finally redacted to
present a complete break between Church and synagogue by incorporat-
ing the Isaiah-quote and connecting the hand washing to the Korban is-
sue; connecting it finally to the two passages which indicate the inclusion
of gentiles into the Church, which made the passage stand out clearly as
a anti-separatist indictment. Against its acceptance as a historically accur-
ate representation of Jesus’ position there are quite a few arguments: the
improbability of there being a consensus about these matters as presup-
posed in the Marcan text; and the historical probability that quite a few
early Pharisaic voices would be in agreement with the original thrust of
Jesus’ statements.
All of the three layers of the text mentioned above had a Sitz im Leben
which explains their meaning and wording. But, the first two are hypothet-
ical reconstructions with only probability and historical intuition as real
basis. If we would only accept the final redactional stage as “text” to be
deciphered, all of our speculations would amount to nothing. We would
end up with a clear rejection of Pharisaic halakah as such in Mark 7, and
a Matthean effort to soften that position for a mixed gentile and Jewish
congregation (accepting consensus on the Marcan source of Matthew.)
Why do we not intend to make use only of the redactional stage? That
seems to be required by the principle of canon-history in an abstract
sense, i.e., if we are simply to accept the Reformation’s interpretation of
the fact of the canon: that all of this is holy writ. But we would end up with
a text that has no valid connections to known rabbinic sources that would
give the passage its rationale, and we would finally have to decide to use
such a passage only as a rejection of Judaizing efforts within the Church;
in short, as an expression of Paulinism. We would do better to try and
read the passage as a mixture of various elements, as a witness to a de-
velopment in Christian thinking, ranging from Jesus’ own conflict over the
oral tradition to the position of the early Church in its specific circum-
stances. The redactional stage, though deleting elements of the specific
and original debate that Jesus had with his Pharisaic interlocutors and
adding the vital issue of messianic versus rabbinic authority, does repres-
ent a valid attempt to derive from Jesus’ position and teachings and the
fact of the existence of a Christian pagan community with its own estab-
lished ”halakah” a Christologically embedded theology, the redaction
stage therefore represents a valid effort of reflecting upon the con-
sequences of Jesus’ words and position. There is, in short, a continuity
between the two ”layers” that grounds the acceptance of the final stage
as authoritative expression of Christian halakah.
Chapter 4

The issue of vowing: Korban

Let us turn now to the second thread within the passage, the argument
that both Matthew and Mark use as Jesus’ counterargument against the
Pharisees’ question about the disciples. In Mark 7:9-13 it is apparent that
there was a provision under Jewish law that made it possible for a son to
reject all future obligations to his parents by dedicating all the financial
support he might have to give them to the priests. Since that implied that
a person could continue to benefit himself, because only after his death
did the property in question fall to the Temple authorities, it implied no
damage to the person, but very real damage to his parents. Then this re-
quired financial support was declared “Korban” and untouchable for any-
one else.
Obviously such a vow in itself could not be retracted, in Mark’s view, and
if based on Numbers 30:2 it is hard to see how it could have been main-
tained that it could be retracted. That has led many to the conclusion that
Pharisaic exegesis of the law implied a breach of the commandment to
honour one’s parents, in which financial support was held to be included.

4.1 The conflict over vowing in Mark

14 And when he had called all the people [unto him], he said unto them,
Listen to me every one [of you], and understand:
7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the com-
mandments of men.
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of
men, [as] the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things
ye do.
9 And he said unto them, Full well you reject the commandment of God,
in order to keep your own tradition.
In verses 8 and 9, the main contention of the passage is stated twice. By
keeping the commandments of men (which we can identify as a derogat-
ory term for that part of the oral law that is not directly based on scriptural
law), Jews do not obey the commandment of God. Verse 8 presents
something of a problem because it implies that the law of kashrut is not
based on Torah, at least not with regard to the purity of vessels. The spe-
cific problem of verse 9 is that it implies that the keeping of the oral law is
with the intent to disobey the written law. Quite an enormous accusation.
Jesus rejects these rulings of men because he intends to uphold the
commandment of God, which can only mean the full weight of the written
law. However, if Jesus is using the weight of written law to reject Pharisa-
ic halakah, how then could he reject the weight of scripture in the case of
Sabbath law in Mark 2? What does this mean, and can we really assume
that this opposition to rabbinic law comes from Jesus and not from the
early Church, debating these issues with the synagogue or portraying a
“de-Jewished” Christ to the world?17
10 For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother; and, Whoever
curses father or mother, let him surely die.
11 But you say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, [It is] Korban,
that is to say, a gift, by whatever you might benefit from me; [he shall be
free].
12 And you will not allow him to do anything for his father or his mother;
13 Making the word of God powerless through your tradition, which you
have delivered: and you do many things like this.
In verse 10 we find the positive commandment to honour one’s parents,
to give them their “weight,” in a quotation from the Decalogue (Ex.
20:12=Deut 5:16), and its enhancement in the prohibition from Ex. 21:17
(cf. Lev. 20:19) not to curse one’s parents, i.e., to cut them off from life.
Such a commandment is annulled, made void (in the legal sense, as the
verb katalusai suggests), if specific rulings make it impossible to follow its
weight in specific circumstances.
According to Mark, there is such a rabbinic rule concerning the validity of
vows. A man may vow that anything by which his parents may ever derive
profit from him is forbidden to them, as it is consecrated to the Temple. It
is then a gift set aside for use in the Temple. It is also understood in verse
12 that such a vow is enforced: afterwards the parents may not use it, the
vow stands and remains valid. Now such a vow would be tantamount to
breaking the intent of the law concerning the honouring of parents, which
is also taken to mean taking care of them in their old age. Apparently,
then, the rabbinic institution which allows such a vow to be valid, and
even enforces compliance with it, is in contradiction with the intent of the
fifth commandment.
This discussion seems to suggest considerable knowledge of Jewish law

17 Cf., e.g., the completely different implication of the beginning of Mat-

thew’s collection of anti-Pharisaic statements by Jesus in chapter 23, where
verse 3, despite its negative intent, does uphold the ethical and hermeneutic au-
thority of the rabbis. Also the wording of Matthew 5:18, referring to the title and
iota of the law, indicates in rabbinic usage an acceptance of the oral law, which
was often taught to be contained in the shape of the letters.
on the part of Mark, or a very specific tradition going back to Jesus that
remained intact as a unit and found its appropriate place here in connec-
tion to that other element of Jewish tradition. Bultmann explains that Mark
even intended, through the force of Isaiah 29, which directs itself even at
the Mosaic law, to reject the whole of the “legal ritualism” that aimed at
outward correctness that could be linked to an “impure will.”18 To him, the
issues of hand washing, Korban, and Sabbath were paradigmatic of the
rejection of a will of God found through observance of rules.
The issue looks decidedly different when seen from a historical perspect-
ive. It is certainly possible that the issue of vows was still undecided in Je-
sus’ time, or even in that of Mark. In both cases there might be good reas-
on for Jesus to join in the debate that was going on and demand a better
solution to the problem. But that is of course not the approach of the Mar-
can redaction. By extending the context to include all of the rabbinic en-
actments and the whole principle of the oral law, what may have been
such a discussion on case law has become a principled attack on Juda-
ism as “legalism.”

4.2 The early Jewish debate on vowing

Let us first look at the evidence from Mishnah and Talmud. Though much
later in origin, the Mishnah especially may contain traces of traditions that
were current in Jesus’ time, even when they were collated later and
gained general acceptance centuries after Mark. We can certainly find
ways of thinking, the inner logic of a given issue, that can help us define
what the context of a halakhic debate in the 1st century might have been.
“Might,” because all of this must be a matter of informed guesswork. We
intend to find through this procedure insofar as is possible exactly what
Jesus is protesting against, and we will use that material to separate the
contextual generalization from the issue under debate as such.
First we must make an important distinction: a vow forbids a certain thing
to be used by the one who vows or by somebody else; an oath forbids the
swearer to do something that is not forbidden in itself. Both were a com-
mon element in ordinary life. Vows were made in anger or resentment, in
an effort to acquire merit, or even in more careless speech on the market
place to entice a buyer. The biblical basis of both is found in Num. 30:2,
where we read: “If a man vows a vow unto the Lord, or swears an oath to
bind his will, he may not break his word, he must do according to all that
proceeds out of his mouth.” In many commentaries, it is pointed out that
the rule of Korban vows is put on this biblical basis: all vows should be
honoured, the point being that in Mark 7 Jesus is portrayed as attacking

18 Bultmann (1955), p. 16.

not only the human interpretation of the law, but also the law itself. Again,
others have stated that the point of the passage is the superiority of the
fifth commandment over the laws on vows in Num. 30. That would make
Jesus’ argument part of an effort to interpret the law through the letter of
the law, i.e., by juxtaposing commandments and assessing their relative
weight without referring to hermeneutic principles that would provide
some structure to their relationship. It is indeed clear that the notion that
all vows should be honoured is the only straightforward rationale behind
the rule of Korban, as it is clear that the commandment to honour one’s
parents is violated in the case under contention.
But precisely this (presupposed) direct and unmediated support from Mo-
saic law for a practice that is against the spirit of Torah is an indication
that we do not find here a Pharisaic but a Sadducee halakah, at least in
its “pattern” of thought. Only from a point of view that does not allow hu-
man explanation and common sense to direct the application of the law
can we expect enforcement of such a vow against the weight of the 5th
commandment.
We might even surmise, as to the historical context, that such a discus-
sion with Sadducees could very well have been transformed into a debate
with the Pharisees, both because (1) the Pharisees were represented in
the Roman society to which Mark is probably addressed, and (2) because
at the time of Mark, i.e., after the Galilee uprising and the assault on Jeru-
salem, the Pharisees, not the Sadducees, were rapidly becoming the pro-
claimed enemy of Christianity. We should be careful of simply accepting
the title “Pharisee” to denote the Pharisaic party if context and contents
seem to point in a different direction. There is no reason for Mark, in ad-
dressing his Roman audience, to be precise in this matter. In fact, the title
“Pharisee” may be part of a development that began by identifying the op-
ponent exactly and which ended up 40 years later in the era of the gospel
of John by speaking simply of “the Jews.”
Let us consider the evidence for this statement with regard to the mean-
ing of the law. We take it for granted that to all parties concerned the gen-
eral commandment to honour one’s vows was important and basic to the
entire discussion. Despite this basic principle, there were four groups of
vows that the rabbis did not consider binding. They are enumerated in
MNedarim 3:1 as “Vows of incitement, vows of exaggeration, vows made
in error, and vows of constraint.” The rabbis apparently considered the in-
tention and condition of the vower, rather than moral value, to be import-
ant in assessing the validity of the vow. In Mishnah 2 of the same chapter,
the vow by which a man forbids his wife from any future benefit from him
is automatically annulled if it becomes obvious that the motive for his an-
ger is untrue. E.g., when he said: “Korban (or konam or other synonyms)
be any future benefit my wife has of me because she has stolen my wal-
let.” The reason for the annulment, then, is that such a vow is made in er-
ror. The reason is not that he has no right to make a vow against his wife,
because in such cases the commitment towards God obviously is taken
to be more valid than the obligations one has towards his wife. In ethics,
one must argue that one should not make such a vow, but in cases where
it can be construed that the vow was invalid due to error or an apparent
deficiency in the decision behind the vow, the rabbis provided a solution
based on the premise that the law was absolute and not conditioned upon
the moral meaning of the vow. The moral unacceptability of the intent be-
hind the vow did not automatically annul its validity. To make that possible
would have implied that the law on vows was itself annulled and replaced
by moral considerations. Put differently: in cases where a vow was made
publicly, it is obvious that the rabbis, wherever a decision needed to be
made with regard to the validity of the vow, chose to uphold it as a com-
mitment to God that could not be broken.
Second, the literal statement of Mark 7:11 cannot be found in the Mish-
nah. Nonetheless, a similar issue arises in MNedarim 3:4 in a very peculi-
ar context. If one vows under constraint, such a vow is void. But if one
adds to what is demanded under constraint, the addition is valid because
it shows intent. So, e.g., if a murderer demands of his victim to vow that
all future benefits are prohibited for his wife, and the victim adds to that a
prohibition for his children, according to Shammai only the vow with re-
gard to the children is valid. But precisely the use of such an example
suggests that the rabbis considered such a vow a monstrosity and a rare
occurrence. And even then, they wanted to make sure that in such cases
the formal obligation of the vow was not lost, since that would have meant
a disregard for biblical law. But painstakingly they made sure that the
vower would have an opportunity to take back his word. In Mishnaic par-
lance, there were ways open for repentance of such an act. In general, a
way for repentance was opened if the rabbis could find a fact or reason
afterwards that would have prevented a man from vowing his vow in the
first place.
Such a possibility is mentioned in chapter 9:1 of the tractate Nedarim in
connection with the fifth commandment. We will quote the passage in full
in Danby’s translation:
R. Eliezer says: They may open for men the way [to repentance or abso-
lution] by reason of the honour due to father and mother. But the Sages
forbid it. R. Zadok said: Rather than open the way for a man by reason of
the honour due to father and mother, they should open the way for him
by reason of the honour due to God, but if so, there could be no vows.
But the Sages agree with (or perhaps better: admit to) R. Eliezer that in a
matter between a man and his father and mother, the way may be
opened to him by reason of the honour due to his father and mother.
R. Eliezer (b. Hyrcanus) lived and taught in the 1st century CE. His opin-
ion recorded here is that the fifth commandment is of such a nature that a
man who vows in anger could annul his vow simply because it would lead
to dishonouring his parents. The majority however disagreed: it would
mean that the mere fact that the vow was immoral by nature could annul
a vow, promoting that vows against anyone could be made in haste and
without thinking, assured of the possibility of annulment. Therefore the
condition for annulment was made more severe. Only a specific fact un-
known at the time of the vow could be used as a means to nullify the vow
to ensure the validity of the Numbers 30 law , which might be in this case
that the son at the moment of his vow did not take into account that he
would dishonour his parents by acting as one who vowed foolishly. But
that he did not take it into account is difficult to construe as an error, but
that interpretation on the surface of it is surely something the law makes
possible.
If the reason for annulment was regret only, which implies a clear know-
ledge of the meaning and implications of the vow, and the fifth command-
ment in itself could be the ground for absolution from the vow, the possib-
ility would remain that a man would affirm that the conditions for annul-
ment were met because of the influence of the sages and not because of
his genuine repentance. If a man dishonoured his father and his mother in
such a way that he vowed to rob them of any benefit, how could his vow
be annulled with a reference to the fifth commandment which he had
already broken by his vow in the first place? How could a transgression
against the 5th commandment be repaired by a transgression against the
law of vows? Such a way of repair would have destroyed the moral integ-
rity of the person. It might also have led to an increase in automatically
annulled vows, weakening the authority of the law.
The commandment to maintain the vow did not preclude the possibility
that the vow could be annulled if the son repented of his former attitude
towards his father and mother. The vow would then be seen as result of
an unintentional transgression against the 5th commandment and not
taken as an act in itself. That is why the majority (the sages) admit that a
way may be opened (for annulment) if the son dishonours his father and
mother directly with his vow. But even that process is not automatic. The
obvious severity of such a vow could lead to repentance afterwards, but it
could not lead to automatic annulment, thereby destroying both God’s ab-
solute rights and man’s responsibility. In my view, the general intent of the
rabbis in this case was to safeguard both the integrity of vowing, as they
were obliged to do under the principle of Numbers 30, and provide mean-
ingful ways of escape for responsible adults who vowed in haste, anger,
in error or against better judgment, in the latter case only by a real pro-
cess of repentance.
In all of this, the importance of the biblical commandment to honor one’s
vows was maintained, but it is obvious that the rabbis were convinced
that such a vow was undesirable and foolish and that there must be provi-
sion for annulment. The ruling quoted in Mark 7, therefore, is either one of
the more stringent opinions, based solely on the validity of the biblical
commandment (which places its author in the vicinity of the Sadducees),
or a misrepresentation of the actual intent of the law as it was developing
at that time. To state that the law as it was quoted was enforced, and that
was simply the end of the matter, is correct in stating the possibility of a
rare occurrence: that the rabbinic law can become an instrument in the
hands of those who have already broken biblical law. It is also correct in
so far as it shows here that the rabbis intended to legislate where pos-
sible, and not intrude too much in the domain of the relationship between
children and parents. Yet, the general thrust of their rulings is against
swearing and taking vows, and intent on providing a legal basis for a son
to repent of his rash act and restore his observance of the fifth command-
ment.

4.3 Results: the meaning of Mark 7

What, then, is left of the intent of Mark 7 after this all too brief excursion
into the domain of Mishnaic law? The passage reflects, apart from appar-
ent ignorance of the minutiae of Jewish law, if in the 1st century there was
anything like the complex exegesis that we find in the Gemara, a disreg-
ard for its intent and the pragmatic context wherein it was enforced, and
draws heavily upon the paradigm of prophetic critique and the principled
Christian opposition between Jewish halakah and a law-free gospel. It in-
tends to show that this way of legal-ethical thought is now discarded in
the Church. But the main point lies, not in the accuracy of the discussion
with Judaism, but in the decision that made the passage possible at all: to
interpret the oral law, i.e., the principle of finding the will of God in ex-
egesis and jurisprudence, as a thing of the past. The detailed Jewish ex-
egesis of the Mishnaic law and its basis in the exegesis of Torah is re-
placed by the ethical discourse concerning inner attitude in verses 17-23.
Only because the will of God was now seen as expressed in the language
of morality did Mark ascribe to Jesus the affirmation of the Mosaic law
only to the degree that it was congruent with that will. The basis for that
was the conviction that Jesus had messianic authority to reject Pharisaic
tradition and was in fact restoring the original intent of the written law.
Although, as we have seen, the passage in Mark does not represent a
complete and accurate picture of the actual debate between Jesus and
the Pharisees, the context does provide us with an important clue. It is
beyond doubt that Jesus opposed the Pharisees wherever their halakah
implied a segregation of the “elect within the people of the elect” or im-
plied a possible laxity toward the keeping of the major commandments. In
that sense, though the actual debate that illustrated it was obscured and
Pharisaic intentions became unrecognizable and, most importantly, Jesus
was shown now to favour a Sadducee acceptance of written law only, the
Marcan redaction is still a faithful report of Jesus’ own intentions to break
down the walls between the laity and the Pharisaic elite. The washing ritu-
al implied the erection of a barrier between the knowledgeable and the
amei ha’arets, who through their ignorance of the institutions were ex-
cluded from table fellowship. In that sense, we might conclude that Jesus
did indeed turn against a side effect of the Pharisaic halakah and to that
degree criticized its main purpose of applying Levitical holiness to the life
of the common man. Jesus disagrees with that general purpose because
it fails to unite the strong and the weak within Israel. The coming of God’s
kingdom and this new presence of God amongst His people would be in-
consistent with the exclusion of groups of people. By the time Mark wrote
his gospel, this message was understood on a far more general level, as
we can see by looking at the way the dispute is connected to Mark 6 and
the passage about the Syro-Phoenician woman: now it has become a
radical protest against Pharisaic separatist use of provisions of the law,
motivated by the question of the inclusion of gentiles in the Church.
The down side of the Pharisaic effort to cultivate ritual purity amongst the
laity was the emergence of a separate class of people, so defined by the
Pharisaic party themselves, who were usually designated as ”people of
the land” (am ha’arets). All those who were not knowledgeable about
Torah and the interpretation of the rabbis belonged to it. We find that
non-Jews living in Israel, Samaritans, tax-collectors, and inhabitants of
the countryside are designated as such almost automatically. The Mish-
nah (Demai 2:3) states that a member of the Pharisaic movement (organ-
ized perhaps as chevurot, small companies of teachers and students)
could not be a guest of such people and would not invite them to his own
home.
We have until now simply followed the gospel’s indication that the opposi-
tion to Pharisaic halakah was addressed to the Pharisees as a group.
That would mean that the basic intent behind Pharisaic halakah as it
comes to the fore behind the polemics recorded in the gospel would be
general among that Jewish sect, but that is far from the truth. While it is
true that issues of ritual purity and impurity were upheld by most of Israel,
especially during the era of the Temple, most Jews only had to deal with
such issues while sacrificing in the Temple and preparing the so-called
second tithe.19
In Safrai’s view, some Pharisees did try to enlarge the scope of the law,
trying to raise all of Israel to the level of holiness of the priests. The gener-
al intent of such laws and the tendency to widen their scope is nicely ex-
pressed in this Mishnah attributed to R. Phineas b. Jair: “Zeal leads to
cleanliness, and cleanliness leads to purity, and purity leads to self-re-
straint, and self-restraint leads to sanctity, and sanctity leads to humility,
and humility leads to fear of sin, and the fear of sin leads to piety, and
piety leads to divine intuition, and divine intuition leads to the resurrection
of the dead, and the resurrection of the dead shall come through Elijah of
blessed memory” (MSotah 9:15).
Essenes insisted on applying the full content of purity law to every one of
their members, and ritual purity was one of their chief concerns. Some
Pharisees undoubtedly agreed with this general intent and added to the
provisions of impurity the following causes: contact with a non-Jew (as in
Acts 10:28), his residence (as in John 18:28), all land outside of Israel,
and idolatry. We already discussed the issue of purity of the hands before
meals that may have evolved out of the practice of washing the hands be-
fore prayer, which in turn depended on Levitical commandments for the
priests.
Safrai, disagreeing with Sanders, thinks the custom was quite common
and mentions the Letter of Aristeas and the third book of the Sibylline or-
acles as evidence for its early date. Washing the hands was a symbolical
act that represented taking a bath. 20 Food could be rendered unclean if it
was touched by hands that were themselves unclean through contact with
any of the major causes for impurity, such a dead body. Pottery was sus-
ceptible to such impurity as well, and impurity could be transferred
through the hands or utensils. It is this stricter approach to Levitical purity
that is found in the Essene movement and in some elements of Pharisa-
ism that we encounter in the gospels.
Jesus’ polemic seems to have been directed against the extreme form of
cultic transference, but not to its principle. How then can it be considered
in continuity with Jesus’ teaching that Mark’s congregation attacked it on
principle? One possible argument could be that, to some, the destruction
of the Temple meant that cultic purity was of minor importance. It could
also reflect the experience of Jews living outside of Israel, who through
their constant contact with non-Jews had to lessen the degree of severity
with which they applied purity law. To a Jewish-Christian congregation

19 Cf. for this view S. Safrai, The Jewish People in the First Century, Assen
(1987), pp. 828-833.
20 Cf. Safrai (1987), p. 831.
that was shaped by the historic demise of the Temple and the Hellenistic
experience, the strict view on purity laws was a foreign matter, distant
both geographically and historically. Jews living in Rome, e.g., in the 80s
of the first century, would remember the purity issue as a thing of distant
Palestine and as belonging to an era now thirty to forty years in their past.
If asked about the essential issue of their Jewish life as children, or that of
their parents and great-parents in Israel, they would probably refer to pur-
ity issues, since that would have been the most important issue of every-
day religious life. The remembrance of that importance and their memory
of its specifics would probably provide the background from which Mark
created the context of Jesus’ sayings. The continuity, therefore, would ex-
ist insofar as there was a logical extension to Jesus’ decisions on particu-
lar elements of purity laws, within the context of a mixed Jewish and non-
Jewish congregation after the Temple had ceased to support the relev-
ance of purity law. The separation of the Church and the synagogue
would do the rest to generalize the debate into a fierce opposition to all of
the Pharisees, widening the debate from particulars of the law into the
principle of oral law.
Chapter 5

The Sabbath law (Mark 2 and 3)

The matter may be different with regard to the Sabbath. This of course
was a commandment that did not rest upon the existence of the Temple,
and it is unlikely to have been the cause for rigid separation between dif-
ferent groups within Judaism. The question is whether the Sabbath di-
vided Jewish Christians from their non-Messianic brethren and if so, at
what stage did this division occur? We will discuss the passage in Mark
that seems to provide the basis for the contention that Jesus here op-
posed both oral and written tradition. Did the Sabbath function as a
boundary marker?
Mark 2:1-3:6 is basically a collection of five controversies that illustrate
the growing opposition against Jesus. All of the five incidents serve to
show the identity of Jesus as the Son of Man over against this opposition
as their background, and they serve as well to explain elements of the
Christian way of life: forgiveness (Mk. 2:1-12) , table communion without
restriction (Mk. 2:13-17), fasting (Mk. 2:18-22), and the abrogation of Sab-
bath (both Mk. 2:23-28 and Mk. 3:1-6). From 2:23-3:6 the conflict narrows
down to the issue of Sabbath laws, with two separate stories illustrating
what seems to be the basic Christological contention of the entire pas-
sage: that Jesus of Nazareth is the ”Son of Man,” in authority with respect
to all aspects of religious life. The second one deals with a healing on
Sabbath and in that manner serves as an appropriate ending for the en-
tire passage which started with a healing in Capernaum.
To the average reader, the reasons for the opposition to Jesus seem to be
clear. In the first incident, Jesus acts on the authority to forgive sins
without any reference to the Temple. This is regarded as blasphemy, but
Jesus immediately proves the reality of who He is by performing a cure
for the paralytic (2:1-12). In the second incident, Jesus shares a meal with
tax collectors, explaining His mission as the call to sinners. Again the divi-
sion indicated is that sharing the meal is one bridge too far from address-
ing sinners, trying to bring them to conversion. In the third incident, again
the topic is the identity of Christ. Fasting is seen to be abrogated as a
practice because what it refers to is now present: how can one mourn the
lost kingdom (=Temple) when the New Kingdom is about to become
present in Jesus?. In summary, the entire collection serves to base free-
dom from the law on the identity of Christ as the Son of Man.
On the surface, the dialogue about the Sabbath in 2:23-28 shows also
why Christ opposed the institution of Sabbath – though only the oral
teaching on the subject. In a pre-Marcan stage, the technical argument
might have been about the application of the law, or rather about the fixa-
tion of the oral law in this particular case. Jesus walked with His disciples
through a cornfield, and as they walked, His disciples plucked the grains
and (probably) ate them, as they were allowed to do under normal condi-
tions according to Deut. 23:25. (The law of peah.) Reaping was however,
considered by the rabbis to be a forbidden act, because it constituted a
”work.” The prohibition of work had already come to refer to all prepara-
tion of foodstuffs, as is clear from Jubilee 2:29 and 50:9. The latter reads:
“And do not do any labour on Sabbath, that you have not prepared in the
six days before, to eat and to drink and to rest…”.
It is evident that we have here a direct commandment of the Torah that
Mark is aware of, and it seems on that account alone extremely unlikely
that we have here a direct violation of Torah in his mind. The oral inter-
pretation of the concept of “work” was never considered to be an addition
to the Torah, but a necessary interpretation of what it meant to work. Still,
there might still have been all auto the Muslim and rules and
You'll she our differences on specific issues. It seems more likely there-
fore that the issue is the legal interpretation of the Sabbath-law, and not
about scribal authority a such. That is the more evident from reading Ex.
34:21 that the Sabbath will be held also in times of harvest and ploughing,
indicating that all agricultural acts are forbidden on Sabbath. The quota-
tions from Jubilee therefore do not constitute an addition to the Torah.
Now it can nevertheless be argued that Deut. 23:24, which expressly for-
bids the use of a sickle (or a basket in collecting grapes) does not view
the plucking of grains with the hands as work that must be forbidden on
Sabbath, since it does not constitute an act of harvesting as intended by
Ex. 34:21. If plucking grains can be called harvesting only on condition of
the use of an instrument, and therefore peah as such does not imply the
use of instruments, then the act of reaping with the hands does not con-
stitute a work. It does go against the wording of the Jubilee version of the
forbidden work on Sabbath, as it can be construed as an act of preparing
to cook. Yet, the grains are immediately eaten! Can it be said then that
the act of reaping involves in this case also a preparation of the food,
which is equal to cooking? If that is so, the Pharisees do have a point. So
it is quite possible that the most elementary level of the Marcan text refers
to a difference of opinion on how to apply the law to a particular act, in
this case, the choice is between the relative weight of a law that provided
for the need of the poor (implying that reaping without utensils is not a
work) and a (rabbinically enhanced) law that upheld Sabbath observ-
ance. In any case, the Pharisees turn up and criticize Him for allowing His
disciples to pluck the grains, so at least it is assumed that (some) Phar-
isees would consider this an act of rebellion against the law of Sabbath.
David Catchpole also notes this in his “Mark”, in: Early Christian Thought
in its Jewish Context, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 71, 72. Vs. 27 would origin-
ally serve as the final argument of Mark 2, which in our interpretation fits
reasonably well: the intent of the original debate might then be recon-
structed by saying that Jesus shows with a familiar thesis (the phrase is
to be found also in the Mekhilta de R. Ishmael), that the laws of peah
served to safeguard human wellbeing and are therefore in this case – of
reaping without instrument – of higher precedence than the rabbinic ruling
that even plucking grain is a forbidden work. Vs. 28 would in such an
early context indicate an inference: if the Sabbath is for man (generally),
then man (=I, Jesus am) is lord over the Sabbath, and can and must
therefore interpret its laws in such a way, that the wellbeing of man is
served. After the issue of peah had been forgotten or was no longer relev-
ant, i.e. when Mark’s materials entered a non-Jewish community, vs. 28
could rise to greater prominence and the Aramaic reference to the speak-
er as representative of weak mankind (son of man) could come to mean
a messianic title, indicating an “imperial” authority over the law.
Jesus is then not seen to be arguing his case directly. Instead he is found
arguing the principle of exemption in specific circumstances that the rab-
bi’s also hold by quoting a precedent whereby human needs superseded
commandments that centred around God’s holiness, and the honor of the
priests, as David ate with his companions from the showbreads that were
reserved for the priests because he hungered. The implicit assertion on
the level of the redaction is that from this precedent Jesus formulates the
new principle according to which the Sabbath law is to be understood.
The continuing importance of this is that the precedent which gave rise to
the rabbinical rule, quoted in Mekhilta Exodus 31:13, that one is allowed
to desecrate the Sabbath in order to save a life, was historically the need
to defend oneself against the enemy when attacked on a Sabbath. During
the Maccabean war the use of weapons in self-defence on Sabbath was
accepted. In the Mekhilta text however this motive from the context of war
was given no further consideration and the reason is now given as
something within the system of law. Because it states ‘And ye shall keep
the Sabbath for it is holy unto you”(Ex. 31:14) Says R. Simon b. Menasi-
ah: this means, the Sabbath is given to you but you are not surrendered
to the Sabbath.” Furthermore, if the law allows circumcision on Sabbath
which deals with one limb, the more one is allowed to save a soul on Sab-
bath. Immediately afterwards however, the phrase “throughout their gen-
erations” is used to emphasize the holiness of Sabbath: “We should dis-
regard one Sabbath for the sake of the life of a person so that person
may be able to observe many Sabbaths.” The intent of this ruling there-
fore is not to reject the importance of Sabbath, but to actually add weight
to it, by making it possible for man to keep it.
The Sabbath was given to man to serve his needs, and not the other way
around. And on that fact the authority of the Son of Man is itself based.
The principle can be interpreted as a means to secure the proper observ-
ance of Sabbath, whereas now, in conjunction with its function of estab-
lishing the authority of Christ as the Son of Man, it is used to defend the
abrogation of the law. Clearly the redacted passage is an effort to give a
basis in Jesus’ oral teachings for the practice of the early Church, maybe
especially the Church in Rome after the expulsion of its Jewish members
under Claudius, to disregard Jewish customs.21
So, in this incident the general principle that Jesus shared with his Phar-
isaic environment that one might transgress against the minutiae of Jew-
ish law on account of personal needs is moved from a pre-Marcan stage
where the debate is about the primacy of conflicting principles and laws to
a position that secures the foundation for something else: the absolute
freedom of the Son of Man (and by implication His Church) from the pre-
scriptions of law. In the second Sabbath incident this comes to the fore,
where Jesus on entry into the synagogue is greeted with the utmost dis-
trust and animosity (3:2) setting the stage to observe a controversy
centered around His person. In such a redactional setting it is clear that
Jesus uses the man with the withered hand to bring out into the open
what deeply rooted opposition against Him was present within them.
When He asks whether it is permitted to do good or evil, to kill or to save
one’s life, two references are being made. The one is that ”doing evil” is
already there, in the inner mood of rejection with regard to Christ’s per-
son. This is stressed even more at the end of the passage, where Marcan
redaction adds to the incident by stating that Pharisees and Herodians
meet on that same Sabbath to plot to kill Jesus. The contrast is made,
therefore, between Jesus doing good (healing) on Sabbath and being
condemned for it, and the Pharisees doing evil on Sabbath, plotting to kill,
and remaining within the strict limitations of the law. The second reference
is more implicit, but obvious to any 1st-century audience: if it is allowed to
kill in defence on Sabbath, how much the more is it allowed to perform a
healing. The incident as a whole can be read as an illustrated kal-va-
chomer argument for allowing those works on Sabbath that are for the
good, precisely because saving one’s life had already been a perfect
ground for desecration of the Sabbath in Maccabee-Pharisaic halakah.
Yet, apart from the redactional context, we can see nothing more than a

21 Even Thomas-logion 27 seems to accept the Sabbath as a divine institu-

tion where it has Jesus say “If you do not keep the Sabbath as Sabbath, you will
not see the Father.” There is no need to surmise that the phrase ‘as Sabbath’
should refer to a spiritual observance of the Sabbath, in fact, the logion provides
evidence for at least a partial non-Gnostic origin of the sayings.
stage in the debate on the application of Sabbath law as it might have
been held in the 1st century. That is clear from some details in the form.
The introduction of halakhic statements within the context of an anecdotal
incident is rabbinic, the so-called ma’aseh being an ordinary rabbinic
device for illustrating a halakhic or moral principle, sometimes backed by
someone who actually acted in a specific situation according to a specific
rule as the real source of authority. 22 But to this is now added a specific
context in which the debate is no longer about the application of a specific
law, or the relationship between law-principles (peah and Sabbath,
should not the intent behind both these laws work together to make this
“reaping” into a legitimate act?) but about the abuse of the law as such.
Those people who worry about Jesus’ keeping the Sabbath are the same
people who plot against him. By implication, the Marcan redactor shows
that the problem is not the details of the law being discussed, but the prin-
ciple of the law as a whole, providing a secondary layer to the drama. If
the Sabbath law is adapted to the needs of man, it should be celebrated
in such a way that a plot to kill Jesus or a rejection of the healing of the
man with the withered hand (even though he is not in mortal danger) can-
not be considered appropriate behaviour. But apparently this care for de-
tail could be combined with such murderous intent. The point is that not
so much the authority of Jesus is at stake here, as the dramatic disclos-
ure of the inner motivations of those who combine a strict Sabbath casu-
istry with a nationalist zeal. The Marcan redaction therefore lifts the
paradigmatic discussion about the application of law out of its original
context and makes it a motivational element for the discussion about the
real and not formal source of authority: pacifist Jesus or the Pharisees in-
sofar they uphold the Maccabee solution. .
On these two passages there are contradictory approaches in New Testa-
ment scholarship. Two different strategies can be found. The one is con-
sistent with the effort to add weight to the Marcan case against the law.
This strategy is obvious, e.g., in the commentary on Mark by Walter
Grundmann.23 Grundmann holds to the idea that the passage is not freely
constructed, but a real incident, simply because the incident is riddled
with unclear elements as if taken from real life.24 The question by the
Pharisees is now a part of the formal warning procedure that is required
by Jewish law to enable the actual execution of the prescribed punish-
ment for breaking the Sabbath law: death by stoning. He further presup-
poses that the precedent of the incident in David’s life is an adequate
reason for breaking the law and implies that the Pharisees were them-

22 Cf. e.g. M. Mielziner, Introduction to the Talmud, New York, 19686,

(1925), p. 192.
23 Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Markus, Berlin (1977).
24 Ibid., p. 89.
selves at fault for not providing Jesus and His disciples with the food they
apparently needed.25 And though he acknowledges that in general it was
the prime Pharisaic intent to make Sabbath into a day of joy and rest, he
also seems to chide them for efforts to lighten the burden of Sabbath by
casuistry. The adaptation of the law to the necessities of life could be
combined with rigorous rules where possible, e.g., rules about not using
cold water to treat a broken arm. Without using the word, Grundmann is
accusing the Pharisees, on the basis of the Marcan text, of legalism.
Of course, Grundmann sees that the passage as a whole is about the
transference of authority from the law to the Messiah. But he sees a fur-
ther rationale in this as well. God wants to have free partners who are
bound to Him in their hearts and will make the free decision in force of
this bond as to what in any given situation is the will of God. (cf. com-
mentary ad locum) It is assumed, therefore, that Jesus’ assumption of
messianic authority over the law implies a discarding of the law and the
institution of a new type of ethics: bound to the situation as it occurs,
evoking a spontaneous decision to serve the needs of others rather than
obey a commandment. This ”reception of freedom” is the correlate of the
authority of the Son of Man, who by His own sovereign freedom repres-
ents mankind as God intends it to be.
Despite Grundmann’s acknowledgment that the passage as a whole has
a polemical and Christological intent that reflects the debates between
Hellenistic Judaism and the early Church, he is also committed to see in
these stories a historical nucleus. Thereby the continuity between Jesus’
own opposition to the law and oral tradition and the attitude of gentile
Christianity is maintained. Already Lohmeyer judged differently in his com-
mentary of 1936.26 Jesus does not respond to the issue, but to the human
partner in dialogue: ad hominem. What we have called the redactional
secondary layer is to Lohmeyer the real issue and at the redactional
stage this is quite correct. In the first illustration, the reference to David as
much as means: “if the law is to be upheld in all circumstances, why is it
that David could break the law when he needed to?” To Lohmeyer this im-
plies that the Sabbath law was already abrogated, which means that the
text can only be understood as a product of the early Church. So here the
historical continuity is refuted. The reason for the passage might even be
the beginning of the celebration of Sunday. 27 With this assessment of the
25 Ibid., p. 92. Cf. MPeah 8:7. A poor man, wandering from place to place,
must be given the equivalent of three meals on Sabbath. The text can be read,
however: if he rests, (i.e., keeps the Sabbath) he must be given food for three
meals. And the point is here that the disciples did not ”rest” but were caught in
the act of reaping.
26 E. Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus, Goettingen (1937).
27 Ibid., pp. 65-67.
non-historical nature of the passage E. P. Sanders concurs. “It is very
likely that the entirety of the pericope on plucking grain on the Sabbath …
is a creation of the Church….If there is a historical kernel, I do not see
how it can be recovered.”28 So in both cases the redactional level is ac-
cepted to be the only and ultimate meaning of the passage, and the dis-
pute is only about the matter of continuity with Jesus’ teachings.
But there is a second strategy which must begin by reconstructing the
plausible context of Jesus’ statements, as they appear to be the material
to which the Marcan redaction was a response, in other words, we should
try to reconstruct the debate that is going on between Mark and his tradi-
tions. First of all we must note (with Sanders and others) that the entire
collection of incidents is implausible if we would argue a simple and direct
basis in Jesus’ history – which is not to say that these events did not oc-
cur, but that the redaction of the text does not bring out fully the possible
real event, because it had been taken up in the different situation of the
early Church.29 The incident about forgiveness in 2:1 - 12 is implausible
e.g. because the passive voice in which Jesus phrases the declaration of
forgiveness cannot be regarded as blasphemy by any stretch of the ima-
gination, the passive voice being a reference to divine action, not to his
own. Only if Jesus had said: “I forgive you your sins” would there be a
possible case for blasphemy, if such an utterance was understood to be
meaningful at all. If we accept that the saying attributed to Jesus is genu-
ine, then the contextual interpretation of it is in the wrong and shows a
lack of understanding of what it meant. So we are left with a tension
between the context that might give meaning to the incident as such and
the redactional context which seems to move from the issue of Sabbath
to the issue of Christ’s messianic authority.
The story of the picking of the grain (Mk. 2:23 – 28) is especially improb-
able. The incident could not have been very serious in the first place,
since after the formal warning to Jesus and his argument that David had
also broken purity laws when in need, the Pharisees apparently retreat,
and the incident is closed. It means, therefore, that Jesus accepted the
law, but pleaded special circumstances, and only for His disciples and not
for Himself. If the story is accurate, Jesus did not transgress the law Him-
self and there is no reason to invoke His messianic authority to ground an
infraction of the law where none occurred. .Even more improbable is the
next Sabbath incident where Jesus heals a man on Sabbath. Jesus
merely speaks in this episode, and speaking cannot be considered forbid-

28 E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 266. But he does accept that “It is
not impossible that authentic sayings of Jesus have been incorporated in one or
more of the stories that we have considered.” (ibid p. 267)
29 E. P. Sanders (1993), pp. 212-218.
den ”work.” If it had been prohibited by the Pharisees, they would have
been even stricter than the Dead Sea sect.
Mark 3 may provide us with a clue as to the historic context of the debate.
Jesus’ question as to “whether it is allowed to do good or bad on the Sab-
bath, to save a life or to kill?” refers to an issue that became relevant dur-
ing the Maccabean revolt against Greek domination and the onslaught on
Jewish religion. If it was not allowed to defend oneself on the Sabbath,
every enemy could restrict its attacks to the Sabbath to slaughter Jewish
soldiers without opposition. It became necessary to understand the com-
mandment with an emphasis on “that you may live” (Deut. 5:33; 8:1, e.g.),
meaning that keeping the Sabbath should not lead to the destruction of
life. So if it is acceptable to kill in defence on Sabbath in order to save life,
how could it be forbidden to heal a man on Sabbath, even if such a man’s
life was not under immediate threat and no instruments were used? Je-
sus’ question shows his opposition to an interpretation of Sabbath that
would make an exception to strict rules that allow killing, even in defence.
His proposal affirms that the Sabbath is incompatible with killing of any
kind, contradicting the Maccabee solution, and thereby he contradicted
the Zealot method of combining faithfulness to Jewish law with a violent
endeavour to free the nation of Israel from foreign domination. The re-
sponse to the breach of the Sabbath would not so much lie in the fact that
Jesus healed, but that this healing was both a demonstration of His power
and an underpinning of his implied teaching that Sabbath halakah should
intend to further life, rather than concern itself with holiness issues to the
detriment of human life. But now we have a historical setting that we need
to reconstruct in order to give meaning of the entire passage, on the basis
of the fact, that the incident reported as such does not in its own historical
context amount to an abrogation of Sabbath-law. So our position is, that
in the redactional stage, neither the Sabbath-issue as such, nor the mes-
sianic authority as such, is really the point of the passage. The incident
must derive its meaning from the implicit teaching in the healing-event
when Jesus dramatically points out the full intent of the Sabbath over
against provisions that are intended to allow for warfare.
So the first Sabbath incident implies the ongoing validity of the law and
tries to justify an occasional transgression with reference to a common
rule: it is permitted to break the law in order to save a life. The historical
kernel involves a debate about the priority of peah and the manual pluck-
ing of grain against the technicalities of rabbinic Sabbath-law that equated
reaping by hand with a forbidden work. The second incident is not a trans-
gression of the law at all, but a dramatic exposition of the intent of Sab-
bath-law against the Maccabee position. So, under the assumption that
Mark in essence gives us a historical nucleus in the incidents themselves
and in Jesus’ sayings, but reconstructs their meaning in a different con-
text, intended to bring out the main purpose of the law: the safeguarding
of life, there is indeed a continuity between the probable genuine Jesus-
sayings and the later redactional context. Only the redactional context
makes it possible for non-Palestinian Christians to misunderstand its in-
tent and argue that it was about the abrogation of Sabbath. The immedi-
ate contextual interpretation, in which the incident occurred historically in
the context that Mark provided, is now refuted: the picking of the grains is
not pursued as an infringement of the law by the Pharisees, and the
second incident is not a transgression in a formal sense at all. The implicit
context of the incident must be reconstructed and distinguished from the
secondary context of the redactor to find the ultimate intent of the pas-
sage.
The rationale of the story in Mark 3 can be twofold. Mark merely inserted
the phrase ”on the Sabbath” into a story about healing and provided a
negative reaction on the part of the Jewish audience to come up with a
challenge to Sabbath law, at least to uninitiated Roman readers. Or, he
deliberately showed Jesus’ opposition to the Zealot interpretation of Sab-
bath law and showed his opposition to the Maccabean solution. Because
Grundmann accepts the text as it stands as historical, he needs to hypo-
thesize about the historic presence of a type of (Palestinian) Judaism with
a more rigorous Sabbath law than has been found anywhere, including
within the Dead Sea sect. Taking the redactional stage of the text at face
value, one needs to find a Pharisaic halakah forbidding any healing what-
soever to make sense of the passage. We would prefer a different ap-
proach. Because Sanders accepts Tannaitic materials as basically provid-
ing an understanding of Pharisaic thought, because of the uniform pattern
of the rabbinic religion, he has a standard by which to reject the historical
context as artificial. Sanders and Lohmeyer stand in agreement mainly on
this one thing: that the whole passage originated in the early Christian
Church, reflecting as it does the position of the law-free gospel. But a his-
toric kernel in this text shows less Pharisaic Sabbath halakah than Es-
sene and Maccabean extremism as the real field of contention, whereas
the redacted context supplies the definition of the opponent: the Pharisee
is here identified as the common opponent of Jesus’ words and action
and as the enemy of the mission of Jesus and the Church.
So, can we say that Jesus rejected Sabbath law, if He actually kept it in
the two related incidents? Or did Jesus interpret the intent of the Sabbath
law in such a way that the early Hellenistic Church, building on His ex-
ample, abrogated the law herself and retrospectively made Jesus do it, by
providing a contextual framework in which His words were taken to mean
precisely that? If the latter is the case, then the concept of obedience to
God that Jesus taught is different from the freedom from the law that the
Church began to teach.
This is brought out sharply by James Dunn’s treatment of the passage in
1983.30 Starting from the observation that the incident that Jesus quotes
has nothing to do with the Sabbath, and that the analogy needed here is
lacking since David was both in a pure condition and fleeing from his en-
emies, Dunn argues that the passage as it stands cannot be but a
massive rejection of rabbinical law. Jesus is not trying to give a justifica-
tion for an incidental breach of Sabbath law. “Rather the point seems to
be more about the liberty of the new age of God’s favor: in the new age
brought in by Jesus, faith and piety are not bound to or dependent on
such rulings.”31 Sanders and Dunn are in real disagreement here. To
Sanders the passage is a misinformed effort to justify and generalize an
incidental breach of the law; to Dunn it is a conscious effort to move bey-
ond the level of the incident as such to a general and principled rejection
of Sabbath law, indeed to proclaim a new form of obedience and piety
where such rulings do not have a place. Sanders seem to base his posi-
tion upon a precise knowledge of the reconstructed context of the Phar-
isees’ question and surmises that Jesus’ response must gain its meaning
from that context if the debate had in fact taken place. Dunn, on the con-
trary, rejects the historical veracity of the exact wording of the debate and
accepts the general intent of the redaction as the historical basis. How
can one choose? Must one choose? The problem seems to be rather how
the conflict, as Sanders has reconstructed, was transformed into the posi-
tion that Dunn explains and how the later narrative reflection on the his-
toric incident was in continuity.
That the passage presented the early Church with some problems can be
seen from the manner in which it was treated by Matthew and Luke. Mat-
thew apparently is not content with the massive affirmation of Jesus’ mes-
sianic authority that seems the real issue behind Mark’s version of events.
(But the motive for this emphasis on authority, as we have indicated
above in the case of the Mark 3:1 – 6 passage, might be something else
in all of these cases: the rejection of the Maccabee-Zealot interpretation
of the law as a tool of power.) He adds, in Matt. 12:1, that the disciples
were hungry, and adds two more arguments. First of all: even the priests
violate the general rule of Sabbath by making a sacrifice, most often
taken as referring to Numbers 28:9-10. But this argument does not hold
up either, since the sacrifice on the Sabbath has been commanded. One
cannot argue that we can infer from that as a general rule that other pro-
hibitions are invalid, because here a specific priestly act is allowed on
Sabbath. It would hold only if the Pharisee position would depend on the
absolute and abstract principle of Sabbath so that any apparent exception
would break down the rule completely. Could this be the reasoning? Then
30 James D.G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the law, ch. 1.
31 Ibid., p. 23.
this would be the reconstructed argument: If you disallow this specific act
by equating it to reaping, you would do that because you apply a general
principle in a rigid manner, but even the law itself does not do that since it
allows for sacrifices on Sabbath. Such a reconstruction would however be
highly abstract..
The second addition leaves us puzzled also. In verse 7 Matthew has Je-
sus say: “But if ye had known what this meanest, I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless” (KJV). This ref-
erence to Hosea 6:6 does not cut it either as a tool for understanding the
reported saying as such. Of course, as we will explain later, Jesus affirms
both the validity of the law and its prophetical interpretation as equally au-
thoritative in Matt. 5:17-20. From that perspective, this verse from Hosea
could be seen as an important principle of interpretation of the Torah, set-
ting up an absolute priority of moral law over priestly law, but the problem
in the immediate context remains because the prophetic quotation simply
does not deal with Sabbath. Only if we allow the argument to be about the
general intent of Pharisee halakah and connected loosely with the Sab-
bath-incident can we give the passage a meaning that allows for continu-
ity between the implicit historical context and the redactional context. The
Pharisees intended to deal with Torah law under the principle of the cultic
transformation of ordinary life, fulfilling the moral intent behind the cult in
every-day life. Jesus opposes that general principle with reference to the
prophetic critique of the cult, thereby demanding a straightforward applic-
ation of the moral intent of the law to every day life. At the same time we
see the evangelist’s effort to apply the principle of Jesus’ messianic au-
thority in the interpretation of Torah under the new conditions of the king-
dom. Such a polemic became attached to the story of the incident, but Je-
sus’ response must then be construed to go far beyond the confines of
the issue. The libertarian attitude of the early (pagan) Church probably
lost sight of the concrete issue very early on. The Christological emphasis
on the authority of the Son of Man, and the prophetic reference which
made sense in a principled debate about the relative importance of God’s
commandments, were linked to a debate about the intricacies of Jewish
law. In short, any story about Jesus’ differing attitudes toward specific ele-
ments of Jewish law was redacted to express a general rejection of Jew-
ish law by a Church that had from other sources learned to do so. And
yet, we also maintain that such a re-interpretation of Jesus’ sayings was
never intended to be the main brunt of the passage. If we can hear the
passage with an understanding of the implicit context and hear the dia-
logue it actually expresses, we can achieve an understanding of the
whole passage that has continuity between the two contexts that are
overlapping. In Mark 3:1 – 6 the implicit context of the reported sayings of
Jesus may make us aware that the entire passage deals with the incom-
mensurability of the Sabbath-law and the intent to kill. Jesus’ messianic
actions dramatize a dealing with law in which the original intent of that law
as providing life comes out in full force. Only because of that can the ar-
gument be made at all, that Jesus’ authority is an issue. But because au-
thority did become an issue for the Church in its own dealings with the
Pharisees, attention seems to shift from the issue under debate to the
personal attack on Jesus.
Chapter 6

Redemption as healing (Mark 9)

We have found, in our short inquiry into Mark 2 and 7, that early Church
tradition moved away from the context of the Pharisaic debate into a deni-
al of the Pharisaic shape of obedience. What began as a difference about
how to keep and apply Mosaic law developed into a rejection of (a part of)
oral teachings, cult transmittal and rabbinic authority, the double focus of
Jesus’ response being His opposition to the principle of the adaptation of
the purity law to everyday life and His stress on the religiously separate
community that developed among the more rigid followers of the sect.
Now Marcan redaction gives massive weight to the personal authority of
the Messiah itself. But that authority is made to bear, not on the legal de-
cisions that Jesus made, but on the significance of His messianic title as
such, and the fact of the Pharisaic opposition against him. The oral tradi-
tion itself was made the target of Jesus’ attacks. As we argued above, the
motive for that lies still in Jesus’ interpretation of the law as such and not
in the abstract and detached issue of messianic authority in itself. Now we
must deal with a closely related question. If Mark’s gospel opposes Phar-
isaism on a principled basis like this, going beyond the context of the
early traditions he found, what then is his solution to the problem of justi-
fication? How does God justify believers, if it is not on the basis of their
actual deeds in conformity with divine law? Can we find in these texts that
Jesus and his Pharisaic opponents had common ground in their dealing
with the law?
Mark certainly did not want only to provide a basis for contemporary
Christian halakah, or to base the abrogation of halakah on Jesus, as was
accepted in the post-resurrection Church. The references to the ”Son of
Man” imply that Mark sought a connection with the earliest traditions
about Jesus to show that His gospel had indeed a totally different goal
than was shown even by His differing interpretations of Jewish law.
The solution may come from an examination of a passage that seems to
explain the core essence of Mark’s gospel. It is the story about the heal-
ing of the demoniacally possessed boy in Mark 9:14-29. In this story, as
well as in the text about the rich man entering the Kingdom in Mark 10:17-
31, the main statement is Jesus’ saying that God is able to go beyond hu-
man ability to save, or rather, to make entrance into the kingdom possible.
In chapter 9:23b we hear that all is possible for him who believes, in
10:27 that all things are possible to God, and both are expressions for the
basis of salvation.
The passage we are examining follows one of the most striking Christolo-
gical stories in Mark. The references to the Mosaic revelation on the Sinai
are as striking as, and even more direct than in the case of the Sermon
on the Mount. Law and prophets testify to the greatness of the messianic
presence of Jesus and are finally transcended by the voice of God com-
ing from the cloud: “This is my son, the beloved, hear Him.” The passage
ends with a discussion of the role of Elijah in which Jesus apparently
identifies Elijah with John the Baptist (9:13). Now it is stated, in verse 10,
that the disciples try to understand what is meant by the resurrection of
the dead, a statement that prompts the question about Elijah, who was
supposed to come before the resurrection. Jesus’ answer therefore im-
plies that since Elijah has already come in the person of John the Baptist,
the era of the resurrection of the dead is already near. It is this issue that
gives rise to the passage we are studying now, since the resurrection of
verse 10 corresponds surely with the end of our passage, where we find
in verse 27 that the boy “stood up” because Jesus “lifted him up” while he
was in such a state that people were saying that he had died and after we
heard in verse 9 about the resurrection of the dead. So the thread that
runs through this chapter is the resurrection.
Our passage brings two motifs to bear on that subject. The first is the de-
piction of the condition of Israel, representing mankind, in the image of
the possessed boy. He is described as being under the influence of a
“foul,” unclean spirit (v. 25) and is addressed by Jesus as a dumb and
deaf spirit, ritually unclean, unable to hear the commandment, unable to
pray - because prayer was most often thought of as praying aloud. It is
his father who is able to “pray” for him, by pleading on his behalf. The boy
is described as showing the phenotype of epileptic fits and suicidal tend-
encies. Where Jesus comes near, the spirit shows its hostility toward Je-
sus in showing at precisely that moment his power over the boy, in v. 20.
While Moses, in Ex. 34, descended from the mount to explain to Israel the
commandments of the Lord, and in Ex. 32:15 is confronted by the idolatry
of the golden calf, here Jesus is confronted with an even greater danger
to His mission. If people can remain in the power of evil, beyond the ca-
pacity of the crowd and the scribes, so that belonging to the covenant
people and having the law explained did not help, then the mission of the
Messiah remained as powerless to redeem as the system of Temple and
law that was already in place. The presence and invincibility of such a
power of evil is a direct challenge to the Christology presented just be-
fore, that in Jesus law and prophets have been fulfilled and the resurrec-
tion of the dead has come near.
The second motif, added to the theme of possession as its corollary, is
the notion of faith. Twice Jesus condemns the present generation, once
qualifying it as “unbelieving,” “without faith”. In verse 21 Jesus asks the
father about the duration of his son’s predicament. When the father be-
seeches Jesus to help,”if you can, help us and have compassion on us,”
Jesus replies: “If you can [believe], all things are possible for him who be-
lieves.” It would be better to translate the “you can” as a reference to the
words of the father: “What do you mean, “if you can?” You express lack of
faith in Me, when all things are possible to those who have faith.” The
father in response manages to express his faith, which is prompted both
by despair over his son’s situation and the reference to faith in Jesus’
words, as if enabled to have faith and yet without the ability to feel secure
in it: I believe, help my lack of faith, expressed with the same word as in
19: “without faith.” So the issue is this: if victory over the powers of evil
cannot be secured by the interpretation of the law, represented in the
scribes, and is due to lack of faith on the part of this present generation,
then all thing are lost, unless the lack of faith can be addressed by the
Messiah. If the messianic age is the age of resurrection, then this lack of
faith surely can be overcome. The change from unbelief to faith can be
represented by the transformation from death to life.
To arouse the faith of the father, his son needs to be ‘resurrected,” i.e., lib-
erated from the condition of being possessed by evil. One might construe
this to mean that the faith of Israel has to be restored by the resurrection
of her Son, Jesus. Primarily, it is the response of Jesus the messianic
healer to the weak faith of the father that restores it to full health. The
Church, or Jesus’ disciples, live from the same reality that is now becom-
ing apparent in Jesus’ actions. Only prayer can give them the means to
conquer evil, i.e., the submission to the will of the Father of Jesus who
has sent His Son to be the beloved One, the One that all the world should
hear (9:7). Read like this, the passage expresses a major principle in
Mark’s gospel: that salvation depends solely on acceptance of or faith in
the beloved Son of God who can restore those in the power of evil to full
health, going even beyond the lack of faith that people have. Hearing, i.e.,
obeying, the law has been replaced by hearing the Son.
The motif of Jesus as the healer of humanity is brought into connection
with the rules of purity in another passage as well. In Mark 5 a woman
who was inflicted with “an issue of blood for 12 years” and was therefore
ritually unclean, according to Leviticus 15:25, touches Jesus’ clothes. Ac-
cording to Mishnah Zavim 5:1, if someone who is ritually unclean under
Leviticus 15:25 (a %"') touches someone who is clean, he or she renders
unclean by that contact. R. Joshua ruled that someone who renders gar-
ments unclean also communicates first-degree uncleanness to foodstuffs
and second-degree uncleanness to the hands. It is obvious from this,
then, that the woman is spreading uncleanness throughout the crowd
without their being aware of it. To touch Jesus’ garments, however, seems
to her a possible cause of redemption. Jesus is not rendered unclean, but
the opposite happens. Power flows from Him and the woman is cured,
something He credits to her faith in Mark 5:34, the point of the story being
that redemption as healing comes from faith in a Jesus who went beyond
the issue of purity. If the woman had obeyed the precepts of Leviticus 15
in its Pharisaic version, that would have obstructed her from receiving the
redemption that Jesus had to offer.
To a generation that lies in bondage under sin and is vulnerable to the at-
tacks of the demonical powers of death, Christ is the Healer, not the pro-
pounder of law. The law has no force to heal the condition of “lack of
faith”. It can only bring out its tragic dimensions even more. In the pas-
sage Mark 2 – 3:6 that we discussed above, two out of five incidents deal
with a physical healing and one (2:13 – 17) uses the metaphor of healing
in a moral context. Jesus calls the sick, i.e. the sinners. Moral and physic-
al health is thereby combined into a single referent of the concept of re-
demption. And if that is the case, the passages about fasting and the
plucking of grains on the Sabbath, must in a way deal with the same is-
sue of healing. The strict application of the law would preserve the sanc-
tity of Sabbath, but would leave the disciples hungry, the strict application
of law would make the disciples fast even when the Healer is in their
midst. Now that the Messiah has come, the application of the law must be
in congruence with that most fundamental fact. And since this Messiah
comes as the Healer of life, no provision of the law may be used to ex-
clude people from life, not because of their ritual uncleanness, their condi-
tion as excluded “sinners”, nor because they eat grains on Sabbath.
B. Jesus and the Law in Matthew
Chapter 7

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7)

We began by arguing that, at least to the community for which Matthew
wrote his gospel, Jesus’ mission did not entail an abrogation of the law.
Fulfilling the law meant setting it up as a standard of behaviour. We have
found, in the three cases mentioned in Mark 2 and 7, that Jesus gave full
weight to the intent of the written law, but differed on the specifics of Jew-
ish Halakah, most often with regard to the priorities involved. Does this
mean that Jesus accepted the Pharisaic concept of obedience to Torah
but differed only on details? Apparently not. The weight of the evidence
we have considered from the gospel of Mark does imply that Jesus’ ap-
proach to Torah was in tension with some or most of the emphases of
Pharisaic halakah, specifically with regard to cult-transmittal and the res-
ulting attitude toward ”sinners.”
The early Church that was Mark’s intended audience, though in a way ex-
aggerating Jesus’ position by generalizing His statements on specific laws
and probably reading its own developed law-free lifestyle back into Jesus’
teachings, did keep a memory of what must be considered a real historic-
al core. There was a clear opposition, e.g., to the spirit of Pharisaic
halakah with respect to the primacy of sanctification above ethics that has
enough echoes in rabbinic literature to be considered historically accurate
on that account alone. And behind the issue of Sabbath law issue we can
discern specific messianic themes: the primacy of the concern for the
poor; behind the Korban controversy the primacy of the commandment to
honour one’s parents; behind the purity issue the primacy of a more in-
ward moral purity as a better way of extending the sphere of influence of
the Temple.
There is no need to accept as equally historical that Jesus would have ac-
tually abrogated Sabbath, rejected Korban and the law of vowing (though
directing his disciples not to swear at all), and annulled purity law as
such, though the washing of the hands was probably an ”open” issue, so
it might have been the case that Jesus rejected this single element of pur-
ity law. But even if we relegate all of these elements to the early Church
as a narrative means to give force to the outcome of communal discern-
ment concerning these matters, there is ample evidence to suggest that
Jesus opposed the pattern of Pharisaic Halakah and its interpretation of
Torah where it stood in the way of the urgency and primacy of moral law,
defining thereby the inner standard of interpretation of Torah as the inter-
subjective demand of righteousness.
We need to show this now by studying two elements. First of all: what
hermeneutical standard did Jesus adopt to present the ethics of the King-
dom as in harmony with Torah, as he was bound to do after accepting it
as absolute standard, as we have seen. Secondly, how does this work out
in the actual labour of exegesis; i.e., which concrete guideline of beha-
viour was the result of such a method of application of the Torah? Both
can be studied by looking again at the Sermon on the Mount. We will first
deal with the hermeneutical framework in Matthew 5:17-20, and then we
will study the issue of neighbourly love dealt with in the so-called anti-
theses.
First, the immediate context of the present passage needs to be made
clear. The Sermon on the Mount opens with a definition of the community
to which its teachings are addressed. Jesus sits down with His disciples
and instructs His people in an manner analogous to Moses from Mount
Sinai, but there is a difference. Christ is not given His teaching, but brings
it Himself. The obvious implication could be that here is One higher than
Moses. That impression of a higher authority is partly reduced by the
statements that we will consider in depth in verses 17-20, where Christ
actually affirms the authority of the Mosaic law. The pattern of this double
impression is that of a tension between messianic authority and affirma-
tion of the law of Moses.. It can be solved by seeing the similarity
between Jesus’ Sermon and the final address by Moses in Deut. 29 and
30. Especially in Deut. 29:10-15, the whole nation is called into the re-
newal of the covenant, including the least of Israel: from the “hewer of
your wood to the drawer of your water.” This corresponds quite well with
verses 1-12 where the Beatitudes express in poetic language the charac-
ter of those for whom the Kingdom is coming, or rather, those who have
the character and condition that is presupposed in the kingdom. But when
that occurs, the multitudes are lost to sight. Only His disciples come to
Him, according to 5:1. The Mosaic law could be addressed to all, and
Deut. 29 urges the people to make it possible for all to be included. Here
in Matthew it seems presupposed that only a minority will come and obey.
The kingdom announced is first and foremost the concrete sovereignty of
God expressed here on earth. In that sense it is the kingdom of heaven, it
derives its name from the origin of the authority that is valid in it. Corres-
ponding to that character, those characteristics of Christ’s disciples are
mentioned that depict an openness or submission to that sovereignty. The
”poor in spirit,” i.e., those people who remain poor because of the Spirit,
have been given the Kingdom. Their lack of economic aspirations makes
them accessible to the demands of the kingdom. They hunger and thirst
for righteousness (verse 6); they are pure in heart, honest, and without
guile. They seek to establish peace between man and his fellow, and they
are able to exercise compassion. Such people are able to enter. And that
still means that simply having these characteristics is not enough to be a
disciple.
The essential characteristic seems to be persecution “for righteousness’
sake” (verse 11), which implies the ability to endure suffering while adher-
ing to the behavioural character of the kingdom, a suffering that is per-
haps intended in an individual sense in verse 10, the basis for that suffer-
ing being that the Kingdom, though present, still exists only among a
minority while the remains of the old order are still here. Interestingly, this
suffering for “righteousness’ sake” that is the character of those who wish
to enter is identified with suffering because of Christ, in verse 12. We can
learn, therefore, that the Sermon equates the characteristics of the previ-
ous verses with the following of Christ, and identifies this following of
Christ as a commitment to the righteousness of the Kingdom. Christ is, in
an emphatic way, the righteousness or standard of the Kingdom He an-
nounces.
The logical next question then needs to be: who are these disciples of Je-
sus who long for righteousness and practice it under duress and for
whom the kingdom of heaven is meant?32 The position of the disciples as
a collective entity is indicated in verses 13-16. The disciples as a whole
and in general are the salt of the earth (13). They are on the earth while
they represent the character of heaven. They have a function in society
and they are involved in its affairs seeking peace, exercising compassion,
etc., but not because they belong to it. The involvement presupposes the
distinctness of a community. The image is used more to express the vul-
nerability of this aforementioned character of the disciples than to explain
the way in which the disciples work within the larger society. How could
the image be considered a reference to the life of Christians within soci-
ety, if the fact of their persecution by that society is already considered
one of their main characteristics? Obviously the genitive means they be-
long to it in some way, but they need to remain pure and unmixed to fulfill
their assignment. Salt can lose its force and character by becoming mixed
with other substances, be it earth or water. The force of salt needs to be
maintained and not become ”used up.”
So we disagree here with Betz, who stresses that the disciples “are to re-

32 H. D. Betz argues (1995, p. 155) that the connection is not to be found in

the surface language. But in verse 11 the language changes already from ”them”
to ”you,” and verse 13 can be seen as an answer to the implicit question of verse
11 as to why the disciples are being persecuted. Verse 11 therefore can be con-
sidered as making a connection between the Beatitudes and the threefold defini-
tion of the disciples as a community. As Betz points out, the duties and status of
the disciples’ community is a consequence of the blessings bestowed upon them
as representatives of the kingdom of heaven, explained in verse verses 1-10 and
expressed in verse 12 in particular.
gard themselves as a most important ingredient of this life...they must be
part of the dirt out of which this world is made.”33 But the text has no refer-
ence to such an analogous use of salt. Any imagery of salting food or ex-
orcising demons (from Greek custom), or even using salt in sacrifices,
etc., is missing here, unless one infers from the expression “salting the
salt” that the notion of “salting something” is implied. But it is highly signi-
ficant that there is no reference whatsoever to what is being salted. Be-
sides, the expression ”salt of the earth” is primarily a reference to the loc-
ation of witness, that the community of disciples represents heaven while
they are on earth. The origin of the salt is not in the earth but in heaven,
and only when walked upon and thrown out can it be said to become salt
of the earth in the real sense of being mixed up with the affairs of society.
So the “of the earth” does not imply being mixed with the soil of everyday
life in society.
If Christians try to be ”part of the dirt,” they will soon find that their role in
society is to be trampled upon, to become the scapegoats of society. It
seems more appropriate to think of the salt needed for sacrifices as refer-
ring in general to a function of the disciples to lend validity to what hap-
pens in this world for the good of the Kingdom, but there is no specific ter-
minology to back that either. One could think of a connection between
sacrifice and martyrdom, but again there is no basis for that. We must
conclude that, in using the metaphor, the writer did not intend to work out
a precise analogy, but was thinking of the general value and vulnerability
of salt and was focused on the condition of the disciples, not working out
an exact image of the relationship between the disciples and the com-
munity at large with the aid of the metaphor of salt as being used to salt
(preserve) something. On a final note, we must agree with Friedlander
here that if we read the text as indicating that Jesus’ disciples should be
useful in society, there is nothing very original in it.
If, however, the disciples saw their contribution to society as their primary
goal in life, trying to change it by enhancing its general level of righteous-
ness and piety in a piecemeal manner, they would be trampled upon and
used to pave the road, and in that sense would become one with the
earth. Within society they would no longer have the force that they have
as a separate substance. The separate position of Israel among the na-
tions is analogous to the way the disciples are now constituted as a sep-
arate community within the society of Israel. This still is compatible with
the idea that the basic intent of this separation is to ensure the inclusion
of all those left behind in Israel as it was then. But the remainder of the
Sermon serves to depict a ”higher” standard of righteousness, by which it
was achieved within a community separated from society for the purpose

33 Betz (1995),p. 158.

of that achievement. But how then is this new community, with its higher
standard of righteousness, supposed to interact with that society?
The way in which the disciples are connected to society at large is ex-
plained by the threefold image of the light of the world, the city on the hill,
and the lamp in the house. All three images imply separation from society
and build on the picture of the salt that needs to remain unmixed to keep
pure.
As a ”pure” community, first of all it can be a light to the world. It shows to
the world what it is by being a community that teaches and practices the
Torah, which is also called a light. The general idea that Israel is a light
unto the nations because they teach Torah to the world returns here. So
we read in Isaiah 49:6: “I will also give thee for a light to the gentiles,” but
here obviously the reference is to the Messiah (though he of course rep-
resents the collective identity of the nation), as it is to David in 2 Sam.
21:17. Yet in Is. 60:3 the light image is transferred to the restored nation:
“And the gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising.” In rabbinic literature the image is applied to God, specific individu-
als, Israel itself, the Torah, or the Temple and Jerusalem In the same
manner light can be the name for the deeds of the righteous but this
seems to be a rather late image in rabbinic literature.
The people of God can also be seen by the world as a separate com-
munity of righteousness, for it is a city on a hill. It can only be visible, sep-
arate, and present as a community, not as individual believers. The com-
munity needs to be visible like a light in a room. Like the salt that should
not be mixed, this light should not be covered with a bushel, something
done not to keep it dark within, but to make sure the light is not seen from
without and/or could not blow out. All of these images are then taken up in
the short explanation that follows, which explains the light and city meta-
phor together by identifying the shining of the light with good deeds. The
deeds of the community should be ”good,” i.e., should be works of right-
eousness, a concept to be explained in the whole of the Sermon later,
and they should be such that the attention of people is directed towards
the ”Father in Heaven” and not to the disciples themselves. So the deeds
of the disciples are only a ”light” if they lead people to proper worship and
a change of heart. The quality of their deeds resides not only in the fact
that they can be considered to be good, but that they are witnessing to
the Heavenly Father. Christian ethics is specifically an ethics of witness.
We are now able to respond to four different approaches to the Sermon
on the Mount that try to interpret the direct statements on specific ele-
ments of the Mosaic law from the status of the two introductory passages.
One might argue that what is to follow is an ethical code for those who
have progressed in the order of saintliness beyond the level of the laity.
The demands are construed to be so extreme that only those fully de-
voted to its achievement can take it on their shoulders. In essence, that
was the solution of the early Catholic Church: that the Sermon was ad-
dressed to those who had a specific and intense interest in living accord-
ing to the gospel code. Whereas it is true that Jesus’ disciples are ad-
dressed in the Matthean version of the Sermon, it is also obvious that the
Sermon on the Plain, Luke’s version of the same material, is addressed to
the multitude. It is further obvious that these chapters are the actual con-
tent of the instruction the disciples are to bring to the nations, according to
the mission statement of chapter 28. The most important argument,
however, is that the distinction between laity and real disciples is not
made in the New Testament in the context of moral discipline, but at the
most in connection with service in mission or with the eschatological ur-
gency of an immediate breaking in of the kingdom (e.g., the passages dir-
ected to the eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom, i.e., those who decided
to remain celibate.)
The Sermon strengthens the usus legis elenchticus (its use as demon-
strating our sin) of the law by radicalizing its demand. Its purpose is to
demonstrate human inability and sinfulness. But of course there is abso-
lutely no indication for that in the actual text of the Sermon. In fact there is
the demand to achieve a higher righteousness than the Pharisees, which
by no means indicates an inability to perform the commandments or show
the required attitude. There is a bias at work that assumes knowledge of
the function of the law, as in Paul’s letter to the Romans (through the law
there is knowledge of sin), and through that doctrinary framework the Ser-
mon is read.
The Sermon is an appeal to achieve the highest goals in social and polit-
ical life. In such a fashion the Sermon is a motivational document for
Christian politics, and it has been read by Tolstoi, e.g., in that manner. In
such an approach, however, the specific nature of the demands of the
Sermon gets blurred, and their character as distinct rules of behaviour is
transformed into a selective inventory of principles. One might argue that
the double love command is an exposition of a principle (Mark 12:28-31),
but the language here is reminiscent of the direct rule of behaviour, as
present, e.g., in Mark 10:2-12 in the prohibition of divorce.
Finally, one might construe the Sermon to contain the behavioural pattern
of the new era. Because the Kingdom has not yet been established, there
is an interim ethics in which the rules of behaviour that Jesus gives are
moral guidelines or principles for behaviour that is at the same time de-
termined by the contingencies and possibilities of the present time. It is
clear, however, that the Sermon expects a new behaviour in 7:24. A sens-
ible man will hear these words and do them, to have a solid foundation for
his house, i.e., his life, in the crisis of the eschatological judgment. The
eschatological age does not precede the behaviour required of the dis-
ciples, but follows it.
From all of this we must conclude that the Sermon does indeed intend to
give us the rule of life for the followers of Christ. We must now see what
we can learn from the opening statement of the Sermon after the double
introduction. In this context, Jesus now addresses first and foremost a
possible misunderstanding about His mission that might easily have aris-
en after reading the first three segments. “Do not accept as my position
that I intend to abolish the law or the Prophets.”34 The full force of ”do not
think” goes beyond the mere having of an opinion. Betz shows from nu-
merous examples that the phrase is used to express a fundamental reli-
gious point of view, defining a general attitude. So the disciples should ac-
cept as their basic viewpoint that Jesus’ teachings did not intend to abrog-
ate the law and the prophets. This goes beyond the rejection of a misun-
derstanding. Apparently it would have seemed the logical step to see Je-
sus’ teachings move in that way. The affirmation of the Torah reverses
that logic and intends to show that all of Jesus’ teachings were in fact to
be considered a valid application of the law. The Torah as such is given a
new function within the gospel of the Kingdom, but it is not set aside.
Secondly, they should not take the intent of Jesus’ teaching to be the ab-
olition of the written law nor its prophetical interpretation. The terminology
“the law and the prophets” suggests that both are intended as separate
yet connected domains of revelation and both are equally affirmed. Jesus’
affirmation is not restricted to a general ”law and prophets,” i.e., the whole
of the Old Testament, but aims specifically at the system of written law
and (equally written) prophetic discourse and explanation on the law. A
contemporary application of this order of things would be to deny the
validity of the use of the prophets to ground a rejection of Old Testament
law. The prophetical critique of Torah predates the writing down of the
Torah and points to a tradition of explanation in which the Torah itself was
given its final shape. This makes the prophets intrinsically interdependent
with the Torah, as ”oral” tradition would be in relation to a written statute.
The need to ground Jesus’ messianic claims on the prophets has tempted
many Christian theologians to see in the prophetical writings the nucleus
of the Old Testament, as if the Torah had already been abrogated in these

34 Betz suggests this in his commentary that the saying was directed at a
real statement that was however falsely attributed to Christ. If we accept an early
origin of the text, this must mean that even before the writing of Matthew there
were strands of tradition current that differed widely on the issue of Jesus’ rela-
tion to the Torah.
writings, whereas in reality they precede the final redaction of the Torah.
To state that Jesus claims not to discard the OT is not enough. He claims
rather to affirm it in its dual essence as written law and interpretative
prophetic tradition. In fact, He is Himself giving His (messianic) interpret-
ation of it in the Sermon. The basic guidelines of Jesus’ hermeneutic so to
speak are what these verses express.
We have already discussed (in chapter 2) the meaning of the next verse,
where Jesus states that He did not come to abrogate, but to fulfil. We can
just reiterate our conclusion: To fulfil the law must then mean to uphold it
by effectively obeying it in accordance with its most general principle, ex-
pressed in and as the summary of the law. The righteousness that is the
inner standard of the law as written statute is now expressed as the
double commandment upheld in a specific community.
The next statement seems to put a time limit on the validity of the Torah:
For verily I say unto you, Until the heaven and the earth pass away, one
iota or one title shall in no wise pass from the law till all come to pass”
(Matt. 5:18, KJV).
In any case, it does apply the validity of the law to this life on earth, mak-
ing allowance for an era beyond the present in which the function of the
law would perhaps change. Within the confines of the present era,
however, the law is here affirmed in its absolute validity in its written form,
but also including the oral tradition, indicated by the smallest letter (ortho-
graphic details and the written text as it is being the peg on which oral tra-
dition may hang new laws) and the smallest elements of the written let-
ters, e.g., the small line that distinguishes daleth from resh, bet from kaf
and the like.
The question might then be asked whether the restriction of the law to this
era was intentional and had a view to the ”now” of Paul’s eschatology in
the present, as in Romans 3:21 and 8:1. Is the law then both absolute (for
this world) but transient, because this world has been abolished by Jesus’
resurrection? Surely this was Paul’s position, as we can infer from Gal.
3:19, where we find that the law was added because of transgression, till
the seed should come to whom the promise was made. The law was
therefore an interim measure intended to deal with sin until the ultimate
revelation of grace was given in the Cross of Christ. In terms of redemp-
tion history, therefore, the law’s function as ”tutor” came to an end. Paul
states something similar when he writes in Romans 10:4 that Christ is the
end of the law because He introduces a righteousness by faith that super-
sedes righteousness under law, his argument being (Rom. 9:31) that
righteousness under law is bound up with the condition of man’s achiev-
ing obedience, which due to the character of humanity fails to even fulfill
the law, let alone the righteousness that it seeks to produce.
But this is obviously not the function of the law in Matthew 5:17-20, since
no specific aspect of it is mentioned that would come to an end in a fore-
seeable future. What is most striking is the affirmation of the Torah as
such, while the limiting perspective lies only in the character of the messi-
anic kingdom and discipleship. Here the Torah is seen as it was in Juda-
ism, as the written source of our understanding of righteousness, the rev-
elation of the divine will. As written statute, this law will of course pass
away with the end of history, but until then, the faithful are bound to that
specific way of communication and discernment of its demands. We find
no indication that the written statute of the law is surpassed by the interi-
orization of the law as written on the heart, i.e., memorized completely
and transformed into the motivational power of behavior, as in the New
Covenant of Jeremiah 31.
We must acknowledge that this is a contradiction to Paul’s view that we
cannot simply harmonize without destroying the plain sense of the pas-
sage in Matthew. Matthew and Paul are not saying the same thing about
the function of the written law. And if we can further acknowledge that for
several important reasons the passage in Matthew is to be considered
authentic, laying down the basic hermeneutic of the Christian community,
we cannot but conclude that the New Testament leaves us with the prob-
lem that Paul’s early statements about the (written) law, which we assume
to imply that it was abrogated in the present, are in direct contradiction to
Jesus’ statements about its ongoing validity and the hermeneutic practice
that he affirmed with it. Paul’s eschatology and the real experience of the
gentile Church would lead him to contradict the teachings of Christ in this
point. The main issue is, that to Paul, the old heaven and earth have
already passed away, and the written statute of the law has been re-
placed by the inner reality of Christ’s presence through the Spirit in us.
Chronologically, the Church might have returned to the authenticity of Je-
sus’ much more difficult position in Matthew, while leaving the early enthu-
siast and eschatological Paul more to the background. That would be a
complete reversal of Bultmann’s thesis, that the early Paul is the authentic
gospel!
The impression that Matthew’s Jesus emphasized the affirmation of the
written law is strengthened by the next verse, which states:

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and

shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven:
but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in
the kingdom of heaven (KJV, Mt. 5:19).
Taking up the notion of the smallest details of the law, symbolized by and
incarnated in the details of the writing of the Law, those who break the
small commandments (fail to do them) and teach that they should be
broken (and in that sense do not uphold the law as standard) shall be the
least in the kingdom. Notably, such persons are still part of the kingdom;
they could still be trying to respect the sovereignty of God. But their posi-
tion is still false; could this be a direct reference to the adherents of Paul’s
law-free gospel?
The disciples Christ was seeking are those that abide by the smallest
commandments of the law and teach likewise. One must note, however,
that the law needs teaching, and teaching needs an uncompromised
standard of behaviour on the part of the teacher. In direct contrast to
those Pharisaic teachers who construct burdens that they themselves do
not touch, here a new radical standard is expressed. The interpretation of
the law must be based on its practice the teaching here ending the series
of indirect references, first through the ”prophets” as a separate body of
scriptures attached to the law, and then through the reference to the her-
meneutic practices of the scribes through the iota and title. Interpretation
must make obedience possible; obedience makes interpretation neces-
sary.
All of this leads to the final statement in this section, which returns to the
theme of the identity and practice of the disciples who have entered the
kingdom of heaven.
For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the right-
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:20, KJV).
We must ask what this exceeding righteousness is. It is loosely to be con-
nected with the first reference in the Sermon, where we find the perse-
cuted for righteousness’ sake (5:10) being equated with those persecuted
because of Christ (5:11). Christ is set up as the standard for righteous-
ness. Thereafter the separate status of the community and its mission to
the wider society is brought in, and the passage ends with the command
to show “good deeds” that bring people to glorify the heavenly Father
(5:16). Our current passage as a whole, then, explains how Christ is the
standard of righteousness in terms of the hermeneutic that He uses. He
affirms the full demand of the law by interpreting it in such a way that it
can lead to the practice that God demands in His sovereignty. Righteous-
ness is not achieved by abrogating the law, but by an ongoing teaching
and interpretation that accepts even the smallest commandments in the
law, interpreting them, however, in such a fashion that they can actually
be done. Such a teaching and doing within the community of disciples,
accepting the suffering it brings while the old order still persists, is the
higher righteousness, and in fact summarizes the pattern of Christ’s life.
Chapter 8

Scribal hermeneutics of the Torah (Matthew 18)

Goppelt has stated that Jesus did not propose an alternative halakah, but
rejected the principle of it. We must at this stage answer part of that con-
tention, or rather, prepare our answer by taking a (short) look into two oth-
er major and surprising elements in Matthew that together constitute the
full picture of Jewish-Christian hermeneutics. First, we must take a look at
the passage in Matthew 18 where the congregation is given what we
might call a semikha, that is, the rabbinic authority to give decisions.
Secondly, we must study the meaning of the peculiar opening of Matthew
23, where the hermeneutic authority of the Scribes is affirmed. How do
both of these formal statements with regard to hermeneutic authority con-
nect with the intrinsic messianic authority that is emphasized in chapter 5
of Matthew?
Chapter 18 of Matthew is the concluding passage of the Galilean section,
connected to the former chapters by the opening phrase “in that hour,”
showing that, to the writer, the chapter’s topics were connected to the is-
sue of paying the imperial tax. After the separate realm of the Kingdom of
Heaven is established in that manner and after Jesus’ statement that the
sons are free, exempt from tax as such, but should not give occasion for
reproach since that would attract attention to the wrong issue, the issue of
being the greatest in that kingdom comes up. Already in Matthew 5:19 the
concept of being ”great” has been explained. Those who teach the pre-
cepts of the law and do them are called great. Small are those who teach
the annulment of elements of the law.
Here we find first of all an opposition between the greatest and the child.
In the first section of the chapter, to be ”like a child” is explained as one of
the major characteristics of being in the kingdom. Conversion must lead
to becoming like a child (verse 3). One should humble oneself (or con-
sider oneself low in rank) like a child (verse 4). Those who believe in
Christ in this manner are the ”little ones” who should not be tempted to sin
(verse 6). What started out as an exhortation to become like children is
now an exhortation to others, probably believers too , to treat such believ-
ers as children, i.e., to have care for their well-being and to be in that re-
spect like the heavenly Father, who does not want any one of these little
ones to be lost. In passing, we must note that Jesus’ concept of salvation
here implies the possibility of going to hell, as opposed to entrance into
life (verse 9), on account of sin. Such a course of events can only be
avoided by not sinning, so the situation here for ethics is not that of any
justification of the ungodly, but of life without sin leading into (eternal?)
life.
After the explanation of the divine will that none of these little ones will be
lost (verse 14) we come to our passage, running from verse 15 to the end
of the chapter. The first section deals with the procedure of dealing with a
”brother,” apparently one of the little ones who has succumbed to tempta-
tion, who has sinned (15-17). It consists of five imperative clauses, struc-
tured along the lines of casuistic law: if x is the case, then you must do y
or y is the result. On a closer look, these five can be reduced to one: if
your brother sins, rebuke him privately. Then possible results are listed,
with their appropriate response. (a) If he listens to you, the matter is
closed, obviously referring to his repentance and being forgiven. Fellow-
ship is restored, as is indicated by the phrase: “you have gained your
brother.” (b) If he does not listen, the next step is to discuss the matter
again with one or two witnesses present, to establish the facts with a view
toward the next stage of the procedure, because of the general rule that
two or three witnesses can establish a fact (16b), but also to widen the
discussion and bring their moral authority to bear in the discussion with
the brother. That is evident from the phrasing of the next verse, where it
states (c) if he does not listen to them, then the matter should be put be-
fore the congregation as a whole. In case the brother does not listen to
the congregation, (d) he should be excluded from fellowship more per-
manently and formally, since the ”gaining” of the brother in verse 16 obvi-
ously implies that fellowship has already been broken by the offense it-
self.
If there is any Hebraic background to the meaning of listen, we should in-
fer that he should obey the decision, as he should respond with repent-
ance to the rebuke in verse 15. But it might also mean in all of these
cases that he should respond, which might lead in some cases to a
change of opinion and to repentance. The Greek verb for “hearing”
(akouein) might be less technical than the Hebrew 3/: (shama’) and allow
for a more general principle: that the offending brother should be brought
into dialogue, with the assumption that this would lead him to repentance,
since both parties after all share the same moral standard. The exclusion
at the end of the process implies that being a member of the congregation
means sharing the moral standard of the community to a high extent, and
that acting in accordance with other standards of behaviour must lead to
being treated as those that have other moral standards. The implication is
that the community is determined by its acceptance of a shared moral
standard. In this case, the gentile and the publican are mentioned to in-
dicate the extent of the dissolution of the connecting bonds between of-
fender and community and how the offender should be treated. The men-
tion of the gentile probably refers to the fact that table communion at the
Lord’s Supper is now impossible. Being a gentile further implies that the
law does not apply any more, so that the standard, being broken, is no
longer applicable. The publican, however, is someone who, while belong-
ing to the people of God, acts in consort with the forces opposed to the
people of God; i.e., he has become an ”enemy.” Presumably, the proper
response is again that table fellowship is impossible, but beyond that oth-
er avenues of contact (e.g. commercial relationships) are lost as well. If
that is the case, it is a minor indication that Jesus’ eating with sinners and
publicans was considered by Jewish Christians to be an exceptional act
of the Messiah, and not an abrogation of the principle of the law that ex-
cluded them from fellowship.
The next section includes verses 18 to 20, and it consists of two amen-
sayings and an explanatory clause (verse 20). In verse 18 the authority to
bind and loose, with respect to the exclusion of sinners, is given to the
congregation, as has been detailed before. A decision reached in the
manner outlined in verses 15-17 is validated by God. That would presup-
pose that the offender loses the status of belonging to the people of God
and that this indeed has visible and practical consequences. Secondly,
the formula “to bind and to loose” is derived from rabbinic thought insofar
as it expresses moral discernment. It refers to the rabbinic authority to
proclaim an object or act to be prohibited or to be permitted (for use in the
case of objects or foods). The connection between the two meanings of
the expression is not that obvious. One might argue that in the specific
process of discipline, the definition of sin is tested and a definition is ar-
rived at. Verse 18 then refers to the final decision to put the offending
brother under the ban, thereby defining his sin and obstinate refusal to re-
pent as a transgression that cannot be overlooked. To bind in this case
would mean to proclaim a certain act prohibited, whereby the brother is
loosed from fellowship. However, it cannot be overlooked that sin is not
being defined here, but repentance and forgiveness is striven for. That
means that the issue of the moral standard is not under debate. The of-
fending brother is easily identified as sinning, since the standard is pre-
supposed in the entire process and has been dealt with already in Mat-
thew 5-7. One might argue that the definition of the offense is being
tested since so many people get involved in discussing the issue, but this
is surely a side-effect of the process and not its main intent.
In that connection it is important to settle a problem resulting from differ-
ing text traditions of verse 15. Does it state: “if thy brother shall trespass
against thee...,” connecting the passage to Peter’s question about forgiv-
ing the brother who offends against me in verse 21? Or does it state: “if
thy brother shall trespass....”; i.e., in general, if you see your brother
stumble. The addition of ”against you” could be explained as dittography,
since the previous word ends with similar sounds: hamartesei then may
give rise to the repetition of the ending esei into eis se, which means
“unto you.” However, the same argument can be used in reverse: be-
cause of the similarity in sound, the eis se could have been dropped, to
avoid dittography. So we are left with the argument that the most reliable
manuscripts, such as Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, do leave out the ”unto
you,” and a reading that includes it seems less than likely because of the
context. In any case the difference in reading is not essential to the argu-
ment, but we can rely on the context to guide us, as I intend to show now.
Let us start with this question. What does the difference mean for the un-
derstanding of the whole passage? If the reading ”unto you” is correct, the
passage starts with an individual and clear offence in a conflict between
brothers. There is hurt inflicted and offence given for whatever reason.
This destroys fellowship within the community between the conflicting
brothers. The witnesses are in that case outsiders who deal with the issue
as impartially as they can, trying to reconcile the two parties. In the event
their attempt is unsuccessful, the congregation as a whole is then called
in to decide the matter. If they find that the brother is indeed behaving
contrary to the gospel and will not mend his ways, they can exercise dis-
cipline and expel the offender.
Such a scenario is not unlikely, but it is dubious whether the context can
give us license to construct the argument like this. For one thing, if this is
the way we ought to deal with a brother who is offending against me, it is
not clear how to connect this with 18:21, where Peter asks how many
times to forgive the offending brother. Obviously the hurt done against me
is dealt with forgiveness straight away. In other words, the reading that in-
cludes ”unto me” leads to a discrepancy between verse 15 and verse 21,
since the one passage is concerned with bringing someone to repentance
and forgiveness and the other is a straight commandment to forgive those
who have offended against me, without the context showing that two dif-
ferent classes of offenses are intended here.
If, however, we can read with the majority of witnesses: “if thy brother
trespasses,” we are dealing with a trespass by a brother of the estab-
lished moral standard that someone else happens to know about.35 The
latter then should deal with it in private but, the offence is not against him,
since in that case he would be obliged to forgive according to verse 21
and not admonish to repentance as in verse 15. But then it is also clear,
that the whole passage presupposes a moral standard as well as an ob-
ligation of brothers toward each other to be aware of and concerned

35 According to Lev. 19:17 it is a duty to rebuke the offender first in private,

since one “should not suffer sin because of him.” Only in regard to duties toward
God is it necessary to rebuke someone in public. The private offence should not
be made public because that amounts to the sin of “gossiping.” Cf. Lev. 19:16
and Rambam, Mishneh Torah, I, 6:6 and I, 7:1.
about trespasses by others, and the whole argument implies a general re-
quirement to exhort one another. Or, even more specifically, the passage
deals with the need to apply this concern for others in a process intended
to bring someone to repentance and forgiveness, motivated by the
concept of a salvation that requires us not to sin any more, and to engage
in the reconciliation of conflicting parties and in the process of moral dis-
cernment active in establishing what the moral standard is. Without being
able to deal with all the implications here, it is in our judgment possible to
accept both these readings as meaningful ways to construct the congreg-
ational process of discernment and forgiveness. We tend to favor the
reading that is the most logical, i.e., the one whereby we do not stumble
upon a discrepancy between the exhortation to forgive and the injunction
to deal with trespasses, i.e., the second reading, which implies that the of-
fender is not offending against the one who tries to deal with it. But the
other reading cannot in fairness be absolutely excluded simply on the
basis that such concepts could not possibly overlap.
It is also not clear what the connection is between the topic of verses 15-
17 and verse 19. Verse 18 can be seen as referring back to the former
section, because it is in the plural and continues the concept of the con-
gregational action referred to in verse 17. What does it mean, however,
that “if two of you are in agreement about anything they ask [which prob-
ably refers to prayer; one praying, the other responding with amen], it will
happen to them of the Father in heaven?” Instead of stating that God will
accept the decision of the congregation, even though it may be wrong, we
now hear that everything will happen according to the request of the con-
gregation. If read on its own, it seems to be a pious statement of trust in
the power of prayer. Or is it a reference, not to congregational prayer in
general, but, because ”two” is mentioned here, as in verse 16, does it
refer again to the disciplinary process? If two (the offending brother and
the admonishing brother perhaps, or the witnesses) are in agreement,
then the matter is decided. On a congregational level, if all are in agree-
ment, then the decision is valid. In any case, where the brethren meet in
prayer and the authority of Christ is recognized and He is in their midst,
present because of prayer, and in their midst because of authority recog-
nized, the action of the congregation is affirmed by God, and the recon-
ciliation and forgiveness they seek is granted them, i.e., is a legal reality.
So, in our reading, the context is probably limiting the application of
”whatever they ask in agreement” to the issue of exclusion, forgiveness
and reconciliation.
There are two conclusions to be drawn here that are vital to our inquiry.
First: the presupposition of the disciplinary process is that sinning leads to
exclusion and condemnation, so there is no justification of the ungodly
without transformation, and that repentance and reconciliation (restoring
fellowship that has been violated by the sin of the offending brother) is the
goal of all disciplinary action.36 The situation into which man is brought
through faith is one of communal responsibility for the moral life of its
members and a process of care and discipline that is directed at reconcili-
ation and repentance. Disciplinary action and forgiveness are primary,
communal “discernment” is secondary.
Second, that the moral standard for sin is not found anew in each situ-
ation, but can be presupposed as the messianic Torah, for only they who
teach and do the commandments are great in the kingdom of heaven. Yet
this does include the fact that in applying that standard, the whole of the
congregation, assembled in recognition of Christ’s authority and express-
ing it in prayer, is assigned the authority to interpret scripture. But in Mat-
thew’s view, the authority granted to the congregation to bind and loose is
not simply the authority to define the moral standard. That can be estab-
lished further if we take a look at the role the rabbinic exegesis of the
Torah has in Matthew’s view.

36 Excommunication in this sense is the “ratification of the rejection of the

original baptismal covenant by the offending brother or sister and the refusal not
to be reconciled again with the community. Only a visible Church must have such
a procedure by which to establish who is and who is not a member.” Cf. J. H. Yo-
der, “The Forms of a Possible Obedience,” unpublished paper (1970).
Chapter 9

Rabbinic authority and the Church

To some, Jesus’ words that open his speech against the Pharisees and
scribes have been a nuisance, to say the least. The Dutch translation of
1951 (NBG), as well as J.N. Darby’s translation, interprets the Greek
tense (aorist) of the word “seat” in verse 2 as an ingressive instead of a
gnomic aorist, so as to say: the Scribes and Pharisees have seated
themselves in the chair of Moses, as if they had usurped power, instead
of a reference to their proper and habitual position as interpreters of the
law. The latter interpretation would favor the translation: they sit on the
chair of Moses, implying that they had a rightful claim to that authority.37
Verse 3, which affirms that authority, could be understood on the basis of
this decisive step in the interpretation, along the lines of the passage on
imperial taxes in Matthew 17. Obedience to rabbinic authority is then a
strategic step in the Christian’s dealing with authorities, a proper thing to
do in the circumstances, in order to witness more effectively among the
Jews, echoing Paul’s words that in order to gain gentiles, one should act
like one.
What are the scribes? During the Second Temple period the word sofer
came to denote a special class of scholars that taught the binding
halakah, explained the Torah to the people “distinctly and gave the sense”
(Neh. 8:8). As expounders of the oral tradition they held authority in dis-
tinction to the priests and Levites who had been the keepers of law, and
of tradition before that. Contrary to this view, and since there are no spe-
cific halakhot recorded in the Talmud and attributed to a specific era of
soferim, it is surmised by others that they did not exist as a group. The
term would then denote any Torah scholar, but in particular all authorities
before the formation period of the Mishnah.
But is this a proper interpretation? It echoes of course the consensus that
deference to Judaism was a tactical move, a side effect of Jesus’ piety to-
ward his ancestors, but not a principled position. Yet we find that the con-
trary is the case here. For one thing, the text even implies an enhanced
reverence for the Pharisees, since strictly speaking only the scribes can
be properly called to sit in the chair of Moses, which refers to rabbinic au-
thority, something given to those who made the study of the law their life’s
fulfilment and had been given ordination to serve as judges in the law
courts. “Pharisees,” after all, is a reference to a Jewish “sect.” The state-

37 Darby emphasizes the usurpation: “have set themselves down.” KJV however
renders: “sit in Moses’ seat,” and Luther has: sitzen (sit), both of which express a
rightful position.
ment therefore implies that the Pharisaic interpretation of the law is to be
considered such a valid application of Mosaic law that Pharisaism as
such shares the authority the Torah accorded to the judges. Of course, a
considerable portion of the judges would probably be of Pharisaic persua-
sion and instructed by the scribes.
In fact, the affirmation of rabbinic authority that we find here is massive,
especially when compared to Mark’s scepticism in this regard. Taken liter-
ally, the text imposes rabbinic authority upon all Christians. All that the
Scribes and Pharisees tell Christians to do, whatever it is, they should
obey. They should do it fully (poiesate, imperative aorist) and make it their
standard for everyday life, i.e., observe it habitually (tereite, imperative
present). Of course this would most likely be limited to those areas of the
law that do not conflict with the messianic guidelines for interpreting the
law in the Sermon on the Mount, but this messianic enhancement
amounts to a stricter observance on the one hand (the greater righteous-
ness of ch. 5:20), and a shift toward emphasis on kingdom virtues (of a
moral nature) on the other.
The negative perspective of the entire passage can then be properly un-
derstood: Jesus states that His disciples should not follow the example of
Scribes and Pharisees, since in their practice they do not obey their own
demands. The point is that they should not lighten the burden of law as do
the Pharisees in practice, but should hold fast to the interpretation of the
law as they decide it in the practical circumstances of their own lives. In
other words, they should decide the law in order to make it possible to
keep it according to its innermost principles, and not lighten that particular
burden by fleeing into minutiae of minor importance. That demand of
practicability on its own would have had considerable effect on the con-
tents of their decisions. Jesus’ followers were required to choose in prin-
ciple for the more rigid interpretation of the law as presented by rabbinic
authority and to conform to it in practice, thereby surpassing the Scribes
in righteousness (cf. Matthew 5:19). But at the same time, the brunt of the
accusation is that the rabbi’s do not “move” the burdens they impose, i.e.
they do not make them lighter for those who are found to be unable in
practice to comply.
The same thought is expressed in verse 4, which accuses the Scribes
and Pharisees of imposing heavy burdens beyond their own capability to
do them. Still, the text does not imply that legal decisions that imply bur-
dens that ”they” themselves would not touch are thereby rendered invalid.
On the contrary, it is presupposed in all of this that these burdens will be
carried by Jesus’ disciples. For Matthew, this principle was mitigated by
the fact that the messianic hermeneutic is concerned with the limitation of
a teaching on law by the possibility, exemplified by the teacher’s own
practice, to do as he teaches. Without this ”do-ability,” a teaching is worth-
less. And furthermore, the specific messianic hermeneutic that we dis-
cussed above would mean a shift in emphasis towards moral obligations.
Still, if scribes and Pharisees concur, and if it were possible to do it, Je-
sus’ disciples were required to comply.
Then we have a second point of critique. Not only is there a gap between
teaching and practice to be concerned about, but there is also the issue
of motivation. In Matthew 5:16 we learn that the good deeds of the follow-
ers of Jesus should shine in front of the people, but such deeds were in-
tended to make the people glorify the Father in heaven, i.e., they were
part of their witness. Verse 5 in chapter 23 now teaches that the aspect in
which the scribes should not be followed is precisely this, that their ac-
tions are motivated by the need to show themselves to the people. They
behave themselves as rulers, motivated by honour and rank. Their reli-
gious practices are drenched in a form of social behaviour where the
scribes and Pharisees act like an elite within wider society, aspiring to rule
over the whole, using the instrument of legal exegesis to separate Israel
from the gentiles, the strict adherents of Judaism from the outsiders, the
amei ha’arets, publicans and sinners. From that perspective it can be said
that the Scribes and Pharisees “shut up,” close the entrance, to the king-
dom of heaven. Their practice, as defined above, implies that obedience
to the law is not equal to a total recognition of the sovereignty of God and
does not lead to glorification of the father in heaven. In short, Pharisaic
practice does not witness to a coming Kingdom. If the obvious motivation
of obedience to Torah is the achievement of social rank and status, and
the proclamation of the law is more important than doing it, then the en-
trance to the kingdom of heaven is closed. We must remember that Mat-
thew closely associates doing and teaching in ch. 5. If there is a specific
characteristic to the behaviour in which the Torah is obeyed by its teach-
ers, then that characteristic is being taught along with its contents.
It is not necessary to assume that the text refers to the Church of the 80s
or to the eschatological kingdom. The rejection of the practices of the
scribes and Pharisees seems to suggest that the kingdom of heaven is a
shared concept, though its interpretation may involve differences. The at-
tack on Pharisees would be more understandable if it could be assumed
that the Pharisees share the intent of bringing people close to the king-
dom, but that they lack in a Christian perspective the radical intent to
serve God only and primarily through the moral law, and deny the social
side-effects of the religious establishment. After all, Matthew showed in
many places how the religious establishment introduces foreign elements
into the service of God and ignores the essence of the kingdom: the iden-
tity and character of the messianic King. Matt. 22:1-14, in a parable, and
the incident of the cursing of the fig tree in 21:18-22 show that clearly.
The specific accusations made against the Scribes and Pharisees in the
remainder of the address have certain characteristics in common. They
cite elements either of decisions on the law or of specific practices, and
the intent is to show that the major issues that concern the kingdom of
heaven (the identity of the Sovereign and His rights) are thereby forgot-
ten. That is the major and decisive discrepancy between the position of
the Scribes and Pharisees and their practices. To that is added the accus-
ation of hypocrisy in verse 28, hypocrisy meaning in particular that there
is in fact contempt for the law insofar as its intent is in practice ignored
and neglected in its intent, and this attitude is combined with an outward
appearance of righteousness. The ”woe” in this connection should not be
construed so much as a cry of moral indignation as one of astonished
hurt that the occupants of Moses’ seat could in practice have been so
wrong about the intent of the law, and so negligent of the real issues.
Even though we should grant the highly critical attitude toward the Phar-
isees of this passage, its main function could hardly have been to instil
contempt for the Scribes and Pharisees. The affirmations of 5:17-20 and
23:2b can hardly be negated even by this impressive list of accusations.
The whole point is that if a specific accusation is made, then there cer-
tainly must have been exceptions, or rather, what is rejected of Pharisa-
ism as a whole, is the fact that it could not effectively fight these aberra-
tions within itself. It is not a generalized statement that Pharisaism was
defined by the practices described. If it was true to say so, the massive af-
firmation of Pharisaic teaching in the opening verses would have been
unthinkable, and yet it is unmistakably present. The specific character of
the critique and the formal acceptance of Pharisaic authority can, in com-
bination, lead only to one conclusion: that what we have here is in part
an effort to establish the specific character of the messianic halakah over
against Pharisaic practices and to fight against those aberrations within
the early community of Jesus’ disciples that ran parallel to these categor-
ies of Pharisaic vices. The main focus of Jesus’ critique is the missing
connection between teaching and practice in the light of the duty to wit-
ness to God’s sovereignty in the coming Kingdom of Heavens.
It therefore seems incorrect to say that the opposition to the Pharisees in
this chapter is based on principles. Nor can we say that the issue is all
about the oral law. The affirmation of the authority of the Scribes also in-
cludes what can be strictly called the oral tradition, i.e., rules of law in-
ferred by specific hermeneutic rules from the paradigmatic laws in scrip-
ture, functioning as a hedge around the law. That is obvious from the
treatment of the law of tithing in verse 24, where the argument does not
show that such rules are worthless, but that they should not interfere with
the main intent of the law. When Jesus is quoted as saying: “these ought
ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone,” the principle is that
of the complete fulfilment of the law, not of a separation between the
mere ritual and the moral. Judgment, mercy, and faith are here called
principles of the law that have at least equal rank with the laws of tithing.
Verse 26 does the same, when to the implied importance of purity laws
concerning vessels the moral demand is expressly juxtaposed, to which
the former refers symbolically. One needs to purify vessels to become
constantly aware of the need to be purified in a moral sense, to share that
awareness with others, to practice it as an exercise in obedience to God
and not as a road to proud achievements, and certainly not as a surrog-
ate for the morality it refers to. But again, the intent of Matthew’s Jesus is
not to abrogate the oral tradition on purity, but to fulfill it, by stressing in
the manner of their application the moral goals that such laws would
serve for the betterment of the community.
There is one element in the address against the Pharisees that we have
not yet examined sufficiently. We should do that now, but in a somewhat
widened context. We have mentioned that in Matthews 23:23-26, tithing
and purity laws are used as examples of hypocrisy, between the general
indictments of hypocrisy in 23:15 and 27 that are a protest against a par-
ticular form of public piety, and the mention of the care taken for the tradi-
tion (the graves of the prophets, etc., in verses 29-36) and the pride con-
nected with it. We can argue that the 5 indictments of hypocrisy therefore
consist of three general rejections of Pharisaic piety, with a view toward
establishing the way of the Church as a better path. (Because hypocrisy
is overcome, the unity of the law is affirmed, and the general attitude is
witness to Gods sovereignty in the coming Kingdom.) In short, they are
intended to establish the distinctive nature of the Christian community
with regard to Pharisaic piety and to serve as a boundary statement
between the two groups.
What we are concerned with now is the nature of Jesus’ position with re-
gard to ritualistic halakah. As we tried to do in our discussion of Mark 7,
we must now attempt to show how Matthew responded to Jesus’ original
intent and tried to preserve continuity while at the same time expressing
the self-evident principles of the congregation(s) he wrote for. If we con-
sider the parallel text of Mark 7 in Matthew 15:1-20, we can see that Mat-
thew actually accepts the Marcan redaction and in his reworking of the
material even enhances the easy flow of the passage. Though this must
indicate the existence of a common theological opinion that the washing
of the hands was religiously unimportant and the side effect of the Korban
rule was against the spirit of the Torah, it is easy to see that Matthew’s
version of Jesus’ final ruling differs significantly on a vital point. Mark 7:15
reads: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but
the things that come out are what defile.” Matthew’s parallel states in
15:11: “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is
what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Matthew’s version is then actu-
ally stating this: it is not so much what goes into the mouth, etc., but more
what goes out, etc. In short: Matthew’s version includes impurity of food,
Mark’s version excludes that kind of impurity as immaterial.
Though difficult to establish with any degree of certainty, I find the
greatest probability in the hypothesis that Matthew here has the most reli-
able tradition and quotes it accurately. The presence of such a rabbinic-
ally structured saying within Greek materials is an argument for its au-
thenticity, based on the meaning. Mark would then have augmented his
source by adding ”nothing,” since that was to him the final point of the is-
sue. It also served to stress the moral aim of the passage. Matthews
though restructuring the Marcan passage and accepting its implicit theo-
logy, restored the saying attributed to Jesus to its older form or had in his
possession a separate tradition.
Nevertheless, where Mark needs this statement and the addition to bring
out a strong antithesis to Pharisaic purity law, Matthew does the same by
adding in verse 3 and verse 8 the ominous direct statement that Pharisee
tradition breaks the commandment of God for the sake of maintaining the
separate authority of the oral tradition. In that sense, Matthew’s opposition
to this aspect of oral teaching is more explicit even than Mark’s. Yet, the
aim of Matthew’s position is that in this instance, the law is broken be-
cause of concern for a specific tradition, while Mark is implying that all of
the oral tradition does nothing but deter from the obedience God requires.
In the same manner, Matthew’s parallel to the incident on the Sabbath re-
lated in Mark 2:23-28 contains additions and changes that bring out its
much more and limit the aim of the critique. Opening with ”at that time” as
opposed to the more general ”one Sabbath,” adding the fact that Jesus
and his disciples were hungry, prepares the reason for the plucking of
grain that would only be necessary if Matthew could expect his readers to
react with surprise at this breach of Sabbath. (And they probably would
have if they had a halakah which respected the Sabbath but alleviated the
rulings to accommodate basic human needs; i.e., if, as probable in this
case, the Sabbath rule included exceptions because of hunger and thirst.)
Furthermore, Matthew stresses that the disciples were acting against the
law by adding ”your disciples,” making Jesus responsible indirectly as a
teacher of law (implicitly the case in Mark as well, of course). He also
brings in a secondary argument that at once points to a possible weak-
ness in the structure of Pharisaic halakah and refers to the character of
the messianic law that was connected with the Kingdom of God.
Let us examine both of these elements for just a moment. In Matthew
12:5, Jesus is quoted as saying that ”in the law” one can read “that on the
Sabbath the priests in the Temple break the Sabbath and yet are guilt-
less?” The reference is thought to be to the sacrifice of animals that con-
tinued on Sabbath, as is clear from Numbers 28:9-10. The interesting
thing here is not the parallel that is drawn between Jesus and his com-
pany and the priesthood. David and his friends were persecuted at the
time he entered the Temple, and surely his hunger was greater than that
of the disciples. No analogy is intended here. No sacrifice is being made,
and the point of the passage can hardly be that plucking grain is equal to
the priestly exception of sacrifice on Sabbath. It is also not very plausible
that the main intent is to establish the authority of Christ over the law,
since neither David nor the priesthood can serve as similes for that.
Christ’s authority over the law in Matthew is based on and restricted to his
being the decisive hermeneutic “rule,” not in any formal fact of his superi-
or power to abrogate, as we have shown in our discussion of Matthew
5:17-20. This passage does not change that already established principle.
The analogies drawn actually confirm it. David was not above the law, but
an exception was made; the priesthood was not above the law, and acted
according to the law on the Sabbath while preparing the sacrifice. Without
the Marcan framework that refers to Christ’s superior authority, the pas-
sage is not a defence of a principle above the law of Sabbath. In Matthew,
the implications of the material that was before Mark are dealt with in a
different manner.
Now we have shown above that the Marcan sources refer to a decisive
point of contention between Jesus’ approach to the law and that of the
Pharisees. The Pharisaic intention, in continuity with most of the rabbinic
material of a later date, consisted of applying the cultic demands of holi-
ness designed for the priesthood to daily life. That was a tendency contin-
ued and greatly expanded after the destruction of the Temple. To Mat-
thew, however, it is clear that it is not the Temple that serves as the her-
meneutic pattern of the application of the law, but the presence of the
Messiah and His proclamation of the sovereignty of God over all people.
Therefore, when Matthew 12:6 informs us that “more than the Temple is
here”, it must refer to the messianic presence of Jesus as the source of
understanding the intent of the law and, by default, of understanding what
exceptions would have to be made to the common rule. That impression
is strengthened by verses 6 and 7, opening with the quotation of Hosea
6:6, where God’s main intent is mercy and not sacrifice. That passage is
taken to mean that mercy is the goal of sacrifice, or that sacrifice ex-
presses God’s mercy. If that is so, then the violation of Sabbath on ac-
count of the necessary sacrifice must surely imply the possibility of allow-
ing a breach of Sabbath law for the purpose of a deed of mercy. In this
case, the interpretation that the provocative principle being refuted was
the rabbinic rule that even reaping without the use of utensils, something
accepted for the poor according to the law itself, in Deuteronomy 23:25,
was not acceptable on Sabbath, is defective because it disconnects the
moral purpose of sacrificial law from Sabbath law.
At issue here is not the Sabbath law in itself, nor the principle of halakhic
inferences, but the specific contents of that halakah and its conflict with
Jesus’ messianic hermeneutic principle. If cultic law is to be applied to or-
dinary life, then the intent of the Temple cult in terms of the moral de-
mands it serves are to be applied as well, rather than the material rules.
We have in this passage a clash between the messianic halakah of a
morals-oriented transmission of the goals of cultic life over against the
Pharisaic intent of cult transmittal in terms of specific preparatory and
pedagogical rites of holiness. Pharisaic tradition intends to institute a cult-
ic pedagogy into ordinary life in order to prepare the moral life, while Je-
sus’ halakah aims at establishing the moral law as the primary hermen-
eutic of the interpretation of such law. In that perspective, Jesus rejects
the Pharisaic intent to make holiness and purity into the primary demands
of God’s sovereignty. Only then can we read the final verse of the pas-
sage properly, where we find that ”The Son of Man is Lord of the Sab-
bath.” Now the messianic proclamation of the Kingdom governs the inter-
pretation of the law of Sabbath. The same message is given in the
Matthean parallel to Mark’s story of the healing on the Sabbath in Mat-
thew 12:9-14. Here we find Jesus stating as a rule that “it is lawful to do
good on the Sabbath,” while Mark makes it part of a provocative question
to the Pharisees. Matthew therefore understands Jesus in all of this to be
maintaining Sabbath law and reinterpreting it, while Mark goes beyond
that to indicate that Jesus’ messianic authority is the basis for its abroga-
tion. Their common sources, however, remain closer to Matthew’s inter-
pretation than to Mark’s and include an implicit acceptance of the author-
ity of interpretative derivations from Torah-law.
Chapter 10

Jesus and Jewish law

We are now in a position to draw some conclusions with regard to the
question of what Jesus’ attitude towards the Jewish halakah really was.
This question is of the utmost importance, because it decides the mean-
ing of the perspective with which Jesus approached the Mosaic law and
affects the understanding of His ethics deeply. In other words, if we can
determine the pattern of Jesus’ affirmation of the Mosaic law, we have a
strong indication as to what the basic constitution of Christian ethics must
be.
First, we must acknowledge that Jesus’ criticism of the law was not direc-
ted against the law itself, but against a specific interpretation of it. Some
have maintained that Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees was due to the
fact that He did not explain the Torah according to the established tradi-
tion. It seems to me that this is at least part of the issue of the passage in
Mark 7 as such, in the redactional stage in which we have it now, and if
read as a seamless whole. Jesus is quoted as saying there that the com-
mandment of God is nullified by the human traditions that sedimented
around it. That can be understood as a rejection of oral teaching.
Still, when we take a look at the passage without its redactional elements
and in conjunction with Matthew’s interpretation of the same material
which he probably knew in its Marcan version, a different picture of Jesus’
original intent emerges. In dealing with a reconstructed layer of the text, it
is important to see how the same tradition could lead to such different
theological conclusions as those of Mark and Matthew. We must move
beyond the single voice of the Marcan redactor to the choir of separate
voices. In it, we first see Jesus arguing within the boundaries of rabbinic
debate: against the ritual of washing the hands before meals and against
the enforcement of vows in the case where a conflict exists with major
commandments. There are voices within rabbinic tradition agreeing with
Jesus here, and in fact the Mishnah Nedarim paints a picture of a very
complicated debate in which the rabbis apparently tried to find a subtle
balance between the fifth commandment and the Numbers 30 passage
on vows. In Mark, only the context and the inclusion of the quotation from
Isaiah seemed to turn this into a major attack on the principle of oral law
itself.
The same goes for the passage on the Sabbath in Mark 2 and 3, where
Jesus is portrayed as breaking the Sabbath by a provocative action. In
this case most scholars have concluded that Jesus rejects all Sabbath
halakah, and even the validity of the commandment itself. But in the two
incidents reported it is clear that Jesus did not break the Sabbath com-
mandment at all, and only the context (which ascribes a rigidity of law to
Pharisees undocumented elsewhere and surpassing the strictness of
Qumran halakah) implies that Jesus in fact did so, from the Pharisees’
point of view, and that it was sufficient to arouse the most murderous in-
tentions on their side.
The notion that one may not heal a man on Sabbath, not even when it
would not imply a forbidden use of an utensil, is sometimes attributed to
Qumran halakah. I have not found any reference to this in scholarly work,
but did find such an opinion circulating among academic theologians in
oral reports. One of the quotes that is given in support stems from the
Damascus-document, CD, XI, 13, 14. “”you will not assist, no one, your
cattle to give birth on the day of Sabbath and if [it] falls into a well or pit
you will not lift [it] up on the Shabbat.” The subject referred to in the
phrase “if it falls” must be the cattle of the previous prohibition. The text is
saying that cattle may not be saved or healed, since that would in itself be
a transgression of Sabbath law. Even without the use of utensils, which
makes it a “forbidden work.” In that case, there would be no evidence to
support the contention that according to CD a human being could not be
helped on Shabbat. The text only speaks about animals.
However, CD, XI, 16 rules that one may not help someone that has fallen
into a pit with the aid of a ladder or a rope. So the idea is again that no
forbidden utensil might be used; not even to help someone in distress.
But the issue in Mark 3 is healing without the use of any forbidden instru-
ments.
We have argued that the core passage in Mark 7 certainly seems closer
to a Palestinian situation, and the contextual framework and editorial
glosses are intended for a Roman audience, dealing with matters on a far
more general level, from a far greater distance. The quotation from Isaiah
also reflects a secondary level of reflection, in our view. That is why the
idea that the situation of the Marcan redaction reflects an initiative taken
by Jesus not to wash the hands, i.e., as a rejection of halakah on the
basis of the written law, instead of saying that it reflects upon a contem-
porary halakah in a completely different situational context, is highly dubi-
ous. It presupposes as historically reliable fact that the ritual was common
and undisputed in Jesus’ days, which we do not know for sure, and
against which there is quite some good evidence; it also presupposes that
Jesus is the source for the general rejection of the ruling, which is unsure
also if we consider the structure of the passage; it also rests on the ana-
lysis that Jesus’ intent was to dismiss the ritual because it was man-made
(a Sadducee-type contention), which is unlikely, considering the fact that
Jesus himself in many of the authentic sayings affirmed halakhic reason-
ing and principles to present his point.
So the whole basis for the common thesis that Jesus ignored Jewish ritu-
al law on the basis of Isaiah 29:13, turning it into a general condemnation
of the halakah, becomes uncertain. I would prefer to say that the general
nature of the rejection of Pharisaic halakah reflects a further development
of New Testament -theology in which the opposition between Pharisaic
preparatory separatism and messianic witness-oriented moralism was
broadened into an opposition between commandment-oriented “legalism”
and a “moral” gospel of submission and ethical virtues.
Goppelt summarizes Jesus’ attitude towards the halakah as follows:
1. Jesus separates halakah and Old Testament law strictly.
2. The halakah as such is condemned as “human tradition.”
3. Unlike the Essenes, Jesus does not provide an alternative halakah, but
rejects it on principle.
4. Jesus does not discuss the interpretation of the law, but tries to change
the attitude of people towards the law.38
We have seen, however, that the context of Mark 7 implies that the early
Church developed Jesus’ dissent within the parameters of the rabbinic
debate to mean an attack on oral law because of its segregating effect,
rabbinic authority, and Levitical purposes. Specific halakah is rejected,
and Jesus may have directed the attention of his hearers on occasion to-
wards its secondary nature as ”human tradition,“ but a principled attack
on oral tradition as such seems to be lacking. The strict division that Gop-
pelt proposes is certainly not present in the earliest layers (the sayings
that form the core of both Mark’s and Matthew’s treatment of the issue),
and there seems no support for that thesis if we consider the careful de-
velopment of the messianic hermeneutic of Matthew 5. It is far more pe-
culiar to the final stages of redaction. The hand washing and Korban is-
sue were now dealt with as examples of foreign (Jewish) rituals that, if re-
jected by Jesus, would imply a general rejection of Israel’s separate
status that was maintained by a specific use of the law. Jesus’ intent to
break down the walls between the Pharisaic elite and the laity that con-
formed to the Pharisaic movement had by this time been understood to
mean paradigmatically the breaking down of the walls between Jews and
gentiles. That is why the particular criticism of a specific element of rab-
binic law had to be transformed into a general rejection of rabbinic law as
such, and the traditions that Mark quoted could perform that function only
because their context and details were no longer either understood or
seen as appropriate teaching for the contemporary situation.
38 Cf. Goppelt, Theologie, p 142
At least the first and second elements of Goppelt’s summary, therefore,
must be seen as part of the understanding of the early Church, or, if they
were present in Jesus’ teachings, they were at least no longer understood
as part of an ongoing debate. They were rather lifted out of that debate to
provide illustrations of one dominant strand of Jesus’ teachings and
thereby to lay a foundation for contemporary Church doctrines: his rejec-
tion of the separatist side-effects and cultic emphasis of Jewish halakah
at the time.
So to the extent that we have a critical position with regard to oral law,
which in itself would not be strange since in all the areas discussed the
law had not yet been unanimously decided, it was not about rejecting hu-
man traditions as such, but about rejecting those traditions that reflect an
authority other than God’s (or the Messiah’s), apply Levitical purity to or-
dinary life, which should be the place where the intent and not the form of
purity laws is lived out, and finally, exclude people on the basis of ignor-
ance or weakness from the people of God. What is at stake in Jesus’ de-
bate with the Pharisees is the shape of the faithful community.
We have argued above that in the matter of the washing of the hands Je-
sus probably took a position against it, as did many of his contemporar-
ies; in the matter of Korban, Jesus undoubtedly sided with those rabbis
who were eager to find a way to prevent possible abuse of one com-
mandment to break another. Jesus’ ethical thinking is far more part of the
rabbinic tradition than against it. Marcan use of Jesus’ position reflects an
era in which certain motives that had played a part in the original debates
had become all important and where Jesus had to be made an advocate
of a Church practice that had developed in gentile Churches. The truth of
Mark 7 resides in the fact that neither Korban nor hand washing nor food
laws were halakah in the early Church. Its opposition to Jewish halakah
and its portrayal of Jesus’ opposition to Pharisaic tradition is historically
improbable in itself, but may serve as an internal Church statement re-
garding the role of law-exegesis as a means of ethical discernment. Mark
7 provides us also with a clear antithesis to a rabbinic type of authority
over halakah and transfers ethical decisions from the legal arena to the
cultural environment: the ethics of Mark’s Church, according to Mark 7,
consists of Stoic virtues. But we must be clear in this vital matter: the op-
position against the oral law and/or the Mosaic institutions themselves is
presented as principled only in the Marcan redaction, never in the repor-
ted sayings. And that is made plausible also by this one fact that Sanders
noted in his Jesus and Judaism (p. 250). If Jesus had abrogated all food-
laws as Mark infers from Jesus’ statements in Mark 7:19b, why then “did
Paul and Peter disagree over Jews eating with gentiles (Gal. 2:11-16)?…
If Jesus consciously transgressed the Sabbath, allowed his disciples to
do so, and justified such action in public debate, how could Paul’s Christi-
an opponents in Galatia urge that the Sabbath be kept (Gal. 4:10)?”
But there is more than this. Sanders notes one instance that he says is
clear evidence of Jesus actually demanding transgression of the law. 39 In
his mind this saying must be the “most revealing passage in the synoptics
for penetrating into Jesus’ view of the law.” Jesus states in Matthew 8:22
in answer to one of the disciples: “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury
their own dead.” (Darby) As Sanders remarks, the criterion of dissimilarity
helps us determine that the saying must be original, since on first impres-
sion it definitely contradicts ordinary Jewish piety with regard to the bury-
ing of the dead. In post-Biblical Judaism this was understood and de-
veloped as an important commandment that ranked even higher than the
duties of the priesthood. So this saying, if genuine, and correctly under-
stood, violates both filial duty and the fifth commandment.
The ordinary strategy to deal with this has been twofold. One might argue
that the saying hyperbolically emphasizes the urgency of following Jesus
and that in the eschatological hour, burying the dead becomes an unim-
portant duty. (Marcus Dodds, Adolf Schlatter; Wilder and Dibelius as
quoted in Sanders) Some others have tried along the same line to sup-
press the weight of the saying, so e.g. H. Mulder in his commentary on
the parallel passage in Luke (9:29), who states that the expression is col-
loquial and means: “Let me serve my father until he dies.”40 The decision
for the kingdom of God cannot be postponed and discipleship excludes all
other ties. (Even weaker is the statement by Baarlink in his commentary
on Matthew41, where he states that “even the most intimate duty can no
longer be an alibi for evading the duties of the Kingdom.”) Still, such a
duty towards the Kingdom would overturn the obligation imposed in the
Torah.
Or one might introduce a spiritualized meaning by arguing that those who
are dead in spirit must bury each other. (So also Dodds who argues for a
dual sense of the saying). So also, surprisingly, Elias Soloweyczyk,
already in 1877.42 And it is true that in rabbinic literature the concept of
“dead” was also applied (proleptically? With reference to moral life?) to
sinners. (JBerakhot 71; BBerakhot 18a, b) There is a third option. Dodds
mentioned it in his commentary as an “eccentric idea” that the first men-

39 E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 252-254.

40 H. Mulder, Lukas II, een praktische bijbelverklaring, Kampen, 1988, p. 31.
41 H. Baarlink, Matteüs I , Kampen, 1997.
42 E. Soloweyczik, !9&8 -&8 (Kol Koree) Leipzig, 1877. p. 114. Soloweyczik
argued in his commentary that the saying expresses the same thought as in
BBerakhot 18b: “”But the dead know nothing”,: These are the wicked who in their
lifetime are called dead.” Soncino Talmud, London, 1948. vol. I (Berakhot) p.
110.
tion of “dead” refers to the corpse-bearers who carried out the bodies of
the poor at night. That of course does not diminish the harshness of the
saying.43 Matthew Black mentions the possibility that an Aramaic original
would have read lemiqbar, to bury in stead of limeqaver to the burier.44
But he calls it a “banal” solution. Instead he proposes a fourth option that
we read: Follow me and the let the waverers bury their dead. Now the
word metan is used for wavering, slow to decide and the like. Yet even
then the verse has a harsh meaning and can be construed to imply an in-
fraction of the law. In a way this brings us back to the first strategy of
reading it in a spiritualized sense. That such a spiritualized reading is pos-
sible within the wider context of the New Testament can be clear from
Paul’s usage of the terminus “dead” in a specific moral sense: we were
dead in our trespasses (Eph. 2:5), or the reference to the “living dead” in
1 Timothy 5:6.
All of these solutions hinge on the fact that the saying seems to be of a
general nature. Let all the dead bury their dead. And since the saying is in
each case interpreted as an isolated statement, its character of universal
wisdom saying is reinforced. The passage remains difficult, but that would
caution us to infer from it that a clear disobedience to the Torah is inten-
ded. It seems more likely that the context belongs in this case to the ori-
ginal tradition and that we have here an example of a saying directed at
the heart of the underlying attitude of the questioner. It does bring other
“follow-me”-statements to mind, like in the case of Mark 10, where the
young man with his zeal for the law is commanded to give up all his
wealth in order to follow Jesus. That exaggerated demand – never re-
peated as a general commandment – seems to fit the particular situation
of the questioner also. So I would be inclined to argue for the hyperbolic
and contextual character of the saying, and in that way referring to an ex-
aggerated commitment to family life on the part of the questioner, and an
equally exaggerated response on the part of Jesus. In that way however,
we do choose in favor of those who argued for the scandalous character
of the statement and have yet inferred from that the weakened position
that duty to Christ overrides all other duties, accepting all the weaknesses
that Sanders has pointed out for that position. Sanders mentions the re-
lationship with Mark 10=Matthew 19:16-30 that we have used above and
comes to the following conclusion:
“At least once Jesus was willing to say that following him superseded the
requirements of piety and the Torah. This may (sic!) show that Jesus was

43 Marcus Dodds, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Franeker, undated, p.

143.
44 Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, Oxford,
1967 (19461), p.207.
prepared, if necessary, to challenge the adequacy of the Mosaic dispens-
ation.”45
But I would still dispute that. Not the law as such is at stake in Matthew 8.
It is true that the requirements of the law are superseded by the require-
ments of the Kingdom. But Matthew had already made it clear that pre-
cisely this “higher righteousness” of the kingdom can be considered a ful-
fillment of the Torah and not its abrogation. (Matthew 5:17 – 20) Besides,
in his own application to become a pupil of Jesus (normally teacher would
invite students) it is the would-be disciple himself who invokes custom.
First to deal with all remaining family affairs, and then to follow the rabbi,
was common practice in response to the invitation. Does the saying re-
flect in that sense a (hyperbolic) evocation of the greatly different style of
discipleship that was required by Jesus? But if that is the case, it would
not be an infringement of Torah-law in the eyes of Matthew, but a con-
sequence of the unique authority of the Messianic teacher.
There is one possibility that needs mentioning here, but it is of a highly
speculative nature. Is it possible that Jesus intended to refute an exag-
gerated form of filial duty towards the dead? The problem is that we would
now have to reconstruct a context that is unavailable to us through the
text and cannot be ascertained with certainty from the remaining rabbinic
material. There is first of all no direct commandment to bury the dead in
the Torah. It is assumed on the basis of Genesis 23 and 49 that such a
practice was obligatory and in the case of the hanged criminal, burial
within one day is certainly commanded. (Deut. 21:22, 23) Yet in rabbinic
practice the obligation towards the dead was so highly esteemed that oth-
er duties came second. The priests were under Torah-obligation not to de-
file themselves by touching the dead except their own kinsmen, in which
case it was allowed, not commanded. (Lev. 21:1) The high priest was
even under the prohibition not to touch any dead, not even his father and
mother. The point of that being that the High priest, even more than the
ordinary priests, was to remain socially independent in order to express
the full ideal of life under the Torah. So the High priest was not allowed to
mourn ritually and publicly and not permitted to refrain from his services
during mourning. (Though he was allowed to rent his garment at the back
of the neck, where it could not be seen by others, and could follow the fu-
neral-train at a distance, BSanhedrin 18a)

45 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 255. From this relatively modest conclu-
sion Sanders without warning proceeds in his summary to declare: “We have
found one instance in which Jesus in effect, demanded transgression of the
law…” (p. 267) This conclusion is however unwarranted as we have explained in
our treatment of the matter.
If we connect the halakah on the priesthood in the case of mourning with
those other texts pertaining to the “social independence” of the followers
of Jesus we can see a common pattern here. We read e.g. in Matthew
10:35, 37 “..for I have come to set a man at variance with his father …He
who loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me”, cf. also Matth.
19:29, Luke 14:26. Can it be that Jesus here accepts himself as the func-
tional analogue of the “Messianic” High priest, whose disciples need to
share his condition of “social-ritual” purity, especially with regard to their
dealing with the dead? It would then be required of his disciples to break
away from all filial bonds that belong to the “Old Israel” in order to enter
into the higher righteousness of the messianic community. And especially
in the case of the natural obligations of burial (not directly commanded in
the Torah!) that were overridden by the concerns for the sanctity of the
priesthood anyway. In that case the verse can be read to mean: “Let
those who belong to the old order concern themselves with burying the
dead, but you as a disciple of the new Messianic King should concern
yourself with the sanctity of life without delay, as if you were high priests.”
C. Jesus and the Law in the Letter of James
Chapter 11

The letter of James

We turn now to a different layer of the NT traditions. We have seen so far,
that between Mark and Matthew there is a difference of opinion about the
weight that should be given to Jesus’ statements about the Law. Matthew
clearly favors a continuing role for the Torah and affirms at least a partial
affirmation of the Oral Tradition by Jesus. Mark however seems to stress
the messianic authority of Jesus over against the Jewish interpretation of
the Law and is further inclined to make a distance between Jesus and the
Torah. There is another text in the New Testament that gives support to a
continuing role for the Torah in the Christian Church. It has been over-
looked most of the time, precisely because it seemed so different from
Paul’s interpretation of the gospel.
It is a matter of consensus that the letter from James consists of a num-
ber of exhortations which show no clear order or principle of organization.
Because of this, and the lack of a formal ending, the “letter” is actually
thought to belong to the genre of paraenesis, which has no equivalent in
the New Testament apart from sections in other letters but is well attested
as a genre in Jewish literature. As is well known, Luther doubted its be-
longing to the canon on the basis of dogmatic considerations: the letter
does not speak about Jesus’ cross and resurrection, indeed mentions
Him only twice. And above all, as Luther understood it, the letter teaches
justification by works and not by faith. His critique echoed early misgiv-
ings. Only as late as A.D. 382 was the letter accepted as canonical in the
Roman Church, as it had already been by the Greek Church in A.D. 360.
The origin of the letter is clouded in mystery, particularly because there is
no trace of it in 2nd-century Christian literature. On grounds of canon his-
tory and its reception in the Church, it is obvious that the letter and its
piety did not play a great role in 2nd-century theology. Still, it does make
one wonder that a letter that so obviously contradicts a central theme of
Paul’s theology was given a place in the canon at all. Did it take so long to
devise a way to harmonize James and Paul? Or was there some kind of
anti-Paulinism that needed to establish itself first and then produced the
letter to give itself a canonical basis? It might have grown in stature dur-
ing the Marcionite controversy to serve as a counterweight to the excess-
ive Paulinism of that faction. That would mean its inclusion in the canon
was in response to an internal debate and neither due to its apostolic ori-
gin nor its widespread use in the Church.
It is held by many, especially in the Bultmann School, that the letter of
James is an early example of the moralizing teachings of the post-
Apostolic Church. That picture is simple and alluring. The historical frame-
work in which the letter is put provides a ready-made explanation for its
contents. It can then be seen as a pseudepigraphical work of a Jewish-
Christian faction that made use of Jewish paraenetical material which it
put into a Christianized context.46 Historically, that explanation runs some-
what like this: the era of the proclamation of the gospel of the risen Lord
Jesus Christ, the kerugma, intended to elucidate the divine act of deliver-
ance in Christ with a view to His imminent return, was then followed by a
period of consolidation and adaptation of the Church to the cultural envir-
onments in which it settled. With the expectation of Christ’s return fading,
a new imperative and morality came to be added to a gospel originally
free from law and moral prescriptions, mostly adapted from Jewish
sources.
Traces of such a “re-Judaization” were detected in Matthew and the Cath-
olic letters, which also betrayed Greek and Roman influences. The con-
clusion was drawn that this was a development that threatened the origin-
al gospel. The kerugma (preaching) of the Cross became overshadowed
by a moralist didache (teaching), by legalist ethical teachings, by an in-
creasing regulation of Church life and the growth of authoritarian institu-
tions, and at about the same time by apologetics, whereby the gospel
was “located” in the philosophy of the surrounding culture and took on
philosophical shapes alien to Paul’s message.
Against this appraisal we might argue that such a connection between the
narrative of salvation and moral law, each having some measure of inde-
pendence, is not without precedent, and there is sufficient exegetical ar-
gument to see moral paraenesis as more than a postscript to Paul’s theo-
logy. The pattern we find here was already firmly established in the Old
Testament, where salvation history and commandments are intertwined in
such a way that the redemptive act is remembered in order to provide a
foundation for ethical response, while at the same time the ethical re-
sponse puts the redemptive history into action. The commandments al-
ways referred back to the conditions that made them possible and mean-
ingful to obey, which is what the two first commandments (it is better to
speak of the “words” according to Jewish custom) of the Decalogue actu-
ally do explicitly. By proclaiming himself as the God that had liberated
slaves from Egypt to be a free nation before Him, God laid the perpetual
foundation for the fulfilling of those commandments that safeguarded the
life of the nation as a liberated people. Because the commandments of
the Decalogue are based on the liberty of those who accept them as com-
mandments and are not forced to do so, and on liberty, in the sense in
which shalom, perfect peace, and righteousness bring it about, as a goal

46 By adding 1:1 and 2:1 to a collection of ethical sayings.

of community life, it might be said that the liberating imperative followed
the indicative of having-been-liberated. The foundation of the covenant
was there, in the act of deliverance and the fulfillment of the promise, be-
fore the covenant-commitment.
That pattern of connection between salvation and ethics can be seen in
the New Testament as well. In the New Testament, Christ’s propitiatory
sacrifice on the Cross in a similar language and imagery lays the founda-
tion for a new covenant. The analogy between the Sermon on the Mount
and the giving of the law, which both constituted a new community and a
new covenant-commitment, is obvious and intentional. The higher right-
eousness of the followers of Christ is at once of the same kind as that of
Israel, and of a different nature because of the imminence of the King-
dom, i.e., the presence of the Messiah. There is an eschatological tension
given to obedience to the commandments, but it is obedience to them,
and not directly to Himself, that Christ is demanding. However, in Paul’s
theology it is not the freedom of the Christian to obey, but the power of
Christ in which the Christian participates, that seems to have become of
pivotal importance. Paul’s gospel did not try first and foremost to elucidate
the duties of man under this new Covenant, since to him this Covenant
was of a completely new nature. This in fact breaks away from the
schematics. Paul seems not so much to have grounded the imperative on
the indicative, but to take up all imperatives within the space of the actual
work of the Spirit, synthesizing both into one single thought: the indicative
of God’s triumph over sin and death.
So what does this picture of Paul’s ethics imply for such works as the let-
ter of James? The moral teachings of the 2nd-century Church are then
not seen as the corollary of salvation according to the pattern of the
Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount; they are not seen as the imper-
ative consequence of the indicative mood of salvation, but as a means of
escaping from its consequences. There is a tendency, originating in Paul
himself, and enhanced by the 16th-century Reformed reading of his let-
ters, to view the moral and exhortatory statements in the New Testament
as outside the context of salvation, as a possible relapse into a Judaism
that was abrogated by Christ. It is thought that one of the basic character-
istics of the new covenant is redemption out of slavery to the law, the very
same law that was described in Exodus 19 as the way of life of the liber-
ated community. On that basis, the strategy was developed to subsume
all exhortatory and paraenetical passages under the doctrine of justifica-
tion, making the latter to function as the ground and context of the former.
It is very much in the center of Pauline theology (in Bultmann’s view, e.g.)
to identify the deliverance that Christ brought with deliverance from the
judgment of the law. The law that formerly epitomized the road to liberty
has now, in the eschatological judgment, become its deadly enemy.
Paul’s teachings at one stage emphatically opposed the very form of the
external and written imperative, as we will see in our discussion of Gala-
tians. But it must be asked: why did he oppose the imperative, which one,
and to what purpose? It does seem to be the case that Paul denied a
specific way of obedience, a specific reduction of the Torah to an invent-
ory of concrete commandments. Each of the commandments would be
done because of one’s fear of judgment, or, positively, in one’s striving for
salvation. Salvation by works of the law, no matter whether we read that
as emphasizing the covenant markers (James Dunn stresses both cir-
cumcision and purity laws), or the ceremonial and moral commands as
single duties (mitzvoth), that scheme of salvation is rejected by Paul in no
uncertain terms, both in Galatians and in Romans.
But the result of our analysis in the chapters on Paul’s letters will be differ-
ent from what we find in the traditional Reformed view, which attributes
the expression “works of the law” to the Jewish (Pharisaic) mode of obed-
ience to God. In the classical view, there could hardly be a greater anti-
thesis than that between Paul’s teaching on ethics and early Judaism.
The life of the Spirit is not a life where we freely bind our will to the ex-
press will of God, i.e., it is not about formal obedience at all. In fact, the
whole idea of striving to perfection by submitting to rules is seen by Paul,
in this interpretation, as equal to aspiring to salvation “by works of the
law,” while in fact abrogating God’s salvation offer thereby. If we deny,
with the Lutheran Reformation, the possibility of obedience, all law is ab-
rogated. Law then can only be seen as “legalist,” i.e., as rules pertaining
to outward behavior, and as such it still has a negative purpose. The mo-
tivation to “evangelical” obedience must then be sought elsewhere. The
law, however, is outside of the “perfection of Christ,” and we have to obey
laws only because redemption has not yet been realized and because it is
proper for a Christian, while awaiting the Return of Christ, to obey the
government under which he happens to be living.
But that is not all that must be said. The same Reformation as it evolved
in Calvinism had other things to say about obedience and sanctification,
and there was another side to Paul to back it up. For Paul, too, righteous-
ness and sanctity are the defining traits of the new life in the Spirit. The
contents of righteousness in Paul are still derived both from his Jewish
training in the law and from Jesus’ messianic teachings on the law and
the pattern of Christ’s life. There is ample evidence of Paul’s referring to
Christ’s teachings in a way that is peculiar to Jewish tradition, i.e. as a
Halakah. So Paul is certainly providing a vision of righteous behavior
above and beyond duty to secular government and compliance with dom-
inating social virtues. But righteousness in Paul’s view is not “done” by
acting in conformity with rules, but acquired through grace in a life of con-
templation of Christ, by participating in the drama of His life, death and re-
surrection, in a change of our attitudes that leads to a change of behavior
from the inside out. Sanctification for Paul was more a matter of participa-
tion and transformation in the efficacy of the Spirit and the Church than of
abiding by a set of rules.
All of which leaves us with the difficult problem of what to do with the un-
deniable presence of moral and legal (halakhic) teachings within the Pau-
line corpus, and indeed in the whole of the New Testament. The most
common solution is the dominant attitude we began with: the kerugma ex-
plains what salvation is about, the moral teachings describe, indicative,
not imperative, the life of faith that results from hearing the kerugma and
submitting to its power. But it seems wrong to simply discard the exhortat-
ory parts of Paul’s writings as inconsequential to the nature of his doc-
trine. That doctrine is explained not in a theoretical discourse and as
standing on its own, but in a specific pastoral context in which the nature
of a particular Christian community is at stake. The doctrine is given in or-
der to establish a proper view of the practical life, and the exhortation
therefore is at the summit of Paul’s texts. Paul wants obedience to
Christ’s commandments, for which the entire body of doctrine serves as
preparation. So we must delve again into the nature and grounds for the
exhortatory elements in Paul’s letters and not decide in advance that
commandment and imperative in Paul are secondary and the indicative is
by default.
To take this supersession of indicative over imperative as our basic prin-
ciple has consequences also for the criteria we use to evaluate the histor-
ic development of these moral teachings. The closer they seem to a Jew-
ish attitude of “works of righteousness,” the closer they are either to a pre-
Christian level, or to a post-Pauline Judaization movement that signaled a
return to these previous attitudes. If the imperative does not appeal to
conscious (and by modern standards autonomous) liberty but can be in-
terpreted as a descriptive rather than a prescriptive rule, it seems closer
to Paul, and therefore to the “original” gospel. If it conforms to the struc-
ture of a commandment, if it in any way deals with obedience in a strict
sense or implies a condition for salvation, it is branded as possibly legal-
istic, a relapse into Judaism, a moralizing attitude, in contrast to the gos-
pel of deliverance.47
In that manner, a schematics of what we feel the historic development

47 Both of these: rules (commandments) and observations about the (mor-

al) nature of things can be found in sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels.
Matthew 5:44 is an example of a commandment, but the main point in Matthew
5:32 is an observation about moral nature. Though stated in the indicative, it
does imply a rule of behavior.
must have been, based upon our understanding of the polemics between
Paul and Judaism in Romans, takes precedence over the actual labor of
exegesis. It betrays a monolithic view of what constitutes the revelation in
the New Testament, even if worked out so subtly as in the search for the
core message of the gospel as canon within the canon, the “center” of the
New Testament. We must respectfully resist this tendency to find a single
harmonious picture of the one truth of the gospel. Such a procedure must
inevitably lead to a distortion of the picture of conflicting voices within the
body of the New Testament and to our ignoring the vast amount of moral
exhortation that is present in Paul: a procedure that can hardly be called
satisfactory. How would we deal with the contradiction between our recon-
structed Paul’s emphasis on the indicative of God’s acting in Christ and
the perspective of “salvation by works” that is present in James? First we
have to remove the layers of Paulinism that James’s letter has accrued, in
order to read and evaluate the text as formally equal to Paul in apostolic
authority and as connected to Paul’s theology through its inner contents.
Chapter 12

The Paulinist framework

A standard solution has been to harmonize the conflicting statements, in
this case the letter of James with what was considered Paul’s central doc-
trine of justification. To illustrate this procedure we could briefly examine
the commentary of C. Leslie Mitton.
Paul, for instance, in Rom. 3:28 wrote: "We hold that a man is justified by
faith apart from works of law"; whereas James in 2:24 writes: "You see a
man is justified by works and not by faith alone." From the general view-
point that defined canonicity in terms of the theory of inspired scripture,
this is of course standard procedure in the Reformation. E.g. this pas-
sage from Calvin’s Institutions (Book II, ch. XVII, 11, p. 941) 11. “But they
say that we have a still more serious business with James, who in ex-
press terms opposes us. For he asks, “Was not Abraham our father justi-
fied by works?” and adds “You see then how that by works a man is justi-
fied, and not by faith only,” (James 2:21, 24.) What then? Will they en-
gage Paul in a quarrel with James? If they hold James to be a servant of
Christ, his sentiments must be understood as not dissenting from Christ
speaking by the mouth of Paul. By the mouth of Paul the Spirit declares
that Abraham obtained justification by faith, not by works; we also teach
that all are justified by faith without the works of the law. By James the
same Spirit declares that both Abraham’s justification and ours consists of
works, and not of faith only. It is certain that the Spirit cannot be at vari-
ance with himself.”
In addition, the solution then lies in changing the meaning of the words:
“Those who are justified by true faith prove their justification by obedience
and good works, not by a bare and imaginary semblance of faith. In one
word, he is not discussing the mode of justification, but requiring that the
justification of believers shall be operative” (ibidem, 13). Of course,
James is not saying that at all, as we will see. He continues:
“Since this issue is of such vital importance, especially to those who rep-
resent the evangelical tradition within the Church, we must begin by trying
to clarify the meaning of these three words in the New Testament, and in-
quire if James and Paul use them in precisely the same sense or with
some variation of meaning. What superficially appears to be a blatant
contradiction between Paul and James, may arise from a difference in the
meaning [italics mine] they assign to these words.”48
Therefore, the harmony between the two conflicting statements is sought
48 Leslie Mitton, James, p. 102
by examining how these words are used. Of course, such an examination
is based largely on the interpretation already present of the conflicting
sentences to begin with, and on the presupposition that there could never
be a real conflict. Some remarks are in order. In the first place, the mean-
ing of a word does not depend solely on the dictionary. The context needs
to be considered. And if it is already decided that Paul’s letters provide the
framework for the whole of New Testament theology, that will provide the
context in which the meanings of the words in James are being ex-
amined.
Furthermore, if it can be found that Paul and James used the expressions
“justification” and “works of the law” with different meanings, this of
course does not automatically mean that they are not contradictory. If
James was written in a time when justification by faith and not by works
had become a Church slogan, the intentional variation of the meaning
and scope of application could be construed as a form of criticism in itself.
Precisely if James had a different view on the matter, he would use the
same words with a different meaning, for to use different words would
have implied the harmony or addition that those that represent the evan-
gelical tradition would be so keen on finding.
However, even if we agree that the difference of usage would imply a pos-
sible harmony between James and Paul, the question remains what kind
of difference we are talking about. Is it indeed at least partially a differ-
ence because of the context in which Paul and the writer of James stood?
At one moment, Leslie Mitton does incorporate into his examination the
very important empirical background and context of the letters, but de-
cides to take Paul’s letter as a polemic against an already identified Jew-
ish-Christian heretical opponent:
“A further consideration must be borne in mind, which will at any rate
partly explain the discrepancy. The kind of error Paul is seeking to correct
in Romans and Galatians is very different from the error that James is
resisting, and our statement of a truth varies according to the error we are
opposing. If we ourselves were arguing against antinomians, who be-
lieved that moral conduct in a Christian was of little importance, our argu-
ments would be very different from those we should use if our opponents
were "legalists" who believed that good conduct alone secured all the be-
nefits of religion. So we must remember that in general Paul is urging his
case against Judaizers, who believed salvation depended, in part at any
rate, on doing the works of the law, whereas James was ranged against
antinomians who believed that inward faith was all that mattered.” 49
Nevertheless, this argument is circular. It presupposes that we can first of

49 Ibid., p. 104
all “invent” the audience that James and Paul were talking about by refer-
ring to our own theory of the developments in the early Church, and that
on that basis we can then argue how Paul and James must have applied
the words that we are interested in so passionately (implying that we for
the time being forget our own doctrinal interests in the matter). The dis-
tinction between antinomians and legalists is already a product of a read-
ing of Paul, since that kind of opposition is peculiar to a mixed Jewish and
pagan Church where the issue of the continuing validity of the law is alive.
If James is writing to Jewish Christians who have only marginally been in
contact with Paulinist teachings, the issue could not have been stated in
that manner at all. So then Leslie Mitton can arrive at the conclusion, that
the apparent difference between Paul and James can be explained
largely as a difference in the use of terms.
For Paul justification is God’s present act in Christ of setting right the rela-
tionship with Him that man has broken. The faith he commends through
which this takes place is the total committal of life, in trust and obedience,
to God in Christ. The works, whose futility for putting us right with God he
criticizes, are the detailed observance of rules governing ritual actions as
well as moral behavior.
For James the "works" he commends are acts of love and charity to our
fellows in obedience to the Spirit of Christ. The faith whose inadequacy he
exposes is just an intellectual assent to an article of belief, though it calls
itself faith. Justification is not just God’s immediate act of restoring man to
right relationships with Him, but involves also the final verdict on a man’s
life. 50
However, not surprisingly, this notion of “works” that Mitton derives from
James is what the Paulinist writer of Ephesians had in mind when writing
about “good works.” The rest of Paul’s reference to “works” is taken as
short hand for “works of the law.” And so on the basis of a few occur-
rences of a positive use of “works” in the Pauline corpus, Leslie Mitton,
with obvious relief, comes to the conclusion that this must be the sense in
which James used it. It must be, indeed, if James and Paul are to be har-
monized. But why would they need to be? If it is argued that such “works”
could never mean obedience to “ritual” requirements or to straight rules of
behavior, they would then have to refer to general attitudes of love and
mercy and to spontaneous acts arising from these. The harmonization
then is complete when Paul and James can be seen as two sides of the
same coin:
“Paul’s emphasis is this: A man is justified by faith in Christ, and this can-
not but produce in him good works, that is loving actions to others.

50 Ibid., p. 107
James’s emphasis is: True faith by which a man is justified proves itself in
Christ-like conduct towards others, and if such conduct fails to appear,
what claims to be faith is shown to be not faith at all. The emphasis varies
because the two apostles are addressing themselves to different kinds of
errors.” 51
Another kind of solution is to affirm the contradiction, but, by denying an-
tiquity to the letter of James, to deny also its authority. That was in es-
sence the attitude to the letter that Luther had, and it obviously posits the
primacy of the Pauline theology. So we need not go into that now.
A third option can be to bring out the antithesis but simply declare that
Paul’s doctrine is “much deeper”, which does not do anything but explain
what moral theory the speaker is adhering to. Or again, one could soften
the antithesis by accepting that James’s teaching on salvation was dia-
metrically opposed to a “popular” and misunderstood Paulinism, but then
defend the idea that James attacks these misunderstandings of Paul’s
doctrine of justification along the lines that Paul himself had to contend
with in Romans 6.
Of course, all of these reading strategies are based on reflections about
the reconstructed historical situation and not directly on the internal evid-
ence. All of this originates in the basic presupposition that only doctrines
that move away from Judaism, as it was understood in the pagan Church
after the 2nd century, are evidence of Christian authenticity. This attitude
can be illustrated easily too. To quote one more commentary, E.C. Black-
man put it like this:
“James stands much closer to the Jewish tradition than Paul does, though
he has not reflected upon its teaching very profoundly. His cast of mind
was not reflective, and that is why his statements about faith lack preci-
sion. He attempts no definition of faith such as we have at the beginning
of the classic chapter in Hebrews: FAITH IS THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR,
THE PROVING OF THINGS NOT SEEN [emph. Blackman’s] (Heb. 11.1). We are left
to infer from James 2 that faith for James means (a) a general belief in
God (v. 19), (b) the basic confession or loyalty of Christians (v. 1). Paul,
who had also been much influenced by the Jewish tradition, and at deep-
er levels of his own being, was a much more independent thinker and he
developed further away from Jewish presuppositions. This is quite clear in
his teaching about faith and righteousness. His radical distinction
between faith and works, and his depreciation of the latter, was a new de-
parture. For most Christians this was too advanced a doctrine. It could so
easily be made to imply that moral effort did not matter. Paul defends him-
self against this misunderstanding in Rom. 6 and elsewhere, but certainly

51 Ibid, p. 108
did not carry all Christians with him. James is a spokesman of the anxiety
the majority felt.” 52
Up to now, the only framework we have encountered involves the distinc-
tion between kerugma and didache, between the indicative of redemption
and the imperative of gratitude. James’s paraenesis is subsumed under
what is supposed to be Paul’s un-Jewish position on works and obedi-
ence. In the next chapter we will have to get a closer look at this problem
of the relationship between kerugma and didache.

52 E.C. Blackman, The Epistle of James, London, 1957, p. 100. Blackman af-
firms the antithesis, but then simply prefers Paul above James.
Chapter 13

Casuistry and moralism

12.1. Rudolph Bultmann and New Testament ethics
The third section of the third part of Bultmann’s Theology of the New
Testament is entitled: “The Problem of the Christian Way of Life.”53 It
contains three paragraphs numbered 59-61, which deal with, success-
ively: The understanding of the imperative, The contents of the demand
and its relationship to different areas of life, and Discipline. It looks like a
promising place to begin our investigation of the specific shape of Christi-
an obedience as depicted by James. There are good reasons to include
Bultmann’s description of James in our study. Bultmann shows a decisive
interest in the Pauline version of the gospel, in fact makes it into the defin-
ing expression of it. That approach is congruent with major strands of the
Reformed tradition.
To Bultmann, the basic problem of Christian ethics as it was defined by
Paul was that of the tension between the indicative of the new life and the
imperative of the old world. As long as the new life must be lived within
the conditions of the old world, the imperative was (or seemed to be) ne-
cessary. The new life in itself and as such is therefore supposed to be
beyond any imperatives.54
According to Bultmann, it was Paul who solved this problem by his new
understanding of Christian freedom. It meant being freed from the power
of sin and death and receiving the gift of the Spirit as a “wonderful force”
that secondarily becomes a standard of Christian life.55 Because we live
the new life, a Christian is freed from all human conventions and values of
a social or a moral nature, including the Jewish law.56 Therefore, the
Christian lives the indicative of the new life, while still having to deal with
the old imperatives, of which he knows, however, that they are void and
without force.
Now, this may be in accordance with Paul’s gospel as explained in Gala-

53 R. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 1953.

54 The imperative, according to Dunn, follows the indicative in two separate
forms. The one expresses the continuing sustaining grace of God in sanctifica-
tion and charisma, the other is an appeal to human responsibility. The latter is
denied by Bultmann, thought to be a part of the old world, the former is not called
imperative at all, but interpreted to be an integral part of the indicative event.
55 Cf. R. Bultman, Theologie, p. 332, #38
56 R. Bultman, Theologie, p. 339, #39
tians and Romans, and we will deal with the thesis regarding Paul later
on, but was it also in accordance with the gospel of Christ? Bultmann ap-
parently thought so, since he took some pains to show that Jesus said
approximately the same thing.
We must raise the question of whether Bultmann ascribes to Jesus what
apparently was his own conviction, grounded in his reading of Paul, that
the Torah was merely a human institution. He makes Jesus say that the
only positive element of God’s will is the demand of love, which surpasses
all legal demands, specifically those of a negative, prohibitive nature. All
of the cultic and ritual prescriptions of the law had been abolished by Je-
sus.57 Because Jesus’ preaching resulted from the unity of the eschatolo-
gical and moral kerugma, making the expectation of the Kingdom into a
present attitude, the fulfillment of God’s law could never be a real condi-
tion for participation in the coming redemption. Obedience to that law
while awaiting a new and universal condition of life could only be called a
provisional situation, soon to be changed.58
Bultmann meets with objections by arguing, e.g., that although Jesus
does speak of the condition of obedience to enter the Kingdom, He at the
same time confirms that this condition has an inner relationship to the gift
of redemption. That is to say, Jesus’ ethical demand is not just meant for
those who await the Kingdom while they are waiting, it is not a demand
that we follow that will be without validity when the Kingdom arrives. It ex-
presses the real commitment to the coming Kingdom as if it were realized
here and now, which is the Kingdom where love will reign supreme, by
demanding now what will be universally realized then. It is an ethos of an-
ticipation, an effort to act under specific circumstances ”as if” that King-
dom had already arrived.
It is emphatically not meant as a code of commandments for everyday life
as such. Its relevance therefore is limited to what we might call inspired
situations. Only those who encounter God’s demand in the specific cir-
cumstances where they meet their neighbor and then respond to that de-
mand are prepared for the coming Kingdom. The keeping of the law, or
any other rule of behavior, has no place whatsoever in this scheme of
things because it too belongs to the old order of imperatives. Any rule
which by its nature can be considered a demand for obedience under
threat of judgment, which is given to my autonomous freedom to obey it
or discard it, belongs to the old world. Precisely in that sense, Bultmann
thinks, Jesus came to abrogate the law.
This picture of Jesus’ relationship to the law is harder to defend now than

57 R. Bultman, Theologie, p. 16, #2.3

58 R. Bultman, Theologie, p. 19, #2.5
it was when it was conceived. James Dunn has argued that Jesus’ appar-
ent criticism of the law in the gospel of Matthew “was well within the range
of the then acceptable debate regarding the interpretation and application
of the law.” 59
Dunn makes a convincing effort to portray Jesus’ preaching as now deal-
ing primarily with the issues of inclusion and exclusion concentrated in
matters of ritual purity and table fellowship, and he indicates that Jesus
took issue with the law as far as it could be used fictionally, to separate
the sinners and the righteous in terms of social belonging instead of the
real concerns of the law.
There are problems connected with this view. The gospel records how Je-
sus did not lift the restrictions between Jews and gentiles: his disciples
should not go among the gentiles nor the Samaritans (Matt. 10:5-6) and
His mission was only to the lost sons of Israel (Matt. 15:24). With regard
to the major identity markers in Jewish law: Sabbath, circumcision, and
dietary laws, we find Jesus disputing only how Sabbath should be ob-
served, not disputing that it was to be observed, not arguing about cir-
cumcision at all, and perhaps arguing only for a deeper understanding of
what the symbol of food laws actually refers to (cf. Dunn, 1991, 114). But
even if we were to decide differently on such issues, it is inescapable that
Dunn and others are right in stating that Jesus did not abrogate the law,
and indeed saw His mission as the fulfillment of the law.
Bultmann is right only in this sense, that to Jesus one of the major social
effects of the law, the demarcation between the righteous and the sinners
in Israel, becomes relocated with reference to the actual doing of the will
of God. It is not enough to belong to the good party or family. But Jesus
never removed the demarcation between people that arises from obedi-
ence to the moral side of the law, even as He crossed these lines to reach
people who had been marginalized, nor did he abrogate the cultic and
ritual elements of the law. And, according to Dunn, Jesus did not lift the
even more important demarcation between Israel and the gentiles. So, in
effect, to be part of Israel and not of the gentile nations still mattered to
him.
Of course Bultmann did not need to have Jesus say what a Paulinist un-
derstanding of the gospel demanded, since to Bultmann a theology of the
New Testament is not about Jesus’ teachings at all. It exists because Je-
sus Christ is the object of a kerugma that became the foundation of the
Church. The historical Jesus is merely a presupposition of Christian faith
because it is a presupposition of the New Testament itself. He therefore
did not need to devise a harmonization strategy.

59 James D.G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, p. 102.

We need to keep this in mind, because we have here a pattern of exeges-
is that is quite dominant in many modern forms of Protestant thought.
Starting from an understanding of the Pauline gospel, Jesus must be
shown to lay the foundations for it. Differences are explained either by re-
ferring to Jesus’ ethics as a “moral code for the interim-period” (which
Bultmann rightfully rejects, but apparently without accepting its ongoing
validity as commandments, as logic would seem to dictate), or by taking
the Sermon on the Mount as a radicalization of the law to impress upon
men that they are unable to keep it, or by arguing that Jesus’ message
was to point out the discontinuity of God and human values in order to re-
lativize all of them.60
We will return to this issue later, but we will concentrate now on a further
question: on the basis of Bultmann’s full acceptance of the Pauline gospel
as the standard of the message of the entire New Testament, how does
he view the elements of a more “moralizing” tradition in the New Testa-
ment? We have seen how he reinterpreted Jesus’ message in the gos-
pels as in line with Pauline theology, but how does he view other wit-
nesses?
For Bultmann this question must be rephrased. The question should be
whether the Church was able to hold on to the Pauline solution. Let’s
quote Bultmann here in full to get a grasp of how he approaches this mat-
ter:
“The question was whether this understanding was held on to; whether
Christian freedom was understood as the freedom to obey and obedience
itself as gift of grace or of the Spirit, or that obedience was seen as an
achievement and therefore as a condition to be met in order to acquire
salvation and the imperative would again receive the character of a law in
the sense in which Paul’s doctrine of justification had destroyed it, the
character of a way to salvation.”61
We must look carefully at the way the dilemma is set up. Of course, it is
obvious that it presupposes the Pauline solution. Bultmann develops
Paul’s theology to show that a life in the spirit was inconsistent with any
kind of obedience, because obedience implies an achievement of the will
of some kind. The Reformation teachers developed their anthropological
notions with the aid of the concepts of merit, the fall, predestination; Bult-
mann, in a more modern fashion, speaks about self-centeredness and
egotism. Both presuppose that the reception of God’s grace and the activ-
ity of obedience are incompatible, unless obedience itself can be seen as
a gift from God. The frame of mind necessary for obedience as such is

60 Cf. J.H. Yoder, Politics, 1972, p. 7

61 R. Bultmann, Theologie, pp. 544-545.
both impossible (because man is unable to conquer sin and death on its
own) and contrary to the gospel, because the latter’s essence is about
what God sovereignly has done for man. Furthermore, it is presupposed
that the advocates of obedience must necessarily also hold that it is a
condition of salvation, lying outside it, as Bultmann stated in his reflection
on Jesus’ teaching, and that their position has been successfully refuted
by Paul’s doctrine, even if the gospels should attribute to Christ an em-
phasis on obedience.
Let us look a little closer at one specific issue. It is one of Bultmann’s con-
tentions that the commandment to love one’s neighbor “according to its
essence does not allow explicitly formulated positive determinations, un-
less it becomes law again.” It would therefore provide a prime example of
the difference between Christ’s moral exhortation, based on the indicative
of God’s actions in history, and the attitude that strives for obedience to
rules and commandments. The inability to come up with a casuistry is
taken as an indication that we deal with a major moral command, and it is
argued that such moral commands are the core essence of Christian eth-
ics. Bultmann gives the following reasons:
Matthew 5:43-48 shows that there are no limits as to the identity of the
neighbor: it includes also enemies. No limits means: no casuistry is
needed to define them.
There is no limit to forgiveness, as is shown by the injunction to forgive
70 times 7, i.e., always, according to Matt. 18:21. So here as well no ca-
suistry is needed to define exactly how much forgiveness must be given.
No advance knowledge is needed to determine the situation in which it
must be applied, in every instance where the need of the brother shows
itself, one can know what to do, as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
And if we do not have to understand the nature of the specific context
within which we practice this commandment, casuistry is out also on this
third count.
So would a positive determination of the commandment to love imply a
limitation as to who my neighbor is, how many times I should forgive him,
or define the range of situations in which I should and others in which I
should not come to his aid? Now that of course represents a valid position
insofar as we are talking here about a moral demand. In Judaism there
are commandments that have “no measure” also, and therefore are not
interpreted through casuistry to define their limits. Far from being an ele-
ment of anti-Jewish thought, this is what Christianity took over from Juda-
ism. The commandment to love thy neighbor has no casuistry attached to
it in that sense, and is not limited to the “brother.“
12.2 The case for casuistry
But Bultmann’s position at the same time exaggerates this characteristic.
It does not mean that the commandment has no inner determinations as
to application and universality whatsoever that would define it as a char-
acter trait or as a virtue. The commandment is not given without a determ-
ining context, and it can still have the character of a rule of behavior, ex-
emplified through the paradigm, as is the case, e.g., with the parable of
the good Samaritan. In the first place, the commandment states: love
your neighbor as thyself. This “as thyself” surely implies that a limitation is
present that is not present in the first of the two great commandments,
which is to love your God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and all thy
strength. It means that I should make the well-being of my neighbor count
for as much as my own, based not on the personality of this neighbor but
on the very fact that God commanded me to do so (“I am the LORD” is
the motivational clause at the end of the verse in Leviticus 19:18). The
love for that God and the full acceptance of His sovereignty over all
people is then a precondition of the practical caring love for one’s neigh-
bor, because it allows me to be motivated toward showing loving-kind-
ness even to neighbors that I do not love in the sense that there is some
kind of sympathetic harmony between them and me. In that way, both the
motivational clause and the addition “as oneself” imply an internal qualific-
ation of the commandment, even beyond the qualifiers that are in the con-
text. The same goes for the contextual meaning of the passage in Levitic-
us, since one may argue that all the prohibitions before it are summarized
in Lev. 19:18b. The commandment in Jesus’ context therefore implies a
halakah, a behavioral strategy for expressing one’s identity as a follower
of Christ, and not a general moral virtue without any context.
Let us take an even closer look. That the commandment to love is without
any limiting determination in this sense is also a Jewish concept, as we
have stated. That is perfectly clear with regard to the practical side of its
execution, which is called: charity or loving-kindness. In the Mishnah
tractate Peah it is stated:
These are the things which have no fixed measure (she’ur), the corners of
the field, and the first fruits, and the three festival offerings brought on ap-
pearing before the Eternal, and charity [gemilut chasidim, i.e., practical
help with money or personal service to all men of all classes – RAV] and
the study of the Torah.62
Charity is mentioned immediately after that as something “the fruit of
62 MPeah 1:1, tr. Philip Blackman (Mishnayot, Gateshead, 1990)
which a man enjoys in this world and the stock of which remains for him
in the world to come.”63 No one therefore can state that he complied with
the demand of charity in full, there is no limit to it.
The first element, that of universal application, is not so clearly present as
it is in Lev. 19:18. Since the same verse speaks about the “sons of your
people,” the neighbor might be the Jewish neighbor. This impression is
strengthened by the fact that 19:33-34 speaks about love for the resident
stranger, which might indicate that the categories of neighbor and
stranger were mutually exclusive. In later times as well, the command-
ment was seen to refer in principle only to fellow Jews, but there are strik-
ing examples of a more universal application of this verse in the early
commentary on Leviticus called the Siphra.64 Most importantly, the verse
could be construed that way in a 1st-century environment. We must note,
however, that the concept of neighbor still refers to someone who comes
into contact, who is nearby. To love thy neighbor can never mean: to love
all mankind, or to love humanity. That degree of universality would make it
quite meaningless and abstract.
Furthermore, such qualifying determinations were possible because the
basic concept was not that of “love” in a modern sense of the word. The
verse in its Hebrew form suggests that practical aid was intended, since it
does not say love thy neighbor (ahavta et re’eicha) but act charitably to-
ward thy neighbor (ahavta le-re’eicha) which indicates a practical service
in connection with the specific needs of this neighbor. Sometimes the
concern for the welfare of non-Jews is expressed in connection to the
promotion of peace among men, maybe as an extension of Lev. 19:9, 10
and 23:22, cf. Peah 1:2: making peace between a man and his fellow
(chaver). Jesus mentions the commandment of Lev. 19 in three places
with the express purpose of defining the intent of the law (Matt. 19:19,
22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31), though it is not clear from the treatment in
Luke 10 that Jesus did in fact choose to define “neighbor” beyond the re-
striction to the Jewish neighbor that seems implicit in Lev. 19.
We must not forget that, even there, the commandment to love the neigh-
bor seems to sum up morally what has been determined legally, and in
the form of prohibitions before that. The positive form of the moral com-
mand does not need to exceed on its own the scope of the command-
ments and prohibitions in which it was expressed in a more legal fashion
and context. In other words: only on the assumption that all casuistic de-
terminacy is in itself incompatible with the very nature of a moral com-
mand can it be said to be prima facie evident that the moral form ex-

63 Ibid., 1:2.
64 Cf. Siphra 19:18, Pirkei Avot 1:12, 6:1. See also Encyclopedia Judaica, XI,
530.
cludes any determinacy in rules of behavior. There might be another reas-
on that we have the explanation of neighborly love in this paradigmatic
fashion.
That Jesus used the example of the Samaritan is not that surprising, con-
sidering what we learned from Dunn: that Jesus was intent on erasing the
boundaries between the different social groups within Israel. So the
Samaritan, who is excluded from the life of Israel as a sectarian but does
not have the same status as a non-Jew, has certainly been taken up into
the definition of the neighbor against that exclusivist tendency. But we
must conclude that neither the Torah, nor 1st- and 2nd-century Judaism,
nor the text of the gospels applies love for the neighbor in the sense of
the boundless and indeterminate universal love for mankind that Bult-
mann credits it with. Love for the neighbor, within Jesus’ ethics, is the
kingdom strategy of doing works of kindness to enemies that erases
enmity and restores the unity of God’s people. The love for the neighbor
does not transcend but presupposes a living community for which it be-
came a strategy of responding to outsiders. To Israel, this meant a re-
sponse to enemies from without; for the Church that consisted of Jews
and gentiles, it remained a strategy for dealing with non-believers. The
status aparte of the community as the defining ethical situation is not lifted
or changed.
So we contend we have no direct evidence that Jesus extended the prin-
ciple of Lev. 19 to include all men. On the contrary, there are old tradi-
tions that reflect Jesus’ reluctance to transcend the boundary of Israel.
Luke (7:1-10=Matt. 8:5-13,Q) makes it clear that a certain amount of per-
suasion was necessary to get Jesus to go to the centurion’s house to cure
his slave, who might have been himself a Jew. The meeting with the Syro-
Phoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30 also shows a reluctance on Jesus’
part to reach out to the gentiles.
Nevertheless, we do find a possible universal scope in Jesus’ command-
ment to love one’s enemy (Luke 6:27) which implies practical and person-
al service again, since we have an easily detectable Hebrew parallelism
here: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” The enemy
here, however, is not simply the Roman occupier, but all those who stand
outside one’s social circle, unlike the resident stranger (ger toshav) who
has a status within it. So in the commandment to love the enemy, is Jesus
moving beyond any particularism into the kind of universalism that Bult-
mann expects? But there is a provision under Torah which gives the
basis for that. In Ex. 23:4, 5 we read:
If thou meet thine enemy’s (‘oiev) ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt
certainly bring it back to him. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee
(shonei) lying under its burden, thou mayest not allow thyself to leave it
to him, but must forsake everything and hasten to its aid.
Enemy here is the translation of ‘oiev, indicating someone who in deeds
has done you real harm or belongs to a group that has done so. In the
more specific circumstances mentioned here of a possibility of damage to
the enemy’s livelihood, help is required, even to the point of “forsaking
everything.” This is of course a positive qualification to the commandment
to “love” one’s neighbor: if the neighbor is an “enemy” (socially or nation-
ally defined) his well-being is in your care in those circumstances where
you have actually have come to be in the position that ordinarily would be
filled by the friends and family of your enemy.
Can we say that Jesus’ commandment in Luke 6 goes beyond that? It
does sound like an extension of the commandment of Ex. 23:4-5 in the
sense that it contains more than actions on behalf of the enemy’s prop-
erty, even when his livelihood depends upon it. The specific acts men-
tioned in Luke 6 define specific circumstances in which this love for the
enemy is to be executed.
To him that smites thee on the cheek, offer also the other, to show that
you do not play the game of violence, ending the spiral of force and
thereby disarming the situation, changing it from a war into a human en-
counter. The specific situation here of course is that of an outright chal-
lenge by the enemy.
And from him that would take away thy garment, forbid not the body-coat
also, a strategy intended to make a theft into a voluntary act of assistance
on your part. Resisting the thief with violence would start a conflict which
would probably end up with greater harm than implied in the theft. The
voluntary act of assistance disarms the whole situation and possibly
shames the assailant. Here the situation is that of an enemy who acts out
of his/her own needs and because of that harms your property directly
and you indirectly.
To everyone that asks of thee, give, since possessions are there for the
purpose of serving others. The situation here is that of the enemy behav-
ing himself as a “neighbor” in asking your assistance. By affirming him in
that role and lending the required assistance, he might very well become
a “neighbor.” Jesus is here giving the same command as in Ex. 23:4, but
now as applied to specific circumstances of the 1st century in the per-
spective of the coming Kingdom. The intent is now not only to behave
“properly” toward the enemy by showing that in principle his well-being is
your concern, but to act in such a way that the animosity is actually trans-
formed into brotherly relations. Jesus explains and uses the Torah as a
messianic tool without transcending its meaning.
There is, we contend, no necessity to maintain that Jesus here abrogated
the law or exceeded it in its contents. The commandment to love one’s
neighbor is explained by Jesus very much in keeping with the Torah and
its provisions, and certainly as allowing for positive determinations as to
the scope and method of its application. It is the eschatological situation
that changes the way the commandment is applied. But its application fol-
lows ordinary hermeneutic principles nonetheless. Bultmann’s third point:
that there is no knowledge needed as to the situations in which it is ap-
plied, is therefore incorrect in principle. In all of this, a precise grasp of the
intent of the rule and the specific circumstances is necessary. It is not a
matter of simply responding to someone’s needs, nor of showing sym-
pathy and concern to all others without qualifications. Such a command-
ment would be considered too general, and even beyond human capabil-
ity. Bultmann’s assertion that the negative merely helps us understand
the purely positive and universal nature of the commandment is unten-
able, in particular because it rests on the assumption that the purpose of
the law is for judgment only, and that it therefore must make excessive
demands. Other examples show this as well. Paul’s statement in Romans
13:10 (Love does not harm the brother) is without meaning if no thought
is given to the situation to which it applies and the conditions of it.
Bultmann maintains that the Pauline solution is still present, though
weakened, in Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter, and even more
weakened in the other letters and early patristic literature. Everywhere he
sees a return to legalism (with the exception of Ignatius who shows the
first traces of sacramentalism). Legalism does still incorporate the doc-
trine of extrinsic salvation to an extent; it still accepts that grace is a ne-
cessary condition for ethics. But instead of affirming that grace is all-suffi-
cient and thereby reducing ethics to participation in the life, death and re-
surrection of Christ, it considers the latter to be a renewal of man, who
becomes capable of acquiring future redemption by way of his own obedi-
ence to law. Grace then restores man’s capacity for ethics instead of re-
placing it. Legalism fails to see that grace is a sufficient condition for eth-
ics because, in it, the new situation of man under evangelical obedience
is defined. It fails to go beyond acceptance of grace as a necessary con-
dition.
Bultmann sees the cause of this development in a weakening of the
Church’s understanding of the radical power of Sin over man as com-
pared to Paul’s. Salvation is now understood as the acquisition of a prop-
er understanding of God by the heathens, or as redemption from Death.
He then goes on to enumerate the loss of specific Pauline concepts that
contributed to it: the notions of sin and flesh as personified powers, the
opposition of spirit and flesh, righteousness primarily as an attribute of
God, to which might be added the notion of faith (pistis) as a force coming
from outside of man (if faith is considered a gift of God, Phil. 1:29, and not
the act of faithful obedience, as in Rom. 1:8). After Paul, faith became the
entrance to a life of moral pursuits. “The Church is under way to slide into
a religious moralism.” It begins to express the newness of Christian life as
living under a “new law” that sets demands of righteousness
(dikaioomata). The next question must be: what then are these demands
of righteousness for the Christian in the post-Pauline theology of the early
Church? And is Bultmann’s diagnosis correct, that this development rep-
resents a loss of the original gospel?
Bultmann discusses this matter in par. 60 of the Theological Dictionary of
the New Testament, called “The Contents of the Demand.” First of all, the
Church’s late 1st-century ethics is determined by the awareness of parti-
cipating in the Church, of not being of this world. (It seems to be axiomat-
ic in Bultmann that this affirmation of a separate, redeemed community is
a return to Jewish legalism.) That is why the ethical demand is primarily
phrased in the negative. New converts are called upon to purify and sanc-
tify themselves and to flee from all worldly and fleshly desires. This gave
rise to a paraenetical and catechismal literature that sometimes followed
the synagogue example of the Two Ways, describing what is commanded
to those who follow the Way of Life and what belongs to those who follow
the Way of Death. The prime example of such a literature is the Didache,
which is thought to have incorporated a Jewish text of that nature. The let-
ter of James is mentioned as presenting examples of such paraenetical
texts, dealing as it does with the sins of the tongue, mercantile concerns,
and exhortations to the rich. All of these subjects would belong to paraen-
etical homily and not to the heart of Christian theology. The common de-
nominator of these texts is the demand for sanctification on the basis of
participation in the Christian community.
Still, the “ecclesial purity” is not expressed (yet) in specific actions or
goals that might constitute a counterpart of the Jewish Torah and its oral
tradition. Bultmann emphasizes that we find here mostly negative virtues:
the exhortation is aimed at combating egotistical drives, and in that sense
it is purely formal. It is the “perfect corollary of the primary commandment
of love, that by its nature does not allow positively phrased determina-
tions.” If it could be expressed otherwise, the commandment would again
have the nature of “law.” Behavior under such a moral law is not directed
at a specific achievement of the human will, determined by the application
of a rule of behavior to specific circumstances governed by its provisions
and worked out in the manner of casuistry, and then performed as a sub-
mission of the human volition to an obligation that is understood. In short,
such compliance with the negative expression of the commandment of
love is not an “ergon,” a work, at all. It is directed not at an achievement,
but at the needs and concerns of the neighbor in my community. A Christi-
an is supposed to judge without the aid of written laws what God wants
him to do. He is ordered to “discern” the will of God.
I find this a problematic approach. The problem is that the criterion for this
distinction is based on a modern, Kantianist appraisal of the ethical situ-
ation. The contradiction between rule of behavior and commandment on
the one hand, and freedom, moral spontaneous action, and discernment
on the other hand, is a modern issue. We found that already in Mishnaic
Judaism the commandment to love the neighbor was seen as a “general”
commandment, to become specific in the situation of the day. It was not
limited in its measure, but perhaps limited to the Jewish neighbor in prac-
tice. Most of all, it was not a “work,” a defined task. In short, it was a
mitzvah and not a moral principle.
We must conclude from the above that Bultmann’s appraisal of the letter
of James is connected with, if not based on, his Kantianist-Lutheran read-
ing of Paul and his insistence on Paulinism as the heart of New Testa-
ment doctrine. What he attributed to Paul are modern notions of humanity
as the universal community, and thereby he overlooks the ecclesiological
and Jewish background of the commandments that Jesus had taught.
If that is so, we cannot overlook the significance of the letter of James. Its
closeness to the paraenetical material in the gospels and its obvious ex-
hortatory character can not be seen as evidence of its late origin, nor can
its basic viewpoint eo ipso be characterized as a departure from the
“pure” gospel.
Chapter 14

James’s debate with Paulinism

So what is James all about then, taken by itself and read from its own in-
ternal context? We might develop from this letter another kind of evalu-
ation of the paraenetical elements in the New Testament. If it cannot be
argued that the commandment to love the neighbor in its very form re-
futes any kind of moral reasoning and reflection on conditions and situ-
ations that positively determine its meaning, then Bultmann’s “slide into
religious moralism” could very well be indicative of something else. We
would lose the necessity to approach Christian ethics as a version of the
antithesis between good works (as casuistry about rules of behavior) and
works of gratitude (the indicative of the Christian life, following on God’s
redemptive action). As we have seen, it is precisely the closeness of Je-
sus’ teachings about love of neighbor to not only the literal meaning of
Torah, but also to the formal structure of the argument as it is known from
Rabbinic sources, that prevents us from reducing the commandment to a
legalistic perversion of a moral expression of the will of God, to be re-
sponded to on the spur of the moment. But if the letter of James cannot
then be regarded as a return to Jewish moralism, what does it represent,
and how is it related to both the Christ of the gospels and Pauline doc-
trine?
The theological high point of the letter is the short discourse about faith in
ch. 2:14-26.
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have
not works? can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked and
in lack of daily food, 16 and one of you say unto them, Go in peace, be ye
warmed and filled; and yet ye give them not the things needful to the
body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in
itself. 18 Yea, a man will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me
thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith.
19 Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well: the demons also be-
lieve, and shudder. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith apart
from works is barren? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works,
in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Thou seest that
faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect; 23
and the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God,
and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the
friend of God. 24 Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not only by
faith. 25 And in like manner was not also Rahab the harlot justified by
works, in that she received the messengers, and sent them out another
way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart
from works is dead. (American Standard Version)
The main thesis, expressed in the rhetorical question of 2:14, is: the ex-
pression of faith without works cannot save. It seems to be the same kind
of argument as in 1:22, where James states that we should be doers of
the word and not only hearers of it. There is no “hearing” without “doing,”
and then also no faith without works. In 15-17 the analogy is made
between faith and neighborly love. A neighborly love that expresses itself
merely in words is not real love. The same goes for a faith that is only effi-
cient in words and not in deeds. It comes close to the faith of demons,
who resist in practice the authority of what they believe in. So faith that
merely relies on its assertion cannot save. By reading the text like this, we
avoid any conflict with the Pauline understanding of justification by faith.

13.1 Faith and works

The problem with this interpretation is that we presuppose that we know
what the expression “works” means here, and that we also find here an
antithesis between the profession of faith (if someone says...) and the ac-
tual deeds of the believer. In Schlatter’s view e.g., the issue would then
be that someone who describes himself as a believer, but has no works to
prove it, makes a vain statement. By being without works, he confesses
that he believes that his faith alone will save him!65 The statement that I
have faith as a matter of fact is then opposed to the actual doing of works
as a proof of faith. Only the statement of faith (in Christ) with the reality of
it, in works of love, can be called faith in the Pauline sense of the word.
If that is indeed the aim of the passage, we could easily find support for
the traditional thesis that faith in itself, as our subjective faith, cannot
save anyway. We believe in Christ, because He saves, and our faith itself
is not the saving power at all. That would be in full agreement with (tradi-
tional) Paul. But the text obviously does not address the point that the
content of faith is Christ as the savior. The One who is able to save and
condemn is called lawgiver and Judge in 4:12, and it is obviously God
and not Christ that is the subject of that verse. It is not about the contents
of faith, but about the commitment that is involved in its confession.
Let us take a closer look. The traditional interpretation states that James
must be arguing against people who think that a mere statement of sub-
jective faith has redeeming power. Now first of all it is hard to see who
such people could be in the 1st-century Church other than Paul himself,
and only the spread of the gentile Church with such a kind of gospel could
explain why it was necessary to select such a position for this polemics. If
65 A. Schlatter, Jacobus, 1932, p. 185.
it is against the mere profession of faith, a (vulgarized) Paulinism must
have been the opponent. There are indeed compelling grammatical reas-
ons in the text to stress an opposition between the profession of faith and
the doing of works. Strictly speaking this is what the text reads literally:

what is the use

if someone states (legei, says, states, confesses) to have faith
and [if he] has (echei) no works
[and implies that this is enough for salvation]

The interpretation can then run like this: The statement of faith all by itself,
being not corroborated by practical works, though as a confession imply-
ing precisely that, is useless for salvation. Then we might say: faith is not
about making statements, so James is only arguing against a pretended
faith.66 The emphasis would then fall on the word “says” and faith would
be taken in the meaning of assent to a doctrine. Corroboration of that
might be found in the fact the demoniacal faith in vs. 19 also believes in
something (as the case is, believes in the oneness of God), but obviously
does not obey. One other argument in favor of this interpretation is the
very fact that James wrote legei (he says) and not echei (he has) which
would mean confession of faith rather than the faith in itself. But we would
affirm already with Dibelius67, that this usage indicates that a human be-
ing that cannot express his faith in works, needs words to do so. And that
would mean that the whole expression of “says that he has faith” is as
such the perfect opposition to “has works”.
But we might consider other alternatives. We think there are two other
possibilities that fit the context better, even if they do not seem to follow
the grammatical pattern of the verse. We can either (1) stress the notion
of legei (he says) to encompass the idea of confession in the sense of
commitment above a mere verbal “profession,” or (2) weaken its meaning
even further to construe a different and stronger antithesis. Let us con-
sider the two possibilities.

(1) The problem we find in the classic reading is that we find in the con-
text no corroboration of this reduction of faith to a statement. A profession

66 So e.g. Leslie Mitton Epistle of James, p. 99, the opposite however Black-
man, Epistle of James, p. 90.
67 Martin Dibelius, Brief des Jakobus, (first edition 1927) 1956, pg. 141.
of faith without works is not called a mere falsehood, as we would expect,
but a dead faith: it is still there as faith, but it is not “working.”
What we do find is a reference to a specific kind of confession of faith that
goes beyond verbal profession, which we know to have implied in Juda-
ism the assumption of ethical responsibility. The reference to the shema
in vs. 2:19 then serves as the defining element in the context. If someone
confesses his commitment to faith, implying ethical responsibility, then the
fact that he does not obey the law that is part of the contents of that faith
is a contradiction of that statement.
We could then read like this: if someone confesses his faith in the sense
of showing his faith-commitment to obedience and shows no evidence of
compliance with the law in the form of works, that faith in itself remains
meaningless and was not confessed truthfully. Then James would be say-
ing that the effective element in faith with regard to salvation is the obedi-
ence in it that produces works, which is implied in its confession as a
commitment. The problem is, however, that James is actually allowing for
the possibility that even the demons affirm the confession of God’s unity
in the shema, while obviously disobeying that same God.

(2) We might also construe the passage like this,

what is the use

if someone has faith, (he says)
and has no works
[and implies that this is enough for salvation]

In that case, we take the word echein (to have) to be closer to echei (he
has) than the grammatically correlated legei (he says). Then we have the
contradiction between “having faith” and “not having works”, or put posit-
ively, the equation that having faith implies having works.
The sense is then in the first case the incompatibility between two state-
ments. Someone claims to have faith even without doing the works of the
law. Such a statement is then considered a paradox because faith must
imply obedience and the doing of works. In the second case the issue is
about the impossibility of two conditions being present at the same time.
Having faith without having works is impossible.
It is much harder in my opinion to maintain the opposition between the
idle statement of faith and the doing of works even if the grammar and
“simple reading” would imply it. “If he says” is not necessarily construed
as an antithesis to the ¨”but has no works” according to the sense, even
though grammatically “says” and “has” correspond with each other. To
sum up, the opposition is between two kinds of faith: the one is divorced
from works (of the law) at least with respect to salvation, the other is in-
trinsically connected to works, and these are seen not as implied in any
Paulinist sense (working faith, faith as source of spontaneous acts of
love) but as visible result (faith that does works is alive in obedience to
the law). Only taking the 8g(® as having to refer solely to an assertion of
faith and construing the passage with heavy emphasis on the grammatic-
al structure without taking note of the context allows for this particular har-
monization with Paul.
But even if we were to read in the traditional way, the problem is not fully
solved. After all, even if it primarily does refer to a verbal confession, it
creates a dissonance with Paul precisely because it then changes the
meaning of “faith” that Paul attributes to it and views it with reference to
what can be seen experientially of such a faith. The text then implies that
a profession of faith along the lines of Paulinism disconnects faith from
works and thereby empties the content of “faith.” Both avenues of inter-
pretation therefore lead to an affirmation that a debate with Pauline theo-
logy is intended. But in the traditional reading, these works are a re-
sponse to faith, and in our alternative reading, the works are an intrinsic
part of faith.

13.2 The meaning of faith

So in what sense is “faith” used here, if it is not the (profession of) a faith
that has works implied in it, but in any case a commitment of obedience to
works of the law? Is law-obedience an intrinsic part of faith or a response
through faith? The comparison in vss. 15 and 16 must give the solution.
The analogy is first described in vs. 15 as a matter of poverty and need.
In vs. 16 we find an expression that is analogous to a faith without works.
Someone says: “go in peace, be ye warmed and filled” (KJV). That state-
ment is of no use to the one who is poor and without clothes and food.
The statement will not help at all, even though it is an expression of sym-
pathy and acceptance of the situation.
The comparison runs like this: the believer is like the admonishing brother
or sister and faith is like the exhortation to get warm, go in peace and eat
well. Faith is then like an admonishment that remains on the outside but
does not change reality on the inside, a reminder of what is good and
should be done, that lacks the reality. It is “dead” because it does not
“work,” or better, does not produce works, but only expresses the need to
work. Faith and works are congruent in contents, faith implies the neces-
sity of obedience; works is the actual deed that shows compliance with
God’s will. As in the metaphor: the content of feeding and clothing
someone is correlated to the statement that it is good to get fed and be
clothed. But such a faith, while telling us what to do, will not help us to do
it. It does not show us what to do either. Faith is there, where the obedi-
ence of faith is operative.
The mention of a content in vs. 19, to believe that God is One, is more
than an example of a doctrinal profession to illustrate the general principle
of truthful speech. On this we have based our contention that the state-
ment of faith is actually a confession of faith implying a full commitment to
a life of obedience. One might objectively “believe” that God is one, as
one can objectively believe that Christ is savior. But the importance of that
basic confession in Judaism is the acceptance of the yoke of the law,
something which is in effect only visible in the doing of the law. This con-
nection between the shema and moral commitment was even more obvi-
ous when, during the second Temple period, the recitation of the Ten
Commandments preceded the recital of the passage Deut. 6:4-9. Later on
two other passages from scripture were added, and blessings were ad-
ded before and after the recitation of the now threefold shema, while the
ten Commandments were dropped. This happened apparently because of
Christian insistence that only the Ten Commandments were valid now
that Christ had come. But the passage that expressed God’s unity (Hear
Israel, the LORD, our God, is the only LORD) became linked to the prohibi-
tion of idolatry and the obligation to suffer as a martyr to prevent it. Rabbi
Akiba is reported to have died because of his refusal to commit idolatry
under Roman torture while reciting the shema. That obligation was well
established in 2nd Temple Judaism. Cf., e.g., S. Safrai (ed.) The Jewish
People in the First Century, 1987, vol. II, pp. 800-801, and Encyclopedia
Judaica under “Shema.” The latter mentions that saying the shema im-
plied accepting the “yoke of the Kingdom of heaven.” All in all, the confes-
sion of the shema has a perfect counterpart in Matthew 5, where confess-
ing Christ leads to martyrdom as well, and implies full commitment to the
messianic Torah.
And in James’s Christianity it is no different. The acceptance of the Lord-
ship of Christ implies obedience as well. Faith in the sense of our commit-
ment to obeying God or Christ is not faith at all if the reality of that obedi-
ence is lacking. Faith is therefore in itself a pragmatic resolve to act in
obedience, but it still needs the effective deed to be real. Otherwise the
confession deteriorates into “just” a statement.
What then is a real expression of a “real” faith? The first mention of faith
in 1:3-6 mentions “faith” in the sense of trust that drives away all doubt.
Faith, being put to the test, grows in endurance when it is acted upon.
Such an experiential life of faith becomes the foundation of certainty. Any-
one who prays with steadfastness, without being divided within himself as
to the nature of a giving God (1:5), will receive from the Lord. Faith here is
seen as the recognition of who God is as the one whom we obey and who
judges our act in conformity with the law, and as trust in such a God for
the things that are necessary to live the Christian life, summarized as the
wisdom we need. In 2:1, then, faith can even become close in meaning to
the “life of faith” when James states that we should keep our faith free
from all acceptance of the person. That acceptance in question, the pref-
erence for the rich above the poor, is considered to be an infringement of
the law in its most vital expression: the commandment of neighborly love.
So “faith” is here the practice of the divine law which becomes comprom-
ised by the acceptance of the rich above the poor. By making such dis-
tinctions we reject the universality of the neighbor, and in doing so we
compromise our faith on which this obedience is based. But obviously
faith and compliance with the law are here thought of as equivalents.
So faith is a recognition of God’s sovereignty, visible in practical obedi-
ence to the written statutes of God’s will, embedded in a practice of en-
durance under persecutions, leading to trust in a giving God amidst the
circumstances of our life, and committed to neighborly love as the es-
sence of the law. Such a faith cannot be deemed to be expressed prop-
erly if it is merely “claimed” to be there; in fact, such a claim makes no
sense at all. James is not arguing that it could be claimed, but that there
are those who are familiar with the attitude and the resolve to obey that is
essential to it, but simply do not comply. A faith cannot be existent in that
sense without the works of faith; it is not simply a faith that would be lack-
ing in works, it would be “dead”.
The issue of faith takes a new turn, however, in the next two arguments
James derives from Scripture. Up to now, one might argue that the sense
of faith is the experiential side of the same concept of faith that Paul has,
merely because the contents of such a faith are not mentioned, and it
cannot be concluded with certainty that James is talking about a moral
commitment within faith. The contextual argument seems decisive but is
counterweighted by grammatical considerations. We might argue that
Paul understands faith to be grounded in the efficacy of Christ’s faithful-
ness, the trust in God’s power to redeem on the basis of our acceptance
of Christ. His theology therefore focuses on the evocation of the content
of faith, and James obviously shows no interest in developing that side of
the matter. It is therefore also correct to say that though the slogan of sal-
vation by faith even without works is a derivation from Paulinism, it is not
Pauline in essence, so James is not directing his attack toward Paul him-
self. But the matter becomes different when we consider the passage
2:21-25.
Here James takes on the issue of justification with reference to two pas-
sages from scripture, of which the first figures prominently in Paul’s dis-
cussion of the issue. James makes the following statements:
• Faith is present in works and never without them, because that
would make faith a mere declaration, or better: would imply that it
is without life. (2:18)
• Even if the content of faith is correct (in the example: the idea that
God is one, when uttered as confession, equals the resolve to
obey God), this in essence is part of practical life; if it is connected
with disobedience, it is similar to demoniacal faith (2:19). The op-
position between living and dead faith is here superseded by the
opposition between committed and demoniacal faith.
• Faith without works is not effective with regard to salvation; works
from faith are effective (2:20) and not merely “proof” of the effect-
iveness of faith all by itself.
These statements might still be harmonized into agreement with Paul’s
doctrine, when James expressed the experiential side of faith and we
could argue that Paul emphasizes the new reality it brings. We would
have to accept, some slight changes of meaning. The opposites in James
after all do not harmonize well with Paul’s usage. E.g., the notion that
dead faith is non-existent faith, and only faith that effectuates itself in
works can properly be called so, shows that faith is taken as the practical
attitude of submission to God in works of obedience as well as in suffer-
ing. But then again, if read slightly differently with emphasis on the
phrase: “someone says,” we get an opposition between the profession of
faith and real faith that is closer to Paul, as we showed above. But even if
there were full congruence between these elements in James and Paul,
we would still have to contend with these further elements.
James brings a proof: Abraham was not justified by his faith, but by a faith
that was only effective in combination with his works. His faith in God be-
came perfect because he acted on it in obedience (2:22). Note here that
James does allow for the notion that faith can be discussed in theory
apart from works.
So Abraham’s faith was reckoned as righteousness in Genesis 15 be-
cause of what Abraham did in Genesis 22: the sacrifice of Isaac. Now
Genesis 15 is a proleptic statement, a prophesy that became fulfilled in
Genesis 22 when Abraham acted righteously. So the distinction between
faith and its product can be made only in conversation! The real act of
faith and the real ground for justification is now Genesis 22 and not 15.
Conclusion: a human being is justified on the basis of works (of faith) and
not only on the basis of faith (without works). Only the living, committed
faith that acts in obedience makes God justify a man.
There seems to be yet another way out, however. Does all of this perhaps
mean that the dynamics of (subjective) faith led Abraham to act in accord-
ance with (objective) faith? That would place James in full accordance
with Paul. Schlatter maintained this:
Abraham’s faith did not consist in words alone and did not exist merely in
the fact that he said he had faith; in fact, Abraham’s faith created the
deed; because he obeyed the divine command and put his son on the al-
tar. 68
But Schlatter misses the point here. James does not state that Abraham
was justified on the basis of his faith in Genesis 15 and that proof of the
efficacy of that faith was given by his obedience in Genesis 22. James is
saying that the justification depended not on the faith in itself at all, but on
the deed of obedience, of which faith as act of commitment was merely
the condition. The deed of obedience showed the fullness of faith in and
as obedience. Faith in Abraham was a practice of obedience that pre-
pared Abraham for the ultimate act of obedience, and that obedience in
faith was the prerequisite of justification. The statement of Gen. 15:6 in
that sense is proleptic, and was, as James puts it, fulfilled in the sacrifice
of Isaac. To James, the meaning of that faith is not exhibited in Abraham’s
acceptance of the character of God who promises life beyond death. Ab-
raham’s faith is not explained, as Paul does in Rom. 4:17, as a faith that
accepted God’s ability to act beyond death or His sovereignty in declaring
even the ungodly righteous. It is not faith in the promises of God, but faith
as the ability to obey beyond and against the circumstances and our nat-
ural inclinations while affirming the sovereignty of God at the same time. It
is the faith of the shema! Obedience as shown in concrete acts of sub-
mission to the divine will is therefore the perfection of faith, i.e., its inner
essence shown outward. In other words, faith is the corollary of obedi-
ence as well as its condition.

13.3 The real debate between James and Paul

We could try now, on the basis of the above, to reconstruct the debate
between James and Paul on the issue of justification. In Romans 3:27-30
Paul states the issue of justification in terms of the antithesis between
faith and works of the law. Man is justified by faith, without works of the
law. Blackman prefers to understand the “works” as “deeds” which un-
doubtedly makes it easier to harmonize with Paul, if we read e.g. Paul’s
68 A. Schlatter, Der Brief des Jacobus, p. 199.
statement in Ephesians 2:10 that we were created in Christ Jesus “to do
the good works that God has prepared for us before”. So we have re-
ceived faith (not on the basis of works – Eph. 2:9a) in order to do the
good works. Schlatter also contended that James dealt with an approach
of faith that separated it from all works, not specifically the works of the
law.69 But did James mean that?
We must understand that in general, the Jewish concept of “good works”
was divided into two sets of deeds, the requirements of the Torah (that
had a fixed measure) and other duties, that could not be measured or le-
gislated like the commandment to do charity or to give alms. The first is
referred to by the Hebrew term mitzvoth and the second by the term
tsedakah. Either one of these could be referred to by the phrase maásim
tovim, or “good deeds/works. When James uses the simple term “erga” in
Greek, is it not possible that he meant the “good deeds” and specifically
the duties without fixed measure? To him, these would certainly be part of
the legislation in the Torah, but they would be lifted from any restriction as
was detailed out e.g. in those parts of the law that dealt with the tension
between Israel and the nations or had a clear boundary-marker quality
like circumcision and dietary laws or the sanctity of the Temple. We need
not therefore construe the word to mean anything like the “moral deeds”
in a specific Christian sense, and oppose that to any kind of Torah-obedi-
ence. On the contrary. In this case prescribed duties can be meant, that
are e.g. expressed in the Decalogue or the sections on social laws within
the Torah.
James’s reply to the traditional Paulinist objection that justification has no
basis in human acts can be found in 2:18, where he states that there can-
not be a faith without works. I.e., it may be perfectly true that those com-
mandments that regulate entry into the covenant will not suffice, but that
does not mean that obedience has become superfluous. On the contrary,
all of the law has to be obeyed (2:10, 11). And here we might say that the
new image of Paul that Dunn has provided might give us an opportunity
to see the harmony between Paul and James after all, because Paul is
equally adamant that the purpose of Christ’s coming into this world is that
“the rightful demand of the law will be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:4). For
James this connection between faith and law can be more directly ex-
pressed. Faith cannot exist without works, and what those works are can
be determined only by studying the law of freedom (the Torah in its liber-
ating, messianic shape) and judging oneself by it (1:25). Only then can
we be blessed (in our doing [ibid.]). James is not arguing that the works
demanded of Christians are the “works of the law” in the specific sense

69 Cf. Blackman, Epistle of James, p. 91, also Richardson James, p. 129;

Schlatter Brief des Jakobus, p. 188.
that Paul is thinking of. But he is obstructing the interpretation that since
justification is not based on specific demands of the law pertaining to
membership in the Covenant, we may drop the law as such. As the law of
freedom, it is still the source of our obedience.
Can we find the harmony now between Paul and James? At this moment
we have not yet given the full argument for our new reading of Paul, so
the following must be seen in the context of what we will deal with later
on. But the harmony between the “new” Paul and James is indeed obvi-
ous. In Romans 3:29-30 Paul mentions the importance of the Jewish
creed that God is One. If He is, then there is one and only one way to re-
late to him, though there are distinctions. Both gentiles and Jews,
however, will be justified on the same principle of faith, though the man-
ner in which faith is present as principle may differ. To justify the circum-
cised by faith means that faith is the actual immanent principle of the cov-
enant of Israel. Abrahamic faith redeems those in the Covenant of circum-
cision as is now shown through Christ, even if part of Israel does not sub-
jectively accept it. gentiles, however, without entering the Jewish coven-
ant first, are justified by “the” faith, i.e., the fullness of the Abrahamic faith
as now expressed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. James mentions the be-
lief that God is one in a different argument, however, when he addresses
Jews by stating that faith in God’s uniqueness is not sufficient either. Jew-
ish faith, in the unique relationship between the one God and His unique
people, will not in itself suffice to escape judgment. James is, from anoth-
er angle, giving weight to the same principle that Paul is using.
To both, Abraham is a test case. Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 : Abraham be-
lieved God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. In Paul’s ex-
planation several things happen. (1) The statement that Abraham be-
lieved is transformed into a statement about faith itself. Faith then be-
comes the subject in Rom. 4:5b, where Paul states that “his faith is
reckoned as righteousness.” (2) The quotation from Psalm 32 is used to
imply that this “reckoning of righteousness” means forgiveness of sins.
Paul thereby confronts the Jewish notion that Abraham was without sin.
(3) Paul inquires into the circumstances of Abraham when justification oc-
curred. Since Abram was at that time not circumcised, and since his faith
is a type of the faith, justification can occasion a forgiveness of sins out-
side the covenant for those who are not circumcised. (4) That grounds the
statement, made almost in passing in the introduction of Psalm 32, that
God justified the ungodly, i.e., those who are outside the Covenant.
It seems clear that James does not deny the principle that justification is
on the basis of faith. But he rejects all efforts to separate that faith from
works, i.e., obedience to what the law demands. The separation in our
conversation and not in reality, between faith and obedience, justification
and sanctification, to widen our horizon for a moment, is denied here on
the basis of their very real and experiential interconnection. In James
2:21, James emphasizes that Abraham was justified on the basis of works
when he in full obedience to God put his son Isaac on the altar. Note that
Abraham was at that moment circumcised, and that James does not deny
the element of faith. He is merely stating that faith became perfect from
works: obedience in a visible act actually made faith, i.e., trust in God,
complete and apparent. James 2:23 then takes Gen 15:6 as a prophecy
that was fulfilled in the akeidah or “Binding” of Isaac. Paul, on the other
hand, does speak about Abraham’s faith in accepting the promise of the
birth of Isaac in Romans 4:19-22. What James would call a still imperfect
faith, a trust in God that needed a work of obedience to be fulfilled and be
effective in the here and now, is to Paul the single most important basis
(cf. Rom. 4:22) for justification. James’ maximalist view does oppose
Paul’s contention that the simple affirmation of Christ’s efficacy already
constitutes saving faith, even if he allows for and actually emphasizes the
fuller richness of such a faith in a life in the Spirit.
The grounds for justification in Paul is simply the acceptance of God’s
promise. It invites the idea that acceptance of the resurrection of the new
Isaac, i.e., the objective contents of faith, is the reason for faith to be ac-
cepted by God. Paul is however merely postponing, or distinguishing in
conversation, what he will later bring together in the chapter on the Spirit’s
work within the believer. I.e., the grounds for justification is faith, but the
work of justification is not faith alone but the enabling of real obedience.
In James this very same faith in God’s oneness or promise or trustworthi-
ness is not enough for salvation, but should be made perfect in acts of
concrete obedience to the law.
If we accept this as the full concept of faith, then we can see that though
Paul discusses various elements of faith under different headings and in
different contexts, the whole treatment of faith throughout Romans is ac-
tually in accordance with James on the issue of the connection between
faith and works. The remaining difference is that Paul sees the unique
nature of the commitment of faith as obedience in the attitude toward
Christ as the new Isaac, and James directly takes up Abraham’s obedi-
ence as an example of faith. The midrashic and experiential context of
Paul and James may vary, but the basic concept of faith as obedience re-
mains the same.
Paul and James are in agreement, against Judaism, that justification is
not about “works of the law” in the sense that belonging to the Covenant
community is the sole basis for justification. To repeat Israel’s confession
of faith (the Shema expresses the oneness of God in connection with Is-
rael and Torah) is not enough for James either. But the Abrahamic prin-
ciple of faith, which Paul sees as the basis for both gentiles and Jews to
be justified, is to James insufficient. Paul’s eschatological midrashic con-
text is denied by James. Faith should be understood as obedience to the
law (of Christ), becoming a reality in acts of compliance with the com-
mandments, not by judging each other with the law to establish who is in
and who is out, but by judging oneself with it, using it as a mirror and a
source of wisdom.
One other objection to this description must be noted here. One might say
that, to Paul, there is a distinction between justification in the present and
the judgment in the future. To James, judgment and justification are not
distinguished temporally like that: both are in the future, as we can see in
4:21. Paul would have agreed with the idea that in the future, our judg-
ment will still be about our works (cf. Rom. 2:6; 5:19). Because Paul
makes the distinction, he can speak with regard to the present about justi-
fication by faith alone. But we will see in our discussion of Romans that
Paul did not make this distinction in such a sharp fashion. The future
tense of Rom. 5:21 is already present reality, as is the case in 5:19, where
the “many are constituted righteous.” The eschatological kingdom is
already realized here and now, though it will be manifested fully only in
the future when Christ’s reign will be a reality.
But more importantly, the argument does not help at all, because as soon
as James identifies faith with obedience and accepts “works” rather than
baptism or confessional statements as the self-expression of such a faith,
then the present condition becomes eschatological in another sense. In
such obedience in faith, the kingdom has arrived in very much the same
manner as it is already present to Paul because of the indwelling of the
Spirit – granted, though, that to Paul the behavior of the believers is more
of a sign of the presence of the Spirit. James could never have made that
kind of distinction between behavior as fruit of the Spirit and the indwell-
ing itself, precisely because he rejects faith as anything other than con-
crete obedience. In that sense, the believers can be called the first-born
in 1:18. This new possibility of obedience is the sign of the entrance of the
Kingdom in this world.
Again, an objection can be raised. If James had the mitzvoth in mind and
argued against a faith without them, it looks still possible to construct an
opposition with Paul who uses the term erga to refer to any kind of action
under law? But does Paul do so indeed? Against the traditional reading
we could follow here James Dunn. In his view, Paul wanted to say primar-
ily that justification is more than being part of and remaining within the
covenant community. The works that the law demands to remain within
the covenant (epitomized in circumcision, Levitical purity, and kashrut but
not restricted to them) do not really justify in the sense that they make a
man stand righteous in the final judgment. God will justify both gentile and
Jew, not by looking at the covenant boundaries, but only on the basis of
real performance. That view is indeed expressed in Romans 2:6. But
since the law shows us that in that respect nobody achieves the perfect
standard, to be in the covenant will not by itself be of any use. Only faith
in God’s promise will justify both gentile and Jew, because that faith will
enable them to obey the commandments of God (cf. Romans 8 and our
discussion in chapter 5). There is a difference, when Paul opposes pre-
cisely the doing of the Torah out of faith to the seeking for righteousness
under the law by the “works” – those works are then the mitzvoth in their
segregating effect. 70
First of all, the expression “doers of the word” is used in ch. 1 in antithesis
to “hearers (of the word).” Because of the expression in 1:21, “the im-
planted word,” a doer of the word is someone who takes the Torah as the
expression of the divine will. The passage obviously refers to Jeremiah
31, where it is the law that is engraved upon the heart. But the expression
“works” is also explained by the context of our passage, the reference first
to Abraham and then to Rahab. In what sense can it be said that Abra-
ham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a “work”? Not only because it is in a general
sense compliance with the divine will. Abraham obeyed God by present-
ing his son as a sacrifice. But there is something else.
The offering of Isaac in Judaism is seen as the essence of obedience to
Torah, not so much because it portrays total submission, but because it
portrays the principle of radical obedience that is presupposed in the
commandments of the Sinai. Both the cultic law, in its role of dedication of
the whole human person to God in the symbolic act of animal sacrifice,
and the moral law, as obedience to the specific divine commandment that
expresses righteousness, are revealed in the offering of Isaac. In this
sense, James does speak about obedience under the Mosaic law
(against Goppelt, 541), both in his reference to Abraham and in the refer-
ence to the shema, as well as in the “doer of the word” passage. Faith is
the prerequisite of a life of obedience to the commandments, which al-
lows full obedience to the divine will and neighborly love to be its sum-
mary principle.
So it is our contention that “works” in James does not necessarily mean
the “good works” of Eph. 2. The doer of the word “does” the works, the
work is connected to the principle of total obedience and connected to
neighborly love as the summary of law. The works of James are the works
one does in obedience to the law on the basis of trust in the lawgiver. But
is it connected also to mitzvoth, to specific commandments? And is the
reference to law in James a reference to the Mosaic law or to some kind
70 James D.G. Dunn Theology of Paul, p. 367.
of Christian usage of it? Obviously, if we could establish that James’s ref-
erence to “works” is a reference to the mitzvoth, the commandments of
the Torah, the issue of what the expression “law” means in James would
be settled from the beginning, as would be the opposition to Paul’s rejec-
tion of justification by works of the law, if taken in its traditional and univer-
sal sense of “all” works that can be demanded. Now there seem to be
several arguments to accept this translation.
First of all there is the outcome of research into the usage of the word in
the Septuagint. Many words which denote conduct in general are used in
combination with ergon. Though the specific meaning is decided by the
context or the accompanying terms, the phrase erga nomou (works of the
law), was well known. It translated the expression ma’asei mitzvoth and,
as in Hebrew the notion of law or obligation could be left out, leaving just
the word “works“. It seems to me highly probable that erga used on its
own, was understood to refer to the ma’asiem, which was a shortened
version of the Hebrew expression for works of the law. So by erga we
mean activities by man that are required by God. The fact that ergon can
also refer to the activity of man as such, in a negative sense, is important
also. In Koheleth we find a reference to the work of the righteous and the
work of the wicked. (Koh. 8:14) But even more general statements are
made: everything that is called ergon in the life of man is sin. The opposi-
tion is then made between what God demands of man as the “works of
God” and what man does on his own as the “works of man.” The point
therefore is not so much the splitting up of the single divine command into
many obligations, leading to a casuistry of a codified law, but the question
of whether the demand came from God or not. At stake is the theonom-
ous nature of obedience to the Mosaic Law over against its sectarian,
“secular” use as a code for separatism and nationalist pride.
Secondly, we can see in the previous passage that the commandments of
the law are viewed as single tasks. The idea that breaking one single
commandment implies breaking the whole of the law means that the
whole of Torah hangs on any single “work.” Usually, though, it is used to
make the assertion that not the single commandment but only the “whole”
of man and his “whole” attitude is demanded by God. Though this is true,
it is obvious also, that in James’s way of thinking there is no opposition
between keeping the individual commandments and, in doing so, keeping
the whole of it. There is nothing to support the idea that an attitude that
strives for obedience to the “whole” could on that basis dismiss itself from
a single commandment, which is the strange result of the reasoning that
stresses the “whole.” That this whole is not a sum of disparate command-
ments is as true as that this whole is present, as the will of God, in each
and every one of them.
Chapter 15

James and the early Catholicism of Clement

That this way of looking at Abraham, with the emphasis on his obedience,
was present in the early Church beyond the confines of the New Testa-
ment points to two possibilities. James’s disagreement with Paulinism is
found in his tendency to stress obedience in a concept of faith that he
does share with Paul, and it might also at the same time reflect a strong
tradition, unhindered by the apparent tendency of the Pauline letters, that
the concept of obedience to Christ’s law belongs to the center of faith. To
give just one example of that “strong tradition,” we will briefly compare
James with the first letter of Clement to the Corinthians (written around 96
AD). Clement, in ch. 10, states the following with regard to Abraham:
“Abraham, styled “the friend,” was found faithful, inasmuch as he
rendered obedience to the words of God [italics mine]. He, in the exercise
of obedience, went out from his own country, and from his kindred, and
from his father’s house, in order that, by forsaking a small territory, and a
weak family, and an insignificant house, he might inherit the promises of
God. For God said to him, “Get thee out from thy country, and from thy
kindred, and from thy father’s house, into the land which I shall show
thee. And I will make thee a great nation, and will bless thee, and make
thy name great, and to be blessed. And I will bless them that bless thee,
and curse them that curse thee; and in thee shall all the families of the
earth be blessed.” [...] And again [[the Scripture] saith, “God brought forth
Abram, and spake unto him, Look up now to heaven, and count the stars
if thou be able to number them; so shall thy seed be. And Abram believed
God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” On account of his faith
and hospitality, a son was given him in his old age; and in the exercise of
obedience, he offered him as a sacrifice to God on one of the mountains
which He showed him [italics mine].” 71
The passage is completely Jamesian, especially where it states that Abra-
ham was found faithful “inasmuch” as he rendered obedience. Apparently
the notion that faith was reckoned unto him for righteousness, which is
supposed to ground the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone, is
not experienced as contradictory at all. In fact, the faith of Abraham is
connected in this passage to the promise of the seed, as in Paul, but the
word obedience obviously has precedence over faith as distinct from that.
In fact, the blessing of Abraham is attributed to “righteousness and

71 1 Clement 10, 1-3, 6 Translation by Kirsopp Lake, Harvard edition of the

“Apostolic fathers,” vol. 1.
truth(fullness)” that he worked through faith (1 Clem. 31:2). Still, without
any doubt, Clement accepted the general doctrine of justification by faith
and not by works where he states:
All these, therefore, were highly honored, and made great, not for their
own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they
wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called
by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own
wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought
in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning,
Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever.
Amen. (1 Clem. 32:3, 4)
The way Clement uses this general idea is noteworthy. If we believe in
Christ, then we should be ready and zealous in good works (34:4). The lo-
gical connection is apparently based on a link between such a belief and
moral action. But of what nature is this connection? Is it intrinsic in the
sense that faith by itself leads to good works, or extrinsic because faith
acknowledges Christ’s sovereignty and we therefore obey, perfecting our
faith as James had taught?
Clement answers our question like this: “We ought to do all things in good
order that the Master commanded us to perform at appointed times”
(40:1). Let him who has love in Christ perform the commandments of
Christ (49:1), taking up the position of obedience (63:1). So the external
motivation for obedience is Christ’s Lordship, His sovereignty. “Let us
then be obedient to his most holy and glorious name, and escape the
threats which have been spoken by wisdom aforetime to the disobedient,
that we may tabernacle in confidence on the most sacred name of his
majesty”(58:1). It is clear: the connection between faith and ethics is ex-
trinsic in nature in this sense, that faith is the affirmation of Christ’s sover-
eignty leading to the attitude of obedience to Christ’s specific command-
ments; not the inner “flow” of the heart toward doing “good.”
Nevertheless, Clement stresses that the Church in Corinth had the com-
mandments and ordinances of the Lord “written on the tables of your
heart” (2:8). Have we now found a contradiction? Because obeying on the
principle of authority and obeying from the inner impulse, seen as being
transformed according to God’s intent, are not identical modes of obedi-
ence in faith. Clement, after having first established the concept of extern-
al authority, now resorts to a procedure in which he lessens this external-
ity and redefines obedience to become an inner submission, or growth of
character. Formally, we have lost that shape of obedience as complying to
the will of another whom I acknowledge as Sovereign Lord over my life
which was the basic view of James. Still, when we look for the contents of
these commandments, we find that they are called “the things or deeds of
sanctification,” and even though they are expressed as virtues, mixed up
with proverbial statements in the wisdom tradition, they are still to be con-
sidered acts of compliance. This had several results:
Without instruction from the law of Moses, in a different frame of thought
than was developed in Pharisaic Judaism, the insistence on obedience to
Torah in James and early Jewish Christianity
• turned into the Stoic appeal to humility and virtuous living;
• moved away from obedience to commandments to the general
style of inner submission and humility;
• replaced intelligent analysis of situations in terms of values and in-
ferred rules of behavior by the general mode of moral awareness
without external guidance.
What we are witnessing here is a moralizing and indeterminate use of
Jamesian motifs. But despite this “Hellenizing” tendency, the reference to
“works,” as demanded by God and transformed by stress on the inner
change of individuals, maintains an essential link to the notion of obedi-
ence. Even if “commandments” are not seen as such anymore, the
grounds for compliance is the external reality of God’s will, not, as in
Stoicism, the human spirit or any immanent principle of rationality.
The development beyond canonical James into the domain of 1 Clement
also shows that the opposition between faith and works was no longer felt
in the same way at the end of the first century, and maybe had never
been there in the first place. The kind of argument that Paul contended
with in Romans 6, that implied that a law-free gospel brought immorality
with it as a consequence, was repeated in 1 Clement in a weakened form,
this time to ensure that nobody would forget to add good works to faith.
Nevertheless, in general, Clement mirrors a general view on faith: that
faith and obedience to commandments go together, and that this is what
faith had always meant in scripture.
So it cannot be maintained that James is merely arguing against an un-
justified claim to faith and would have agreed with Paul on a “faith that
could be separated from works” as the basis of salvation. As soon as we
read Paul with the emphasis on sola fide, we lose all possibility of har-
monizing him with James.
Why? Because James argues against the statement, that justification is
dependent on faith in itself, because to him faith is merely one of the con-
ditions of obedience. It is obedience (specifically in the form of compas-
sionate, neighborly love) that will justify and survive the judgment in 2:13.
Works are not added to faith to make a perfect Christian life, but faith is
developed and grows to maturity as obedience.
Clement’s “spiritualizing” and “moralizing” tendencies did obscure the ma-
jor emphasis in James: that it is the law that guarantees the external
nature of this compliance with the will of God, and that the “works of faith”
cannot be found without a direct use of Scripture as their source. What
then is the status of the Mosaic law in James?
Chapter 16

Law and obedience as constituents of faith

We need to turn now to James’s treatment of the concept of “law.” We

have found that the major difference between James and Clement lies in
James’s emphasis that the external nature of obedience is grounded in
the written source for understanding the external will of God. The law as
“written in the heart” came to represent an “inner” morality of the heart in
the 2nd century instead of a specific kind of cognition, as in “knowing it by
heart.” That is the meaning of the expression “writing on the heart” in
Jeremiah 31, as we will show later. It is also the reason that Paul opposed
knowledge of the law as “written,” i.e., as something to be taught to others
in an abstract manner and as a goal in itself instead of being applied to
particular circumstances by the reader. So now the question must be how
James views the role of the written law.
The exhortation in 1:19-27 makes a threefold mention of the law. It is
called the implanted word in vs. 21, very much in the tradition of state-
ments concerning the new covenant. Again, twice it is called simply the
word in vss. 22 and 23, and more directly the perfect law of freedom in vs.
25. That “word” and “law” are identical is easy to see from the end of vs.
25, where the doer of the law is mentioned on an equal footing with the
doer of the word in vs. 22. The word that can save us in vs. 21 is equal to
the law that frees us in vs. 25. In the passage 2:8-13, this same law is
called the Royal law, the only direct indication that James is thinking of
the law of Christ. So it seems as if James is identifying the Torah of
Moses with, or rather sublating it in, the will of Christ. The messianic
Torah is the law that frees us. Christ and Torah are seen in direct congru-
ity with each other, though it must be obvious that the liberation and free-
dom of the law must have been seen as a consequence of Christ’s life
and death. However, there are several ways to bypass this conclusion
and this reference to the Mosaic law:
One might argue that these concepts refer only to a part of the law that
could be adopted by Christians without compromising their law-free gos-
pel: the ten commandments as they were incorporated into the ethical
discourse of the Church.
But then it surely would be odd to speak about the Royal law in vs. 8, be-
cause that expression gives to the whole of the law the status of being an
expression of divine sovereignty. And then it must be a reference to the
totality of the law seen under a double perspective: first of all formally,
that this law has now become the rule of life within the Kingdom. It would
need no mention that Christ is the appointed King of that kingdom. The
Lord Jesus Christ is already mentioned in vs. 1 with this sovereign attrib-
ute. Secondly, in a material sense, the law should be “fulfilled,” i.e., main-
tained, kept, observed, “according to,” in conformity with the principle of
its exegesis that Christ instituted. Christ is the sovereign of the law as
well. Neighborly love is here not the “fulfillment” of the law, in the sense
that the law could be reduced to it (in seeming opposition to Paul in Rom.
13:8: whosoever has loved his brother, has fulfilled the law). The entire
law should be fulfilled, and as “Royal” law it could be fulfilled in accord-
ance with the ways of the Messiah by doing it completely because of and
in accordance with the principle of love.
One might argue that it is the law only in this one element of neighborly
love. The other commandments mentioned can of course be understood
as flowing forth from this one central commandment. The status of the law
would then be equivalent to Paul’s statements in Galatians 5, e.g., where
the “fulfillment” of the law is in obedience to the commandment of “love
thy neighbor.”
It is hard to see, however, how this could be called a “work” and a “law.”
The qualifications of “freedom and “royal” would not be enough to take
away the implications of “law” as a commandment demanding observ-
ance and obedience.
One might argue that here we see evidence that the letter was composed
of elements of Jewish paraenetical teaching to which elements were ad-
ded to make the letter Christian. The reference to the law was an element
of Judaism that was kept, unfortunately.
But then again, insofar as the letter of James functions within the Christi-
an New Testament, even if the sources of the letter were Palestinian
Judaism, the meaning of it in the Church today would not be bound to
such a historical reconstruction. If there were Jewish sources, this rather
strengthens the notion that in some circles, at least, the gap between
Judaism and Christianity was not yet seen as unbridgeable. Even so, the
expression “Royal” law, and the reference to neighborly love as the es-
sence of the law, sound more Christian than Jewish. If there was a Chris-
tian reception of the entire Jewish law and the principle of obedience that
goes along with it, it is most certainly expressed here.
It is hardly possible to understand James’s reference to law as meaning
anything else but the Mosaic law, though he refers to it in its “messianic”
mode. We must of course see how the references to it are qualified.
Primarily by the use of the term: law of freedom. Some have argued that
this in fact is a decidedly Christian usage and would prove a reference to
some concept of the “law” of Christ in distinction to the Mosaic law. Noth-
ing could be more wrong than this assumption. In Judaism, the notion that
only the observance of the law made a man free was widespread, and it
became reinforced by the Stoic notion that only those who acted in con-
formity with the underlying principle of reality (the logos which was identi-
fied with Torah in Philo) could be called free, in the sense of having free-
dom from their desires. The law of freedom can be called perfect, be-
cause the Mosaic law actually makes people free from the domination of
anyone else but the God of Israel. It sets those who obey it and belong to
its domain outside of the sphere of influence and power of the earthly
rulers. They are bound only by the authority of the God of the Exodus,
i.e., a God who liberates and who, in order to enhance and safeguard that
liberty, gives His divine will in the form of instruction, Torah. After all:
“None is your freeman but he who is occupied with the study of the Torah”
(Pirkei Avot, 6:2).
So we can conclude not only that the Christianity of James is very much
centered around obedience, but that this obedience is structured along
the lines of obedience to Torah. There is a multiplicity of divine command-
ments that man is obligated to do. The Torah as a whole is the incarnate
wisdom of God. Faith (which remains somewhat ambiguous: is it faith in
Christ? in God?) is the condition or the corollary of that obedience and
has no meaning on its own. Its content is the resolve to submit to God’s
will; its existence lies there where man responds to God by doing His will.
The Torah remains the standard for that, though with a reservation: it is
the Torah as it emerged from the reinterpretation of the Messiah. It is now
called the Royal law, since it is the way of life in the Kingdom that Christ
has brought. It is to be done in difficult circumstances, which demand en-
durance, wisdom and patience. It is to be an expression of the same
depth of trust and submission that Abraham showed in the sacrifice of his
son; with the same kind of allegiance that was shown by Rahab. How do
all of these other elements come to play a part in James’s Torah-centered
ethics?
If we want to find out about the ethics of James, it is not enough to con-
fine ourselves to those elements of exhortation or those doctrinal state-
ments regarding the law that we usually connect to ethics in a modern
sense. We must instead look at everything that defines the Christian way
of life. In James’s letter it is not so much faith, or even obedience to
Torah, that defines the Christian life, though these belong very much to
the center of it, but suffering and temptation on the one hand, and the re-
versal of the relationship between the poor and the rich on the other.
The letter opens with the issue of temptation in 1:2 and returns to it in
1:12 after mention of wisdom (1:5) and the contrast between rich and
poor (1:9ff.). Then at the end James speaks about the Coming of the Lord
and its attendant suffering. An important observation to be made in con-
nection with this letter is the fact that salvation is referred to three times,
not counting the references to justification in 2:14-26 (1:12, blessed; 4:12,
God as the Giver of the law is able to save and condemn; 10:20, to return
a brother from his erring ways means saving him from death), the first
time in connection with endurance under temptation, the second time
connected to God’s attribute of justice, and the third time in connection
with repentance.
So what can we glean from this with respect to the Christian way of life?
James views that way of life as being constantly on trial. The circum-
stances of Christian life are such that obedience to the messianic Torah
brings with it a real temptation to choose the wrong path in order to avoid
suffering. There is opposition in this world when Christ’s disciples try to
obey their Master. In suffering, therefore, there is temptation: to avoid the
suffering by becoming disobedient. In his temptation and suffering in the
wilderness, Christ demonstrates His identity by enduring temptation. Per-
severance, and not “certainty” (to be without doubt means to be of one
mind, i.e., resolved), becomes the characteristic of a faith that has been
put to the test.
To James, the Christian is a follower of Christ by taking up the yoke of the
law and applying it as the will of God in a pure sense: without discriminat-
ing between rich and poor, by following it against the dictates of society, in
the conviction that trials and temptations are part of a life that obeys God
above men. It is obedience to law that will bring redemption when God
enters the stage of history as Judge, for this obedience is not only the
sign but the reality of faith. Everything short of that is a mere assertion, a
hollow statement of faith without basis.
To James, the coming of Christ changed the circumstances of this obedi-
ence to Torah. It announced the imminence of the Judgment, it instituted
the reign of Torah, it purified life under Torah from social distortions and
obsession with social and religious distinctions, and it showed that a life
of obedience in this world is necessarily a life under trials and distress.
But, not insignificantly, “faith” as a possibility of obedience to God’s com-
mandment was changed in shape by the coming of the Lord Jesus.
Chapter 17

Concluding remarks
Our reading of the gospels in the light of our understanding of 1st-century
Judaism added another dimension to the old discussion about the
sources of Christian ethics. There is a specific messianic hermeneutic of
Matthew and a discourse on justification by works by James. Both con-
strue the meaning of Torah as a direct source for our understanding of
God’s will, both adopt the position that obedience to Christ entails obedi-
ence to the messianically explained and “fulfilled” Torah.
Our renewed understanding of the meaning of the Torah in Judaism and
the oral tradition in which it is interpreted (and the process of ethical dis-
cernment in the congregation in which it is applied) may signal a return to
the Jewish mode of thought about God’s will and human obedience.
What is needed for the future is the construction of a Christian way of life
that can be called “halakah” because it tries to determine the basic
guidelines for a Christian way of life for a separate community that is
committed to discipleship, or Nachfolge. That derives from the given of
the New Testament commandments of Christ and the hermeneutic frame-
work in which the Torah is read by the messianic community.
It should entail the Noachide commandments as adopted by the Jerus-
alem Council as a blueprint or constitutional law. It should endeavor to
study the principles of Torah-law in concentrated legal reflection and try to
apply them to our situation. It would mean a return to a Christian casu-
istry that has been rejected so vigorously for so long, and a farewell to the
dualistic nature of an inspired narrative of ethical grandeur for the saintly
and conformity to society’s standards for the common person. After all,
what else can casuistry be in this context than the sustained effort to un-
derstand and apply divine law to the ever-changing circumstances of life?
In short: it is a systematic mode of communal discernment. It should
provide us with a grip on what our real task is today.
To me it seems obvious now that significant parts of the New Testament
imply or teach a validity of the Torah for Christians. It seems closer to Je-
sus’ original teaching to speak about upholding the standard of the Torah
as part of the of life for Christians. In order to make that case, other argu-
ments are needed though. We should discuss the meaning of Paul’s
statements about the Law in his letter to the Romans and Galatians. We
should also try to make clear what such an obedience to the Torah might
look like in a modern context. All of that is part of an ongoing endeavor to
present the contents and method of Christian ethics from the perspective
of a new appraisal of the Jewish roots of Christianity.
The conclusion I reach in this book can therefore be only a modest one.
Though Mark and Matthew show a difference of opinion on the validity of
the Torah for Christians, Mark implicitly and Matthew explicitly do affirm
the possibility that the Torah is some way the guide line for Christian be-
havior. How the meaning of Jesus’ Lordship can be connected with the
validity of the Torah is shown by the letter of James. The Gospel of libera-
tion is in conformity with the Torah of liberty. The gospel provides a differ-
ent way of reading the Torah. However, it does not imply its annulment.
Mark’s final redaction showed a strand of Church tradition that is determ-
ined in its core by the growing distance between gentile Church practice
and the original Jewish background of the gospel of Jesus. The shape of
obedience in such Churches was determined by the radical demand of
the Kingdom ethics that Jesus had taught, but no longer was this obedi-
ence expressed and worked out in the legal form of discourse that we
know of as rabbinic thinking. The freedom of the law that came naturally
to gentile Christians, and was reinforced by Paul’s preaching, implied the
necessity to seek out new analogies in Greco-Roman culture to express
the contents of Christian ethics and serve as the framework of applica-
tion. Jesus’ demands were set in a new context that emphasized some of
its elements and dismissed others

In contrast, Matthew shows us a Christ who affirms the validity of the law
and presents His gospel of the coming Kingdom as an authoritative inter-
pretation of that law, leading to a higher degree of righteousness for a
specific and separate community within Israel. Here, it seems, the con-
tinuity is greater. Still, that impression is established at least in part by a
conscious effort to re-evaluate Jesus’ sayings by placing them in the con-
text of a mixed Jewish and pagan congregation and their effort to build a
Jewish-Christian framework for a Christian way of life. Matthew’s effort to
set Jesus’ teachings over against Moses’ revelation on the Mount as a de-
cisive messianic reinterpretation is one of the literary means at his dispos-
al to make his case. There is no reason to think that Matthew is closer to
the ”original” tradition; in fact, the case can be made that he is actually
not. Matthew’s gospel is more likely part of an effort to contextualize Je-
sus’ message into the framework of the ongoing concerns of the congreg-
ation, and reflects that fact by discussing the general principle of Christian
exegesis and communal discernment.

The picture that emerges can now be made clearer. In the whole range of
ethical perspectives that the New Testament offers, Matthew and James
present the case that the rabbinic form of thinking and the basic validity of
the Torah, as exemplified and interpreted through the teaching and the life
and death of Jesus as the Messiah and the community that He founded
as the locus of application, that all of this constitutes a concrete method of
ethical discernment still focussed on the Torah. Jesus is the second
Moses, the prophet that Moses referred to, the son of David that Nathan
referred to; the messianic Torah is the Torah as explained in accordance
with the fundamental and total obedience required by God. Love for God
and the neighbour can then function as the decisive pattern of interpreta-
tion of the law. To be “justified by faith” in this perspective does not mean
to be “reckoned” as righteous alone. It also means to live in accordance
with the higher standard of righteousness that Christ brought in a com-
munity called to such an obedience.

In distinction to that, the Marcan type of obedience involves a more in-

ward ethics of submission for which the example of Christ in His submis-
sion to God serves as the pivotal example. The rejection of a rule-oriented
or mitzvah-oriented ethics is motivated in part by the exclusionary effects
of Pharisaic halakah, in part by the necessity to remain focused on the
one major principle: love for God and neighbor as the single requirement
of the kingdom of God. In Mark’s view, no halakah-type of Christian ethics
is possible. Servanthood and being healed are the metaphors in Mark for
the situation and condition in Christian ethics. The passage on paying the
imperial tax, which refers to giving unto God what bears the image of
God, i.e., total submission to the service of God and to the neighbor who
is the real bearer of the image of God, is one expression of that essential
Marcan ethics.

This leaves us with at least three distinct patterns of Christian ethics:

(1) Obedience to the messianic Torah in James and Matthew (the situ-
ation: the eschatological community of Jesus’ disciples; the condition: the
acceptance of Christ’s authority and faith in God; application of Torah
within the pattern of Christ’s life). The Jewish-Christian solution.

(2) Submission under messianic and divine authority in a law-free situ-

ation in Mark; overlay of the pattern of Jesus’ life (and in particular his
stand on halakah) over common values in the environment. The Roman-
Greek Church solution.

(3) Transformation through the Spirit and the inclusion into the corporate
entity of the Church as the new situation and condition in one: justification
and sanctification through the Spirit leading to a fulfillment of the Torah as
exemplified (a) by Jesus’ life and position on love for the neighbor and (b)
love for the enemy, defining the relationship to the worldly powers. Paul’s
explicit position.
But how then are faith and Christian ethics interlinked? Christian ethics is
based on faith in a God who redeems humankind through a process of
transformation of individuals as well as their social context. The faith that
is required of man is a form of obedience to God’s revelation in His Torah,
not in general as written law-code for humanity, but in the specific form
that this Torah takes on first in the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ
and then in the community of His followers. The Christian reception of the
law through the teaching and example of Jesus of Nazareth implies obed-
ience to a messianic Torah that highlights love toward God and neighbor
as its major commandments and as the hermeneutic principle of the
whole. The Torah that the gentiles received is an embodied Torah, and
the incarnate Word of God is to be found primarily in the self-surrendering
love of Christ on the Cross and in His obedience to His Father unto death,
which transformed the human condition as well as the ethical order.
The image of Christian ethics that emerges throughout the whole of the
New Testament is firmly linked to scriptural revelation and the new situ-
ation of the Church. Christian morality is a morality received in a Scripture
and passed on by a living hermeneutic tradition. It is primarily the con-
gregation defining a commandment to be obeyed, not individuals exer-
cising the inner voice of consciousness to be adopted if they see fit; it is a
particular morality practiced in a separate people among the nations of
the world, and not a motivational power for good citizens to abide by soci-
ety’s standards. It is based upon a reversed moral order, where autonom-
ous achievement and expected rewards are no longer the incentives on
the road to self-willed perfection. It is based on a reversal of the situation
in which man stands before God. Being justified and sanctified by parti-
cipation in the life and death of Christ, Christians obey because the God
of their salvation requires it and because the new life that they share im-
plies the same.
Let me conclude with a story that has become a paradigm for the Men-
nonite view of Christian ethics, which may show us the inadequacy of nar-
rative ethics.

In 1569 Dirk Willems was seized in Asperen, his native village, on the
charge of being re-baptized in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.72 In his final
arrest, he was pursued by the thief catcher and several others, including
the mayor of the town. Dirk managed to cross an ice-covered river, but
the thief catcher was not so lucky. He fell into the icy water, calling for
help, and at that moment Dirk could easily have escaped. Considering,
72 Cf. the excellent analysis by James W. Lowry in The Martyr’s Mirror Made
Plain, Ontario 1997, pp. 119-124.
however, that the others would not be able to reach his pursuer in time to
help him out of the water, Dirk turned around and helped him. Now why
would he do that? Based on a form of narrative ethics, he might have un-
derstood that he was like Israel, fleeing from Egypt, and the punishment
for the thief catcher would be a righteous one. Just as they did on the pur-
suing armies of Egypt, the waters would have closed down upon him. The
life of the pursuer was in Gods hands, after all, and so was his own.
Could he not have understood this situation to be a result of divine inter-
vention on his behalf? And how would Kant have judged this situation?
By risking his own life to help his pursuer, did Dirk Willems in fact make
his private rule of behavior into a moral law for all people? Then it would
have set a standard difficult to follow.

Now there was the commandment from Christ to love the enemy. Was it
applicable here? Surely, the demand to love the enemy would not entail
risking one’s own life. The world was not yet redeemed and the kingdom
was not yet a reality. If one could interpret a commandment based on
one’s rational assessment of the situation, there was no direct precept.
Goppelt would have answered that such an action could not be required
from anyone. Loving the enemy was a good inner intention, but practical
reasoning would have led to the decision to leave the thief catcher to be
the victim of his own recklessness, it would show that those who live by
the sword will die by it.

So the demand to love the enemy would have been counteracted by mor-
al reason, by the narrative framework of salvation, and by a sober ac-
knowledgment that the Kingdom was not yet present. But to Dirk, the
commandment to love the enemy was not to be judged by moral reason,
narrative theology, or practical reasoning. The commandment changed
his perception of his own life and that of his pursuer. He was not to reas-
on about morality, but to obey the commandment, trusting in God to lead
the situation as he saw fit, even if that might cost him his life. When faced
with the representative of the state, the principle of neighborly love had
full force, even if that state was nothing but evil. The thief catcher was its
victim as surely as it intended to make Dirk into its victim. But that did not
change the main point: the life of the pursuer was not his to judge, nor
was his own life to be esteemed “higher” than that of his pursuer. So Dirk
acted like Abraham, considering that all life is in Gods hands, and that the
promise of life could be fulfilled by God even above and beyond Dirk’s
own efforts of preserving his own at the expense of that of his pursuer.

Dirk’s action did indeed lead to his death. After rescuing the thief catcher,
the latter was willing to let Dirk escape. However, the mayor began to
shout that he should arrest Dirk on the spot. Under oath to obey, the thief
catcher reluctantly did so. Dirk was found guilty and burned at the stake.
What did he accomplish with this action? Was there any visible result but
his own death? Apparently not. But he showed in an extreme manner that
obedience to Christ does not depend on our judgment and moral reason-
ing, and certainly not on our estimate of the good result. The command-
ment determined his view of life; it results in the paradox that we should
love those that use force against us, make us suffer in Christ’s name, be-
cause we ourselves were God’s enemies and live by the power of forgive-
ness and reconciliation. We may not show the courage that Dirk has
shown, but we cannot lay our consciences to rest in the conviction that
Dirk was exceptional whereas he in fact did what is commanded of us all.

The “Martyrs Mirror” that relates these events is a book that speaks about
those moments in time when witness and suffering were joined together.
The trust in God that is put to the test speaks in the non-resistant actions
of those who had to endure the evil that lies at the heart of the political
powers in this world. World history and its realism meet with the anticipat-
ory power of faith: faith in a Christ who promised not to leave His disciples
alone until the end of time (Matthew 28:20). Faith in a God who tran-
scends the boundaries of death and evil and enables us through His Spirit
to do the impossible: follow Christ in our lives. To live according to that fu-
ture reality in which Christ will be everything in all, to live the life of obedi-
ence to Christ that is determined by caring, self-surrendering love, and re-
conciliation and forgiveness, is the moral legacy that comes to us through
the channels of time and tradition from the era of the New Testament.

To accept that legacy means to affirm that the ways of the world and the
realism of its history do not have the last word. The final word is the word
that Christ will address to those who follow him in life, take up their cross,
separate from the ways of the world, and obey his commandments:

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant”

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