Step back into the time of the New Testament and unpack the complex interactions between Jesus and notable groups such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Discover how Jesus challenged established traditions and reshaped the way people understood religious teachings. Journey through pivotal moments like Paul’s missionary journeys and the consequential Jerusalem Conference that bridged key doctrinal divides.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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When you sit down to read the New Testament, you encounter a strange cast of characters. I say strange, but only strange to us. The New Testament writers didn’t bother to explain because all these characters were well known to their first readers. If I may digress, it’s important to keep in mind that the New Testament front to back was written with contemporary readers in mind. The people who wrote the different books were either writing letters to people or they were writing their witness and testimony down of what they had experienced. And they wrote it for people they knew, people they understood in a language that they could communicate with. There’s no reason to think that the boys who wrote these books were thinking about readers in another language 2,000 years later. Now, this poses a difficulty, but it’s not insurmountable. It just requires a little bit of attention. For example, you have these folks called Pharisees who seem to play such a large role in opposition to Jesus. Who are these people? What do they stand for? Well, the name of the party, Pharisees, means essentially separatists. They were a people who kept themselves separate or believed in being separate. And in fact, they actually did. I mean, they would not sit down and have a meal with a Gentile. They wouldn’t go into a Gentile’s home. They were separate. They were a holy people. You don’t find Pharisees in the Old Testament because they didn’t form as a party until way after the last books of the Old Testament were written. After Israel had returned from Babylon and rebuilt the temple, the walls around the city, a very stormy period ensued, which included a very strong anti-Judaic Hellenizing movement that climaxed with one Antiochus Epiphanes about 170 years before the birth of Jesus. You’ll encounter the word Hellenization or Hellenizing from time to time. It comes from the word Hellas, which is the Greek word for, well, Greece. Those Jews who mounted the strongest resistance to the attempts to turn them into Greeks, the process of Hellenization, were called Hasidim. The Pharisees were one of the successor groups that followed on the heels of the Hasidim. They are people devoted to maintaining their Jewishness. That means they were formed as a group sometime after 170 A.D., so they don’t go back into indefinite history. The first historical source, that is non-biblical source, to mention the Pharisees by name was Flavius Josephus. He was a Jew living in Rome. He wrote his work sometime after 70 A.D. So all the New Testament references to the Pharisees were mostly earlier than that. Now you don’t have to know a great deal of the history to pick up on these people as a religious political party who found themselves somewhat threatened by Jesus’ teaching. Yes, read the New Testament. That comes through loud and clear. There were three other major schools of thought among Jews at the time of Jesus. One was the Essenes. You never find them mentioned in the New Testament because they were not political. There were the revolutionaries, the zealots who wanted to throw off Roman domination. Then there were the Sadducees, who were political, who were often in control of the Sanhedrin in the temple, and who also felt threatened by Jesus. The Pharisees would later become the backbone of what is today called Rabbinic Judaism. The Sadducees would disappear along with the temple. Now, another set of characters will appear frequently in gospel writings. They are called, at the time, scribes, presumably because they were the guys who actually wrote down the scriptures or copied them. They would later be called sages by Jewish writers. It shouldn’t be surprising to us to find sectarian divisions among the Jews of that time. There is something about religious belief that all but demands the development of sects. If you don’t have them, you have to go out and create them. It is in the thought process and the conclusion of analyzing Scripture and on it that people will fall into different opinions and form clot, if you will, into various political parties. It happens. Now, there were various doctrinal differences. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not. And there is one important distinction to be considered between these parties that has to do with the very foundation of religious authority. It’s the law. The Pharisees believed, and many Jews today still do, that the law was handed down from Mount Sinai in two media, written and oral. Now be sure you get that. Many Jews still believe that the law was handed down from Mount Sinai into media, not just written, not just written by the finger of God, but also handed down in an oral form to be memorized and passed on from one generation to another. The Pharisees didn’t believe that. They believed that only the written law was authoritative. They saw what Jews called the oral law as being nothing more than judgments, traditions, and so forth, which could, if necessary, be set aside. There are two words, then, that need to be understood in terms of who is using them when you’re reading the New Testament, because they do not always mean the same thing. They are the law of Moses and the Torah. Torah is the Hebrew word usually translated law. More accurately, it means instruction. The law of Moses, though, meant one thing to the Sadducees and something very different to the Pharisees. Most Christians, like the Sadducees, consider only the written word of the Bible to be authoritative. But for the Pharisees… And this is hard for us to get our mind around. For the Pharisees, the oral law was absolutely on par with the written law and actually could transcend it. Bear in mind that what the Jews called the oral law was just that, oral. It became written some 200 years later with what is called the Mishnah, which was the foundation of the Talmud. With that in mind, it’s important to know that the New Testament nowhere mentions the oral law. That in itself would seem to be strange. I don’t know, though, whether the term was even in use in this generation. The concept, though, is found frequently in the New Testament where it is called the traditions of the elders or the traditions of the fathers. This is, I think, a much more accurate way of describing it. I don’t know whether the New Testament writers just simply avoided the expression oral law, or whether people just didn’t use it then. But again and again, starting with the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is in conflict with the Pharisees over their belief in, their trust in, the traditions of the elders. Now, that said, there are two very important occasions where we can recognize this distinction, and we have to recognize it if we’re going to have any hope of understanding what is coming down. One of these occasions is the Jerusalem conference that’s described in Acts, the 15th chapter. What led up to this was that moment in time where Paul and Barnabas and others were fasting and praying and ministering to God in Antioch, and the Holy Spirit said, Separate me, Saul and Barnabas, for the work whereunto I have called them. So the Antioch church laid hands on these guys, and they sent them forth, gave them support, and they went off on what people often call the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. And wherever they went, they went first to the synagogue, preached the gospel. It was rejected. But then the Gentiles who came to the synagogue said, No, we want to hear more about this. Help us to understand. And so they preached it to them, and they ended up baptizing, who knows, scores of Gentiles. They came back to Antioch. Everyone was happy, rejoicing, and celebrating that the Gentiles were being called into God’s church. Problem. Acts 15, verse 1. Certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you can’t be saved. Well, that’s brutal. Because what you’re trying to tell these Gentiles are adult Gentiles, that they had to undergo the rite of circumcision to be saved. Well, they thought that wasn’t a very good idea, so Paul and Silas and the others came back down to Jerusalem. They were received by the church, the apostles, and the elders. They reported all that God had done with them, but some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up. Now think about this. You have extant in Jerusalem sects of Judaism across the population. It was inevitable that some of these people would come to believe in Jesus. And they did. I’m sure there were Pharisees. I’m sure there were Sadducees. I’m sure there were Essenes and Zealots and all the rest of them. But they rose up, the Pharisees, who believed, saying it is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses. Now, it’s important to know who’s making this allegation. The Pharisees. And for the Pharisees, the oral law was part of the law of Moses. Let me repeat that so you understand this. In the eyes of the Pharisees, the oral law was part of the law of Moses. For Jesus, it was not. If you missed this distinction, you’re apt to miss the entire point of the whole chapter. But there is another very important instance where we have to make this distinction. I’ll tell you what that is. But first, grab a pencil and a piece of paper and take down this short message, and we’ll be right back.
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Most Christians have no idea how the greatest of Jewish holidays became the greatest of Christian holy days. Ronald Dart’s second book, The Thread, God’s Appointments with History, is now available at your local bookstore or directly from borntowin.net. The distinction we’re talking about is underlined by a statement Jesus includes in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s found in Matthew 5, verse 17, not long after the Beatitudes. He says…
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Don’t think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Now, as easy as it is for you and I to read by this, it would not have been lost on the audience of the day. They would have immediately understood what Jesus was saying. Letters and strokes of the pen speak to the permanence of the written law and implicitly omit the oral law. And in fact, the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins to develop the themes that grow out of the written law, and which in some cases, the way he develops them, completely contradict the traditions of the Jews, otherwise called the oral law. For Jesus, and later for Paul… and to some degree even for the Sadducees, what the Jews called the oral law was nothing more than the accumulated judgments of the sages over time. They had formed a body of tradition, and they were nothing more than the laws of men imposed upon the written law. In other words, if you come to the judges for a decision, they mull the matter over, they arrive at a decision, and that decision enters into law, And for the Pharisees, it became just as impossible to pass away as the original written law itself. Jesus did not agree. If you want a scripture that draws a bold, hard line on this issue, turn to Mark 7, verse 6. Jesus answered and said to the people around him, Well, has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites? As it is written, this people honors me with their lips, their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. You might want to underline that in your mind, if not in your Bible, that they were teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. And that is precisely what the traditions of the elders, otherwise known as the oral law, were. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, like the washing of pots and cups and many other such things you do. And he said to them, full well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your own tradition. Frankly, it is this distinctive that leads to really much of the confusion regarding Paul’s letters. Paul does not set aside the law of God. But he does reject firmly the law of the Jews. And you can easily get confused if you don’t know that reading through Paul’s epistles. Now this all outlines in some degree the political climate into which Jesus came and out of which the New Testament grew. The conflicts between the Sadducees and the Pharisees were not as big as some of the broader issues that rose up during the Second Temple period. There were class conflicts between the rich and the poor. There were cultural issues. There were even conflicts regarding the importance of the temple as opposed to the Scriptures. Remember that in the earliest part of this time, the canon of the Old Testament was being established in determining what was the written Word of God and what was not. It is said in general that whereas the Sadducees were conservative, aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular, and more democratic. It is said that way, and yet when we encounter these people in the Bible, they seem to be rather authoritarian and very inflexible when it comes to their interpretations of law. But lest we get off on the wrong track here, one thing we should understand. Most Jews, even religious Jews, were not political and were a part of no political party or class. Why? Well, they had lives to lead and mouths to feed. They didn’t have time to be chasing around after this or that doctrinal nicety. They got on with living. Jesus carried a lot of authority with this broad populace, which generated no small amount of fear in the political elite. I think what happened is that Jesus, as he interpreted the law and as he taught the people, made sense. He actually spoke to the real world. He spoke to their lives as they were lived. He was merciful to people. He was not rigid in his interpretations. And as a consequence, people listened to him. They thought, this man knows what he’s talking about. The result of that was downright frightening to the religious establishment of the time and eventually led to Jesus’ crucifixion. At the beginning of the New Testament period, Even before Jesus appeared on the scene, there were high expectations that they were living in the generation when the Messiah would come. You get hints of this in the New Testament when you read about the shepherds in the field who, when they heard the announcement of Jesus’ birth from the angels, immediately understood, it seems, that we’re talking Messiah here. He has come. Mary even had to understand the significance of what the angel told her when he announced Jesus’ birth. But there’s also an event very early in the life of the child Jesus that sort of underlines all this. You’ll find this story in Luke 2, verse 22. It is after the traditional nativity scenes you find there. When the days of Mary’s purification, according to the law, were accomplished, they brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. This is according to the law of God. Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. They had to offer a sacrifice according to the law, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. And as they were there, there was a man in Jerusalem. His name was Simeon. He was a good man, just and devout. We’re told he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. That’s kind of a code term, as it were, for the coming of the Messiah and the reconciliation of man to God. And the Holy Spirit was upon this man. It was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. In other words, old man, you’re not going to die before you see the Messiah. Well, he came by the Spirit to the temple on this occasion. He was there. The Spirit moved him, got him up, and got him down there. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do according to the custom of the law, the old man took the baby in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now let your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. This incident happened kind of underscores and underlines that there was a general messianic expectation throughout Jewry at this time. They saw all the prophecies in the Old Testament of the coming of the Messiah. They wondered for him. They hoped for him. Because there is a limit to how far you can endure the occupation of a nation like Rome without groaning under the burden. Well, Joseph and his mother marveled at these things which were spoken of Jesus. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against. Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. I wonder what Mary thought that meant. There was also a woman who came in, and right at the same time, her name was Anna. She was a prophetess of the tribe Asher. She was of great age. She had lived with a husband seven years from the time they got married, and she was a widow now for another 84 years. She was old. She didn’t leave the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she came in right at that instant and gave thanks likewise to the Lord and spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth. Listen to this short message. When I come back, we’ll go on with the story.
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For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Introduction to the New Testament No.
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Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. That’s 1-888-242-5344.
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In the days we’re talking about, there were two major social institutions extant. They were the synagogue and the temple. Jewish tradition attempts to give Mosaic origins to the synagogue, but there’s no evidence for it. It most likely originated in Babylon. Why? Well, they had lost the temple. They had no center of worship, and so the synagogue was the place where they could gather together. The function of the priests as teachers of the people had all but disappeared by the time Christ came on the scene, probably because the priesthood had been secularized in the political struggles of the years leading up to it. because when you read that story, it will almost make your head spin as to the involvement of the high priest, oftentimes, in secular politics. Those next to the priests in authority were the elders, and these were the men that ended up serving as the leaders of the synagogue. The synagogue service, as far as can be ascertained, consisted of the recitation of the Shema, that is the confession of God, of prayers, of scripture readings, and an exposition of the text, what you and I might call a sermon. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the early church was profoundly influenced by the synagogue and that some of the patterns of ancient synagogue service probably survive in some Christian churches to this day. In the first generation of the faith, everyone was Jewish. And consequently, everyone was at home in the synagogue. In fact, the whole church, and I didn’t realize this until recently, in all these early years of the church, they were all either Jews or God-fearing Gentiles until well into the second century. The church did not begin to encounter what some people call raw Gentiles until about 120 to 140 A.D., Those before that were people who had accepted the God of Israel. They just had not submitted to the right of circumcision. They were not physically Jews. Now, it would be hard to overstate one major difference between those times then and our times today. And this is the reason because as you and I read the New Testament not knowing this or not thinking about this, not bringing it to the front of our consciousness, we can miss stuff. The invention of printing changed everything. It’s almost impossible for us to visualize or imagine what life would be like without our Bibles. How hard we would have to work to get to know the Word of God, to internalize the Word of God. For the latest generation, it’s hard to visualize how they can get along without their computer Bibles. Only the very well-to-do in the first century could possibly afford to own even one scroll of the Bible, much less all of it. Thus, the reading of Scripture in the synagogue was crucial to worship and to learning. Someone once said that the invention of printing… had a negative effect on human memory. And I have no doubt that it’s true. We lost the skills of memorization. We no longer practiced it. We can have it in a book on the shelf. Why worry about keeping it inside your head? Well, in the first century, the memorization of law was an important activity among both first century Christians and Jews. It was an activity that took place in the synagogues. And it’s referenced in James’ decision at that Jerusalem conference we mentioned earlier. Once they got down through all this disputing and kicking around of the question, James summarized what he saw as the decision. You’ll find this in Acts 15, verse 19. He says this, “…wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not those who from among the Gentiles have turned to God.” but that we write to them, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, from fornication, from things strangled, and from blood. For Moses of old time has in every city them that preach him being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. Now, I don’t know how you take that, but I take that to simply be a statement to the effect, we don’t have to tell these people every aspect of the written law because Moses is being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. That’s where their obligation to learn the law will be, not from some letter of ours. What they did was write to them about the four big items that were problems among the Gentiles that they wanted to call their attention to. In reading the New Testament, A surprising amount of misunderstanding arises from cultural issues. In the case of reading Paul’s epistles, the misunderstanding arises from not remembering that you’re reading someone else’s mail. Paul was not writing to a 21st century English reader. He was writing to a 1st century reader. Greek reader. Moreover, he was writing in response to specific issues that the church had raised with him. The Corinthian letters are particularly difficult because in some cases, Paul may actually be citing the issue raised by the church, not making his own comments on it. It’s not impossible to sort this thing out, but it does suggest reading with some care. Something else really important was going on in the years leading up to this. A couple of hundred years earlier, the first five books of the Old Testament were translated into Greek. And what a change that would make. But I’m out of time for now. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart.
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In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit our website at borntowin.net.
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Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
