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New Testament understanding through the Jewish perspective (view source)
Revision as of 14:03, July 12, 2008
, 14:03, July 12, 2008no edit summary
From close to the ground - two stories, two Feedings, two messages (with one Church to embrace them both), and two real occurances. .
From close to the ground - two stories, two Feedings, two messages (with one Church to embrace them both), and two real occurances. .
'''Example 4'''. What is real is real in many ways and the smallest of matters are great with portent.
Jesus said : Don't think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill. I tell you with the fullest force that until heaven and earth pass away not one yod (jot) or a letter's ornament (tittle) shall pass away from the Torah (law) until every thing shall come to be. Therefore whoever shall loosen one of the most minor of these commandments and teaches others will be be called "minor" in the Kingdom of Heaven.And whoever does and teaches others to do, this one will be called "great" ("rav") in the Kingdom of Heaven. Matt. 5:17-20.
The "yod" is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet and the tittle or decorative flip of the scribe's pen made in the writing of the letter (or, according to the script, radiating lines) is likewise small in size. But also known and internalized in the Jewish perspective, this letter and this decoration are opposites as well as similar in size. In Aramaic and Hebrew, the yod, despite its size, is pregnant with meanings. Inserted it can change "luck' or a particlular god (gad) into a goat (gedi) or ligament (gid). Suffixed it can turn God into "my God (Eli). With verbs, it can turn active to passive as in "written" (ktiv). It can change "you have come" to "I have come", and "come!" to a woman, It can serve as a consonent as in the English word "You" or as a vowel as in the word "healthy", and many, many other meanings does a Yod supply.Unlike the yod, the tittle has only one meaning, if it can be called a meaning. It adds beauty. That is all. But beauty has with it, integrally, the sense of fittingness, wholeness, holiness, and warming of the heart. All of these, are part of the text and within the text, inseparable from the text.
The text is the Torah, usually translated as the "Law" - as in "the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings" (the Old Testament). But Judaism knows of a more precise term for "Law". It is Halakha, from the root for "walking". This is the term for legal prescriptions. This is in disctinction from Aggada - telling or recitings, and which takes in stories, parables, narratives, anecdotes. The Torah, the 5 books of Moses, is Aggadic as well as Halakhic. Therefore "law" doesn't do it justice (or rather, our sense of "law" is inadequate}. Illuminating Instruction is better ("Torah" is from the root "to instruct")
Jesus said something strange, something unthinkable for any Rabbi, Teacher, or notable to say.; These could say,"I have come to obey, or practice and teach, to maintain and uphold the Torah". but Jesus said, " I have come to fulfill the Torah." That has a double connotation. Jesus Himself fills up the whole variegatated content, impulsesof meanings, and beauties of the Torah, and Jesus Himself in some sense brings a closure to the Torah, a pivotal transition to something new - And this he does in the sermon, not on Mount Sinai, but the Mount of Beatitudes by the Sea of Galilee. Thus the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31:31 forecasts the New Covenant of the Lords Supper and of Calvary, but receives its concretization and "authorization" from the very words of Jesus Himself - " I have come to fulfill". Jesus, the Fulfillment of Torah, then becomes for His followers the new and true principle of interpretation by which, in their obedience, their love, their prayer, they either enact the Truer and Deeper Torah, and so become "great", or in their failures to obey, become "minor" in the Kingdom of Heaven"
If understanding of transition "from" and transition "to" is true, it ought to be be shown in other ways and places in the New Testament as the New Testament is no mere theological textbook but a book of real life. And that it does.
"By calling this Covenant 'new' [Jeremiah 31], He has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear". Hebrews 8:13, See Acts Chapter 15 for the transition in life of the Church from exclusively Jewish to predominently Gentile and the transition away from the Law of Moses.
The inclusion of these words of Jesus concerning His fulfilling of the Law, are from the times of Jesus on earth and no invention of the later Gentile dominated church. At the later time, there would have been no need for these Jewish oriented and Jewish pervaded discussion concerning the Mosaic Law. The Church was dynamic and in transition and full of real life.