Hi, Well, I don't go to church either. God never told us to go to church. He told us to individually keep the Sabbath. A day of rest is a gift. It's a day off from the 6 days of work we are commanded to do. The benefits come later in the Kingdom. Not during this life. But I choose to do this without any religious organization telling me how to. I choose this alone and in my own heart. That's the big difference between true worship and being part of the borg.
2nd Corinthians 3
by Butters 34 Replies latest watchtower bible
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heathen
I think you need to read acts of apostles and the account of peters vision concerning cornelius . It was obviously a good thing to observe the 10 commandments inside of jerusalem because they would put you to death if you didn't . That corinthians scripture seems to be more about not keeping the truth concealed but to actively make it manifest .
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Butters
That's the point. The Pharisees and high priests were abusing the real Torah and adding Dogma. The ten commandments are God's LOVE. They are truth. They are wonderful loving instructions from a loving Father to his children. They are not a burden or anything bad. Torah is great! Shalom! Halleluyah! Praise Yahweh Elohim! May the Holy Ruach Kodesh guide us all to victory over sin in Messiah Yahshua.
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Narkissos
The food laws were never done away with in Mark 7. That is a misunderstanding. Messiah was rebuking a HAND WASHING ordinance added to the Torah (this is a dogma)...
That may well be how the story was understood in Jewish-Christian circles. However, it is definitely not how the extant Gospel of Mark understands it, in view of the comment in v. 19: "Thus he declared all foods clean."
Dogma is what Paul is referring to as abolished. Not the law, which Messiah clearly said he did not come to destroy (Matthew 5:17-20)...
Nice way of explaining Paul by Matthew... You are entirely right as far as Matthew is concerned, but this is precisely where he differs from Paul. "Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" is a direct attack on the Pauline school as represented in Romans or Galatians. See also 7:21ff where Matthew points out that confessing Jesus as "Lord" while being anomos, "law-less," will bring rejection rather than salvation (compare Romans 10).
If you read other Jewish-Christian texts like the Pseudo-Clementines, which take a stance very similar to yours on the Law, you will notice that they regard Paul as a false teacher. As I said, I have no problem with Jewish Christianity, only I think that enlisting Paul into it is desperate.
This is proved by the fact that by the time Peter in Acts 10 is told to "Kill and eat" he REJECTS the false idea, and is in the right in doing so! The message was not about food, but PEOPLE... (Acts 10:28)...
The vision would be pointless if it didn't assume that God had "cleansed" the food as well (v. 15). If the writer of Acts thought differently, why are the Torah dietary laws not mentioned as a whole in the so-called "apostolic decree" in chapter 15, instead of just "blood and what is strangled"?
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Leolaia
Mark 7:19 compares well with Paul's thought in Romans 14:14, 20: "As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that nothing is unclean.... All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble". Notice that while the commandments on food purity are violable here, it is still the commandment requiring love for one's neighbor that is respected (cf. Romans 13:9-10, Galatians 5:14 = Leviticus 19:18).
Butters....I would also concur with the others that you misconstrue the point in the Cornelius story in Acts 10. Peter naturally objects because the thought of breaking the command on food purity is almost unthinkable for a faithful Jew; it is tantamount to wickedness (anomia). Peter denies this divine command three times, just as he disowns Jesus three times (Luke 22:54-62), but the intention behind his protest is similar to that of Jesus in Luke 4:1-4 (in both cases hunger is involved). But notice what he says in ch. 11: Peter explicitly mentions the vision in order to explain why he went and ate what was at the house of uncircumcised men (11:2-17), i.e. setting aside ritual purity halakha concerning the cleanliness of Gentile food. Such halakha is behind the refusal of eating "food and wine" from the royal table in Daniel 1:8-16, in which Daniel refused to "defile himself with the royal food and wine" (v. 8). Similarly, faithful Esther declares that she "has not eaten at Haman's table nor honored the king's feast or drunk his wine" (Esther 14:17 LXX), the faithful Judith used her own food utensils and refused the food of Holophernes (Judith 12:1-4), and the faithful Tobit states that when he was taken captive to Ninevah "all my brothers and the men of my race ate the food of the Gentiles but as for me I would not eat of the food of the Gentiles" (Tobit 1:10-11). The closest parallel is in Jubilees 22:16: "Keep yourselves separate from the Gentiles and do not eat with them". This is precisely what Peter does not do in Acts 11:3 which notes that he "visits uncircumcised men and eats with them". And yet although "his custom had been to eat with the Gentiles," Paul himself notes that Peter on occasion did maintain ritual purity when pressured by conservative Jewish-Christians from Jerusalem to do so (Galatians 2:12-13), indicating that some Christians did continue to follow this halakha. The vision described in ch. 10 of Acts was not ascribed to the Devil as if Satan was trying to tempt him with unclean food...Peter obliged in absolving ritual purity because he recognize that it was the will of God: "Who was I to think that I could oppose God?" (Acts 11:17). Peter's initial refusal was overturned.
Leolaia you can try and escape God's laws and good holy commands all you want with your commentaries. You can try and burry the Sabbath under the carpet.
In no sense am I saying that Sabbath is not for Christians; you are confusing biblical exegesis with theology. I fully support your faithfulness to the Sabbath....and I recognize that Sabbath observance, along with Torah observance in general, is just as much a part of Christianity as anything else. In many posts here over the years I have tried to show that Torah observance was not a Judaizing heresy as the apologists and heresiologists regarded it and should be respected as a genuine apostolic tradition. But....I also recognize that there were several different positions on the matter in primitive Christianity and the conservative view is not representative of the NT in general. Hence, I object to painting Paul with the same brush that one finds in Matthew and similar works.
If what Narkosiss says is true, then Messiah was breaking down law when he said he didn't come to do so! He was breaking down traditions of men in Mark 7! .... The Pharisees and high priests were abusing the real Torah and adding Dogma.
This is much too simplistic. The polemic in Matthew is not against the concept of halakha, as if it is "wrong" to have oral interpretations of the Law; rather Jesus objects to the Pharisees' hypocrisy of following halakhot to the letter while ignoring the very fundamental laws of "love your neighbor" and "love your God with all your heart" which transcend everything else. Jesus recognizes the halakhic authority of the rabbis and affirms their teaching while at the same time condemning their hypocritical actions: "The scribes and Pharisees occupy the seat of Moses [i.e. they do in fact have authority to interpret]. You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say but do not be guided by what they do since they do not practice what they preach" (Matthew 23:3).
Moreover Jesus' teaching frequently presupposes rabbinical oral law and accepts them as premises, tho they are not found in the Torah per se. For instance, Matthew 5:21-22 builds on a halakhic saying of "men of old" (which has parallels in rabbinic literature, e.g. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 9:6), Jesus' argument in Matthew 9:14-15 depends on extrabiblical halakha against fasting in the presence of a bridegroom (cf. b. Sukka 25b, t. Berakot 2.10), the teaching that Jesus appeals to in Matthew 12:5 that priests are innocent of breaking the Sabbath does not belong to the written Torah (cf. b. Shabbat 132b), Jesus follows oral halakha in Matthew 15:36 by giving thanksgiving before eating, he refers to the Law and Prophets "hanging" (krematai) from Leviticus 19:18 and the Shema which is language borrowed from oral halakha (cf. b. Berakot 63a, m. Hagigah 1.8), he presumes halakha against travel on the Sabbath which exceeds what is found in the written Torah (Matthew 24:20; cf. Acts 1:12, b. Erubin 4.5). Jesus is not opposed to the existence of rabbinic halakha when he himself presumes it while at the same time modifying and amending it (as he clearly does in Matthew 5:21-22). The Sermon on the Mount, particularly ch. 5, is an extended halakhic discourse....even employing the techinque of antithesis familiar from the rabbis (i.e. Rabbi so-and-so says this, but I say this).
Mark on the other hand, particularly in the controversy stories, has a sustained polemic against Pharisee halakha per se, or rather what is cariacatured as such. I say this because Jesus' position is frequently exactly what the rabbis taught as well. In the grain-plucking story in ch. 2, Jesus tacitly accepted the oral teaching against gathering grain on the Sabbath since he does not deny that plucking grain is "work". Rather he appeals to the principle of "need trumps usual commandment observance" (discussed at length in my prior post), which is a genuine Pharisee halakhic teaching. The most telling controversy story is that concerning handwashing in ch. 7, for there the Pharisees complain that the disciples have turned aside from traditional halakhot: "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders but eat with their hands defiled?" (Mark 7:5). Jesus affirms this and then denounces the Pharisees by saying: "You abandon the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of men ... thus making void the word of God through your tradition which you hand on" (v. 8-13). Thus we have a black-and-white dichotomy.... the Pharisees abandon the actual commandments of the Torah while the disciples do "not live according to the tradition of the elders". The treatment of this pericope in Matthew 15:1-9 however softens the denunciation of traditional halakhot by omitting v. 3-4 (which was unnecessary for Matthew's audience) and v. 8, clarifying that the real issue was "transgression of the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition" (Matthew 15:3), and rephrasing the claim that the disciples no longer "walk according to the traditions" (which could be taken to mean that they have abandoned them) to one asserting that they "transgress" them (Mark 7:5, Matthew 15:2). The main thing about Mark is that ritual purity is converted entirely into ethical purity, such that it isn't just the case that ethical purity matters more (which is the position in Matthew), it's that ritual purity has no significance at all, e.g. "He declared all foods clean" (Mark 7:19; a phrase that is omitted in Matthew). As mentioned above, this view is also very close to that in Romans 14:14, 10 and Acts 10:15, 11:9, and certainly underlies Paul's view in 1 Corinthians 8 that there is nothing intrinsically unclean about food sacrified to idols as long as they are not partaken in idolatry and in a way that stumbles others. Not only does Paul set aside specific halakha on how to observe food purity, but even the original OT laws themselves from Leviticus 11 have been superseded if "all food is clean".
Paul's more liberal view about food purity went hand in hand with how he conducted his preaching mission. It is significant that he wrote: "Remember that the ministers serving in the Temple get their food from the Temple and those serving at the altar can claim their share from the altar itself. In the same sort of way the Lord directed that those who preach the gospel should get their living from the gospel" (1 Corinthians 9:13-14). Paul here makes an explicit reference to a dominical command, and the saying has a direct parallel in Luke 10:4-9: "Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be upon this house!' ... And remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you, heal the sick in it and say to them 'The kingdom of God has come near to you' " (cf. the parallel in Matthew 10:5-15, which predictably lacks these two references to indiscriminate eating). Following these directions from the Lord in the Gentile lands where Paul had his mission would necessarily involve the partaking of Gentile food, including the foods prohibited in Leviticus if that is what is provided. And the situation involving Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10-11 is exactly along these lines, i.e. Peter goes to a Gentile residence and eats whatever they provide for him.
The thought in Ephesians 2:14-15 is not that Jesus validates existing halakha or provides his own substitute interpretation (as he does in Matthew), but that he has nullifed "the Law (ton nomon) consisting of commandments (entolón) in decrees (en dogmasin)," a rather strong statement implying the cessation of both halakhot and the Law itself. Compare 3 Maccabees 1:3 which refers to the Law in its entirety as "the Law and the decrees of the fathers (ta nomima kai tón patrión dogmatón)". The parallel in Colossians 2:14-22 similarly mentions dogmasin "decrees" along the lines of "Do not handle! Do not taste!", but the mention of "grovelling to angels and worshipping them" as well as Jesus' triumph over the Sovereignties and Powers by nailing "the written Law with its decrees" to the cross (v. 14-15, 18) suggests strongly that the written Torah is also in view, mediated as it was by angels (Galatians 3:19).