Commentary on the Teaching of Rabbi Yeshua - I (Defense of the Law)

First, I would like to focus on the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7), which seems to me to be the heart of Rabbi Yeshua's teaching. Since we have already spoken elsewhere about the Beatitudes, I would like to jump in at Matthew 5:17-20, Rabbi Yeshua's Defense of the Law. In Shem-Tob's Hebrew text (translated by George Howard), it goes like this:


At that time Jesus said to his disciples: Do not think that I came to annul the Torah, but to fulfill it.

Truly I say to you that until heaven and earth (depart) not one letter or dot shall be abolished from the Torah or the Prophets, because all will be fulfilled.

He who shall transgress one word of these commandments (and shall teach) others, shall be called a vain person (in the) kingdom of heaven; but whoever upholds and teaches [them] shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

At that time Jesus said to his disciples: Truly I say to you, if your righteousness is not greater than the Pharisees and the sages, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.


Alert readers will have noticed that the introductory phrase "At that time Jesus said to his disciples" (which appears twice in this citation) did not make it into canonical, Greek Matthew. It is important because it shows us something about Matthew's editorial method in forming this great sermon out of loose bits that he had collected.

Of even greater interest is the failure of both Mark and Luke to parallel these verses in their own Gospels. I can imagine several possible reasons for this, but, being a fan of Occam's Razor, I will choose this one, since it is the simplest: The Gospels of Luke and Mark were written for the "ethnikoi," the goyim," in the former case the Greek-speakers of the eastern Mediterranean, and in the latter case the young Christian community in Rome. Non-Jews had no great appetite for the Jewish Law, so the passage was left out of those other synoptic Gospels.

For the "notzrim," the Nazarenes, whom today we might (somewhat inaccurately) call Jewish Christians, the situation was different. They had only the greatest respect for the Law, and would have seen it as a prerequisite for any sort of spiritual validity.

It is really because of this divide in attitudes that we have more than a single Gospel today. Saint Paul, with his wider ambitions, needed to be "all things to all people," but Jesus / Yeshua, whose priority was the Jews, especially the "lost sheep from the House of Israel," did not. His audience was the Jews, and it is this ministry that the Gospel of Matthew reflects.

This difference of audience can be seen in differences of language. For example, "kingdom of heaven" is a typically Matthaean circumlocution, usually replaced by "kingdom of God" in Luke. But Jews do not use the Name lightly, and find it offensive when others do. The "ethnikoi," or "goyim," had no such compunction or restraint about such use. We also see that Mark needed to explain Jewish customs to his audience, whereas Matthew did not. It is clear that the Gospel of Matthew was written primarily for the Jews.



Text and image © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.