Grafted-In Ministries

Messianic Jews and the Law, Part 2
By Michael Schiffman

What did the mosaic of first-century Judaism look like?

The Babylonian captivity commenced in 586 B.C.E. and, according to the prophets occurred because the people turned away from the Lord and His Torah. The returning exiles, fully aware of the reasons for the exile and living in the ruins of what was once a prosperous land, put a new emphasis on the law.

In the Judaism of the two centuries before the Messiah, through the first century C.E., the law came to be viewed in an absolute sense, independent of the covenant. It was understood to be eternal, existing from the foundation of the world. Fulfillment of the law determined membership in the people of God. ⁽¹⁾ This, however, was not the opinion of all Jewish people. As far back as the intertestamental period, Judaism was not monolithic in its expressions.

Marcel Simon has said regarding first-century Judaism:

Judaism at the time of Messiah had no universally recognized magisterium capable of formulating the norms of the faith. The duties of the priesthood lay in the area of ritual.  The Sanhedrin was a court of justice whose function was to interpret and apply the law of Moses, rather than a council occupied with formulating doctrinal statements. Moreover, the Sanhedrin was far from representing a homogeneous point of view. The rabbis, who, during this period, increasingly assumed the role of spiritual leaders of the chosen people, also devoted themselves to the interpretation of the Torah's stipulations. Their interpretations were made in the light of a tradition transmitted from generation to generation, although among the various schools there were considerable variations and even contradictions. ⁽²⁾

In the first century there were many groups, but no one group was the undisputed representative of Judaism.  Marcel Simon observed:

The Jewish sects were not radically aberrant groups vis-à-vis the official synagogue.  Nor were they separated from each other … They were, rather, various currents that, taken together, constituted Judaism.  Moreover, each one could claim, with some semblance of justification, to represent the most authentic form of Judaism. ⁽³⁾

Present day Rabbinic Judaism has its roots in the first-century Pharisaism. While it was not the only expression of Judaism in the first century, it was highly influential and, apart from Messianic Judaism's rebirth in modern times, it is the only surviving representative of the first-century Judaism.  Judaism of the first century was far more pluralistic than what has survived into modern times. The value of the rabbinic tradition in understand what was understood as Jewish viewpoints in the first century is limited by the fact that the views of the other sects have not been preserved. From studying the rabbinic tradition, we get only a partial understanding of what was believed at that time. According to the rabbinic tradition:

The word torah is variously used for the Pentateuch, the entire Scriptures, the Oral Tradition, as well as for the whole body of religious truth, study and practice … To the Rabbis, the torah was not merely the written text of the Five Books of Moses, it also included the meaning enshrined in that text, as expounded and unfolded by the interpretation of successive generations of sages who made its implicit divine teachings explicit.  This Oral Teaching was handed down from the earliest days by word of mouth until it was codified in the Mishnah circa 200 C.E. ⁽⁴⁾

The importance of this historical observation is the understanding that there were many differing views of Judaism, and the law in the first century, and belief in Yeshua as Messiah was not a departure from Jewishness or Torah.