ARE THE WRITINGS OF THE RABBIS APPROVED BY GOD?

The Jewish Talmud, also called the “Babylonian Talmud” (complied around 550 AD), wasn’t simply a commentary on the Bible. It also added laws. In The Wisdom of the Talmud, Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser readily acknowledged this fact:

·       The supplementation of the Bible, in its rich flowering in the literature of the Talmud, was a daring process…it often proceeded in bold new channels. (6)

How so? Because such supplementation violates the warnings of the Scriptures:

·       “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you.” (Deuteronomy 4:2 ESV; 12:32)

Bokser and the rabbis recognized that these verses presented them with a problem. However, they came up with a “solution”:

·       For the Bible apparently sensed the need of supplementation, and even projected an institution to accomplish it. (6)

Bokser reasoned that since Moses had established “a system of higher and lower courts,” this was reason enough to prove that these bodies would offer new legislation. Bokser offered Deuteronomy as proof that this gave them the authority to not only interpret the Scriptures but also to add to them:

·       “If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the LORD your God will choose. And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision. Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the LORD will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shall die…” (Deuteronomy 17:8-12)

However, these verses did not authorize Israel’s judges to add to the Mosaic Law but merely to interpret and apply it. Bokser offered other proof-texts to support his idea that:

·       The [Talmudic] teachers who supplemented the Bible did not limit themselves to interpretations. At times they promulgated new enactments. (7)

Bokser claimed that the Prophet Elijah had modified the law when he offered a sacrifice on Mount Carmel (instead of at the Temple) in order to discredit the false prophets of Baal. However, Elijah didn’t modify the law. Instead, he had challenged the priests of Baal at the direct command of God. After the prophets of Baal had failed to validate their gods by bringing down fire to consume their offering:

·       …Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word.” (1 Kings 18:36)

Elijah hadn’t modified the Law. Instead, the Lord Himself had directed Elijah. In fact, the Prophets of Israel never added any legislation. Instead, they enforced God’s Law, citing the promises and threats of Israel’s God.

Bokser concluded that the Torah should be regarded as a mere set of impermanent guidelines:

·       …the ultimate authority to guide life cannot be a written text, but the living interpreters of those texts, the custodians of religious leadership in every generation. In the words of the famous Talmudist Rabbi Jannai: “If the Torah had been given in fixed and immutable formulations, it could not have endured. Thus, Moses pleaded with the Lord, ‘Master of the Universe, reveal unto me the final truth in each problem of doctrine and law.’ To which the Lord replied, ‘There are no pre-existent final truths in doctrine or law; the truth is the considered judgment of the majority of authoritative interpreters in every generation.’”

According to Bokser and many other Talmudists, the word of the rabbinic interpreters should take precedence over the Word of God, and, in Orthodox communities, it has! However, the Word of God warns consistently against trusting in the word of man:

·       And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:19-20)