The Oral Law

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Scott Bushey

Puritanboard Commissioner
Given that the law was all oral, prior to Moses actually writing down the commands of God, how much credence do you give to the Talmud, Mishhnah and Gemara?

For example, in the passover meal, we see no positive command to use wine as the drink of choice for the meal. However, when we consult these other 'verbal' documents, it is said that there are 4 cups of blessings where wine is used.

Psachim 10:1
"On the eve of Passover [from] close to [the time of] the afternoon offering, no one must eat until nightfall. Even the poorest person in Israel must not eat [on the night of Passover] unless he reclines. And they must give him no fewer than four cups of wine, even [if he receives relief] from the charity plate."

It being that we reformed hold to scripture alone, do you consider any of these other documents to get to any of your conclusions?

Thanks in advance.
 
Given that the law was all oral, prior to Moses actually writing down the commands of God
What does this mean? What existed "orally" prior to Moses?

Was it the 10C? That law is written on the heart, whatever forms in which men commit them to ink.

Was it sacrifice and offering? God gave direction at the time of Gen.3:21, if we take the presentations of Gen.4:3-5 as follow through. Even if we suppose nothing at all was recorded in writing about the instruction, yet this is very basic. According to Gen.7:2, there is knowledge of some kind of clean/unclean distinction respecting animals (presumably for sacrifices).

It is incredible to suppose the whole Mosaic-era clean/unclean distinction dates back to the world-that-was, or even to the beginning of the post-flood age. No, but what we have (and look, it's written for us) is not terribly elaborate. It does not tax the imagination to see a very basic, God-given form of worship. It's gratuitous to think it was ever and always orally passed between generations; but then, there wasn't much to pass.

The rituals of the Mosaic administration amount to a "leap" of monumental proportions, so far as religious rites go. It's true, this immediately brought Israel "up to the level" of the idolatrous religions all around. Why were they so wild? That has to do with man's perversion of God's simple directions, his will to elaborate and obfuscate for human glory.

In other words, it was not to the credit of men that they invented many and intricate religious and occult rites for their manifold defections from the one, true God. At Sinai, Israel was given comparable rites for their observance, which thence forward stood in contrast to the myriad of falsehoods in the world.

Now, what do men do with the new, God-given rites? Well, they add and take away from them, of course, just as they did with the original commands for sacrifice. We have no legitimate reason to give divine credence to accretions upon the Scriptural directions, whether for Passover or any other thing.

Some think Paul, 1Cor.10:16, makes reference to a Lord's Supper "cup" which Jesus might have (in the aftermath of the Last Passover, Lk.22:17) repurposed and given his disciples. This whole interpretation is inference atop inference atop extrabiblical foundation.

We lack the evidence that Jesus actually conformed to a four-cup ritual, or that the Talmudic tradition is solo, or if its origins are straight-line to 1C Judea, much less earlier. For the most part, these are faith-commitments of those who have inherited the non-Christian stream of the Abrahamic-Mosaic religion.

We owe the "traditions of men"--prototypes of the Talmud et al., and condemned by Christ--no notice.
 
"Credence" and "consideration" are two different questions.

As far as "credence" is concerned, we should not believe anything on the basis that the Jews traditionally accepted it, especially when we recognise that the Jews have handed down a tradition of apostatising from God, witnessed both in the Old and New Testaments. I do not say this to make them less than other men. All men have apostatised from God and all men need the saving grace of Jesus Christ. I only say this in order to ensure that the Jewish traditions do not receive some sort of privileged position, as if they were sacrosanct and to be treated differently from any other "vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers," from which we need to be redeemed.

For "consideration" there are different values such things will hold of a grammatical and historical nature. Among Reformed theologians of the 17th century, and among some of the Westminster divines, Talmudical studies took on a life of their own, and one finds these writings being intricately discussed and even keenly debated in the interest of learning the background of the New Testament on points relating to church government and worship. John Lightfoot was immersed in the literature and wrote a commentary on it. I see no reason why we should neglect any source which might aid in our understanding of holy Scripture, as long as we ensure that we are walking in the light of Scripture itself and do not turn aside to fables, genealogies, and other fruitless inventions of men.
 
So one issue Scott and I had discussed was the introduction of the "cup" into the Passover meal. There is no mention of a cup in Exodus 12 when the Passover legislation was given. And yet Jesus clearly used the cup at the Passover meal to also introduce the cup for the Lord's Supper. So why was the cup there? Was there a separate meal in addition to the Passover meal? Or had the cup just crept in by cultural habit or innovation? Some scholars have argued that Jesus was following the 4 cup tradition of the Passover, which was likely a later addition to the Passover ceremony. But I think I could agree with you Bruce that there's not enough explicit evidence to verify Jesus actually followed the 4 cup tradition.

In that case the use of the cup in the Lord's Supper was a completely new element introduced for the new sacrament? And that the only parallel element from the OT sacrament would then be continuing the use of bread?
 
The different cups the Jews used in Passover would sometimes come under discussion for the purpose of working out whether Judas partook of the Lord's supper. Some commentators and historians try to determine which cup our Lord blessed, but I cannot see any relevance to it as far as the Lord's supper itself is concerned, since Christ was instituting a new sacrament. The element and action depend solely on the word of institution.

While the Lord's supper comes in the place of Passover as a sacrament the two are not equal owing to the fact that Passover was a type and Christ has fulfilled it. The bread and wine of the Lord's supper are not typical but simply sacramental.

The original passover included the sprinkling of blood, and some of the sacrifices later contained this symbolism with the use of sprinkling. Christ has fulfilled these and brought in the new testament. The cup is only blessed in commemoration of the new testament in Christ's blood.
 
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