Chapter 2: The First Theologians. When God set apart the Israelites as His special people, He gave them the Law of Moses, which, along with Genesis, marked the beginning of the Holy Scriptures. After the death of Moses, God told Joshua, "This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it." Joshua 1:8.
Although most Israelites would not have had a copy of the Scriptures in their personal possession, one responsibility of the priests and Levites was to read the Scriptures to the people so they would be familiar with them (2 Chronicles 17:9). However, God never told the priests and Levites that it was their responsibility or place to interpret the Scriptures.
God set up no theological hierarchy to construe the Scriptures for the people, nor did He set up any seminaries or divinity schools to train special teachers or theologians in the proper meaning of the Law. Rather, through the centuries, God sent prophets to exhort and warn the Israelites when they were departing from God's ways. But the prophets were not theologians, and God never set up the prophets as a hierarchical class.
Because the Israelites repeatedly failed to listen to the instructions of God, He eventually allowed the Assyrians and Babylonians to remove them from the land of Israel and take them into captivity. Years later, a remnant of Jews returned to the Promised Land from Babylon and rebuilt the Temple. The period from the rebuilding of the Temple until its destruction in AD 70 by the Romans is often referred to as the Second Temple Era. During the Second Temple Era, the Jews began establishing synagogues.
These were places of assembly where Jews could meet for prayer and reading of the Scriptures. Because the Jews at that time were dispersed throughout much of the Mediterranean world, this enabled them to maintain both their identity and the Law of Moses, even though many of them lived quite a distance from the Temple. During the same period, various religious leaders arose who wanted to make certain that the Jewish nation would never again violate the Law of Moses and go into captivity.
Among these leaders were the Sadducees, a priestly group, and the Pharisees, who generally were not priests or Levites. There were also learned men known as scribes. Although these groups of religious leaders began with good intentions, they evolved from being simple pastors and teachers to becoming an elite hierarchical class above the common people. They went from being the right-hand men of God to being God's opponents.
They changed from genuine spiritual guides for the Jews to spiritual masters who tyrannized the people. They turned from enlightening the people to keeping them in spiritual ignorance. By the time of Jesus, these religious leaders were being addressed by the title "Rabbi," which literally means "My Great One." The elite class of theologians used two basic methods to bully the common Jews and to give the impression that the theologians alone could properly understand the Scriptures.
These two means of control were: 1) their linguistic skills, particularly their knowledge of Hebrew, and 2) their status as the official interpreters of the Law. Using Linguistics to Bully. People with linguistic skills can use their abilities to the glory of God and to the benefit of His people. However, linguists also can use their skills to put themselves on a pedestal above their brothers and sisters. They can use their knowledge as a way to bully others who don't have such learning.
That's exactly what the Jewish theologians did. By the time of Jesus, most Jews couldn't fluently speak and understand biblical Hebrew. Instead, their everyday language was either Aramaic or Greek, depending on where they lived. Although most people could no longer understand Hebrew, the theologians were opposed to translating the Scriptures into languages that people could understand. They believed the Scriptures were too sacred to translate into other languages.
The Scriptures were written in Hebrew, and they must remain in Hebrew. So the Jewish theologians set up schools to teach future theologians the Hebrew language. In the Aramaic-speaking synagogues of Palestine, Babylon, and other Eastern countries, an appointed reader would read the Scriptures to the people in Hebrew. As the Scriptures were read, a scribe or synagogue leader would explain in Aramaic what the passage meant. These loose Aramaic translations or paraphrases were known as Targums.
However, the theologians forbade these Targums to be written down. As a result, none of these Aramaic Targums were written down until after the time of Christ. Yet even when the Targums were finally put into writing, they weren't widely circulated among the ordinary Jews. They were primarily something for the rabbis to read and study. So the Aramaic-speaking Jews were almost totally dependent on the Jewish theologians for their knowledge of Scripture.
Few ordinary Jews would have dared to challenge the teachings of the scribes and other leaders, for the leaders would always be able to say, "Well, the Hebrew in this passage actually means so-and-so." And the ordinary Jew would be unable to dispute that. Fortunately, the Greek-speaking Jews fared better, although not because of the theologians.
Through the providence of God in the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy, the Greek ruler of Egypt, invited learned Jews to come to Egypt and translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. He did this because he was trying to assemble a library containing the written wisdom of all the civilized people on Earth. So through Ptolemy, God opened up a way to get around the theologians and make the Scriptures available in a language that most of the Mediterranean world could understand.
The Greek translation of the Old Testament made under the authority of Ptolemy is known as the Septuagint, which means "seventy," because seventy translators worked on the project. One remarkable thing about the Septuagint is that it wasn't translated into the literary Greek of the classics. Instead, it was translated into Koine Greek, the common Greek spoken by everyday people. This was an unheard-of thing at the time.
But God wanted the Scriptures to be in the actual language the common people spoke, not in the literary language of the elite classes. Even though the Septuagint freed Hellenic Jews from the language bullies, it didn't help their Aramaic-speaking fellow Jews. And the Jewish theologians had another means to maintain spiritual control over even Greek-speaking Jews: their status as the official interpreters of the Law. The Official Interpreters of Scripture.
Many commandments of the Law are not spelled out in detail in the Scriptures. For example, the Law says, "Whoever does any work on the Sabbath shall be put to death" (Exodus 35:2). But God didn't give the Israelites a precise definition of what constituted work. In fact, He gave only one example of what constitutes work: kindling a fire. Obviously, other activities qualified as work.
Any reasonable Israelite would have concluded that if kindling a fire constituted work, then so did plowing a field, harvesting crops, or selling merchandise. But that still left a huge gray area. What about taking a walk, writing a letter, tending to an injured person, taking a bath, throwing a rock? Do any of those things constitute work? Perhaps all of them do, or perhaps none of them do. Who can say? Well, the theologians declared that they could say.
They based their authority on the fictitious claim that in addition to the written Law of Moses, an oral law had been passed down from Moses over the centuries through the theologians. This oral law supposedly filled in the gaps of the written Law, and only those who studied in the rabbinical schools knew the oral law. For instance, what if someone wanted to know if throwing a stone on the Sabbath constituted work? Well, the theologians had the answer.
He who throws an object up to a distance of four cubits on the ground has violated the Sabbath. However, if he threw an object within the space of four cubits and it rolled beyond four cubits, he has not violated the Sabbath. But if he threw an object beyond four cubits and it rolled back into four cubits, he is liable. On the other hand, he who throws an object four cubits into the sea is exempt from violating the Sabbath.
However, if the object was thrown into shallow water and a public path goes through the water, he who throws four cubits is liable. But what is the measure of shallow water? Shallow means it is less than ten handbreadths in depth. So thanks to the theologians, a Jew could know just how God feels about throwing rocks on the Sabbath. What about writing something on the Sabbath or just doodling with a pen? Well, the theologians had the answer to this as well.
He who writes two letters of the alphabet during a single spell of inadvertence is liable for violating the Sabbath. If he wrote with blood, water, milk, honey, fruit juice, dirt from the street, or with anything which does not leave a lasting mark, he is exempt from a violation. Likewise, if he wrote with the back of his hand, with his foot, mouth, or elbow, he has not violated the Sabbath. If he wrote one letter of the alphabet alongside a letter that has already been written before the Sabbath, he is exempt.
Well, I could go on and on. Sewing two stitches violates the Sabbath, and so does trimming one's fingernails. Setting a bone violates the Sabbath, and so does killing a flea. Although these theologians imagined that they were doing the work of God, they were actually working against Him. They were corrupting the thinking of the Jewish people with an evil leaven or yeast. But just what was this leaven of the scribes and Pharisees, the theologians of their day?