Legalism and Faith (5)
The Law in the Hands of the Pharisees - Part 2
Fears and Fences
(Bible Study - May 1999)
The scriptural account
The quotation above appears twice in Exodus (23:19, 34:26) and again in Deuteronomy
(14:21). In the last citation it occurs in the context of other dietary laws. In Exodus
the contexts seem filled with a variety of unrelated issues; however, the general contexts
concern warnings about adopting the practices of the various heathen nations in and around
the promised land (cf. Ex. 23:23-24, 34:11-16.) Umberto Cassuto, a Jewish commentator,
notes a link to the previous command about bringing the first fruits, which was also a
Canaanite practice. His paraphrase would read, "Yes, offer your first-fruits, but
don’t do the kid-boiling ceremony with which they accompany their offerings." He
cites a Ugaritic inscription, "boil a kid in milk, a lamb in butter," referring
to a fertility ritual. The command not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk was
probably intended to proscribe this idolatrous Canaanite practice.
One might think that this law would not generate much attention after the Canaanites died out. Maybe when Israel first entered the land it would have some relevance, but then what? However, in the hands of the legalist sages, this prohibition took on a life that would last to the present day and govern the lives of Jews the world over. It is the basis of Kosher laws regarding the separation of milk and meat.
A study of the processes that led to this multiplication of laws and applications will give us a primer in Pharisaic methodology. The following sections will cover some key forces and issues that proliferated laws, and gave them standing as God’s own word.
Theology
Pharisaic theology concerned itself little with the issues of faith we would consider "first
principles." The Pharisees had far more interest in obeying traditions than in
probing, say, the nature of God. Because Judaism is largely a religion of following rules,
a remarkably wide span of thought exists on issues of basic principles and issues of the
plan and purpose of God.
"The aim of Jewish study was not really the knowledge of God. That was too daring -- Theology was not at the heart of religion. The aim of Jewish study was not to experience God, but to know His will. The former is, after all, a pleasure, but the latter is duty and work" (Lionel Blue, To Heaven, with Scribes and Pharisees).
"In any event, the Talmud is primarily about conduct, about how a good Jew should behave in particular circumstances. The codes of Jewish law define the faithful Jew as the one who keeps the commandments. The emphasis is always on correct practice rather than correct belief" (Lavinia and Dan Cohn-Sherbock, A Short Introduction to Judaism).
"Not inquiry, but action," reads a dictum in the Talmud (Abot, I.17). The sages didn’t spend a lot of time with issues such as the nature of God or man, as they thought these subjects had little practical application for creating rules.
To the rabbis it made little difference why God gave the prohibition about boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. Their expositions wouldn’t focus on spiritual lessons they could derive from the command. If the law’s purpose was to keep them from idolatry, all that really mattered was that they obeyed the law in behavioral terms.
Knowledge
The scholars and sages dominated the religious life of Israel for hundreds of years
before and after the time of Jesus. Rabbinic traditions stressed all the capabilities of
the mind: memory, logic, intuition, deduction, analogy, inference and so on. The sharper
the mind, the more respect and reverence a rabbi commanded from his disciples. They
considered knowledge the greatest attribute a human could have. They even felt obedience,
which they regarded very highly, came second to knowledge. Without knowledge one
wouldn’t know what rules to obey. For instance, scholars who specialized in dietary
law would have an apprenticeship in a slaughterhouse to learn all the particulars of
kosher meat production. Steinsaltz notes that in many communities the shochet, or kosher
butcher, had a status second only to the rabbi.
The rabbis considered the proliferation of rules an exercise of the mind which honed one to godliness. They didn’t think of their laws as splitting hairs, they thought of them as necessary and appropriate mental exercises. As Steinsaltz observed (again quoting from The Essential Talmud) concerning the basic command to rest from labor on the Sabbath, "In every age this has immediately aroused a practical question: how is this labor to be defined?" Concerning the instruction to dwell in booths (Lev. 23:42) he wrote, "...the student must immediately ask himself how to define booth." If the first thing that comes to mind is "define," it’s easy to see how their minds worked. It would remind us of the question "who is my neighbor?" posed to Jesus by the man trying to "justify himself" (Lk. 10:29).
Their idea of law led immediately to definition, because behavior measured tasks, not attitude. Definition led to further definitions, clarifications, exceptions, contingencies, what-ifs and whatever other mental gymnastics were required to specify just exactly what to do. Thus, the creative mental exploits of the rabbis built a burden of law that eventually not even they could bear.
Fences
To the Pharisees, life and death, blessing and cursing depended on their ability to
follow the rules. God had to be pleased always. If one displeased God, watch out! They
were afraid of God, afraid to the point of punctilious circumspection.
The rabbis thought their proliferation of rules would protect both the people and the Torah. Rules, they believed, kept the Torah sanctified and prevented people from coming close to sin. The rabbis called these rules "fences" because they provided additional space around what their scruples had defined as sin. A fence was a rule that kept people further away from breaking a rule by not letting them even get close. In the Mishnah, the part of the Talmud that records all the laws, the rabbis had a teaching saying the establishment of fences was one of the three main duties of a Jew (Abot, I.1.3).
The kosher laws
Regarding the commandment concerning the kid boiled in its mother’s milk, the
rabbis reasoned that to be safe, one must not cook any meat in any milk. How would a
person making a stew with milk and meat know if perhaps the milk came from the calf’s
mother? One might not know for sure, so they forbade any meat cooked in any milk, just to
be sure.
What if one cooked the milk part of the meal separately from the meat part, then ate them together? Milk and meat would still contact each other, and even that could mean a mistake. Mixing any milk with any meat became regarded as unkosher, or unclean. But why stop there? Could they risk displeasing God?
Supposing a cook hadn’t quite washed her pot thoroughly after the last custard, and a spot of dried milk remained on the pot. She threw some lamb chunks into the pot for a stew. HORRORS!! CONTAMINATION!! So another fence went up -- don’t use a pot to cook a meal with milk, and then later use the same pot for meat. Use two pots; in fact, have two entire sets of dishes, cooking utensils, cutlery, etc. One gets used only with meat meals, the other with milk.
However, even separate sets of dishes won’t guarantee ritual purity. They could get mixed up with each other. I witnessed this infraction once as a youth at a Jewish summer camp. The camp had a kosher kitchen with separate utensils and cookware. Separate refrigerators kept the milk and meat products. We segregated even the beverage pitchers, which might hold milk or juice, but never any meat products. A pitcher which once held milk could never serve juice at a meat meal. All the meat items had a red nail-polish mark. Once, someone accidentally placed a washed meat fork in the drawer for milk utensils. The camp rabbi had to go through a special service to atone for this breach.
"An affluent Jewish home will have separate dishwashers," note the Cohn-Sherbocks. The ultimate kosher kitchen is really two entirely separate kitchens. All these arrangements have one purpose: to prevent any possibility of a cooking or eating utensil used with meat from contacting one that had touched a milk product. Such anti-contamination measures, according to legalistic thinking, preserves both the law and the people.
The milk-and-meat issue had other considerations. If the mixing of milk and meat was unclean, then they couldn’t be eaten together. But how long did one have to wait after eating the one before consuming the other? What constituted "separate meals?" Was ice cream for dessert OK after a roast lamb dinner? How about an hour later? The rabbis had to debate and establish laws to regulate when one could eat a milk product after meat, and vice-versa. Other arguments delved into the biochemistry of animal products (e.g., the rennet used in cheese production) to determine when in the process of production they became "mineral" and not "animal."
Locus of sin/holiness
Implicit in the concept of fences is the legalistic concept of sin. Sin meant breaking
a rule or coming in contact with something unclean. If a person kept from uncleanness,
then he stayed holy. A person became more holy by keeping even further (sometimes
literally farther, as in Luke 10:31,32) from external defilement or transgression. For
instance, separating milk and meat came to mean not to eat them at the same meal, but
Steinsaltz cites one especially pious rabbi who wouldn’t even eat milk and meat on
the same day. By observing fences even further away from the original law, one could
establish a higher level of holiness.
If milk and meat caused sin, then that combination had to have something inherently wrong with it. The rabbis believed that there were some things outside a man, which by going into him, could defile him (ct. Mk. 7:15). This idea impinges greatly on our concept of evil. If one could avoid sin by observing rituals, then sin clearly had an external, not internal, origin. The Essenes, who considered the Pharisees slackers in matters of holiness, withdrew to the caves of Qumran for just this reason: avoid sin in a world of Gentile uncleanness. The Pharisees preferred their isolation without the inconvenience of ascetic monasticism. They did it with laws and punctilious circumspection.
The externalizing of sin had multiple effects. Avoiding certain foods constituted one large area of life. One could avoid certain combinations of foods, avoid foods from certain animals, avoid the animals themselves, avoid people who raised the animals, and so on. Clearly, the more one avoided, the holier one became. Holiness became a matter of how much fear an individual had, coupled with his acuity about recognizing potential pollutants. Holiness had nothing to do with one’s relation to God, and it ignored the fundamental concept of the inherent sin-prone nature and natural lust we all have.
Idolatry after all?
In the attempt to save the law, did the rabbis violate the first commandment? Had they
made "self" a false God whom they worshiped? Let’s look at a key
issue concerning salvation, and a key Bible text which tells us clearly, "yes,
they did." Legalism looks holy, but violates the supreme attributes of God.
Under the Pharisaic system, salvation and blessing resided in the individual. If you followed the rules, God didn’t offer you grace; He owed you a reward. You had Him in your debt. He owed you blessing that you had earned. Thus, God was not really a judge of personal merit, but a dispenser of good and evil, according to what one had done. Although the Talmud itself says that one should follow the law not for the sake of reward, but for the sake of duty (Abot, I), establishing laws inescapably demands the sequel of justification by works. If you obey, God must reward you; if you disobey, God must punish you. This might not sound so different from our Biblical theology. Worse yet, it might be our theology. That’s the danger: Pharisaism appears so righteous and looks so close to the "real thing," it easily passes as true. Nevertheless, Paul labeled it as "utter refuse" (Phil. 3:8).
Why is it so bad if it comes so close? Because it reverses a critical factor: who God is. It puts oneself in charge of one’s salvation. If you do good, you have earned blessing. God becomes merely the dispenser of the blessing you earned.
That’s why in the little parable in Luke 18 (which could have easily been an actual event), the Pharisee prayed "with himself." The Interlinear Greek-English NT reads: "...to himself prayed: -- God, I thank thee..." He was his own God! Now you see the difference. It is the greatest manifestation of pride possible to think we can earn our salvation and blessing. We become our own false God, and the rules we make become our own false Word of God. We turn the tables on our Creator. Once we embark upon the path of rules as a means of holiness, we inevitably end in the same spiritual cul-de-sac: the idolatry of self as God. We can no longer apprehend the true God and His life-giving character and mercy. Thus, the condemnation of the Pharisees by our Lord Jesus: But woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in (Matt. 23:13).
Lord willing, next: The Sabbath
David Levin