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JESUS THE MESSIAH |
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His Life and Times |
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No. 5 The Scribes
As we try to picture scenes from the New Testament in our minds, the figure that would have to be in one of the most prominent positions would be that of the Scribe. The scribes are talked about a great deal in the New Testament. They seemed to be in abundance in every town and the people thought of them as being everywhere all the time. They were thought of as being indispensable. The birthplace of the Scribes was actually in Babylon, but over the years they had come to be the center of all religious activities and even carried much weight carrying out the laws. The Scribes appeared everywhere as the mouthpiece and representative of the people. As he walked to the front of a room, the crowd respectfully moved aside to let him pass. Everyone eagerly hung on to every word that he uttered as those of a very recognized authority. The words he said carried much weight with the people. He had been solemnly ordained by the laying on of hands. He could ask any type of question, object to anything that he did not feel was right, and he expected full explanations from people when he asked them a question. He also expected them to speak to him in a manner worthy of utmost respect. He was basically a master of the law and had a great amount of knowledge. The Scribes had a vast amount of sheer power in those days and they thought themselves extremely important. In the Josephus book of Antiquities, it is said, "He is the Divine aristocrat, among the vulgar herd of rude and profane 'country-people', who know not the Law and are cursed. More than that, his order constitutes the ultimate authority on all questions of faith and practice; he is ' the Exegete of the Laws' ". The Scribes were generally known to appear in company with the Pharisees, thought they were not necessarily one of them. The Pharisees were only a religious party while the Scribe had status and held an office. He was the learned student whose honor was to be held in the highest esteem. He far outweighed all the common people who had to pay him every honor. They felt that they had so much respect that even if they said something that wasn't true, the people should believe them absolutely, without any questions asked. They had not always had a great amount of power. Over the years they had just gotten stronger and stronger and gradually risen to greater and greater status. Their institution stretches back to at least the time of Nehemiah. During New Testament times, though, they went through a period of extreme persecution. This caused them to sort of sink out of sight and eventually they merged with the more extreme segment of the Pharisees. This caused much controversy in the Pharisee party, because everyone did not have the same views as the Scribes. This caused a split in the party and there were now two parties that made up the synagogue - the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The two parties now appointed their own officials and created elderships. They decided to have a High-Priest that would be the chief of a representative ecclesiastical body of rulers. It was more like our democracy today, instead of just the Scribes having all the power and authority. Eventually the 'eldership' they created came into being the Sanhedrin, which was in full force at the time of Jesus. Its power would vary with political circumstances. At some times it was almost absolute, while at other times it was just ecclesiastical authority. The elders, or lawmakers, lived in strict adherence to the laws of the land at that time. They felt that if they could just have a law for everything and every circumstance, that they could eventually cover all the bases and it would all be written down plainly so there would be no questions about it. By the time that Jesus was born and had come into full ministry, their set of laws had become so many that there was no way any person could follow them. They had added to the laws God had already given for the different Feast Days, New Moons, Sabbaths, and even on Mondays and Thursdays. Then on top of all this, they had people who followed the oral law, or traditional teachings, and other people who followed the written law, or all the new laws that had been added over the years by man. This was definitely confusing and added extra conflict and division among the people. They also had several writings of the Scribes such as the Mishnah and the Talmud that some considered to be just as important as the writings of Isaiah and other writings that make up our Bible today. There was a Jerusalem Talmud and a Babylon Talmud. Both of them are written in Aramaean. The MIshnah is the Oldest authoritative collection of Jewish oral law, that supplemented the written laws that were given to Moses in the Old Testament. It was compiled by a series of scholars over two centuries and was given final form in the 3rd Century A. D. Additions by later scholars in Palestine and Babylonia resulted in the Gemara. These two writings are what make up the Talmud. The Mishnah has six major sections, on daily prayer and agriculture, the Sabbath and other religious rituals, married life, civil and criminal law, the Temple of Jerusalem, and ritual purification. The Jerusalem Talmud was written about a century before the Babylonian Talmud and is four times smaller. The Babylonian Talmud occupies, with marginal commentations, 2,947 folio leaves, or manuscript pages. Even with the other Talmud being much smaller, we can see that it occupied many pages still. They had gotten to the point that they felt that if they could obey the laws then they were holy and righteous and God was pleased with them. They had developed the law in its outward direction as ordinances and commandments. When Jesus came and started his teaching, he taught totally opposite of what they had come to believe. He started at the heart and taught about changing the inner part of the man first and then he taught that the outward part would change. This was why he taught in Matthew about the things proceeding out of the mouth came from the heart. All their years of traditional laws and customs just could or would not accept the way Jesus taught. It was especially hard for the Rabbis and people who had worked all their lives to learn and obey the laws. Rabbinism started with demand of outward obedience and righteousness, and pointed to sonship as its goal; the Gospel started with the free gift of forgiveness through faith and of sonship, and pointed to obedience and righteousness as its goal. Israel had made void the Law by its traditions. Under a load of outward ordinances and observances its spirit had been crushed. The religions as well as the grand hope of the Old Testament had become externalized. And so alike Heathenism and Judaism - for it was no longer the pure religion of the Old Testament - each following its own direction, had reached its goal. All was prepared and waiting. The very porch had been built, through which the new, and yet old, religion was to pass into the ancient world, and the ancient world into the new religion. Only one thing was needed: the coming of Christ. From a spiritual standpoint, this was the world that Christ was born into and where he ministered for his earthly years. The truth that he proclaimed was so foreign to them and all their laws, that it's easy to see how they could have missed the whole truth about his first coming. No wonder they were so against what they thought was a counterfeit person trying to claim the kingship that they had been looking for so long. When Jesus didn't act and do like they thought he should, it was very easy for them to dismiss Him as the Son of God that they knew was coming into the world that the scriptures had proclaimed. For more information from this book, go to the archives page at my site www.cathydeaton.com There are other articles of interest there also. This text taken from the book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah written by Alfred Edersheim and used by permission.
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