Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus : Volume 4: New Testament Objections by Brown Michael L

Author:Brown, Michael L. [Brown, Michael L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2006-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

5.21. The Jesus of the New Testament is hardly Jewish. In fact, he even refers to the Torah as “your Law”—precisely because it was not his own.

Jesus stated emphatically that he did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but rather to fulfill them, and the primary focus of his earthly ministry was on reaching the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In all his teaching, he made reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, even stating to the Jewish leaders that if they truly believed Moses, they would believe him. After his death and resurrection, his followers continued in this pattern, living as Torah-observant Jews and pointing back to the Tanakh to support the Messianic claims of Jesus. How then can you possibly argue that this very same Law was not his own?

The specific verses in question are John 10:34, where Jesus responds to the Jewish leadership by saying, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’.” Related to this is John 15:25, where Jesus, again speaking of the Jewish leadership, says to his disciples—who were all Jews—“But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’ ” Addressing this in volume 1 (242, n. 183), I noted:

Some would also point to verses such as John 10:34, where Jesus speaking to “the Jews” says, “Is it not written in your Law , ‘I have said you are gods’?” [my emphasis], as if he was saying, “This is your Law, not mine!” However, such an understanding of this text is completely untenable for the following reasons: (1) Elsewhere in John, Jesus insisted that it was the whole Bible in general, and the Law of Moses in particular, that bore witness to him: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. . . . But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” (John 5:39–40, 45–47; see also John 8:32, where continuing in God’s Word —meaning the Hebrew Bible!—is the prerequisite for being a true disciple); (2) When dialoging with Jewish leaders, Jesus alluded to Moses as part of their shared heritage; see, e.g., John 3:14–16; 7:19–23; (3) Jesus’ own disciples are credited with seeing him as the fulfillment of Moses and the prophets: “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45); (4) The verse from “the Law” cited by Jesus in John 10:34 is actually from the Psalms (82:6), indicating that Jesus used “the Law” (i.e., “Torah”) in the broader sense of the Scriptures as a whole, something which was quite common in Jewish usage.

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