Jesus’ first task as king was not to deliver the Jews from the Romans but to save the Jews from the Jews.
The whiteness of the field in Jesus’ day was not all wheat. As in the wilderness, God did not cut Israel off but instead granted one generation of mercy to purify and prepare the people of God for “the era to come.”
The inspired and gifted ministry of the Apostolic Church brought that harvest to a state of maturity, or “perfection” (1 Corinthians 13:10). It is estimated that, by AD69, four million Jews of the diaspora had heard the Gospel from Christians. But the Gospel revealed both the wheat and the tares for what they were. When the testimony was finished, those who received Christ were left with faith, hope, and love—spiritual maturity. But those who did not were also brought to a state of maturity. Like Pharaoh, whose heart was hardened through the harrowing “ministry” of the Ten Plagues, the “ten days” of the apostolic witness brought the stiff-necked Jewish leaders to a state of perfect hatred.
Although this hatred for Christians metastasized after the Day of Pentecost, the “troubling spirit” sent by God to bring delusion to the self-righteous rebels only concentrated a loathing for Jewish commoners that already ruled their hearts. A chasm had developed between the elitist teachers of Israel and the am ha’aretz, the people of the Land. Michael Hoffmann writes:
Recall the scene in the book of Luke when the Pharisees, using their sly ability to twist words, which has remained with their spiritual heirs to this day, tried to ensnare Jesus, when they asked Him, “By whose authority do you teach?” Jesus countered by asking of them a question in turn, “By whose authority did John baptize?” This passage in Luke illuminates the extent to which the peasantry among the Jewish people, the am ha’aretz, were on Jesus’ side at that time. The Pharisees murmured among themselves, “If we answer that God sent John, He will say why were you not then baptized? But if we say John’s authority did not come from God, the people will stone us because they believe that John was a prophet.”
The “people” of Israel, the am ha’aretz, for a time believed John the Baptist and did not hold with the Pharisees or their anthropomorphic traditions.1
Hoffman goes on to quote some rabbinic definitions of the am ha’aretz from the Talmud, showing how Jews who did not highly regard or acquaint themselves with the oral tradition were viewed by the Pharisees. These quotations not only justify the condemnation of these recalcitrant overseers as false shepherds who sold and slew their own sheep because they regarded them as worse than beasts, but also give us a glimpse of the burning hatred of which Jesus and the apostolic martyrs, as the “firstlings” of the new flock, were victims.
BT Pesahim 49a-b: “But let him not marry the daughter of an am ha’aretz, because they are detestable (‘sheketz’) and their wives are vermin, and of their daughters it is said, ‘Cursed be he that lies with any manner of beast.’
“Rabbi Eleazaer said: An am ha’aretz—it is permitted to stab him (even) on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath.
“Said his disciples to him, Master, may we slaughter him (ritually)?
“The rabbi replied: This (ritual slaughter) requires a benediction, whereas that (stabbing of the am ha’aretz) does not require a benediction.
“Rabbi Samuel ben Nachmani said in Rabbi Yochanan’s name: One may tear an am ha’aretz like a fish!
“Said Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac: And (this means) stab him along his back.
“Greater is the hatred with which the ignoramuses (am ha’aretz) hate the (Talmudic) scholar, than the hatred with which the goyim hate Israel, and their wives (hate even) more than they.”
“Our rabbis taught: Six things were said about the ignoramuses: We do not commit testimony to them; we do not accept testimony from them; we do not reveal a secret to them; we do nothing for their orphans; we do not appoint them stewards over money; and we must not join their company on the road. If an am ha’aretz loses something, the scholar is not required to notify him; the am ha’aretz should not benefit from any physical good in this world!”
BT Sotah 22a: “It has been reported, if one has learned Scripture and Talmud but did not obey Rabbinical scholars, Rabbi Eleazar says he is an am ha’aretz. Rabbi Samuel ben Nachmani says an am ha’aretz is a boor (literally ‘bor’ in Hebrew); Rabbi Janni says an am ha’aretz is a Samaritan; Rabbi Aha b. Jacob says he is a magician. Our Rabbis taught: Who is an am ha’aretz? Whoever does not put on tefillin. Rabbi Ben Azzai says: Whoever has not tzitzit on his garment. R. Jonathan b. Joseph says: Whoever has sons and does not rear them to study the Talmud. Others say: Even if he learned the Old Testament scripture, but not Talmud, he is a boor”…
The Kabbalah (Zohar: Exodus 7b) teaches that at the “end of days” the am ha’aretz, these “wicked Jews” will become the allies of the enemies of the “Klal Yisroel” (the “Jewish” people.).2
Apart from the obvious, two things are worth noting here.
The first is the fact that these Talmudic scholars considered themselves to be the “true Jews.” In reality, however, they had replaced the authority of the inspired Old Testament Scriptures with a false “canon” in the same way that the Roman Catholic Church later usurped the authority of the Bible with its magisterium. In both cases, the institution claims to be the authoritative interpreter of the Word in order to subvert and replace it by stealth with a coercive, diabolical forgery. Jacob Neusner writes:
“In reading the written Torah itself, the Talmud’s exegesis enjoys priority of place.”
“…any notion of Pharisaism (or later Rabbinic Judaism) as the true and direct descendants of the Old Testament is contradicted by the most fundamental assumptions of one Mishnah-Tractate after another. These stand wholly separate from the Priestly Code… and generally contradict it!”3
Just as the Roman Church persecuted those who attempted to reform it by calling it back to the Bible, so also Rabbinic Judaism later persecuted those Jews who rejected the Oral Law. As Hoffmann notes, “If Judaism were simply—having rejected Christ—a corrupted variant of the ancient religion of the Israelites, then Judaism would not have, over the centuries, despised, reviled, denounced, persecuted, beaten and murdered the Karaites (Kara’im, Bne Mikra: ‘People of the Scriptures.’)”4 Robert Adam writes:
The Jewish sects of the present day are… the Rabbis or Talmudists who add to the written law all the traditions of the Talmud. They conceive that the true sense of the scripture is only found in their oral traditions… They hold the ancient Pharisees in high estimation; and tell us that they were not a sect but the whole mass of Jews… They insist that their character is not fairly represented in the New Testament… They seem to inherit their self-righteousness… The numerous fables, idle stories and otherwise strange materials with which the (books of the) Talmud are stuffed, gave serious offense to many judicious and well-meaning Jews, who were unwilling to believe that such traditions could come from God, but who, notwithstanding, did not allow their dissent to proceed to any breach or schism among them, till about AD750, when one arose from this, which continues to this day. Anan, a Jew of Babylon, and Saul his son, then openly disclaimed and condemned all traditions, excepting such only as agreed with the written word of God. And as those who opposed them and adhered to the Talmud were chiefly the Rabbis and their scholars, that party was called the Talmudists or Rabbinists; while the other, declaring for the Scripture alone, which in the Babylonian language is called Kara, were thence called Karaites… i.e. Scriptuarians… The Karaites are some- times called Sadducees by their opponents the Talmudic Jews, but very unjustly, for they agree in nothing so much as rejecting the oral law… Collectively considered, they (Karaites) are men of great learning, probity and virtue…”5
The second thing we ought to notice is that a major reason for the Pharisees’ hatred for the people of the Land was the fear that they would side with their enemies. This further justifies Paul’s comparison of the Jewish leaders with Pharaoh (Romans 9:17), who slaughtered the infants of Israel because he feared that the Hebrews would turn against their Egyptian masters and ally themselves with foreign invaders. The irony is that it was the Jewish leaders themselves who ultimately allied themselves with Rome—in spiritual terms—against Jesus in the court of Pilate and then against His Church during the Neronic persecution.
Hoffmann notes that there are hundreds of books on the market that expose the teachings of Islam but there is nothing approaching this quantity of criticism concerning Judaism. Since World War II, the rabbinical “archetypal persecutors, haters, killers and racists” have used the heinous vilification and victimization of Jews to render their own religion immune from criticism by the Church. The accusation of “antisemite,” like “racist,” is, in this case, a calculated abuse of historic ethnic conflicts to mask and protect a continued doctrinal lie. Jesus made it clear that those teachers who prevent the Law (through distortion or replacement) from bringing men to Christ are satanic. Just as the primary victims of Islamic tyranny are Muslims themselves, so also the primary victims of this Talmudic tyranny are ultimately Jews themselves.
How does this exposure of the hateful nature of the belief system of the “Judaism” that claims to be the heir of the Old Testament religion affect our interpretation of the New Testament? For one thing, it explains the ferocity of the apostolic condemnations of the Jews and Judaizers. Having been written by believing Jews, these imprecations were no more “antisemitic” than the condemnations of Israel’s kings by the prophets before the exile. More importantly, it sheds further light on the meaning of Paul’s prediction that “all Israel” would be saved, that is, delivered (Romans 11:26).
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for laying heavy burdens upon men’s shoulders and offered the people an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30, 23:4), thus testifying of a spiritual exodus from Talmudism. The Jews had expected their Messiah to deliver them from the Romans but Jesus’ first task as king was to free His people from the burdens of the Oral Law. In other words, He came to save the Jews from the Jews.
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. (Exodus 1:8-11)
And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!” The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” (Exodus 5:5-9)
While the zealots robbed and murdered in their quest for freedom from their Gentile masters, Christ would release the am ha’aretz from bondage under their Hebrew masters, binding the “strong man” who held them captive by denying to them the reconciliation, peace, and liberty that comes from true atonement. Thus, the prophet Jude corresponds the ministry of the Church with that of Enoch (the seventh from Adam, Jude 1:14) only to condemn the Jews as Lamechs (also a seventh from Adam) who had replaced mercy with vengeance. The Gospel would conquer the Gentile powers in due course, but that could not occur without first dealing with the Jewish ones: humanity is a tent with three domains—Garden, then Land, then World.
As in the days of Jeremiah, the rulers’ ultimate refusal to release their Hebrew brothers from this spiritual slavery was the act that sealed their doom.
“Therefore, thus says the Lord: You have not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother and to his neighbor; behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine, declares the Lord. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.” (Jeremiah 34:17)
God would once again cut off the lawless “head” of Israel in order to save the “body.” By the end of the apostolic era, the Jews had been completely “threshed” and all that remained was the “chaff” that God had gathered in the “great city.” The true villain of the first-century story—the key to the world’s troubles—was not Rome but Jerusalem. This rounding up of the ringleaders is how Jesus banished ungodliness from Jacob (Isaiah 59:20; Romans 11:26).
Understanding the first-century events as an escape from spiritual Sodom, an exodus from spiritual Egypt, and a release from spiritual Babylon, also sheds further light on the Apostle Peter’s controversial statement that “baptism… now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). For the Jewish believer, baptism into Christ was not just a deliverance from the continual requirements of the Law. This new, once-for-all “Levitical” rite also granted to the Jew an emancipation from the burden of the Pharisees’ mendacious, elitist, totalitarian bureaucracy upon his conscience. It was the Law of Moses that brought—and still brings—men to Christ. But it was the demonic Oral Law that stood—and still stands—as an angel with a flaming sword at the gate of the Sanctuary, denying Jews access to the mercy of God. This explains why Peter then mentions that Christ was no longer subject to the use or abuse of the earthly Sanctuary because He now ruled the heavenly one.
Woes to the Pharisees and Lawyers
LUKE 11:37-54
While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”
One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” And he said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”
As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.
This is an excerpt from The End of Israel: Jesus, Paul & AD70.
- Michael Hoffman, Judaism’s Strange Gods, 13-14.
- Hoffman, 14-16.
- Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Judaism: Structure and System, 209, and A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, 7. Cited in Hoffman..
- Hoffman, 166.
- Robert Adam, The Religious World Displayed, Or, a View of the Four Grand Systems of Religion: Judaism, Paganism, Christianity and Mohammedism. Cited in Hoffman.
