The Method of the Rabbis

And He said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?” Luke 13:18

And To What – If there were ever a phrase that shows us that Jesus is thinking and speaking like a Jewish rabbi of the first century, this is it!  “And to what may it be compared,” is a particularly common phrase among the rabbis.  Rabbinic Judaism developed the literary form of the parables as no other group has ever done.  This introductory phrase was used over and over in rabbinic teaching.  When Jesus uses these words, He is announcing Himself as one of the rabbis.  And, of course, everyone who heard these words found them very familiar.  They were the same introductory words that they heard whenever a great rabbi was teaching.

We learn two very important lessons from this fact.  First, it simply is not possible to understand Jesus from a Greek perspective.  Yes, the New Testament documents are Greek.  Yes, the word studies of New Testament documents must begin with Greek.  Yes, most ministers and students of God’s Word put their emphasis on Greek.  But Greek is not the language of our Lord.  He was part of the Pharisaic rabbinic tradition.  He taught like a rabbi.  He walked like a rabbi.  He gathered His disciples like a rabbi.  If we want to understand what Jesus says, we must enter into His culture and His language.  (That is one reason why you should come to Israel with Rabbi Robert Gorelik and me in May).

Secondly, once we know that Jesus was considered part of the rabbinic tradition, we can understand why the people were so amazed by His teaching.  They were not amazed because what He taught was new.  Yes, He did have important new insights on God’s Word but that isn’t why they were so shocked.  They were amazed because, even though He taught like a rabbi, He didn’t have the pedigree or use the same methodology as the rabbis.  When a rabbi taught, he most often quoted a previous rabbi – the one who was his teacher.  The method was an oral form of footnotes and references.  In fact, most of the time, a rabbi memorized the commentary of his teacher and repeated it whenever he taught.  But Jesus didn’t do that.  Jesus came without the expected pedigree.  He didn’t point to a long line of teachers.  He didn’t quote other sages.  He taught “as one with authority,” a shorthand way of saying that He taught as if He himself were the author of the comments.  That might seem perfectly acceptable to us, but in first century Judaism, that was unheard of.  The people were amazed because He was original – and He was teaching about God’s sacred and unalterable Word.

We don’t find this shocking anymore.  We are so used to the Greek Jesus that we no longer hear the words of the Hebrew Yeshua.  Maybe that’s one reason why we easily misunderstand Him.  We pour ourselves into the Greek text commentaries without first discovering what it was like to be a Jew in the first century.  Do you think that a lot of the controversy that we have as Christian today might disappear if we just did a bit more cultural homework?

Topical Index:  parables, rabbinic method