Miss-education
“One shall not sell a thing to a Gentile,” The Babylonian Talmud, Regulations Regarding Transfer on Shabbat
Gentile – We have often noticed that paradigms determine interpretation. Investigation is governed by what we expect to find. It is never neutral. Even in hard science, the theory defines the category of discovery, and as the history of science demonstrates, unexplainable occurrences are more often discarded than they are taken as disconfirmation of a theory. All of this really amounts to a very important revelation: our views of the world have a built-in bias that is very difficult to overcome.
Most of us think that the Bible is our final authority. After Luther, we have been taught that the Bible is the only source of faith and practice. If it’s not in the Bible, then it’s not from God. But this view is entirely Protestant in origin. It’s based on Luther’s five solas, in particular, sola scriptura. It’s not the view of the early Church (which was Catholic), and, more importantly, it’s not the view of the Jews. It wasn’t the view of the Jews in the first century either. Note the comment by Benjamin Sommer:
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as Jewish biblical theology. While many definitions of the term “biblical theology” exist, they all accord some privileged place to the Bible. All forms of Jewish theology, however, must base themselves on Judaism’s rich postbiblical tradition at least as much as on scripture, and hence a Jewish theology cannot be chiefly biblical. (By Judaism’s rich postbiblical tradition, I mean first of all rabbinic literature found in the Talmuds and midrashic collections, which stem from the first through eight centuries C.E., and also post rabbinic Jewish commentaries, legal literature, mysticism, and philosophy from the eighth century through the present.) Conversely, any theology that focuses especially on scripture is by definition Protestant and not Jewish, for the notion of sola scriptura has no place in Judaism—even as an unrealized ideal.[1]
Now take a very brief look at a very small part of the discussion in the Talmud following the instruction, “One shall not sell a thing to a Gentile,”:
The rabbis taught: The Beth Shamai said: One shall not sell a thing to a Gentile, nor lend it to him, nor help him carry it, nor lend him nor present him with any money on Sabbath eve unless there is time enough for the recipient to reach his house before night comes on. The Beth Hillel said (all this may be done) if there is time enough to reach his house at the wall of the city where he lives. R. Aqiba, however, says: It is sufficient if there is time enough for the Gentile to leave the house of the Jew.[2]
This discussion goes on for several pages, a back and forth argumentation about the interpretation of the statement. If you were interested in what it means to not sell anything to a Gentile, you would read the history of the rabbis’ debate about this topic. As a Jew, this becomes the way to determine how you should live. It’s tradition. It might be an extension of a biblical text, but rather than simply citing a text, it provides detailed interpretation of the text. If you were orthodox, you couldn’t live without it. Is that the end of the lesson?
What have we discovered other than this historical tidbit? I hope you realize that Yeshua and his followers lived in a world of tradition. They were familiar with the teachings of the rabbis. You and I read hints of this in the gospels when Yeshua engages in debate with the “scribes and Pharisees.” Paul was certainly a part of this tradition (he specifically says so before Felix). Because we grew up in a Catholic or Protestant worldview, we probably never considered the role that tradition played in the lives of Yeshua and the disciples. We probably haven’t read anything in the Talmud. We don’t know about the rabbinic debates or their alternative interpretations. We see students in a Yeshiva pouring over the Talmud and we think, “Why aren’t they studying the Bible instead of these works of men?” And we’ve completely missed the point. What do you think Yeshua studied as a child in Nazareth? Because we grew up in a Christian world, we have only part of the rich textual material that our Messiah knew. We only understand part of his religious experience. We dismiss the Jewish traditions and we become instant Lutherans, declaring that the Bible is all we need to know. I wonder what Yeshua would think about that.
Topical Index: Talmud, tradition, education, sola scriptura
[1] Benjamin D. Sommer, Dialogical Biblical Theology: A Jewish Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically in Biblical Theology: Introducing The Conversation, eds. Perdue, Morgan and Sommer (Abingdon Press, 2009), pp. 1-2.
[2] The Babylonian Talmud, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/FullTalmud.pdf p. 26.
