Clifford Denton addresses common misunderstandings about Torah.
In the last article we considered the subject of halakhah. Now let us consider Torah, on which halakhah is founded. These are Hebrew words, which will need some fresh investigation by many Christians, especially since some confusion has entered our Christian experience because of translation of these key words into other languages.
Our English Bible translations use the word ‘law’ where the Hebrew reads ‘Torah’ in the Old Testament. The New Testament manuscripts came to us in Greek rather than the Hebrew language. The word nomos is used rather than Torah or halakhah, again resulting in the word ‘law’ in English translations. This adds to our difficulty in re-thinking the relationship between Torah and halakhah because of the connotations of the word law in our lives and culture today.
This problem is increased because of the way Judaism has put the concept of halakhah into legalistic terms, further leading to many Christians rejecting serious studies of both Torah and halakhah, seeing law and grace as mutually exclusive.
We must look into the heart of God’s intent, and beyond legalism of either a Jewish or a Christian kind, to discover God’s purpose for all the family of faith. That is why we first of all, in our previous article, established that the Hebraic lifestyle was always intended to be a walk with God – the true interpretation of halakhah.
So now let’s put Torah into right relationship with this walk with God.
We must look beyond both Jewish and Christian legalism, to the heart of God’s intent for Torah and halakhah.
Compiling the Torah
It is instructive to consider the historical development of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible are called the Books of Moses. Before Moses’ time, oral tradition was the means of transmitting what was later to become the written word, recorded by Moses.
Enoch, Noah, Abraham and others learned to listen to God and walk with him. Then, when Israel was to become a nation within their own land, God caused Moses to record what is now the first five books of the Bible. This contains relevant earlier history, an account of the wilderness journey from Egypt to the Promised Land (itself a walk with God) and also the instruction that God gave by which Israel was to live. This included the Ten Commandments and a wide variety of requirements by which God’s chosen people should live as a nation, incorporating also the yearly cycle of Feasts of the Lord and the Sabbath Day.
The record of Moses came to be known as Torah. This word does not mean ‘law’. It means ‘teaching’ or ‘instruction’, drawing on the entire content of the first five Books of the Bible. God’s purpose was not to cause law to replace the foundational principle of walking with him in personal and corporate relationship.
Considered as God’s teaching programme, Torah was to be in balance with halakhah. This was the approach to be made in families, where children were to be taught by example and through parental guidance (Deut 6) and for the entire nation, for whom elders were appointed to interpret Torah on the walk of faith (Ex 18).
The Writings and the Prophets
Torah became Israel’s Bible, as it were. Other written records were compiled later, including the history of the nation, the Psalms and the Proverbs, which together were grouped as Ketuvim, the Writings. The Writings came out of a nation that was seeking to live in relation to God and to interpret his teaching as the foundation of that relationship.
When Israel fell away from God, their fall could be assessed by how far they had departed from Torah. The Prophets came along to point Israel back to God through reference to Torah. The third set of written material thus emerged which was called Neveeim, the Hebrew for ‘Prophets’.
The record of Moses came to be known as ‘Torah’, but this does not mean ‘law’.
Thus emerged the priority for the Hebrew Bible. With Torah (the five Books of Moses) at the foundation, Neveeim and Ketuvim were compiled with it, to make what comes to us as TaNaK, or the Tanakh (Old Testament).
Torah: Lost in Translation?
The true meaning and significance of Torah must be untangled from the concepts of English ‘law’ and Greek nomos if we are to re-connect with our Hebraic heritage. The key is in the Hebraic background of teaching, expressed as well as translators could in Greek, English and other languages.
The Greek nomos has shades of meaning that fit this original Hebraic background, but the English ‘law’ can easily be misinterpreted in our day, when it is connected with crime and punishment so readily. Yet, ‘law’ does also imply rules to bring safety and structure to the life of a community, and if we re-connect the concept with education we are not completely divorced from the original intent of the scriptures.
With Torah, interpretation was always necessary. Generation after generation of Israel’s elders and teachers, including rabbis in the Jewish tradition, helped the community of Israel to interpret Torah into a way of life. The call was not to make individual believers dependent on them, but to help them to be dependent on God. It is this link between Torah and halakhah that is so important.
This applies to the Christian world as much as it does to the Jewish world. Indeed, if we re-connect more firmly to the continuity from Old to New Covenant days, both Jews and Christians have the same objective – a walk with God as disciples, learning all that God wants to teach us.
Torah must be untangled from the concepts of English ‘law’ and Greek nomos and re-connected to our Hebraic heritage.
Yeshua Upholds Torah
During his Sermon on the Mount, Yeshua (Jesus) said that he had come to rightly interpret Torah (Matt 5:17). He confronted the religious teachers of the day for their controlling traditions and wrong interpretations (Matt 23). Moses’ seat, referenced in Matthew 23:2, was the seat in the synagogue set aside for a teacher to bring interpretations of the Torah.
Seen through these eyes, we see that much of the ministry of Yeshua was concerned with establishing the true foundations of halakhah through correctly interpreting Torah. He attacked dry ritual and challenged the attitude towards the Feasts and Sabbath (e.g. Mark 2:27-28). He showed that Torah was given by God to strengthen relationships between mankind and God and between men, women and children within Israel’s community (Matt 22:37-40) – the priority being for how we walk out our life in this world whilst also walking with God – halakhah.
Ritual Halakhah
By contrast to the true purpose of Torah, Jewish halakhah has become a form of legal interpretation of 613 dos and don’ts that have been identified in the written Torah.
Many of these commands, taken in a literal sense, are strengthened to give a margin of error so that the actual law will not be broken. This is called a fence around the Torah. However righteous the fence around Torah might seem, it carries with it the potential of robbing a person of their walk with God. Torah is deeper than this and more spiritual in application.
Further, if Torah is separated from the life and sacrificial death of Yeshua it will also lose its true purpose, because only through faith in Yeshua can one achieve the relationship with God that was always the goal of Torah.
Jesus’ ministry was concerned with establishing the true foundations of halakhah through correctly interpreting Torah.
Christians can also be found guilty of falling short of the purpose of what the Bible teaches, as Paul’s letter to the Galatians pointed out. On the one hand there is the possibility of misunderstanding Torah as law in the legal sense and so missing the true purpose of God’s teaching. Many Christians have thereby detached themselves from serious study of the heart intent of Torah foundations, misinterpreting Galatians 3:13. Yeshua (Jesus) took away the curse of Torah (the ‘law’) in that he took the punishment for sin away on the Cross for those who believe. He did not take away Torah itself.
On the other hand, in seeking to restore Torah observance, some Christians have taken a legalistic route, similar to that found in Jewish halakhah.
In Light of the New Covenant
Our challenge, therefore, in re-connecting with the Hebraic background to the Christian faith, is to be serious students of the entire Bible, re-establishing Torah foundations in New Covenant terms, helping one another secure a walk of faith in relationship with one another and with God and not being so legalistic as to spoil that walk, whilst learning together how to let our freedom in Messiah be submitted to the will of the Holy Spirit.
It must be said that the evidence is that it is far easier to slip into legalistic interpretations of Torah, leading to bondage to ritual more than freedom to walk with the Lord – something that takes a lifetime to learn in reality.
Take Psalm 119 as an illustration of where to start. Picture the author carefully constructing his psalm to express his delight in Torah. The psalm has 22 sections, each linked to one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of the eight verses of a section commences with a word beginning with that letter, aleph, beit, gimmel and so on.
The number eight in Scripture represents new beginnings, possibly new life, so this symbolism is wound into the construction of the psalm. Perhaps there are other symbols too, along with the emphasis on the alphabet.
Our challenge is to re-establish Torah foundations in New Covenant terms, helping one another secure a walk of faith in relationship with God, while not slipping into legalism.
Considering all this, we realise that the psalmist took great care in expressing his love of Torah. Every letter of every word was to express his love of God and recognition of the power of Torah to transform, protect and guide a person.
This same inspiration can be carried over to New Covenant love of God’s teaching. Do we love God’s teaching through his Holy Spirit in such a way that we respond to it with the same heart as the psalmist? How many Christians have seen it that way? Torah was always spiritual and with the gift of the Holy Spirit to write it on our hearts, we are in a privileged position to live a Torah lifestyle - free of bondage, free to learn, discovering how heart manifestations of Torah principles are intended to guide and strengthen our individual and corporate walks with God.
Next time: Some illustrations from Torah
