Pharisees, Torah, and Sacrifice: What We Miss When We Misread the Law (Paul Sloan) Ep. #219

Dru (00:00)
Why does Jesus affirm the Torah, the law of Moses, so strongly when the gospel came to free us from it

this conversation with New Testament scholar Paul Sloan, we talk about his new book, Jesus and the Law of Moses, where he gets into the nitty-gritty of what the law of Moses was doing in the days of Jesus, how it functioned, and how Jesus saw himself within the law and extending the law of Moses into the gospel. You will not want to miss as he gets us into the nitty-gritty of how the law works.

Dru (00:35)
What do people typically do that keeps them from

understanding the law or what ideas floating around in Christian culture today are interrupting us from understanding how Jesus sees the law.

Paul Sloan (00:48)
Yeah.

That’s a great question. so I was at ⁓ a panel, I think it was the last SBL, I think it was the panel on the use of rabbinic writings in New Testament scholarship or something like that. how to do that and how to navigate that and how to not do it, that sort of thing. And ⁓ in the audience, ⁓ someone spoke up and everyone was talking about how did this come to be? How is it that New Testament scholars

Dru (01:01)
nice.

Paul Sloan (01:19)
At one point, we’re super comfortable using rabbinic writings and then have now waned and now also when they do it, are they using it rightly or not is a big question. ⁓ Are they understanding it on its own terms rather than just sort of picking up? But one person spoke up and I thought, man, that really nailed it. His name was Rabbi Joe, Joe Charnes, I think it was. ⁓ And he prefaced by saying, look, I’m not a scholar, I’m a rabbi. That was his own words. He said, I think the problem here is that

Dru (01:30)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Sloan (01:49)
we’ve New Testament Christians, maybe at the general level, but also particularly New Testament scholars of a certain generation are already working with the supposition that, well, Judaism in terms of conventional Torah observance is precisely all the stuff that Jesus and Paul got rid of. And so why would you take the time to study Torah or Torah observance on its own terms? ⁓ You’re just studying something that has been

Dru (02:07)
Hmm.

Paul Sloan (02:18)
you know, replaced or left behind or criticized, right? Yeah, yeah, right. And so, or even criticized. And so I thought, yeah, I think that’s really it. Why take the time? ⁓ Why take the time to study Torah on its own terms or law in the gospels or law in early Judaism or law in the Mishra or whatever if it’s just precisely that ism that’s been criticized and dropped?

Dru (02:22)
No pun intended.

Paul Sloan (02:45)
I think that’s a big one. Also, the obvious one, particularly still at the popular level, is still the issue of legalism. know that scholars like to think that that issue was just dealt with 50 years ago by Sanders. at one level, at the scholarly level, it did really shape the conversation. But ⁓ I don’t know what the deal is. just simply hasn’t trickled down to, by and large, has not trickled down to ⁓ popular lay levels. ⁓

Dru (03:07)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Sloan (03:15)
I’ve teached lot of churches, it’s still the kind of reigning framework. And I obviously teach all levels of freshmen and undergrad, and it’s still the, it’s the reigning framework that they come in with. So that when I’m teaching a class on law or Torah, anything related to this sort of stuff, I have to actually spend the first couple of weeks just talking about the different kinds of frameworks and why this one in particular, legalism, is actually not the best framework. And the reason is because then, again, once you’ve already decided that that’s the issue, once you’ve already decided that legalism is the issue, well then,

then you can filter every single controversy through that lens. So every controversy with the Pharisees becomes a controversy over legalism. that means, oh, they’re too strict and Jesus is less strict or lax or telling them to chill out. And so my basic, I mean, I use this analogy now in so many settings, is the Play-doh molds, right? Like no matter what mold you choose, if you choose a mold, then it doesn’t matter, sorry.

Dru (03:49)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Paul Sloan (04:11)
Drew and I were talking before, I have three kids, a six year old, a four year old, a two year old, so there’s a lot of Play-Doh in our house. ⁓ We do those Play-Doh hand cranks.

Dru (04:17)
I thought you were talking about Plato the Philosopher.

Paul Sloan (04:21)
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s I thought you were into him break that Okay, yo play dough the little little squishy stuff ⁓ You have those little play dough hand cranks where you can crank the play dough through a shape if you’ve no matter What shape you choose right if you choose a little star shape or whatever well doesn’t matter how much play dough you use doesn’t matter What color it is doesn’t matter if you put a pound of it in there or an ounce of it in there It’s all gonna come out the same shape

Dru (04:23)
I was like, where is he going with this? Play-Doh, wow, okay. Play-Doh, yes.

Hmm.

Paul Sloan (04:46)
⁓ And I think that’s what some of these isms do particularly with say ⁓ legalism ⁓ is It it it it just dictates what all the controversies are actually about after all you can’t you know Just all the data gets run through that same mill So ⁓ I do actually think that’s one of the biggest ones at least at the popular level ⁓ at the scholarly level. I think there’s a ⁓ Sometimes can still be an issue of

Talking about Jesus and the Pharisees in terms of just different patterns of religion They’re doing Judaism this way and Jesus thinks thought to do Judaism this way or to observance this way that sort of thing and I and I and I Don’t I also don’t think that’s accurate I think it’s not a matter of distinct patterns of religion, but distinct convictions about sort of eschatology You know is is is the restoration here or not? So I think those in particular can can hinder either a person’s desire in the first place to

study law or take it seriously on its own terms, or can hinder a person’s capacity to understand well the controversies between Jesus and his contemporaries.

Dru (05:52)
It’s probably fair to say that the legalism issue, legalism is bad anytime somebody invents a rule to help them live in a certain way, that’s gonna be a bad thing. It’s probably not unconnected to Luther’s division between law and gospel, right? Where gospel is the freeing mechanism and law is the constraining mechanism. that correct or you see?

Paul Sloan (06:16)
Yeah,

mean, I’ve actually made it a habit to basically never comment on Luther because I haven’t really, I mean, I’ve read him, I’ve read Bits and Pieces, but of course he’s got so much. And so I do see the point though, whether it comes from Luther or someone downstream of him, if you’ve got sort of the law gospel distinction, and it’s like a hard distinction, then yes, and you reduce law to…

Dru (06:36)
Right.

Paul Sloan (06:45)
restraint and you reduce gospel or and you emphasize that gospel is liberty, then yeah, I do think you’re gonna have, you’re gonna come up with those similar kinds of constraints that like, okay, well, rules are constricting and this is about freedom, that sort of thing. And so I do think, and I say this in the book, I do think there’s a certain kind of reading of Paul that’s basically been, first of all, I don’t think is an accurate reading of Paul in the first place, but also then that aside is then,

retrojected into the the Gospels. And so made made made those made made that kind of reading of Paul to work in the Gospels as well. And so I think that’s what’s sometimes going on. Yeah.

Dru (07:24)
Hmm.

Yeah, and I don’t want to suggest, I don’t know anything about Luther other than the stuff I’ve read here and there from Luther. But yeah, but certainly.

Paul Sloan (07:30)
Hahaha

I’ve talked to too

many systematic theologians who every time they hear someone they’re like, yeah, and I’m like, okay, that’s fair. I wouldn’t like it if someone else were talking about whatever. Anyway, go on.

Dru (07:38)
They’re like, that’s not Luther. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But certainly there is a stream that descends from Luther that does ⁓ turn it into that move. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ Yeah, so maybe we could just make the case, of all, what is the best case you can make ⁓ for, I want you to steel man the idea that Jesus and Paul basically are getting rid of the Torah, that they are giving a completely new system. Like, where would people go, where are they typically pointed and saying, you know,

Paul Sloan (07:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely, Certainly.

Dru (08:12)
When people are questioning you, they’re like, well, what do you do when Paul says X, right? So what are they pointing to?

Paul Sloan (08:20)
Yeah. The best Steel Man case, of course, I think from Paul. Actually, I’ll go ahead and say I don’t really know where you would get it from the Gospels. The Gospels just seems, it’s hard for me to see it now. It’s pretty straightforward. Pretty straight.

Dru (08:32)
Well, one place that people often say it

is honestly, it’s like they don’t read the whole passage. So even Wes Huff, saw he made this mistake because he did this total law gospel. Jesus came to bring the gospel, not the law. Very old school. And he said, well, know, Jesus, when confronted with Pharisaical teaching with “Tithing mint, dill, and cumin,” ⁓ he says you shouldn’t do that. And he completely missed the other part where he said, so you should do right. But don’t think like.

Paul Sloan (08:45)
Yeah. Uh huh.

Sure. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, the second half of it. Yeah,

you should have done both without neglecting the other. Yeah, so okay. So let me start with Paul. Probably Galatians three, right? ⁓ Therefore, why then the law came on behalf of the transgressor for the sake of transgressions, whatever, ⁓ until the coming of the seed to whom he was promised, et cetera. then, so then the law became our Paedogogos, our disciplinarian, or whatever, however you translate that.

Dru (09:04)
Right.

Paul Sloan (09:25)
And then down the line, so then therefore we are no longer under a Paedogogos, so under a disciplinarian. So if he’s identified Nomos, Torah with the Paedogogos and then says we’re no longer under a Paedogogos, that’s, I think the temporal arguments in Galatians 3 and that aspect, again, I don’t agree with that take. I think he’s not saying that the Torah is intrinsically a Paedogogos or disciplinarian. think he says explicitly that it became one. ⁓

And so I don’t think he means that Torah was given as one, but that it became one ⁓ in light of in response to transgression. And so that and so that ⁓ the fact that we’re no longer under a pedagogos, a disciplinarian means that we’re no longer under the putative discipline of the law. But I personally still also I wrestle with three the why then the law, it was given on account of transgressions until the coming of the seed. ⁓ That’s probably the.

I understand when interpreters come to the conclusion that, okay, I hear Paul saying, Tora is completely temporary and completely, you Now, you didn’t ask me to respond to those, but I’ll give one brief response, which is that ⁓ the reason why I think it just can’t be absolute, even if you want a nuance that claim, it just simply can’t be absolute is because he clearly thinks they ought to fulfill the love command. I he quotes it and says that they ought to do it, ⁓ which is from Leviticus 19, of course. And so, ⁓

Dru (10:24)
best. Yeah.

Paul Sloan (10:52)
And then of course the curious claim in Galatians 5-3, The ⁓ one who circumcises obligated to keep the whole Torah. It sounds like he thinks circumcision does something and it brings them into a state of obligation under all the commandments, which just seems, ⁓ That makes me, that’s the reason why while I grant the difficulty of Galatians 3-19 and following, ⁓ I don’t find it to be an absolutely devastating ⁓ take there.

Dru (11:01)
Thank you.

Paul Sloan (11:35)
Yeah, in the Gospels, you already mentioned some of them. What are the best case scenarios? I think most people appeal to Mark 7:19. say that, look, Jesus declared all, or the narrator says, Jesus declared all foods clean. So there’s an unification of the dietary laws, and that’s one domino that sort of pushes off all the others, which sort of suggests that, okay, well, if you got rid of food laws, and if food laws are a thing that distinguished Israel, that marked them out as Israelites, well, that’s sort of a domino down for the rest of New Testament, where you can see that the apostles are getting rid of the other.

sets of commandments that also distinguish Israelites and only keeping sort of the so-called universal moral ones. So that’s why circumcision becomes not necessary. And that’s ⁓ why aspects of like ritual impurity or become unnecessary. ⁓

I don’t, yeah.

Dru (12:20)
And that’s, there’s

a big if there whether he’s actually getting rid of food laws.

Paul Sloan (12:24)
yeah, no I don’t, yeah no I don’t, he’s

not. I don’t think he is. I’m happy to say pretty comfortably he’s not. But ⁓ I’m also aware that of course you have to interpret the passage and it’s not sort of self-evident what it means. ⁓ Obviously, every interview now basically becomes a promotional podcast for Logan Williams’ ⁓ Because this text always comes up. So if you haven’t read it, read Logan Williams’ article. Or if your listeners haven’t read it, read Logan Williams’ article on the stomach cleanses all things. It’s open access so you can just find that. ⁓ So yeah, the Mark’s.

Dru (12:41)
You

some nice poop

talk in there as well.

Paul Sloan (12:54)
Yeah, that’s right. It’s important to defecate. ⁓ Cleanly. Let’s see. Yeah, you mentioned the tithe thing. I think that’s right. The other one that I often see is Matthew 19, actually the thing I started with in my book, ⁓ which is that when the guy comes and says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And he says, keep the commandments. just…

Dru (13:19)
Right.

Paul Sloan (13:21)
response and the guy says, which ones? And he quotes some of them and he’s like, I’ve done all that. What do I still lack? Or Jesus says, one thing you still lack, do this. The typical way that’s treated to indicate that, okay, Jesus is actually sort of saying this is going by the wayside is because they assume that that’s an impossible standard. They assume that the response, keep the commandments, is an impossible standard that will never be met, which.

Dru (13:40)
Hmm.

Paul Sloan (13:47)
So then parenthetically, you need something else, which then of course, Romans 3 provides you. Those are the routinely the things I’ve seen, either at academic or popular levels.

Dru (13:58)
Yeah. That impossible standard is kind of based on, correct me if I’m wrong, because my first century knowledge is pretty weak, but a general Roman legalist view of the law that you have 619 commandments, and kind of the goal is to keep all of them, and then of course you have all these rulings around keeping the commandments that keep you from breaking the commandments. And that’s why it seems impossible. Like who can keep?

Paul Sloan (14:24)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Dru (14:27)
all of these at any given time. ⁓ But that’s taking a very specific view of law. And there are other views where it’s not about keeping or breaking these laws. It’s actually about being guided by them or something.

Paul Sloan (14:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that whether you take it that route that are about being guided about them rather than keeping a breaking. But even if it’s about keeping and breaking them like the sacrificial system assumes the commission of transgression. Right. Like so even if it is about keeping and breaking them, it’s built in. Forgiveness is built into the system. And so just the notion that an Israelite had to be, you know, perfect to be in good covenantal standing is just self evidently wrong. ⁓ And so ⁓ and like even Jesus in the same.

Dru (14:49)
Right, Built in.

Paul Sloan (15:09)
It’s amazing to me. Even Jesus in Matthew five, when he says, so therefore be perfect, teleos I ⁓ In the very next, people then take that to be, okay, this is a moral standard, an impossible moral standard, he’s calling you, et cetera, ⁓ Of course, people have done a lot of good lexicography research on that word and shown that it doesn’t just of mean some sort of morally perfect, ⁓ never make an error type or sin, if you’re a human.

And it has more the standard of completeness or maturity that sort of thing And that like for example Noah is described that way as as teleos Yeah, and then the Greek with the same Greek word that what Jesus used teleos in in subdued in all text but also then after he tells him that like he’s Going he goes on to Matthew 6 and he assumes that the humans will need to petition divine forgiveness and will need to forgive each other So even within this summons to perfection, he’s still assuming that

Dru (15:48)
Right, tell me, yeah.

Paul Sloan (16:07)
forgiveness of transgressions will be something both needed and given divinely and humanly. I just, think that framework just doesn’t have a lot of footing.

Dru (16:19)
Yeah, and I think I heard you talking about, or maybe I read it in part of your book, was this idea that people are moving in the system, and I’ve taught Leviticus how many times, and I talked through this, but I never had put so succinctly. People are moving in and out of impurity all the time. People are moving in and out of the need, and impurity is not necessarily a moral issue, but they’re also moving in and out of the need for forgiveness from God. ⁓

Paul Sloan (16:37)
Precisely. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s right.

Dru (16:45)
at all times. And so this is a

very fluid situation. It’s rather than a series of 619 check boxes, right?

Paul Sloan (16:52)
Right,

right, right. No, exactly, Drew, that’s exactly right. mean, you’re slipping in and out of impurity all the time. Becoming impure is not this grave, frustrating thing unless you’re literally on your way to the temple to offer a sacrifice and then someone defiles you accidentally. Then you would probably give an eye roll and be like, now I gotta go bathe and I gotta wait. Now I can’t make this offering till tomorrow. But just like if you’re up in Galilee and whatever, it’s just…

Dru (17:07)
Great.

How could you? Yeah, exactly. Because it’s a pain.

Paul Sloan (17:21)
Yeah, I don’t know, I can’t psychologize them. I’ll psychologize myself. If I were living within this system, ⁓ I would probably just kind of assume I was in a state of impurity until proven otherwise. Unless I bathed and was cleaned by sundown, then went to bed and didn’t do anything, and then woke up and didn’t see or touch anybody, then I’d know. But as soon as you’re out in the crowd, you’re jostling with people.

Dru (17:31)
Right. Yeah.

Paul Sloan (17:50)
And so I just think that it’s just such a mundane routine aspect of life that people think of as this insurmountable thing like, you could never know. You’d be so nervous about it all the time. now the problem with this, of course, is that once you’ve associated ritual purity with this really grave, serious thing, and then you’ve seen that people like the Pharisees are interested in maintaining ritual impurity,

Dru (17:55)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Paul Sloan (18:20)
it’s easy to then imagine them as just being this certain kind of annoying, intense person who would never talk with anybody else and would not touch anybody in the streets or something like that and make sure that you’re like, and I just think like, man, what an over-read. They’re part of the people. They’re super popular. They’re in the crowds. ⁓

Dru (18:37)
Taliban enforcers or something. ⁓

Paul Sloan (18:49)
⁓ I find it just such an overcooking of the evidence. And then the problem with it is that it inscribes a view in which the Pharisees, because they’re so into ritual purity, they must be a kind of annoying personality. So then this gets put to work in readings like Marcus Borg and others where they describe the Pharisaic purity as basically being anti-compassionate. ⁓ And that when Jesus is healing people with impurity,

Dru (19:14)
Mmm. Yeah.

Paul Sloan (19:18)
He even says that when Jesus heals the guy with lepra, it’s an anti-Pharisaic, that healing had an anti-Pharisaic front. I just find that astounding, right? ⁓ He’s quoting somebody else, but he endorses the claim. Anyway, I just think that it’s not just about, okay, well, let’s understand ritual impurity better. You have to understand it better so that you don’t sort of have these really weird misreadings in which you inscribe a certain kind of personality or character to Jews.

or Judaism or the Pharisees, and then think that that’s what Jesus is opposing.

Dru (19:51)
Yeah.

And I think it’s, you know, there’s everybody shares the blame in some of these caricatures and misunderstandings, but certainly the pulpit is a place where it’s very easy just to say, here’s the bad guys. Here’s how Jesus has come here to release you or to defeat the bad guys. And then, you know, you just point out simple things like, well, Paul’s a Pharisee and he doesn’t quit identifying as a Pharisee. Even his last public statement says, hey, I’m a Pharisee. ⁓

Paul Sloan (20:04)
Yeah, sure.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Right.

Dru (20:21)
And you

have Pharisees in the council at Acts who…

Paul Sloan (20:24)
Some

of it says, I was just teaching it yesterday, some of the Pharisees who believe stood up and said this, XYZ, about circumcision, which means there’s a group of believing Pharisees, some of them thought the Gentiles ought to be circumcised, and some didn’t. So you have believing Pharisees who already were not the people who were proposing Gentile circumcision. ⁓ so it’s just, yeah, those details are important. Sorry, what?

Dru (20:50)
And they don’t renounce their identification as a Pharisee.

⁓

Paul Sloan (20:55)
Exactly, they don’t renounce their identification

with the Pharisees and the council doesn’t go with those guys like it like doesn’t agree with them like and then and then it says everyone agrees right obviously whatever you think you know the point is is that like those details are often just kind of glossed over and in a hurried attempt Because of our recognition. Well, yeah Pharisees like they’re the kind of guys They walk on the stage everyone booze and throws a tomato or something right you already know right there. They’re the villain ⁓ Yeah

Dru (21:00)
Right. Right.

Okay.

Right, with the hangman. yeah.

And well, and I think for me, it’s actually an important issue for today because as some of my Jewish friends will say, like the story of modern Judaism that emerges from the second, third century is the Pharisees won. Basically, their style of Judaism essentially becomes the style of Judaism with lots of modifications along the way.

And so if you take that view as a Christian against Pharisees, and then you look at modern day religious Jews who are practicing their religion, it’s very easy to just go like, ⁓ Phariseical. I mean, it’s even a curse word, a byword, you know, today.

Paul Sloan (21:56)
Sure. Well, exactly.

Pharisee or Pharisee equals a slur. And on top of it, again, I’m actually not a specialist with respect to the question of what degree actually is the Mishnah, the inheritance of, or the deposit of the Pharisees. But let’s take the supposition that it is because that’s what a lot of modern folks have. Well, then all of a sudden, if that’s your supposition, then all of rabbinic Judaism represents the thing that Jesus criticized.

Dru (22:09)
Right, right.

Right.

Right.

Paul Sloan (22:25)
Then that’s where again you just have and then what does that do it does that’s a negative on its own, right? Because because not only is then Jesus sort of Criticizing, know all of the stuff that I just think we don’t actually have evidence that he’s criticizing that but also B once that rabbinic Judaism is associated with what we might call like modern Jews or Judaism well, then then you’ve then you’ve got the situation in which well Yeah, Jesus would critique all you guys for the same reasons. You’re like, okay, that’s that’s strike two and then

Strike three is that ⁓ because rabbinic Judaism and the Mishnah and Talmud and everything else is rightly understood to be, when you read it you can see, okay yeah, these guys are really into debating Torah and details and all that sort of stuff. And if Jesus opposes that, then you might think, is opposed to all those fine detailed arguments and he’s really just cutting to the quick. I think, actually no, if you think that, you’re gonna miss.

Dru (23:19)
Hmm.

Right.

Paul Sloan (23:25)
some really important stuff. I actually think the Mark seven piece is really important here where he has got a fine-tuned understanding of ritual impurity and its directionality and he’s making, putting that to work in both why his disciples don’t wash their hands and why, and his instruction that impurity comes from the heart and not the mouth, et cetera. But also his argument about the Sabbath grain field stuff. When his disciples are looking great on the Sabbath and they get opposed by the Pharisees, Jesus defends them.

Dru (23:47)
Great.

Paul Sloan (23:53)
He defends them with a kind of complex argument that assumes a sort of well-versed understanding of Torah regulations and scripture generally. And honestly, of course, I would think this because I’m a gospel scholar and I’m a Christian, but it’s impressive. When you see it, you’re like, okay, this is like…

Dru (24:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Sloan (24:21)
He really knows his stuff. But if you’ve already assumed, of course, like, but if you’ve already assumed that this is the sort of thing that Jesus doesn’t do, right, because, that’s repenting Jesus. Well, then I think you’re just gonna, A, miss his actual argument, but also, B, not miss that, like, ⁓ you know, he’s actually working with that kind of legal reasoning. So anyway, yeah.

Dru (24:22)
Alright. ⁓

Yeah, he has a book of the works where I’m trying to argue that Jesus actually learned Torah and he learned the legal reason of his day and he is making very sophisticated slicing and dicing arguments between those two. ⁓ Probably not, I might just end up ⁓ saying go read Paul’s book instead. So it can be a short book. Going back to Paul, ⁓ I wonder what you make.

Paul Sloan (24:52)
Yeah, yeah, sweet, awesome. I can’t wait to read it.

No, no, Write yours.

Dru (25:12)
or how do you teach this? ⁓ That the last thing Paul does as a free guy is goes down to the temple to offer animal sacrifices as part of a Nazarite vow. I think when I talk about this, most people are just like, wait, what? Because you’re possibly decades here after the resurrection of Jesus. So what do you do with that passage?

Paul Sloan (25:21)
Yeah, sure.

Yeah, right, right.

Sure. Yep.

Yeah, great question, Dru ⁓ So in my book, Jesus and Law of Moses, I do address some of the Acts stuff, and I don’t address that particular thing, I don’t think. And then I also conclude with some stuff on Paul as to of give some sort of gesture toward how I’d handle some of the Pauline data.

So what I do is I take a, I think that Paul thinks that Jews ⁓ are still expected to be Torah observant. I think this is arguable from his letters, like very plausibly arguable from his letters, and is utterly demonstrable according to Acts. ⁓ And so I think he thinks that

Okay, everyone’s just actually now to even use the language of Acts 15, which I think is something I could then I think I can translate well to Paul’s letters. Both groups are saved by the grace of Jesus, that both groups are saved on the same basis, but that doesn’t mean that they have identical obligations after that. And that the obligations, which again, I use the word obligation very positively. don’t people hear that as a negative word. I don’t use it that way. have both duties, responsibilities, obligations. ⁓

Dru (26:52)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul Sloan (26:58)
have obligations that theoretically differ from one another and that’s fine. That’s already baked into the Torah. Once you’re in the Torah, it’s already the case that differing parties have differing obligations. Not all Israel keeps all the commandments. If you’re a non-priest and you try to keep the priestly commandments, that’s transgression, bud. You can’t do it. And so, on and on.

Dru (27:20)
Right, right, right.

Paul Sloan (27:25)
The point is, I think, and similarly, if you’re a foreigner who lives in the land, you don’t have to obey all the commandments. In fact, it’s not just that you don’t have to. There are some that you cannot do. If you’re an uncircumcised foreigner, you cannot, may not eat the Passover rite. So ⁓ I think that’s how I read Paul, and I think that’s what Acts 15 is doing as well. There’s different commandments. So then that’s basically the principle. And I get there, by the way, in case people are curious. I’m not the first to argue this. That’s been argued for decades by others. ⁓

textual reason by that, I would take a look at 1 Corinthians 7, 19 and following, that’s where I go from that, where he says, ⁓ right, circumcision is nothing and foreskin is nothing, but what matters is keeping the commandments of God. And right before that he’d said, like, look, if you were circumcised when called, then remain in the condition in which you were called, ⁓ et cetera, and don’t, if you were circumcised, don’t do an epispasm, don’t undo your circumcision. And if you were called in foreskin, don’t get circumcised.

Dru (28:15)
Right.

Paul Sloan (28:24)
Let every man remain in the condition in which he was called and in that condition let him walk. And then he says, because circumcision is nothing, foreskin is nothing, what matters is keeping God’s command. It sounds like he’s saying, all right, everyone stay how you were when you were called and keep the commandments that obligate that social positioning. So then I go to Axe and I think this is what’s happening. He’s a Jew, he’s still subservient to Torah laws while he’s operating in this realm. ⁓

Dru (28:29)
Hmm.

Paul Sloan (28:55)
And if he’s taken a Nazirite vow, then well, the legislation for that is that you offer, you know, you do certain kind of shaving rights and make certain kind of sacrifices. ⁓ it just seems to me, just is like, it’s really more of like, I really kind of more like put the burden of proof on others. Like, what’s the problem here? Like, you know, I understand. I get it. I really do. I’m not trying to be, you know.

silly about it. ⁓ get it. But at the same time, I start to think like, okay, wait, actually, I’d like you to tell me why you think this is a problem. I feel like the burden of proofs on you. Because why would like, like, there’s nothing sort of intrinsically that compromises salvation by grace through faith with the Messiah, and that you keep certain commandments like that, that there’s just nothing intrinsically opposed to those things. ⁓ And so or oppositional between those between those claims. And so, yeah, I think he’s

making sacrifices, he thinks they’re still legitimate. ⁓ And I think that Jesus and Paul and probably the early apostles, along with actually a lot of other Jewish texts that have a restoration eschatology framework, I think that they think ⁓ sacrifices couldn’t get Israel out of the punitive discipline, right? If they’ve violated the covenant and now they’ve got all this punitive discipline, sacrifice couldn’t get them out of that.

So if you’re trying to offer a sacrifice to get yourself out of covenant wrath or whatever, then that’s not how that works. You need just to endure the discipline, et cetera. ⁓ But once you’re within sort of ⁓ a well operating machine, know, sacrifices are just legitimate and they work. And the important point I’d say is they work and they do what they were designed to do. so do like he took it as right now.

Dru (30:34)
Right.

Paul Sloan (30:41)
which also well, I assume he took a Nazirite vow. And I think that’s what’s going on in Acts 18, where he says he shaved his head because he was under a vow. There’s only one vow that’s associated with head shaving. It’s got to be the Nazirite vow. This tells you that he intentionally took a vow. That’s a voluntary vow. That means that he voluntarily took a vow, which imposed upon himself, A, the requirement to be more scrupulous about his ritual purity, because you can’t come into a contact with the corpse.

Dru (30:52)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Sloan (31:12)
and it,

required, he knew he’d have to go make a hatat, which is often rendered as this sin offering. So he took a voluntary vow that he knew would make him subject to a higher degree of ritual purity and making sin offerings or hatats, purification offerings. So I just think that, ⁓ I think he thinks, hey, while I’m still in this moral realm where the law has its jurisdiction, I’m gonna live my life according to that pattern. And so be it. Yeah.

Dru (31:37)
Yeah.

It’s difficult to reconcile that Paul in Acts to a kind of Paul who’s basically saying, yeah, yeah, this burden of the Torah is too much. This is what Christ came to relieve us from. yeah. ⁓

Paul Sloan (31:51)
Right. Yeah.

So just don’t read Paul that way.

Dru (31:56)
Yeah.

Well, I think you’re right in flipping the question. Like, what are you concerned about here? What’s the problem? One area I do get a lot of concern, I say it kind of casually and then I can see in my students or parishioners faces where they’re like, wait, is, you know, when you suggest that Jesus participated in the sacrificial system, you know, that’s one of the things where I don’t know why, but people are just like, that’s a no go for them. And they’re like, well, how do you know he participated in this? I’m like, well, was a Jew.

Paul Sloan (32:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Sure. Right.

Dru (32:25)
He breaks from his parents at Passover. ⁓ Do you think he was sitting on the side going, like, no, none for me. I’m good. ⁓ I got a meal coming later. You’re going to love, right?

Paul Sloan (32:25)
Yeah, right.

Right, he celebrated Passover. ⁓

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he’s celebrated. Exactly, well, and

even when you’ve got the Last Supper and it’s the sort of thing that’s, you know, he’s obviously imbuing it with another layer of significance, it’s still the fact that they had to get the lamb, so he sent people to prepare for it. mean, like, that’s, whatever you call it, it is participation in the sacrificial system. Also, I think the people, think that, here’s the understandable reason why I think people bump up.

against that and I think it’s the fact that they assume that all sacrifice is about sin. And so if all sacrifice is about sin, well then, know, and Jesus was sinless, well of course he didn’t ever participate in the sacrifice system. And all you have to do is just remind people that no, that’s not all that sacrifice is for. In fact, actually there’s, you know, the hatat and the guilt offering, the isham, and those are two of them. A lot of the others are just about, you know, other things. You’re fulfilling a vow, you’re just expressing gratitude, whatever.

Dru (33:09)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good.

Paul Sloan (33:34)
Jesus never had to make a votive a vow offering because I suspect he never made a vow. yeah, right. I but I or at least never made a vow that that required sacrifice. But like, don’t know, did he ever just give an offering to express gratitude? I don’t don’t see why that’d be problematic, you know. You know, imagine.

Dru (33:37)
Right, right, because he’s pretty strong against them, yeah.

Paul Sloan (33:57)
20 year old Jesus just did that. I don’t see why that’s a problem.

Dru (34:04)
Yeah. Okay, I want to switch topics just mildly, and I want you to kind of step out of your scholar role and more into your cultural critic role. Yeah, nothing hardcore. ⁓ You know, we talked about the rabbinics, and I have a lot of thoughts, and I’m genuinely interested to hear your thoughts on, you know, Christians who kind of use the rabbinics to backfill what Jesus was saying and doing. And I’ll give you one example that…

Paul Sloan (34:10)
Okay.

my.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dru (34:32)
The first time I heard it, I didn’t even know anything about rabbinics. I just knew it didn’t smell right. When I heard Rob Bell give this talk about in the dust of the rabbi, a disciple followed so closely they were in the dust of the rabbi. So be a dusty disciple. I was like, that sounds more like salesmanship than ⁓ scholarship. ⁓ And I know actually where he got that view from. I know the genealogy of that view.

Paul Sloan (34:37)
Mm-hmm.

Dru (35:01)
But essentially he’s turning to rabbinic literature that’s several hundred years after Jesus, and then kind of projecting that back. What do you do when you run into this? I mean, I don’t know if it’s a problem, it’s just one of those things that I don’t know what the method should be for discerning where the rabbinic conversations are in the first century when we don’t really have anything written down. I mean, you can clearly see some being echoed, but we don’t have them written down.

Paul Sloan (35:27)
Yeah.

Dru (35:28)
until the 250s, 300s.

Paul Sloan (35:30)
Yeah,

a couple of things. is there is, and I’d answer this question in two ways. One is there is a exoticization, exoticizing, there’s an exoticizing of the rabbinics because they’re so other and distinct and exotic. ⁓ And so there’s sort of a thrill in seeing, ⁓ Jesus, Jesus was doing this sort of thing too. Like this is his world, you know.

Dru (35:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Paul Sloan (35:58)
⁓ And so there’s a delight that I don’t see maybe as many academics as doing that, but I think you do see it in quite a bit of ⁓ some popular circles that are not anti-Rabidic Judaism, but are sometimes perhaps unintentionally doing the opposite, sort of exoticizing it and then saying, yeah, that Jesus was just walking these waters. Okay, I’m sort of halfway there, right? I do think he’s doing that sort of stuff in the sense that he is

Dru (36:04)
Right.

Paul Sloan (36:29)
⁓ He is on occasion providing very sophisticated arguments for certain laws or assuming already a sophisticated argument and then building on it, that sort of thing. But you do just have to recognize that like Mishnah could be as early as 200, ⁓ but it’s just not… You just can’t assume that everything that’s in it was also how it was being practiced in the first century.

And then once you get to the Babylonian Talmud and everything that’s different geographical location and centuries later, again, you cannot straightforwardly assume that what’s going on there is going on in the first century. So fair enough. ⁓ Now, the ways in which I think there is a ⁓ justifiable use is ⁓ A, there are lots of rulings that are there in Qumran and there in Philo, Josephus that ⁓ then do appear in the Mishnah.

Dru (37:23)
I agree.

Paul Sloan (37:28)
Pretty like either in which you can tell that yeah, that’s the ruling they’re talking about. Like this ruling that’s here in Bavocama is also the same thing that Philo and Josephus are talking about.

Dru (37:37)
Mm-hmm.

100 years before Jesus or 50 years before Jesus.

Paul Sloan (37:45)
Or

it’s something, a ruling that you can tell that they’re building on and distinguishing from what they don’t agree with in whatever, ⁓ from however they knew the rulings of Qumran, but just like whatever ruling is there is clearly, I don’t know, it seems to be pretty straightforwardly like addressing, implicitly addressing and then coming to a different conclusion about it, but still implies that they’re aware of a trajectory and either building on it or deviating from it. ⁓

Dru (37:50)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Paul Sloan (38:14)
So sometimes when you see those cases, I think there’s a more justifiable use. mean, the example I give in the book that I draw on a lot is, or I draw on just once actually, is the notion that eye for eye was often commuted to monetary fines, like Josephus comments on this, Philo comments on this, and then it’s there in vava, comma, eight, Mishnah

Dru (38:32)
Hmm.

Paul Sloan (38:40)
And I think, okay, that’s a pretty good example. Philo and Josephus both describe it as like, and they seemed, and Philo’s like really mad about it, which in test is like a pretty widely practiced thing. And now it’s like being here talked about, you But sometimes also you’ll get the reverse where you’ll get a legal argument that’s in the Mishnah and you don’t get the same ruling in any other extant text, but you can, it seems that the, maybe the principles that are operating are.

Dru (38:52)
Right.

Right.

Paul Sloan (39:07)
are well known either in

Dru (39:09)
Yeah.

Paul Sloan (39:09)
Jewish texts or non-Jewish texts. The one I think about a lot is ⁓ someone who’s commissioned to a task gets to subordinate some commandments when they might hinder the completion of that task. So for example, ⁓ if you are, it says if you’re commissioned to go do something, either to keep another commandment or to do something important, well you can abstain from sleeping in a sukkah.

Dru (39:23)
Hmm.

Paul Sloan (39:36)
during sukkha season because that might hinder your capacity to keep your commission duty. That’s in Mishnah sukkha 2.4. The point is that you see that echoed in another rabbinic passage, Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1, where these people who were supposed to go testify about the new moon, have the capacity. They set their calendar on seeing the moons. And so these people who see the new moon need to travel to Jerusalem to testify about it.

And if the distance is long, they’re permitted to profane the Sabbath to do that. That’s, you know, that’s I personally think that’s a relevant argument for Matthew 12, where Jesus thinks he’s doing commissioned work. And so he thinks that he gets to subordinate other commandments. The point is, is that though that particular ruling in Mishnah to Rosh Hashanah 1 isn’t in whatever, know, Josephus or Philo or the Dead Sea Scrolls, they they will their text that clearly talk about

Dru (40:08)
Right.

Paul Sloan (40:35)
someone who’s been commissioned is just duty bound to complete that commission until, you know, and he can’t let anything get in that way, right? I think Josephus actually talks about the Roman, one of the Roman, what’s his, gosh, the guy who was trying to, is it, the guy who was trying to erect the statue on Gaius’ behalf, I forget his name now. Anyway, the point is that he talks about him that way. I think it’s part of Jesus’ argument, Matthew 12. I think it’s baked into the,

Dru (40:58)
Yeah.

Paul Sloan (41:04)
Sacrificial system like the priests have to in Jesus’s terms profane the Sabbath to keep to keep to keep the sacrifice All is to say is that it’s definitely a spectrum you can overcook it ⁓ Sometimes it does have to kind of be a vibe check like does this does this smell right or is there stuff you know? ⁓ but you know I I’m I was probably pretty free with my use of rabbinic stuff in it without really describing a methodology for it, ⁓ but I tried to also at the same time stick with

Dru (41:09)
Right.

Right.

Paul Sloan (41:35)
Stick with instances where I think I see it going here in the first entry and then see it also attested here and then work with those texts. Anyway, long answer.

Dru (41:46)
Well, I think

for the general public, though, just hearing that answer, though, is, ⁓ like this isn’t the rabbi said it, and therefore I can now read what the rabbi said into the. Yeah.

Paul Sloan (41:57)
Yeah, that’s probably overdoing it. ⁓

Just because it’s attested in a rabbinic text doesn’t mean that… Because A, of course, the rabbinic texts themselves are sometimes citing a rabbi and that rabbi is 100 years later. And so it’s not simply that, well…

It’s in the Mishnah and the Mishnah is recording all these opinions from the first century. Like, well, sometimes it’s actually not like explicitly. Sometimes even the person they’re citing is from the second or third generation or whatever. ⁓ But then, yeah, you do just have to you do have to be a bit more a bit more careful than that about just kind of straightforwardly assuming that it’s here. So therefore, Jesus, Jesus must have known about this ruling. ⁓ It can be hard. ⁓ But I think but yes, that’s if you are concerned about that particular issue.

Yes, I think it’s good for non-scholars to also just be aware of that fact that you can’t just sort of assume everything. ⁓

Dru (42:47)
Yeah, if Josephus or Philo are saying it, you can absolutely say somebody knew about it. if it’s Philo, it might not have been a discussion though. It might have been just Philo and his friends talking about it, right? Yeah. So there’s this question of like, who knew what, how wide were these discussions? And ⁓ even things like, ⁓ I think of Lazarus and the rich man, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

Paul Sloan (42:50)
Yep, right. Widely enough to, yep.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dru (43:14)
where that seems to be a very well-known Egyptian folk tale of a prince in Egypt and his heart being weighed against the feather of Maat. But it makes its way up into the Levant, into the land of Israel, and then it gets transmogrified into it’s a rabbi or it’s a scholar, a Jewish scholar or a lawyer who ends up dead or whatever. you can tell by the framing, right? Because I’m dealing with issues of like afterlife and people are always like…

Paul Sloan (43:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Dru (43:43)
Well, what do you do with Lazarus and the rich man? was like, wait, did you think going to heaven was sitting in an old man’s lap and listening to screams from across an uncrossable chasm? did you think that was the actual description of heaven? Yeah, rather, it’s like, doesn’t it feel a little bit more like he’s tapping into like a well-known trope here? And in the same way, there’s a story that he seems to be tapping into and then twisting it at the end, you know, if they won’t listen to Moses or the prophets, they won’t listen to a dead man raised.

Paul Sloan (43:48)
You

⁓ listening to the screams, my gosh.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dru (44:13)
⁓ Well, that’s great. The name of the book, I have it over here, Jesus and the Law of Moses. ⁓ Did you come up with the title?

Paul Sloan (44:23)
Hey, this is crazy, not only did I come up with the title, but I am not like a graphic arts kinda guy at all. And I made a couple suggestions and they just did it. And they were like, yeah, actually it looks great. And I was like, okay. So I was deeply surprised because I’m just like not a, you So yeah, Jesus in the Law Moses, Gospels and Restoration of Israel within First Century Judaism. That was my title. I came up with a couple others that a few friends and colleagues were like, ah no, this is the best one.

Dru (44:29)
Right.

That’s what they did with me too!

Paul Sloan (44:52)
And then the cover is the Gustave Dore ⁓ print of the Matthew 12 grain field scene, which I just always liked Dore’s stuff. So I just suggested it. And then I remember telling them, I just think it was that book called The Emergence of Sin by Jonathan Grossman or something like that. And it’s cover always felt very arresting to me because I think it’s like a black cover with stark white letters here or something like that. And so was like, hey, I think that’s cool, but I don’t really know anything about graphics. You guys do whatever you want.

Dru (44:55)
Yeah.

Paul Sloan (45:21)
And then they just like did it. I was like, okay, great. Thanks. ⁓ yeah.

Dru (45:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

My book too is with Baker, right? So I sent them a mock-up. was like, really like this watercolor. And they just came back, same fonts, everything. They’re just like, yeah, we like that. We’re just going to touch it up. I was like, how did that happen? It’s good. It’s beautiful book. ⁓ Great ideas. Much.

Paul Sloan (45:28)
Yeah, they correct me.

Yeah, I was deeply surprised. But I’m grateful. think it looks great. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate that.

Dru (45:45)
needed, highly commended. So thank you, Paul, for your wisdom and sharing that with us and with the church.

Paul Sloan (45:52)
Thanks for having me. Thanks for the convo.