What were the Pharisees really trying to require of the Gentiles in Acts 15? Sabbatarians argue it wasn't what Luke plainly wrote. In this article we'll examine the last of the three most common explanations and see if it can withstand scrutiny.
We've been deep-diving into Acts 15, stress testing some claims about what was really going on in the Jerusalem Council. In the first post, we investigated the Sabbatarian interpretation of verse 21 to see if the plan was really to send Gentile converts to synagogue to learn more law later on. We saw that the best approach is to let the context speak for itself rather than read a bunch of predetermined conclusions into it. In the previous post, we looked at what the debate was about in the first place.
Most people seem to believe the debate was between the Apostles who were 0% in favor of the law vs the Pharisees who were 110% in favor of the law. That is not the case. The Apostles were in favor of letting the Jewish converts retain their Hebrew traditions, yet binding none of that on the Gentile converts. If you want an example of a Jewish convert keeping their Old Covenant traditions, I offer you --- the very Pharisee converts at the heart of this debate.
Sabbatarians, however, assert the Apostles were roughly 3% in favor of the law vs the Pharisees who wanted something else entirely. But what? The three main explanations are:
A) Circumcision only, or
B) Pharisaical traditions, or
C) All the law - particularly the ones which Sabbatarians don't believe are necessary and which they call "the Law of Moses".
In the last post, "Acts 15 - What Was Debated? - part I", we went over the first two of these. We saw how they don't hold up. Today, we investigate the third.
Let's get crack-a-lackin.
LAW OF MOSES?
The Council was not only about the "law of Moses".
Some people realize this could not only have been about circumcision or the customs, but they still have an ideological commitment to protect the Ten Commandments, therefore they redefine what the phrase "the law of Moses" means. Some redefine it as the ceremonial and national portions of the Old Covenant law. They claim there is a difference between the "law of God" (ie. the Ten Commandments plus a handful of other things like tithing, meats, and holy days) and the "law of Moses" (pretty much everything else). This has become a very popular claim.
I disagree there is such a difference in the first place. We have articles on that (see "Law of Moses - Law of God" and "Law of God - Law of Moses").
Now, I realize those two posts that I just mentioned can be very confusing. They made sense when I wrote them, but they are admittedly challenging to follow. I will distill down the best parts for you here. Let's start with Nehemiah 8.
(NEH. 8:1,8) 1 Now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law [torah] of Moses, which the LORD had commanded Israel. ... 8 So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law [torah] of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.
Same book, same law, two descriptions. In one verse it's "law of Moses". In another verse it's "law of God". In both it's "Torah". It's all the same thing.
Joshua 8:30-35 calls the whole Torah the "book of the law" and "book of the law of Moses". Remember, in Joshua's time they only had the first five books. All of it was "the law of Moses". And what will we find more than once in this 'law of Moses'? The Ten Commandments.
It's the same in the New Testament.
(Luke 24:44) Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”
That's the whole Old Testament. Jesus recognized the three divisions in the scriptures: the law, the prophets, and the psalms. But He refers to the whole law as "the law of Moses".
I Kings 2 presents this even more clearly:
(I KIN. 2: 3) And keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses.
Oh my.
I shouldn't have to say another word about this ...but I will.
My conclusion, that there is no difference between "law of God" and "law of Moses", is precisely what was written in the Worldwide Church of God's "Systematic Theology" document, 1978 version, page 3 paragraph 2. They wrote:
"It is also important to note that the term 'law of Moses' is itself used interchangeably with the term 'law of God.'"
Except, the Systematic Theology was a bit controversial and contradicted other things that were written by the same church both before and afterward. (Armstrongism always has liked to have its cake and eat it too.) Still, I find it interesting that the Worldwide Church of God in its heyday, for brief and shining moment, officially recognized what I am telling you now.
Referring back to Josephus - read his works and you will see he consistently treats the laws, the Torah, the books of Moses, and Moses' legislation, as one body of material. So, now we have biblical and extra-biblical reasons to believe it's all the same thing.
You see, when the Bible says "of Moses" or "of [insert name here]", it doesn't necessarily mean those things belong to that person or were invented by that person. It means those things were either primarily about that person or they were given through that person. For example, "Jesus of Nazareth" doesn't mean Jesus belongs to Nazareth. Likewise, "the book of Isaiah" was not really about Isaiah so much as it was about the prophecies that God gave through Isaiah. They were God's prophecies, but called Isaiah's because he was the conduit. "The Gospel of Mark" doesn't mean there is a gospel about Mark or a gospel that belongs to Mark, separate from “gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (MARK. 1: 1). That's all "the law of Moses" means. Those laws didn't belong to him; they were given through him.
(JON. 1: 17a) For the law was given through Moses...
There is no "law of Moses" with a separate and distinct "law of God". They were all the law of God. They were all the law of Moses. The whole third claim is artificial and based on a predetermined commitment; a commitment to take the singular body of law and break it up into chunks, keeping a few and discarding the rest.
I realize this is a critical point for Sabbatarians, so they will disagree with me. They must. So, let's look at some of the top arguments in favor of there being a "law of God" and a separate "law of Moses".
Perhaps the foremost argument is:
The Ten Commandments were written by God's own finger and were placed inside the Ark of the Covenant, while the book of laws that Moses wrote was placed beside the Ark.
The point of this is to make the Ten separate and superior. This has some serious problems.
The first problem is: It was the second set of tablets that were put into the Ark, but it's not clear who wrote the second set of tablets.
God wrote the first set of the Ten Commandments with His own finger, but then Moses broke those tablets. As for the second set:
(EXO. 34:1) And the Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.
(EXO. 34:27) Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”
Who wrote the second set? Scholars have debated for a very long time whether it was God or Moses. It isn't clear. If you want to believe it was God, that's fine. But...
The second problem is: the Ten Commandments were written in the book Moses wrote, too.
It's in both places. How can the Ten Commandments be superior to the Ten Commandments? If ignore Nehemiah 8 and forge ahead claiming "the law of Moses" was that book, then it was all "the law of Moses". In fact, I'm willing to bet you've never read the Ten Commandments straight from the tablets. You got "God's law" from descendants of that book that was placed beside the Ark, same as the rest of us.
The third problem is: no Sabbatarian church that I've ever heard of believes only the Ten Commandments are required.
A little law always leads to more. What about tithes? What about meats laws? What about holy days? None of those are in the Ten, or the "moral law" for that matter (another artificial term). So, if those aren't "Law of God" then why must anyone bother with them? And what about the four laws the Apostles said were necessary for Gentiles to observe in Acts 15? They were not in the "Law of God". And what about circumcision, which got this ball rolling in the first place? All of these are solidly in what Sabbatarians call "the law of Moses".
So, were the tablets placed in the Ark with the Aaron's staff and a pot of mana because:
A) Those three things were creating a special category of law,
or
B) Because they were special physical items that represented God's relationship with Israel?
I am going with B.
I do not find this argument convincing at all. And it's arguably the best one.
There is another claim which is very similar to the first.
Herman Hoeh, "the most accurately informed historian in the world", had a slight variation. In his article "Which Old Testament Laws Are In Force Today?", he claimed:
The Ten are special because they are the only laws God spoke directly to Israel, while Moses merely delivered the statutes and judgments.
While those base facts may be true, the conclusion he is attempting to reach does not hold. The way they were delivered does not make them a separate class of law. God spoke many of the laws to Moses, who them wrote down in his book. The issue is not whether God spoke these words directly vs. indirectly through Moses. The issue is that they came from God. I am not convinced by the claim, "All mankind must keep these laws because these are the ones God spoke to Israel."
In Israel's view:
"All 613 of those mitzvot are equally sacred, equally binding and equally the word of G-d. All of these mitzvot are treated as equally important."
-Judaism 101, “Aseret ha-Dibrot: The Ten Commandments”.
I am not saying the Ten aren't special. They are! But even the Jews don't believe their delivery or where they were placed makes them a separate and particularly binding class of law.
There are more arguments than these, of course, but I am not going to get into them here. They get more and more ridiculous as you go along. I will simply suggest reading "Common Legalist Arguments - Part VI".
This whole section boils down to this: modern Sabbatarians say "law of Moses" refers to a particular subset of the law, but if we cannot prove that's what the people at the Jerusalem Council thought then it all falls apart. And we have no good reason to believe that's what the Apostles and Pharisees thought.
The initial trouble was not only about some portion of the law called "the Law of Moses".
CONCLUSION
The three main explanations given by Sabbatarians of what the Pharisees were trying to bind on the Gentiles are either:
A) Circumcision only. It cannot be this because Luke says, "and the law." Circumcision was not about merely being circumcised.
B) Pharisaical traditions. It cannot be this because Luke says, "the law of Moses." The oral law was not called the law of Moses.
C) The "law of Moses". It cannot be this because there is no separate "law of Moses" distinct from "law of God". They are the same thing.
We have reviewed each and shown how each of these has insurmountable weaknesses. Each one collapses under its own weight.
These three aren't reasonable explanations so much as they are rescue attempts.
I was an Armstrongist. I know the motivation - there must be a Sabbath day, and that means there must be the Ten Commandments, and that means the Apostles must be for some of the law, and that means the Pharisees must be arguing something other than what Acts 15 actually says. These three explanations are the result.
And that means the "Early Church Fathers" were all liars, and this is all Constantine's fault, and mainstream Christians are all deceived, and so on and so forth. I get it.
The Sabbatarian understanding of Acts 15 comes out of prior commitments to the Sabbath day. In short, eisegesis.
But, in case you haven't noticed, this blog has been systematically going through each individual point in the universe of Sabbatarian proof texts, and we've been pointing out the issues in each and showing other ways to understand them. What we've been driving at is - what if there is no prior commitment to the Sabbath day? What if the Apostles really did decide against requiring the law for Gentile converts? What if the New Covenant really is different from the Old, as the prophecies of Jeremiah predicted? What if these three explanations we saw today fall apart because the prior commitment itself is not valid in the first place? If these three points really are the explanation, then why are they completely incompatible with one another? It sounds like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. None of them do!
So what were the Pharisees really debating in Acts 15? I believe they were debating how to join the Covenant.
The fourth explanation is that Pharisees meant exactly what Luke wrote: The Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law.
That's what the text says.
And the decision of the Apostles was exactly what Luke wrote, and several years later reiterated when he quoted James: "But concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing."
But the Gentiles were not joining Israel. The Gentiles already received the Holy Spirit. They were accepted into the New Covenant without joining Israel first. Instead, both Jew and Gentile were joining the body of Christ, and all the Gentile converts had to do to keep the peace with the Jewish converts were those points of the law required of all Gentiles in Israel from Leviticus 17 & 18.
Or, to put this entire thing another way:
Christ is sufficient.
