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Two-thousand years ago a rabbi was a teacher and advisor but not, by himself, a legal authority. Questions of interpreting the law were argued in rabbinic courts, study halls, and ultimately the sanhedrin. The talmud is in large part a written record of those arguments. A typical argument might go as follows: R. Yehoshua said that the law (on some topic) ...

Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 6, fourth mishna explains how stoning is carried out: MISHNA IV.: The stoning-place was two heights of a man. One of the witnesses pushed him on his thighs (that he should fall with the back to the surface), but if he fell face down, he had to be turned over. If he died from the effects of the first fall, nothing more was to ...

Occam's answer: The toleration of polygamy in the OT is not to say that it was an ideal, and we see that the laws dealing with it are mostly proscriptive. The ideal is more likely represented by the monogamous story of Adam and Eve. But for various reasons, the position of women in the ancient world was such that polygamy was an unavoidable fact of life ...

My reading of the Gospels—especially Mark—is that Jesus operated in grey territory from the perspective of human authority. For instance, right at the beginning of his ministry, the people were amazed at his authority: And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. —Mark ...

This test has many dimensions to it. It has little to do with the guilt or innocence of the woman. In order for the test to apply, the woman must become foolish. This has been interpreted to mean that she has aroused her husband's jealousy by flirting. Or she has aroused the suspicion of witnesses to her flirting, but they have not witnessed adultery, and ...

The torah commands the Israelites not to "work" on Shabbat or on festivals (here, Pesach). The torah does not define what this means; that was expounded in the oral law, which was transmitted (orally) from teachers to students and finally written down after the destruction of the temple, probably around 200CE. The mishna attributes the arguments it records ...

Though Jesus was called 'Rabbi' the term was used in it's primitive meaning of 'great' one. He was not formally educated as a Rabbi[1] and had no earthly credential to teach as one, and certainly no man made institution gave him authority. He claimed it as his own Father's house [2], and they were unwilling to challenge him on it. [1] Joh 7:15 And the ...

Some possible meanings: The Old Testament - particularly the legal and sacrificial systems - are types (examples, shadows, mirrors) of Christ. In other words, they point to some aspect of His ministry or work. From Paul's writings in Romans, the Law brings death so that we grasp the life found in Christ as both a satisfaction and a contrast. The prophets ...

Jesus had the legal authority to cleanse the temple not because he was a rabbi but because he claimed to be like Solomon, the "Son of David" and thus the builder of God's house (2 Samuel 7). This is evident from a careful reading of the gospels through the lens of the Hebrew Bible. In the synoptics the temple cleansing is immediately preceded by Jesus' ...

I think this is a clear Matthean addition: And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”—Mark 10:11-12 (ESV) “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced ...

From these verses it is easily gathered that the Christian view of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is presented as the only foundation of the New Testament. If we were to remove the Old Testament, it would be like removing the walls from a building – the roof with instantly fall to the ground. From the Old Testament scriptures one finds the only logical ...

The Hebrew word here is כרת‎ (karet). The precise meaning is uncertain, but it seems to be a punishment at the hands of heaven, not one that a human court hands down. Depending on whom you ask, this might be an early death (at the age of 50, according to one talmudic opinion), extinction of the soul (spiritual, not physical, punishment), or a punishment in ...

We often think that the punishment for adultery in the Bible was stoning but according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) it was strangulation. John Owen says, strangulation was used for: adulterers, strikers of parents, man-stealers, old men exemplarily rebellious against the law, false prophets, and those who predicted the future under the names of idols (John ...

νόμος in Paul is almost always Mosaic Law (though probably not in Romans 7 when he finds within himself a "law"). However, not all authors use the same words the same way. Even from above we can see that authors don't even use the same word the same way, though they may exhibit patterns. So, to hold John up to the requirement of using νόμος to refer to ...

I've always thought "fulfill the Law" referred to the death and resurrection of Christ. In the sense that, it was the Law that condemns us, and it is faith that justifies us. In other words, God had always intended that the Law be perfected/completed/revealed in Christ. Galatians 3:23-25 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, ...

To Fulfill To fulfill the law means to complete it in every aspect. The Greek word is πληρῶσαι (lexical form πληρόω). Τελειόω is a synonym; it has a sense of bringing something to completeness in its end, in its finality. Πληρόω has the sense of to complete something in fullness. And this sense indeed applies to Jesus' fulfillment of the law: it was not a ...

Under torah a woman does not have standing to bring a legal claim against her husband, nor can she initiate a divorce. It seems to follow, then, that she could not initiate the sotah ritual against a straying husband. (Note that if there has been adultery, then this means the other man's wife, if he is married, has no recourse against him.) According to ...

If you believe that the text is divine, then this isn't a question about the text. It's a question about why G!d chooses this asymmetrical policy. And, as such, that question belongs, I believe, on a doctrinal site. If you look at the text as a text, then you are looking at the social and cultural context of the time in which it was written. In that society ...

Polygyny was acceptable because women were considered to be possessions. That is why Sarah called Avraham adon (Gen. 18:13 cp. 1 Pet. 3:6), or "sir"/ "lord"/ "master." The husband is essentially considered to be his wife's "master," and she, his servant. This is why women did not have the right to divorce their husband. The only way they could re-marry was ...