Sid: I have Dr. Michael Brown in the studio. Dr. Brown and I go back many many years, and I am so privileged to have been able to put together a debate between America’s Rabbi, an Orthodox Rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, and Dr. Michael Brown. He is the top Messianic Jewish scholar in the world as far as I’m concerned, on who is the “The Real Kosher Jesus?” The audience, the real studio audience, was on the edge of their seat, we had the best representative of the traditional Jewish community. I have to put it this way, as far as I’m concerned, the best representative of the real Jewish community. Because as far as I’m concerned you can’t be a true Jew, you can be a Jew, but you can’t be a true Jew unless you know the Jewish Messiah and He lives inside of you. You can’t understand scripture unless you have the Spirit of God and the Word of God with the scriptures written down in them. Now one of the things that the Orthodox Rabbis feel strongly about is they have been entrusted as the true teachers of Torah, and you can’t understand Torah unless you understand the oral law, or the Talmud. The problem is this is much more than Moses got if he got a moral law at all. How big is the oral law today Dr. Brown?
Michael: Oh, tens of thousands of volumes.
Sid: So you think Moses got that on Mt. Sinai?
Michael: Well, see the Jewish view would be that he got the principals of interpretation and specifics of interpretation so that he could transmit those on. The problem is we don’t find the evidence of that, the problem is out of all the thousands of rabbinic and Jewish laws and traditions that have been developed over the centuries is the Rabbis have zealously sought to preserve what they understood was Torah life. The fact is you don’t find God ever dealing with those in the scripture.
Sid: Is the Talmud mentioned in the New Testament or the Old Testament at all?
Michael: Oh, the Talmud itself, the Babylonian Talmud is the primary one, is put in writing in the fifth and sixth century so about 500 years after the time of Jesus.
Sid: But is the oral law mentioned in the New Testament or the Old Testament?
Michael: The traditions are mentioned, Jesus speaks about the traditions of the Fathers and sometimes…
Sid: I thought that came from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Go ahead.
Michael: No the traditions of the Fathers, here’s the deal some traditions are fine, some traditions are great; the fact going to a synagogue that was a tradition Jesus went to the synagogue that’s fine. Not all traditions are wrong, but what Jesus dealt with was this when the traditions took authority over the Word. He said for example in Mark 7 to some of the Jewish teachers “You have a fine way of setting aside the Word of God with you your traditions.” Every church has traditions, every religious group has traditions, every human being has traditions, that’s fine, but when the traditions take on a divine authority that they don’t have and when the traditions come in conflict with the Word of God that’s where the challenge is. Sid, think about this and I lay this out in depth in my book “The Real Kosher Jesus.” Yeshua has a conflict with many of the religious leaders. Rabbi Shmuley my dear friend, says “No, that didn’t really happen, Jesus was a Rabbi, he was a Pharisee, the Rabbis loved Him, they were all in harmony they were all in harmony it was the correct High Priest and the Romans that had a problem with Jesus,” okay. And yeah the corrupt High Priest did and so did the Romans but He had a lot of conflict even with the Pharisees.
Sid: Of course!
Michael: Why? Because He was a Prophet, just like Jeremiah had a conflict. When Jeremiah spoke to the destruction of the first temple they didn’t applaud him, they were ready to kill him. And you have text like Jeremiah 26 that say that all the other prophets and all the priests and all the political establishments they all wanted to kill him. That’s what happens when a prophet speaks a prophet speaks with divine authority, and unless we understand Jesus, Yeshua, to be not just a Rabbi, but to be a prophet sent by God, the last and greatest prophet, the prophet like Moses and even greater than Moses. Unless we see Yeshua like that we don’t understand the New Testament. And the Rabbis need to say “Oh, He was the one speaking with divine authority, we had our traditions, He was speaking with divine authority. So let me ask you a question, when you read through the Old Testament, when you read throught the Torah does it say, “Well Moses said this and Aaron said this and they had a debate?” No, the Lord to spoke to Moses and Moses spoke to Aaron. Do you hear the prophets say “Well, Isaiah said this and Jeremiah said this and Zechariah said this and so we are going to debate. No, No “Thus says the Lord!”
Sid: And that’s what the Rabbinic writings, the Talmud is all about the debates. One Rabbi says this, another Rabbi says this, and the majority of the Rabbis’ say, but this is the conclusion because this is the answer. So obviously half the Rabbis’ weren’t inspired and half were based on their standard.
Michael: And there’s a view that says that they’re both inspired because they’re both the Words of God because they’re both streams of tradition. You say, “Okay that’s a very nice concept, but number one it’s self contradictory.”
Sid: Let’s see what Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has to say about that question during the debate on “What is the Oral Tradition.”
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach during debate excerpt: It’s very easy to prove that the oral tradition was given to Moses at Sinai, very easy I’ll just use a single proof. The Bible says that on the Feast of Tabernacles, in Hebrew we call it Sukkot you have to take a pr’ate Ha-dar, you have to take a choice fruit, and you have to take other things that go from the ground and you have to wave it. This is where the tradition of the lulav of the palm comes from, which survives in Christianity today with Palm Sunday etc. When Jesus is welcomed they said, “Hoshanna” Hoshanna is part of our tradition of taking the lulav. Now listen to what it says, “You have to take a choice fruit.” So imagine Moses comes down, let’s say Mike is right, Torah doesn’t say anything about an oral interpretation of the law. So Moses comes down from Sinai and he says “Hey, I was just talking to God and He said, “On Tabernacle you have to take a choice fruit.” And the Jews look at him and they say, “Which fruit?” And Moses said, “I don’t know He did not say, there is no oral tradition.” Now imagine what the synagogue would have looked like that Sunday! It would have looked like farmers market. One guy hears a choice fruit, that to him is a cluster of grapes, he’s waving grapes. The next guy says I love pomegranates. Another guy with his kids holding a giant watermelon you know trying to wave it, but interestingly you will see that all Jews use a citron, they use an etsrog in Hebrew as that choice fruit because of course it was interpreted otherwise the whole Torah is mumble jumble it makes absolutely no sense.
Sid: Okay but the question was, “Where in Torah does it say there is an oral law?”
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Oh, it says in Deuteronomy it says that you must listen to all of the sages who instruct you in that day.
Sid: Well, Dr. Michael Brown why don’t you respond on this radio interview to that. I’ll tell you that was such an eye opening debate for Christians, and for Jews. In the audience we had Christians, and we had Jews that did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. And we had a lot of fruit from that debate, but go ahead.
Michael Brown: Yeah, and again Rabbi Shmuley is doing a great job of representing the traditional Jewish viewpoint there that the Torah is given as ambiguous. It says “Don’t work on the Sabbath there is a death penalty if you work,” but it doesn’t tell you what work is and everything has to have these detailed laws. Well, the problem is (snickering) when you get into Rabbinic laws it’s not just a little clarification it’s hundreds of laws, it’s thousands of laws it takes years to master what the laws are. Yet God just spoke it to Israel and they said “Yes, we’ll obey.” Theres no evidence of those thousands of laws that are within the Torah. So first thing when Rabbi Shmuley said, “The Torah says “Follow the Sages.” No it doesn’t say that that’s a misuse. We talked about it yesterday, it’s a misuse of Deuteronomy chapter 17 which is just speaking of the court system that God would establish. When you have a legal dispute you go there and they settle it. It wasn’t saying that the Rabbis can tell you what time you get up in the morning and what to pray, how to pray it, what words to say.
Sid: Alright if that is they’re authority, if that establishes their authority and it’s a misquote then what about the whole structure of Rabbinic Judaism as far as influencing our Jewish people?
Michael: It has exerted an authority over our people that for all the good it’s done in preserving our people, and for all be beauty of the traditions it’s ultimately been detrimental in terms of the Rabbis taking on authority God never gave. Sid, “How could that be for the good of our people when…”
Sid: As far as I’m concerned Mike, Rabbinic Judaism has put a picket fence around Jewish people to prevent Jewish people from thinking for themselves as to who Jesus is, and that outweighs all the good that they’ve accomplished.
Michael: Rabbinic Judaism would basically say that we in this generation are less than the people of the last generation and they were less than the people of the last. There’s a Talmudic tradition that says “If this generation is men, then the former generation was angels; and if this generation is donkey’s the former generation was men.” In other words each generation is further away from the revelation. So Sid “Who are you and I to argue with the Rabbis’ because they learned it from the generations past, the generations past settled it and therefore…” Sid you don’t think for yourself of who Jesus is because the Rabbis who were there rejected Him and that settles it.
Sid: Yeah, but all the Rabbis that accepted Him, in other words some Rabbi whose name I don’t even know said Jesus wasn’t the Rabbi, another Rabbi whose name I don’t even know said, “Jesus was the Messiah.” And I am living my life based on some Rabbi whose name I don’t even know that might have been on the wrong side of the fence.
Michael: But Sid your thinking too individualistically, you see you have to think as part of the people of Israel, and the people of Israel have the traditions and the laws. Ultimately here’s what’s so funny and it’s kind of ironic, there was no study tradition more intense than the Rabbinic study tradition, you talk about people using their minds and thinking day and night and wrestling out knotty problems, but you must think within the walls, you cannot think outside of those walls. And for any Jewish person listening especially traditional Jew you know there’s some times you questioned the Rabbis’ you know there’s some contradictions you see, you know there’s some things that don’t line up right. Could it be that these Rabbis as sincere as they are, are wrong on the most fundamental thing of all, who is the Messiah? Could it be they’re wrong? Oh yeah, use your mind just within these parameters if you dare think outside of the traditions…awe now there’s something matter with you.
Sid: But when you go back to that conservative Rabbi that I was talking about on Monday, but this Conservative Rabbi had the debate with a Christian Minister, when you go back to him and he says the foundation of God that has been given to us we know is the book of Genesis, and he tosses it and says “It’s not inspired, you can believe anything you want.”
Michael: Hey which Rabbis then the Conservative Rabbis’, the Reformed Rabbis’, the Orthodox Rabbis’, the Ultra Orthodox Rabbis’. You say “Well they all agree that Jesus is not the Messiah,” isn’t that interesting they have so many other disagreements could it be they got this wrong?”
