MessianicMusings.com

As Dan Gruber reveals in Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah, religion and politics were pretty much the same thing from about the time of the Maccabees to the fall of Jerusalem, the period of time in which the Pharisiacal rabbinic movement rose to power and strengthened its hold on all of Jewish life and culture. The interesting thing is that although this may have been true of Jewish society even earlier, never before did those in power elevate themselves to a position of power over even the G-d of Israel. The rabbis did.

Certainly, King David’s rule could have gone a lot smoother had he elevated himself to a positon of authority over G-d, as did Rabbi Akiba. Why, there would have been no penalty for stealing another man’s wife. And he could have built the temple himself, rather than waiting for his son, Solomon, to do it. David was called to account by G-d through an indepedent and outcast prophet. That possibility still existed in Israel prior to Rabbi Akiba.

Akiba, perhaps fearing a prophetic challenge to his power similar to what David faced, implemented a rather ingenious idea; simply by declaring it so, the Akiba movement declared that only rabbis could prophesy legitimately and that all other prophets were illegitimate. They justified their claim by twisting the meaning of scripture to fit their exegetical agenda, as was Akiba’s habit, and that was that.

It was like saying that to be a prophet, you have to have business cards that prove it, only in an even more concrete and exclusive way. Of course, only those rabbis who supported Akiba were granted this rather exclusive prophetic status. Goodbye, prophets. Goodbye Adonai. Hello, absolute rabbinic authority.

Prior to Rabbi Akiba, Pharisaic Judaism, which ultimately became modern Judaism, kept its scope and authority somewhat limited. While his predecessor, Rabbi Eliezer, preferred to keep the scope of Oral Law limited to its until-then traditional scope, Rabbi Akiba had a more ambitious agenda.

Under Rabbi Eliezer, Pharisaic Judaism was like a set of Powell furniture; solid, sturdy and based on reliable ingredients. In other words, the scope of the Oral Law was confined to matters of keeping the social order.

Not so under Rabbi Akiba. Under his guidance and direction, nearly all matters of life, be they public, personal or intimate, came under the control and ruling authority of the rabbis. This move had more to do with political than religious control, though in the first century the two concepts were nearly inseparable. As such, rabbinical authority extended not only to dietary matters and property rights, but even when so far as to dictate the nature and frequency of the intimate relations between a husband and wife.

The problem with Rabbi Akiba’s direction for Judaism is not that he was a politician trying to establish the authority of his sect, but that in doing so, he overtly overthrew the authority of the Torah in favor of the rulings of the Rabbis. Under Akiba’s version of Judaism, even G-d himself could not challenge rabbinical authority, but must submit to it.

Of course, with the Gentile-ization of the Talmudei Yeshua into the state-church of Rome, in the form of Catholicism, Christianity ultimately went in error toward the same direction. All of this leads one to wonder where first-century messianic Judaism went shortly after the first century, and how it could ever be recovered in purity, nearly 1900 years later.

Food for contemplation. Books like Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah, as well as The Church and the Jews, both by Daniel Gruber, get my highest recommendation.

Soon — this week, actually — I have to turn in my first paper for messianic ordination training. The theme of the paper is, “What practical use does rabbinics hold for today’s believer?” With most of the reading out of the way, I’m finally zeroing in on a thesis statement.

It comes to this, and since I’ve already begun study in the second course of study, focusing on the [Christian] church and the Jews, I can say it safely applies to both Jews and Christians alike: Reading about church history is no way to inspire yourself toward obedience to haShem, primarily because so many failed to live up to that commitment … even the most pious figures one can imagine.

Rabbi Akiba? He comes off as a rather brutal, intolerant man. Constantine? A murderer of those faithful to the messianic faith he co-opted into a state religion and hardly the sort one could imagine as being remotely holy, let alone a pope. Martin Luther? Violently antisemitic.

To be honest, a bit of church history can kill one’s appetite for religion about as effective as a solid dose of Phentermine can kill one’s desire for a thick, juicy steak. Of course, it only goes to prove what the Brit haDashah teaches through Messiah Y’shua: “He who says he is without sin deceives himself and the truth is not in him.”

Certainly the history of both Christianity and Judaism is rife with examples of this particular truth.

The more I learn about the origins of rabbinic authority, the more cautious I become with how much of the truth non-messianic rabbis hold. The tension comes from a political struggle in the first and second centuries, especially following the fall of Jerusalem. Without the temple of the Lord to serve as the centerpiece of Judaic life, several groups battled for the hearts and minds of the Jewish people and it was the descendants of the Pharisaic movement who won the power struggle and formed modern rabbinic Judaism.

The disturbing part about this struggle is how grounded in earthly lust for power this battle became. The rabbis, who actually had no Torah basis for exerting control over Israeli religion and life, backed a big transfer tank up to the Torah and filled it up to overflowing, in an attempt to establish a basis for their authority.

They did this by means of taking their oral traditions and asserting them as not only equal in authority to the Torah, but greater, since they claimed that their oral traditions, which came to be known as the Oral Law, could contradict Torah, but that Torah could not overpower Oral Law in such a struggle. What was their basis for such a claim? Their own claims.

It’s kind of ridiculous, once you understand it. But then, the Christian church is no better; in fact, the Catholic religion basically has established nearly the same thing. According to the Vatican, Catholic tradition is co-equal in authority to Scripture itself.

When will mankind ever learn to worship the things of G-d and only the things of G-d? To respect His Word more than their own?

If only the human mind were as reliable as computer memory. It would be so easy to study Torah and related materials, then. Easy to recall all the details. For the human mind, however, it’s not a simple matter of uploading and downloading information.

Over several weeks, one reads a couple hundred pages of a textbook, sometimes over and over again. The mind engages, soaks in facts, then starts the process of comparing that information to all their prior life experiences, trying to make connections, spot contradictions, and filter it all into an end product called truth. Or at least an opinion on the truth of the matter.

Of course, it’s good practice. If I do go all the way down this path to ordination, I will eventually be expected to do this sort of thing every week and distill it into a couple end products: a Torah commentary and a sermon. As much work as it is, it’s exciting.

It sounds simple enough. Write a five- to eight-page paper on the topic, “What is the value of rabbinics to today’s messianic believer?” using Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah: The Origins of Rabbinic Authority by Dan Gruber as a primary source. Yet picking out an HDMI cable that will work seamlessly between a PlayStation 3 and a 1080p HDTV would in many ways be an easier task.

Yet the assignment’s simplicity is deceptive. Sure, I can pump out a paper of that length in a matter of a few hours, but the point is to prove I’ve mastered the reading material. More than that, even, is to prove to myself that I understand the material enough to have an informed opinion on it.

That’s not easy; with this topic - the origins of rabbinics - I am out of my familiar territory. Much of the information is fresh and new to me. The next class - the Church and the Jews - won’t be quite so alien. I could almost write the paper now. Not so with this one.

Although it may not seem like it, even this first class is vitally important. It very easily could determine much of my doctrinal outlook on rabbinics. It’s going to require some deep thought.