Vort: Replacing the Old Laws

If I were to sum of Christianity (from a religious Jewish perspective) it might go something like this: Christianity is a religion where the actual laws of Judaism were considered too difficult, so they decided to institute a new set of laws that removed all the difficult laws and replaced them with extremely simple requirements of belief that anyone could follow. And how do we know that this is what God wants? Well, according to the Christians we just have to trust Jesus and his disciples. The Jews of course saw through this ruse, but the goyim didn't, and many converted to the "simple" religion that promised large rewards for no hard work.

That view is of course a bit slanted, but there is some truth here. Christianity did abrogate the old laws, which they termed the "Old Testament" and replaced them with a new set, the "New Testament." The "New Testament" did focus more on belief rather than religious precepts like dietary laws, sacrifices, circumcision and the like. The religious spin comes in when describing the motivation for the switch. Perhaps the founders of Christianity, mainly Paul, thought that the old laws were actually "bad laws" and should be replaced. They hampered the approach to God rather than enabling it. Christians say that the replacement came directly from God through Jesus, but Jews scoff at this explanation. God doesn't change his laws. Why would he ever do that?

This week we'll see where at least one prophet accuses God of giving bad laws in the past and attempts to rectify them, an idea that seems pretty "Christian."

Before we get there, I'll note that Judaism itself does try to soften or excise "bad laws". One example of this is the "eye for an eye" which was completely neutered in Talmudic times. Other examples were all the commands for capital punishment which were also essentially removed by the Rabbis, who then claimed they had never been in effect in the first place. But we're not talking about this kind of change in the laws, we're going to talk about something more direct.

Yehezkel's "Bad Laws"

The prophet is Yehezkel (Ezekiel) and the versed in question are Ezek. 20:24-25. Here they are in Hebrew:

כד יַעַן מִשְׁפָּטַי לֹא-עָשׂוּ, וְחֻקּוֹתַי מָאָסוּ, וְאֶת-שַׁבְּתוֹתַי, חִלֵּלוּ; וְאַחֲרֵי גִּלּוּלֵי אֲבוֹתָם, הָיוּ עֵינֵיהֶם.  כה וְגַם-אֲנִי נָתַתִּי לָהֶם, חֻקִּים לֹא טוֹבִים; וּמִשְׁפָּטִים--לֹא יִחְיוּ, בָּהֶם.

 And here's my translation:

24: Because they did not do my judgments, and disdained by laws, and profaned by Sabbaths, and their eyes were directed towards the idols of their fathers. 25: And then I gave them bad laws, and judgments that they would not live by.

A lot of the scholarly discussion regarding this verse comes with the context of the verses after, which seem to imply that one of the "bad laws" that Yehezkel is referring to is child sacrifice. But this is not the topic I wish to discuss. (If you're interested in this topic, you can see this series of blog posts 1, 2, 3, where the second and third link deal entirely with this section of Yehezkel)

Instead, I merely want to draw attention to the pretty monumental claim that Yehezkel is making. He is basically saying that there were some laws, given directly by God, that are bad and that people should not do. And he gave these laws as a sort of punishment. Presumably he's coming to tell you what the good laws are and what the bad laws are.

Of course, as a person listening to Yehezkel, why should you believe him? After all, the old laws, those "bad" ones were given by God himself, and who is he to contradict God? But more importantly, we see an idea wherein Yehezkel's concept of Judaism is very different from the concept today. Yehezkel obviously does not believe in a static set of laws that are in effect for all time, and he's actively seeking to abrogate some of the old laws he doesn't like. Instead of using the same approach of Christianity or the Talmudic Rabbis, that the old laws are outdated, he actually says that God gave the old "bad" laws as a form of punishment for disobedience. It's actually a pretty crazy idea if you think about it. It's a level of malevolence that most people would not ascribe to God.

When you read through the book of Yehezkel, you find that he has a very different idea of how Judaism's laws came about. In some places he directly contradicts the Torah story about when laws were given, and like every other prophet, he makes absolutely no mention of the revelation at Har Sinai. Here it seems, that he thinks the laws are a bit more fluid, and that we should actively get rid of "bad laws" and replace them with good ones. How exactly we should know what is bad and what is good? Well we just need to trust Yehezkel.