How Elder Expediency & The Pharisees' Oral Traditions Are Similar

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

I heard this phrase again the other day and meditated briefly on what it means.

Obviously, the same exact events do not repeat themselves in all aspects. Once something happens in history, it's over. It cannot be redone.

That part we understand.

What it seems we do have trouble understanding, however, is that "rhyme," as Twain puts it, really is the next closest thing to learn from, but we don't.

People behave the same ways in different generations. This seems normal in successive generations within a culture, but it is interesting to me that it can happen in separate cultures thousands of years apart.

This is exactly how I see "elder expediency" in churches of Christ with which I'm familiar.

For some background to what I mean,

The following comments from Tom Wright in The New Testament and The People of God explain why Jesus had so many debates with the Pharisees.

Why He had a different interpretation when confronted with not keeping the "traditions of the elders" (Matt. 15:1), and it especially explains, for me, why some Christians today try to bind expedient traditions of elders.

Wright writes,

"The Pharisees... while they undoubtedly had case law which enabled them to apply the Torah to particular situations, did not claim for this a status exactly equivalent to the written Torah itself. They interpreted, they applied, they developed Torah. They had to. But they knew when they were doing it."

I think that the same applies today. No one would claim that attendance on Sunday night or Wednesday night was "written" in the New Testament, but you will be judged as "unfaithful to God" or certainly as "less faithful" than those who attend all "services of the church."

Wright explains why this is so for Jesus' generation and ours:

"It is important to see what they were thereby achieving. The alternatives to developing some system of oral Torah was to abandon the Torah itself. Case law was a way of preserving the Torah as a symbol. It could not be abandoned without giving up one major part of the worldview."

"The detailed discussions of how Torah should be kept on a day-to-day basis [weekly worship basis for us, sp] are therefore ways of maintaining the vital symbol while making it relevant. This illustrates a vital point about the elements of worldviews. A symbol that loses touch becomes worthless. The Pharisees and their would-be successors developed ways of ensuring that this did not happen."

Wright continues:

"If [oral] Torah was a vital symbol within first-century Judaism, it was a severely practical one. At a time when Judaism’s distinctive identity was under constant threat, Torah provided three badges in particular which marked the Jew out from the pagan: circumcision, sabbath, and the kosher laws, which regulated what food could be eaten, how it was to be killed and cooked, and with whom one might share it. In and through all this ran the theme of Jewish 'separateness.'

The only 'authorized' worship in 'one place'?

For us today, it is being the "exclusive church you read about in the Bible."

Wright notes how this played out back then,

"Within an all-Jewish or mostly Jewish society, circumcision could be assumed, and the manner of its keeping was (more or less) uncontroversial: a male was either circumcised or he was not. But, even within such societies, the keeping of sabbath was a matter of dispute: what counted and what did not? The maintaining of purity was even more uncertain: what rendered one unclean and what did not? Debates about sabbath and purity, therefore, occupied an immense amount of time and effort in the discussions of the learned, as we know from the Mishnah and Talmud."

Wright goes on,

"This was not, it should be stressed, because Jews in general or Pharisees in particular were concerned merely for outward ritual or ceremony, nor because they were attempting to earn their salvation by virtuous living."

"It was because they were concerned for the divine Torah, and were therefore anxious to maintain their God-given distinctiveness over against the pagan nations, particularly those who were oppressing them."

"Their whole raison-d’être [reason for existing, sp] as a nation depended on it. Their devotion to the one God was enshrined in it. Their coming liberation might perhaps be hastened by it, or conversely postponed by failure in it."

"[Oral] Torah thus provided the vital covenant boundary-marker, especially in those areas where it seemed important to maintain Israel’s distinctiveness. That this was the case in Galilee ought to go without saying. If one were in Jerusalem, the Temple (still governed by Torah, but assuming the central role) was the dominant cultural and religious symbol. It was around this that Israel was organized, it was this that the covenant God would vindicate."

"Matthew 24:1-2 comes to mind here while the Galilean disciples were in Jerusalem: "Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 'Do you see all these things?' he asked. 'Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

Wright continues:

"But away from Jerusalem (in Galilee, or in the Diaspora) [see James 1:1] it was Torah, and particularly the special badges of sabbath and purity, that demarcated the covenant people, and that therefore provided litmus tests of covenant loyalty and signs of covenant hope. This conclusion is a point of peculiar significance for understanding both Jesus’ controversies and Pauline theology."

"The ‘works of Torah’ were not a legalist’s ladder, up which one climbed to earn the divine favor, but were the badges that one wore as the marks of identity, of belonging to the chosen people in the present, and hence the all-important signs, to oneself and one’s neighbors, that one belonged to the company who would be vindicated when the covenant God acted to redeem his people. They were the present signs of future vindication. This was how ‘the works of Torah’ functioned within the belief, and the hope, of Jews and particularly of Pharisees."

I think we call this "expediency" today. 

And that 'expediency/efficiency' is our unwritten/oral view and interpretations of "works of the commands of God."

It goes without saying the Pharisees thought their oral traditions and case laws were in some way "what the Bible says." Everyone believes this. Nevertheless, we certainly bind the 'case laws' of oligarchical authority, church treasury, meeting 3 times a week, 'gospel preachers' being the only ones who speak in our assemblies, etc.

It astounds me that we know and teach that "context determines meaning," but we don't acknowledge/understand the historical context of 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 (cf. Acts 11:27-30; Romans 15:25-26); 1 Cor. 14:29 (cf. 1 Tim. 1:4; 4:13); and Hebrews 13:7-18 (cf. Acts 15:22) or acknowledge the practices we have inherited/modified from Catholic/Protestant church history such as meeting in basilica/government style buildings.

I think that we are nobly trying to maintain relevance of certain Bible passages into a coherent pattern of institutional worship and church government, but we are merely binding "commandments of men" and modified inherited traditions and have made 'case laws' and 'oral torah' of our own like the Pharisees to maintain our identity and so that the Bible does not become worthless to us.

We have been taught a system of "case laws" of institutional pattern worship and government and we question and condemn, like the Pharisees did Jesus, why others don't keep our traditions. We have become vested in this system and constantly repeating our case laws of expediency and interpretations is necessary to maintain our identity and our worldview of "having restored the church of the New Testament."

A noble endeavor if it were only true.

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Wright, N. T. (2013-03-21). The New Testament and the People of God: Volume 1 . Kindle Edition.