Theology in the Raw - Did Jesus Disagree with the Law of Moses? Dr. Paul Sloan

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Paul Sloan is the Chair of Theology and Associate Professor of Early Christianity at Houston Christian University. He received his Ph.D. from St. Andrews University and he’s the author of this outstanding book: Jesus and the Law of Moses.Join the Theology in the Raw Patreon Community See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Gospels depict Jesus as the herald and agent of Israel's long-awaited national restoration. He's coming and saying, look, now is the time that God is coming to rain over us once more. Now is the time that the restoration is materializing through my work. So believe this is good news. And that within that, he's teaching, he's the authoritative interpreter of the law and what will mark people out who will experience that national restoration. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology on. My guest today is Dr. Paul Sloan, who is the chair of theology and associate professor of early Christianity at Houston Christian University. He received his PhD from St. Andrews University and is the author of this

outstanding book. Oh my word, Jesus and the Law of Moses. I learned so much from this book. He challenged a lot of my presuppositions, corrected some of my assumptions about Jesus and the law. And I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. Are you prepared to have some of your categories? he's opened up, corrected, blown, tweaked, maybe confirmed. But I absolutely enjoyed this book and thought it was very well researched, reasonably argued, if not very convincingly argued. And yeah, this conversation dives into a lot of those. What about this?

What about that kind of issues with regard to Jesus' relationship to the law of Moses? I would say this episode is it gets a little on the geeky side, but it's very clear. But you might want to have your Bible open. We do reference some scholarly names and stuff, but it's not, it doesn't go too deep into weeds, but it would be helpful if you have, you maybe your Bible open and you kind of look at some of the passages we work through. So I just, yeah, could have talked to Paul for hours and I'm sure we will talk again. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one or only Dr. Paul Sloan. Dr. Paul Sloan, I am so excited to talk to you. I read a lot of books, but I, you know, to wade through a pretty beefy, substantial academic book. You know, it takes a while to slowly work through it. And so I don't do a ton of that. But I read through your book, man. And I absolutely loved it. And I was telling you off the line. I'm like, this seems so.

compelling. And so like, I'm like, what's the counterargument to this? Because like it just made it so compelling. But you're disagreeing on some level, not totally, but disagreeing to some pretty heavy hitters in the field. So why don't we start with, can you give an overview of maybe the different popular approaches, popular or academic approaches to Jesus's relationship with the law of Moses? And then I would love for have you unpack the approach, the approach you take. Yeah, sure. Well, Preston, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I detail a few common approaches to understanding Jesus and his teaching of Torah and his and his dialogues with, you know, his interlocutors or his critics in the Gospels, particularly the synoptic Gospels. And, you know, kind of the kind of one of the key things I notice is that oftentimes controversies or conflicts over Torah, they kind of reverect. reveal sort of the where, you know, the fault line of disagreement is. And then how you explain that fault line of disagreement really becomes, really kind of shows an interpreter's own framework as to what what they think the conflict is really about, you know. And so the three I kind of detail in the book are that some people think the conflict is just really about legalism. that the law in making demands was either a they were impossible demands or too difficult

or the Pharisees themselves were just too demanding and too overbearing and too scrupulous and that Jesus came either to you know show people the impossibility of the law itself on the one hand or on the other hand to show just the overly demanding and scrupulous legalistic nature of the Pharisees themselves, such that they describe most of the legal conflicts in terms of legalism, some sort of like, yeah, overbearing demand about the law, which then means that, right, that that means that Jesus' interpretation is the non-legalistic one, right? That his interpretation is the one that shows really instead the need for grace, rather than observance of Torah or that you need to, the Pharisees need to relax their interpretive

practices and instead come up with, you know, easier demands. And I think those fall short because often Jesus, I mean, as a lot of readers know from, you know, Matthew 5 through 7, it's not as if Jesus A, isn't making demands. He is. And B, it's not as if those demands are like, not, you know, demanding. You know, he's he's saying what the Torah itself says when he says, hey, you ought to regulate not just your actions, but your intentions and your heart and your motives. So, you know, don't, you know, don't Don't covet. Don't lust. Don't, you know, don't be angry. Those are, those are, I would say those are demanding, right? And there, my issue is that the reason I think the legalism kind of framework overall fails is for a handful of reasons. One is that, of course, Jews and other Pharisees, you know,

knew about grace and forgiveness and atonement through the sacrificial system. I don't think they thought they were, you know, earning their salvation by just ratcheting up enough good works to get to get into heaven or something like that or to get into the, you know, restoration or resurrection or something. And so I just think that kind of fails to account for actually Jesus' own. Right. The fact that he also, you know, makes demands that are demanding. And that kind of like law, gospel, legalism versus grace approach,

uh, it seems like a lot of Christians kind of read it through that lens. Yeah. It's kind of assumed. It's what we hear from the pulpit a lot. Yeah. But in scholarship, is that view kind of not nearly as popular? I wouldn't say it.

Yeah, I would say it's not quite as popular in current, you know, current academics scholarship. It's still out there. But it's, yeah, I wouldn't say it's quite as popular anymore. And I think it just muddies passages. This is the one I open with, the Matthew 19 passage, where, you know, the man comes to Jesus and says, what shall I do to, you know, enter into life or inherit eternal life? What good thing must I do? And Jesus says, keep the commandments.

And then he never sort of falsifies that. You know, you can have the debate as to whether Jesus really thinks that guy has kept them or not. But then in the end, he says, you know, one thing you lack, sell your stuff and follow me, which seems to be, you know, adding that to his prior answer, not negating it because he says one thing you lack. Right. And so it seems that for for the Gospels, they're comfortable saying that, yes, you need to, you know, follow Jesus the Messiah and follow him as Messiah and keep the commandments. Keep, particularly, of course, assumed as keep them as he's interpreted them. But this is, this is just these are like sort of faith in him and keeping keeping the commandments are just not binaries in the framework that they've presented. Another common one, this was a bit more common in the, it's still common in a lot of places, but was argued for in 80s, 90s, early 2000s, kind of describing the law as this cold, demanding, compassionless thing that was, and that, and that, and that, and that, that kind of compassionless, cold demanding nature of it was really inscribed in the ritual purity laws. so that what happens is that like the ritual purity laws get get moralized so that if a person were impure

interpreters think oh well that that means therefore they are you know an outsider and they're marginalized and because the Pharisees really cared about purity they therefore really thought that anyone who wasn't up to their purity standards was just a sinner and was an outsider and the Pharisees you know in in caring so much about ritual and purity they stratified Israel and they made everyone who wasn't a Pharisee feel like they were just, you know, worthless and less than and not real or true Israel. And then Jesus comes along and says, no, you know, your ritual purity laws are, you know, outdated or in Marcus Borg's term, he would just say Jesus just reinterprets them. He just reinterprets purity to be really about compassion and not about, you know, some ritual purity state. And so that then the conflicts become not about sort of legalism and grace, but they come, they're about sort of Jesus's compassion over against the Pharisees' uncompassionate concern for lawkeeping, right?

I think this just fails because, you know, ritual purity isn't a moral issue. Anybody could become ritually impure. And if you were ritually impure, that was fine. Just purify. And everyone had to do this. same rituals. The way I say it in the book, which is not unique to me, is that, you know, the most morally scrupulous priest could become as impure as easily as the most recalcitrant center. And they both get purified in the same way. They have the same ritual. Just wash and wait until sundown and you're clean on the same day. Could Jesus become impure? If it's not a same category. Right. Yeah, Luke says he did. excuse me, sorry, Luke says he does in Luke, Luke 2, I think it's Luke 222, where they go to offer Mary offers for, quote, their purification. This probably isn't Joseph, but it based on, I have, you can check out, I know Matt Tison and Isaac Oliver's work has written on this, and Logan Williams and I have done a whole podcast episode on it in our podcast, Jesus and the Jewish law.

But the there probably refers to Mary and Jesus because the idea is that when a woman has given birth, she's impure for a period of days depending on whether the child is male or female. And then after a certain number of days, 40, if it's a boy, the woman goes to the temple and offers for her cleansing. But Leviticus 12 only mentions the cleansing of the mother. but Luke 222 says she offers for quote their purification and the idea seems to be based on

the fact that in the same way that sort of if you know if you if you touch a minstrand you're impure for that day and you have to wash and wait till sundown but similarly if a man and a woman if like a husband slept had sex with his his menstruating wife he was then impure for the same duration as her menstruation. So for the same duration. And so it may be that they sort of reason analogously, if that happens to a man who's had sex with his menstruating wife, well, then also it would be the case that a child who came out of this category of bleeding

would participate in the same duration of impurity as the mother. And so would need the same purification ritual. which again we don't we don't like know that for sure but it just it's a it's a legal reasoning that helps explain why luke would think that jesus is in need of purification at that uh at that so luke luke luke twos that you know they offered for a quote their purification so i think yes also i mean even without that text i would still actually say yes um because again ritual purity is not a moral issue it's just an issue of mortality and so if we're already believing that you know jesus is fully human, well, then we're already committing ourselves to the notion that he really

takes on all the effects of what it means to be a human, including mortality. And so, and ritual purity is a, I should say ritual impurity, like becoming, becoming ritual impure, is an effect of our mortality or our finitude. It was sort of assumed within Judaism, I hear you're saying, like everybody would counter-imperative. Yeah. In fact, I think most people probably had to assume much of the time that they were just in a state of ritual impurity. All you had to do was have one of those discharges that's named in Libidica's 15 or just touch someone or touch something, touch one of those persons who has that discharge or touch something that they've touched, right? Like, it's very easy to become ritual impure.

And so I think many people were probably in a state of ritual impurity with some regularity. And so the easy thing to do is just regularly wash. And then by sundown of that day, you're, you know, you're cleaning it. So yes, I assume Jesus, like we already believe the harder thing, right? Jesus died. Jesus became a corpse. And corpses are sources of ritual impurity. Like if we're already, if we already think Jesus died and became, you know, it was a corpse.

Like it's just that's that's the more difficult thing. It's it's less difficult to believe that he would have, you know, become ritual and pure in his life. But anyway, the mistake with that view is that, you know, it just immoralizes ritual and purity when it when it's not that. And so I think it just makes a muddies the issue when Jesus actually cares about ritual purity. And like, for example, when he heals the guy with, with leprosy, whatever, he tells him to go purify. Right. So he tells people to keep these rituals. So the last one that is often described as sort of a framework for interpreting Jesus

and his relation to the law is some sort of nationalism. The idea that the law functioned as boundary markers around Israel and that in Jesus' day, the Pharisees and other Jews were sort of violently nationalistic. And so, and they used the law to sort of inscribe that violent nationalism or to reflect or express that nationalism and that desire for liberation through violence in particular or through rebellion. And so because Jesus disagreed with that agenda, he thereby also sort of reinterpreted those boundary markers in any effect setting them aside to say like, okay, if these if these, if these, laws and boundary markers are the things that, you know, set us apart and also kind of turned us into, you know, violent nationalists. Well, then because that agenda is wrong, I think it's now time to set them down. And of course, some people have said that now that the nations are being

included in the announcement of the kingdom of God, now that the nations are included, Israel should stop being, should stop being distinct. And so because they, because their distinction, goes away, the customs that distinguish them should go away. Therefore, circumcision, dietary, lots, etc. This would be popular, would this be like new perspective-ish type thinkers done and right and others? Yes. Yeah, predominantly. Yeah, that's a common so-called new perspective approach. And yes, my dialogue partner for that is into your right. As Mother's Day approaches, many of us are thinking about the women who cared for us and showed up for us time and time again. Most Mother's Day gifts are about one moment, but StoryWorth is so much more.

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to meet a teacher and gain a better understanding of how easy, convenient, and fun learning with Kairos will be. So what that just, and I'm sure as you're going to be talking this whole during this conversation, people are going to have somebody. What about this? What about that? We're probably not going to address all of those. But it seems, even as you briefly explain it, it seems like, well, there's some truth to that, right? I mean, the last one would you say? Or all of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that certain maybe phariseical movements within Judaism were concerned about maintaining distinctions and when those are generally. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so absolutely. So there were, whether they're the Pharisees proper or just whoever the zealots are and whatever, you know, whatever, whatever group they broke off of or however they started, the zealots are. are, you know, a rebellion party who, who care deeply that, you know, the law is kept, you know, in the way that they think it ought to be kept and that those who don't keep it are as good as, you know, as good as Gentiles and they become subject to violence at the hands of the zealots.

But my point would be that the answer to that is just simply to say, all right, well, don't be a violent zealot. Just keep the law without killing people and without killing and without, you know, being a violent zealot. So there, that's, that's, and that also seems to fit sort of hand and glove with, again, the gospels where Jesus says, hey, don't, don't be violent, be peacemakers and keep the law. Like, these are not, they're not, they're not like logically connecting. You can be a lawkeeper, and even a rigorous one, and not be a sort of violent nationalist who wants to, you know, kill fellow Jews who don't keep the law like you do or, or, or kill Romans, you know, through military invasion.

And so it's just a non-sequitur. So, yeah, he could disagree with those agendas. I think he would disagree with those agendas, but still say, but lawkeeping's not the problem. Like, you can still be a lawkeeper and distinct without being a violent nationalist or whatever. Okay. And then same with the Pharisees.

Yeah, the Pharisees are, do care quite a bit about ritual purity. But my point simply they, so does Jesus. And that when he disagrees with them, sometimes he actually thinks that they get ritual impurity wrong. And so again, I think you can have those disagreements that, yeah, Jesus also, and the fault lines not be that, oh, they care about ritual purity and Jesus doesn't. It's more that you would be like, yeah, they care about ritual impurity and so does Jesus. And they have the fault line of disagreement is on a different issue. So they wouldn't disagree on whether there is such a thing as ritual purity that should be maintained, but maybe what constitutes that, different interpretations of various laws.

They would agree that ritual Both agree that ritual purity exists And I think they would both largely agree On how it's how ritual impurity You know happens At least on the biblical sources They would agree on most of them That the discharges named in Leviticus 15

Like seminal flux or minstrel flux Or irregular Genital discharge Or leprosy, whatever that is The skin affliction named in Loviticus 13 and 14. Those are, yeah, those are sources of ritual impurity. Animal carcasses, certain animal carcasses, human corpses, they would all agree.

Those are sources of ritual impurity. And I don't think there'd be, you know, disagreement about that. And I don't think there'd be disagreement about how to purify. They agree, the biblical sources are clear on this. If you do XYZ, just wash and wait until sundown, unless it's something stronger like leprera or, you know, corpse impurity. then go do whatever Leviticus 14 or Numbers 19 tells you do. Yeah, the fault lines of interpretation come on either other, just other legal issues,

not related to ritual impurity, which I know we'll talk about Mark 7 later, or just disagreements about whether Jesus really is who he says he is, right? Because part of now, I guess maybe this will be a segue into, it might help answer the question. And part of the onus of my book is not simply to say, hey, Jesus is law observant after all. that's that's true that's also part of it but part of the framework I'm trying to say is it like no that Jesus is uh that the gospels depict Jesus as um that the herald and agent of Israel's long-awaited national restoration um that Matthew Mark and Luke assume as many other second temple texted of the time that um that Israel of course had received the law but that like Moses said in Duda

They broke it. They violated the covenant and thereby incurred the covenant curses, exile, subjugation to the nation's destruction temple, etc. And that they'd been in that state for off and on for centuries. But that in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 30, other prophetic texts, God had promised he would return to them and the nation would be restored. They'd come back to the land, be multiplied. And God would circumcise the her heart or purified their heart. And that that promised restoration was still expected and desired in the time of in the time of Jesus. And the gospels are depicting Jesus as, like I said, now the the herald and agent of that national restoration. So that he's coming and saying, look, now is the time that God is coming to rain over us once more. Now is the time that he's, you know, the restoration is materializing through my work. So believe, you know, believe this good news. news. And within that, he's teaching sort of the, the, the, he's, he's the authoritative interpreter of the law and what will mark people out who will experience that national restoration.

This is right thing, you know, Matthew 5 is so, so relevant. So this, so you're articulated, basically your, your approach. I, I, so I just, as you were talking over the, over your approach in the previous one, I just kept thinking of Mark 7 and I was like, oh, wait, I'm sure we'll get there, but maybe we can go there now because here we have a case where, you know, the Pharisees is Pharisees, right? They're rebuking Jesus because he and his disciples don't wash before they eat and then Jesus responds. And then he has this statement in some translations, you know, that Jesus thereby, what do you say, made all foods clean. Yeah. So it seems like he's disagreeing with many Old Testament laws that say there's clean and unclean food.

And I think many people listen to are like, yeah, didn't. Jesus, yeah, didn't he disagree with the law? Maybe, you know, didn't he kind of nullify, get rid of these clean and unclean laws, the dietary laws? Didn't he kind of go do away with those? Yeah, and sorry, my for sure was not that, not yes, that he did that. But yes, I recognize that those are questions people are asking. Yes, so I, correct, that is how that's interpreted.

So some Pharisees and scribes ask Jesus, they notice that Jesus, disciples don't wash their hands and so they say why do your disciples not wash their hands before eating and why do they transgress the or you know not follow the traditions of the elders so that's the important framing in mark seven okay they're not asking about why don't they follow the dietary laws they're asking about a tradition namely handwashing prior to eating which the texts explicitly names a tradition of the elders it is not a law to wash your hands before eating not a biblical law to wash your hands before eating. Jesus then, of course, ups the ante and says,

well, why do you guys break the law? Right. You guys are great at setting aside the law for the sake of your tradition. And then he gives an example as to how they do that. And then he says, listen to me and understand, there's nothing coming out of the person that can defile that person, but it is what comes in, oh, excuse me, no. It is not what, yeah, it is not what goes into the person that can defile him

because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated. And then it's, and then the parenthetical says, thus he declared all foods clean. And I'm saying that no, you know, what he's saying is like, nothing defiles you that enters you because it doesn't enter your, your heart, but it enters your stomach and is eliminated, thus purifying all the foods. So the issue is is that the Greek phrase Catharizone, Pontotobromata

is the Greek phrase What verses this real quick? That's Mark 719. In Mark 719 Most of these translations put it in parentheses and thereby make it the narrators aside.

So that you have Jesus speaking, look, nothing to file the person by going into him because it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated. That's Jesus's speech. And then they put in parentheses, thus he declared all foods clean, which then makes that the narrators aside. Right. Right.

You see what I'm saying? So it goes from Jesus's speech to a narrator's aside in that translation of it. What I'm saying is that, no, it's not a narrator's aside. It is still part of Jesus's speech. So he says there's nothing that defiles the man by going into him because it doesn't enter his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated, thus purifying all the foods. And so what his, the, the legal logic of, of his argument is that the, the reason we don't have to wash our hands before eating is because even if there were ritual impurity on our hands, and even if that ritual impurity, then let's say it was transmitted to the food theoretically, let's just grant that for the moment. What if I then ingest that food that's become ritually impurified, will I thereby become defiled? And his answer is no because it doesn't go into your heart but into your stomach and is eliminated.

And the process of elimination, so defecation, purifies all the foods. And there his legal logic depends upon, actually, this goes back to your point about ritual and purity. Jesus' legal logic depends upon his comprehension of purity law. Because according to the purity laws, feces is not ritually impure. Wow. FECES is not ritually impure. And this is, again, probably one of the biggest areas when I'm teaching my students, the biggest areas of confusion. The first area of confusion is that they think, oh, well, impurity means is a moral issue.

So if a person is impure, they are thereby immoral. And step one is saying, nope, there's all sorts of ritual impurity issues that have nothing to do with morality, right? Semino flux, menstruation, touching a corpse, whatever. those are those if you do those things you're now in a state of ritual impurity but that's not a moral issue right um because then you just wash and wait till sundown etc other rituals the second mistake people make is they conflate impurity and dirty they conflate impurity and being dirty so that things that we think of as dirty or bodily stuff that's like yucky or dirty, we just think, oh, that's impure.

Like, because the text says seminal flux, penile discharge, certain vaginal discharges, menstrual blood, those cause a person to be ritually impure. And then we just, either because we think it's in the text or because we just make an assumption, we think, well, then other discharges certainly are ritually impure too. Like, well, surely, like, urine or mucus or feces, those are also ritually impure because we've, for whatever reason,

either we think that's in the text, but it's not, or because we've just conflated ritual impurity with dirtiness. Okay. But importantly, those things I just mentioned, in fact, the mission to name several things, pus from a wound, urine, mucus, and feces are not ritually impure, which is to say they are ritually pure. So, feces is ritually pure.

Now, all this is to say, like, dude, why are you talking about this? Yeah. Because go back to the original point. I'm going to skip breakfast this morning. Because go back to the original point. What if I've got ritual impurity on my hands?

And then I pick up my meal, eat it. Now I might have transmitted ritual impurity of the meal. And then I ingest it. And now I might be afraid that I've ingested ritual impurity. And oh gosh, now I'm ritually impure because I've ingested ritual impurity. That's bad. I don't want to do that. Jesus says, no, nothing going into the person defiles him because it doesn't go in his heart, but into his stomach, and it's eliminated, thus purifying all the food because it came out as feces, which is, remember, ritually pure.

And so if what entered you, even if it came into your body, ritually impure, if it exited your body as feces, which is pure, what must your body have done to it? purified it. It must have purified it. And so he says it doesn't go into heart something, thus purifying all the foods. So it's not about dietary laws, it's about ritual periodos. Also, before you ask your next question, I just want to say because that, that's not my original argument. I get that from my friend Logan Williams, who wrote the article, The stomach cleanses all foods, which is an open access article for people to read if they're like, nope, I don't find that convincing. And I've already read your book.

Well, then go read that article. So I When I read your section on this Because I didn't check many English translations But the ones I checked They all have that parenthetical Mark saying he thus declared all foods clean And I was like

But then I went back and look at the Greek And it seems so clear That it's saying what you're saying It's then I'm like Well okay I know it's easy for people to say You know this translation says this but the Greek actually,

so, you know, like, like, preachers do that a lot. But I'm like, yeah, translators are pretty good. So, so then I'm like,

well, how did we miss it? Like, what would be the counter argument? Because it just seemed, the Greek seems so clear to correlate with what you're saying. I think it's a participle,

right? There's no reason why. Yeah, it's a participle. It's a participle. And, and the finite verb that it's attached to is like 35 words prior. So to make it a narrator's aside

would have, would be a very, to make it a narrator's aside and to make it, you know, dependent upon a finite verb that came like 35 words probably, would be very improbable. Again, Logan Williams has like the argument about the grammar in his article that I recommend to you. I think I can answer the other question. I can add on to that, though, about why we get certain places. And this is a good example of, again, this isn't a knock on translators, but it is actually just a point about interpretation. So often we take to be sort of the obvious, we think of something

is obvious because of we've, of course, got, we've got all sorts of unstated presuppositions in our head about what a text, you know, must mean. And so because we already have Acts 10 in our head and because we already think Acts 10 is where the dietary laws have been nullified, or because we already have Romans 14 in our head, and we think that Romans 14 is about the nullification of the dietary laws, which parentheses it's not. But it's, but it's, it's, Let's say that we, that's a common interpretation, right? Well, we've already got those in our head. We already have this notion that, right,

Derrick-Tor-Laws got nullified. So then it's easy then to think, well, oh, this just must be what Mark's, Mark 7 is about. It's a narrator's aside saying that, you know, it's Mark drawing out the implication of what was implicit in Jesus's point. And that then you see that this is just Mark's version of Acts 10 or Romans 14, that sort of idea. Again, I don't know why that's if that's sort of always at stake in any mistranslation or misinterpretation of Mark 7.

But I think it's the kind of thing that happens all the time. We just take for granted that other texts mean X, Y, Z. And so it must mean this year too. When really the direction of dependence could go the opposite direction. It might actually be that Mark 7 doesn't nullify the dietary laws. and that actually Acts 10 doesn't either, and that actually Romans 14 doesn't either, right? Which I think that it doesn't.

But also... I want to get to Axe. Go ahead. Well, last thing I'd say is I think there's also just a misunderstanding of ritual and purity laws that I think hamperes the discussion. So anyway, yeah, I suppose we could say more about that. Well, that so when he's... So mistranslation, thus declaring all foods clean,

doing away with the dietary laws. That's, I mean, marks, if you're right about Mark 7, and I'm for the sake of right now, seems like you are, that's, that's, I don't, I just so people know, like, that's pretty bit, like a lot of stuff is really rooted in Mark 7. And that's when we, when we get to the accident and other passages, we're like, well, yeah, this start, Jesus started this, Mark 7. Are there other places in the Gospels where you would argue there's been a similar misreading specifically of Jesus doing away with the Jewish dietary laws.

Dietary laws. Or does it really just come down to Mark 7? Dietary laws, yeah. Yeah, sometimes people get that from eating with sinners. I don't think that's the case. But people have seen that like, okay, well, you know, he's dining with sinners. And the Pharisees come and say, hey, why is your guy dining with sinners, right? He's breaking a law.

He's breaking some. He must be breaking some taboo. either ritual purity or a dietary law. And the assumption then is that, oh, he's either, you know, breaking a ritual purity law by eating with sinners, which is also not true, or he must be breaking a dietary taboo. And this is, again, you do get this. I think, gosh, now I'm not going to misquote it. I quoted it accurately in the book, so find the quote there.

But I'll now paraphrase it. You know, I think Professor Wright says something like this. Into Wright says something like this about Jesus' Dining with Sinner. Just sort of, you know, redefined table fellowship and set aside the food laws, you know. And I just think, no, I don't think that's a, that's certainly not an obvious reading to me. And it's, in fact, I think highly, highly improbable. So I think that's, I have, and I have an interpretation of the dining with sinners. Can you, yeah.

Can you, can you explain it briefly? Sure, yeah. I think it's just as simple as it's sort of like, hey, why are you keeping company with him? Like, you know, it's it's common for, for people to judge you by the company you keep. You get this in the epistles where Paul's like, hey, don't eat with people, you know, who so-called brothers who are actually, you know, are actually immoral in all these ways. Don't, don't even eat with them. Because, like, it sort of signals fellowship.

In other words, there's an eating that sort of signals endorsement of your eating companions, right? And then there's sometimes there's just eating. And so it seems that the Pharisees are not worried about, wait, well, are you breaking the ritual purity laws? And because it's not, and this is important, it's not a sin to eat while ritually impure. Like even if the sinners were ritually impure, that's fine. They got to eat too. People are in a state of, there's no requirement to eat in a state of ritual purity. think how terrible that would be

if you had to be in a state of ritual purity to eat women who've given birth to go where they got to fast for 40 days because you're impure for 40 days if you've given birth to a girl you can't eat for 80 days if you're a leprra you're never going to eat again in your life

if you're just touched if you just buried your parents so now you've got corpse impurity you can't eat for a week like this is just not only is it just historically unlikely, right? The text itself, Deuteronomy 15 says, referring to some animal that gets slaughtered, the text says, the clean and unclean alike may

eat of it. So eating in a state of ritual and purity is totally fine. The only time you have to be in a state of ritual purity to consume something is if that food is sacrificial food. So you can't go to the temple and eat sacrificial food in a state of ritual and purity. But that's fine. Just don't do that. And so, Gene. Jesus eating with sinners in a Jewish context, there's no reason why he would have been eating pork. I mean, he's eaten with other Jewish sinners. The only way, the only reason why, just thinking out loud, it might be, you know, somebody eating, unclean, or, you know, violating dietary laws is maybe more in Paul, Paul's letters when you have Jews and Gentiles

eating together. And there's maybe, maybe an assumption that, well, if a Jew and Gentile is, If a Gentile invites a Jewish person over, they're serving foods that are unclean, and so the Jewish person is violating that. But we can almost set that aside and say, well, that would open up a whole discussion of, you know, Galatians 2 and other passages. But in terms of Jesus, dining with Jewish sinners,

there's no reason why there's an assumption he's eating unclean food, right? Right. That's what I'm saying. And also then the text, I think, bears this out because he doesn't defend against that point. Oh, right. Like he doesn't bring it up.

What does he say instead? They say, hey, why are you dining with sinners? And he's like, I came to call sinners to repentance. In other words, they are thinking, wondering, actually, if eating with sinners implies Jesus's endorsement of them qua sinners as sinners. So, and Jesus is saying, no. Like, in fact, importantly, Jesus agrees with the Phariseic description of them as sinners. He says, yeah, they are sin.

sinners, but I came to call them to repentance. And so dining with them is how I'm going to get some face time with them, table time with them, to call them to repentance. And so he doesn't defend against ritual impurity charges. He doesn't defend against dietary law and stuff. And instead, he hears their accusation as implicitly saying, wait, do you endorse them as sinners? And then his responses, no, I'm calling these sinners to repentance. And then, of course, like, notice, like, they don't get mad. They don't say, like, oh, it does, like, in Mark 7, it says they went away offended, right? About the ritual impurity stuff.

In certain Sabbath, you know, controversies, they're like, yeah, sometimes they're just silent. And then sometimes they're like, oh, no, we really don't, we really don't like that, right? Here, they just don't say anything. to just move on. And it never comes up in his trial. Like if this were just like, everyone knew Jesus had violated dietary laws,

it would be straightforwardly something they could bring up in the trial. Whether or not, that'd be the sort of, not that they execute him for that. But my point is, if you want to, if you're amassing evidence that this guy is, you know, a transgressor who needs to be punished,

like surely something is straightforward as, hey, 1,000 people saw him transgressed the dietary laws. And we got these 50 witnesses here. like it never comes up. Why not? Also, again, the point that about Acts 10, if Jesus had nobify the dietary laws, again, I don't think Acts 10 is about the nullification of the dietary laws.

Maybe we'll get there. But my point there is, is that when the voice tells Peter, rise, Peter, kill, and eat, da-da-da. Peter's like, no, I've never eaten anything impure or defiled. Like, how is it that Peter, some years later, still hasn't eaten impure or defiled food if Jesus, had set it aside. I never thought about that. He's saying, through all my years hanging out Jesus, we never ate. In my whole life, I've never eaten. Yeah, much, and all the more, yeah,

with Jesus. And even now, it's been years after the Ascension. And he's saying, I've never done this. That's incredible. If Jesus himself had not only exemplified it, but taught him, it's okay. And he's just like, yeah. So to summarize your case so far as I understand it, and then I got a question about the Sabbath. You're saying, Jesus, never. advocated for breaking or setting aside any of the law of Moses with that. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So, okay, so dietary laws, we've kind of covered some of the possible hurdles there. So I think you're doing pretty good so far. Yeah, Sabbath. You know, there's, as I recall, this has been years since I looked into it, you know, there's debates about whether Jesus actually broke the Sabbath. or maybe broke traditional interpretations or additions to the biblical Sabbath law, what would be your approach to Jesus and the Sabbath?

Yeah, so a couple things. One, there are several different kinds of Sabbath controversies. One of them, let's take Luke 14. in in luke 14's controversy it's where it's Luke 14 one to six or so and it's when he's gosh i think he's dining at the house of a Pharisee having lunch there or something and then the man with dropsy is there so the man dropsy or edema so he's got the excessive fluid in his body right

and and he heals this guy on the sabbath that's that's one kind of sabbath controversy and in it he doesn't explicitly appeal to any sort of like divine prerogical of like, well, I'm the Messiah and I'm here on a mission. So I, and this mission is urgent. So I've got to do this right now or else, you know, he just does it and then, you know, provides a reason for it. And so I'll talk about that one in a minute.

But then there's a different kind of Sabbath controversy in, at least as I read it, in Matthew 12, where his disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath. And, and he gives a different kind of defense of that. So the short answer is, no, I don't think you set aside Sabbath keeping. generally, or as a general law. No, I don't think he's set that aside. I do think, though, that Luke 14 might be an instance of either just disagreeing, having a different, you know, halakhic standard for what Sabbath keeping looks like, or at the very least, it could be that the Pharisees actually agree, but he's just pointing out an inconsistency of practice, in which case

there's not a different halakhic standard, but they just, he's pointing out an inconsistency in their practice. So let's think through this text. It's Luke 14. It's where, you know, the man with edema is there, dropsy. And this is, again, this is an excess of fluid in the body. And actually, importantly, the Greek word for that is who dropicos, which you can hear the word hydro or hydra in there. So he's watery. He's waterlogged. He's waterlogged. This is a waterlogged guy came forward, right? And then he says, in fact, I don't want to actually misquote it because I think he says, you know, who of you would have a, gosh, an ox or a son fallen to a well? I think that's what he says.

This is Luke's 14. It's Luke 14, 1 to 6. And he says, yeah, Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? They kept silence. he took hold of him and healed him and sent him away and he said to them, which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well and will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? And they could make no reply to this.

Now, here, I don't think he appeals to some sort of like, well, I'm the Messiah and I can do whatever I want or whatever. I think this controversy depends upon understanding a bit about sort of first century or Second Temple Halakha about the Sabbath, which is that at least in the, certainly in the Mishnah and possibly in other, it could be in other circles as well. The Mishnah is a Jewish source from about the year 200 CE or so, sort of a compendium of legal opinions from various rabbis, among other things. And they thought that, you know, doing medicinal therapy or medicinal healing,

anything like that was generally prohibited on the Sabbath, except in cases of preservation of life. When there was, right, like an urgent life preservation issue, then you could violate profane Sabbath to intervene and help the person. So if they're starving, right, and you, or like a better example, if like a house falls on them and you're like, oh, gosh, they might be, that guy might be dead. I, you profane Sabbath to go over there, lift the rocks off them and check. And you're not actually breaking, you're like the biblical law allows for it. It's an interesting, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question. There are several texts that do in fact say profane Sabbath, which means to treat it as if it's a common day.

And so that is technically the language of it's like you ought not profane Sabbath. Profaning Sabbath is prohibited, right? And yet there are certain cases in which you profane Sabbath to do X, Y, Z of something of a higher import, right? This is the basic logic of the sort of legal overrides, which I talk a lot about in the book. Right. So circumcision must be done on the eighth day of the boy's life. But what if the eighth day of the boy's life coincides with the Sabbath? Oh, right.

What are you going to do? You either got a profane Sabbath in order to circumcise or you got to violate the temporal component of the circumcision commandment in order to keep Sabbath. You have to violate one of those commandments. Right? You see what I'm saying? There's no, you have to. You either have to profane Sabbath to circumcise. or violate the temporal component of the circumcision commitment in order to keep Sabbath.

Those are not articulated as such. They're just natural tensions left unstated. Precisely. The law itself does not tell you what to do. This is so important for both this book, but also just understanding lots of things. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't say what to do. You have to have legal reasoning about it to come to a conclusion as to, well, here's what we come to it.

And so the widespread opinion in, and, rabbinic texts is that you you profane Sabbath to circumcise you you keep the circumcision commandment at the expense of Sabbath but it's a as you then put it it's a permissible profanation it's a permissible one you don't have to then go make a sin offering for it so it's like a it's it's called pushing it override pushing it aside um so similarly if you know if someone's life is in danger you you can you can intervene and even if that means you're you're setting aside Sabbath momentarily in that moment of crisis, that's okay. The sticky issue here, of course, though, in Luke 14 is this doesn't seem to be a life-threatening

issue. This guy could probably survive till the next day. And same with lots of other healings. They're not life-threatening issues, and yet Jesus still heals the guy. My argument is that I think he simply thinks that that's not a necessary conclusion from the Sabbath law. I think he thinks the Sabbath law itself could be read to say that, no, you sometimes. you've got to just do stuff to help people.

So the whole like, keep the Sabbath unless there's a life threatening circumstance, that is a rabbinic interpretation. Yes. Yeah. The notion that you can intervene in life, the life threatening situations, but not otherwise,

is, yeah, is a rabbinic, is in the missiona, you know, preservation of life. So Jesus is participating in rabbin, or Jewish. Well, he's participating in, yeah, in this discourse about what's permissible to do on the Sabbath. I don't think he agrees, at least in Luke 14, it doesn't seem that, he seems, well, he does heal the guy and it's not

life-threatening. So clearly he thinks, no, there are other cases in which you can, you know, intervene even if it's not life-threatening. But my point is, I think he gets that from the Sabbath legislation itself. Because the Sabbath legislation itself says that you ought to rest. So this is Deuter Army 5, Exodus 20 and other texts, says that you ought, you know, do your work on six days, and then on the seventh they do no work, neither you nor your servant, nor your, nor your ox, nor your donkey. No your ox. Rest, yeah, in fact, the precise language of Jesus in this text, the precise words.

Rest so that you and your son and your ox and your donkey, et cetera, so that your animals may rest and they may refresh themselves. So that means the Sabbath law itself requires that animals all. also take their rest. Well, like, if animals are going to rest and be refreshed on the Sabbath, clearly their owners are going to have to do stuff for them, right? This is actually his point in Luke 13. Who of you wouldn't untie an animal and lead him to water on the Sabbath? Like, if the Sabbath legislation itself requires that we, that these animals rest, well, then resting for these animals is going to require that they have food and drink. And they can't do

that themselves. So there's going to be, there's going to be stuff that you have to do to take care of them like untie them and lead them to water. Well, does that work? Or is it just sort of activity that the Sabbath law itself sort of requires so that you can keep, keep what the Sabbath law says, namely to secure the rest of these animals? I think this is a similar kind of situation here where he says, look, who of you wouldn't have an ox or a son who fell into a well and you'd get them out? Like if they are now not really enjoying the Sabbath. rest that the law itself grants them. And so you would pull them out of the well, right? And his point is, if you would do that for an animal, an ox, why cannot not do it for this man? And there,

importantly, I think he's chosen an example that aligns with the ailment that he's healing. Right? Because remember the guy's ailment? Yeah. Dropsy. He's waterlogged. Well, he's, the example he chooses is an animal or a son that falls into a well. Oh, wow. A water-filled thing. He goes, if you'd help your ox or your son out of this water jam, why cannot help this guy

who's drowning in his own body? Right. And then same deal in Luke 13. He picks an example that aligns with the ailment. He's healing. The woman is described as bound. She's bent over double.

Luke 13, the woman who's bent over double for 18 years. She described as bound by Satan. And so what she needs is untying, releasing, right? And so he says, look, if you would untie your animal to take it to water, why can I not untie this woman for her, you know? So he's using the same language to use the same language. But itself also, I think, is sort of partially dependent upon his reading of what the Sabbath law itself permits, right? Okay. Matthew, I'm looking at our time. Matthew 12 is a

longer argument. So people might want to just read that one. But, yeah. Yeah, do you have a hard cut off? go a little over. No, I don't. I don't, but I just wanted to keep. Okay. Let's, yeah, because we do have, I do want to talk about a couple of other things. It might take some time to unpack. So, yeah, let's let's go read Matthew 12. I remember, I remember reading that section. And it was, if people are like having their eyes open a bit with what you're saying about Luke 14 and 13, then it's definitely there in Matthew 12. Temple. Okay. He, Jesus, was assuming that Jesus was still totally cool with all the laws, dietary laws, keeping purity laws and all these things, he seemed to be not so down with the temple. What is the relationship between Jesus and the temple? Because he cleansed it, predicted its destruction.

And even if you, you know, the temple is bound up with a sacrificial system and Jesus came to do away with that. Or at the, at Lee, well, I mean, do away. Fulfill it would probably be the better language. I'm just kind of, these are the categories that I would typically have. Am I, is that, is that right? So I'm affirming that those are things people think, yes. You're such a scholar. I wouldn't put them all quite that way.

I mean, so I think he's pro-temple. Let's put it that way. And I think, what he and he does, yes, predict the temple's destruction. I think, though, he predicts the temple's destruction in the same way that Jeremiah and Ezekiel do. So Jeremiah predicts the destruction of the temple,

but Jeremiah is not like anti-temple. Ezekiel, gosh, is a son of a priest or a priest, probably. I mean, like, he predicts the destruction of the temple, and he's not anti-temple. In fact, of course, Ezekiel, more than most, has like a prolonged vision of the new temple. and is in this sad state of the of the current one. So I think Jesus is, of course, I think Jesus is more than a prophet,

but I think it's very important to understand Jesus that he is like Jeremiah and Ezekiel in this way, that he is, as the agent and herald of the restoration, he is like the prophets calling people to return, return to God. This is that language throughout Jeremiah and the prophets is, you know, return to God, return to his ways, et cetera. And this is the language of Jesus. In fact, it's the language of Luke where it says that John the Baptist

will return the hearts of many to their people using the same language. And of course, Jesus' own mission is used the language of repent, but I think it's tapping into that same idea. Turn back to God. But at the same time, he's not just the prophet of restoration. He is that. He's also warning of the judgment that would befall

if people fail to participate in the restoration. So it's not simply, hey, good news is here and it's all going to go great no matter what. So just, you know, he's saying like, look, now is the time. Like, get on board or else Israel will continue to face, you know, judgment for their rejection of not just the historic prophets, but now me, the one whom God has sent to get Israel to turn Israel back. And so he predicts once he sees that he's, you know, being rejected, he sees that, okay, you know, they're not by and large returning to. to God or listening to my message. And so therefore, they will remain, you know, subject to this judgment.

And the form of that judgment will be the destruction of the temple at the hands of Israel's enemies, which in that case is Rome. So this is how I take Luke 19, right? I mean, Luke 19, I mean, it's pretty explicit. He's approaching Jerusalem and he's saying, you know, he sees he's weeping. It says, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets, you know, how often I wanted to gather you at like a henik gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. if only you would know the ways that make for peace,

which is, in other words, like if you had heard the message of John the Baptist, because John the Baptist was the one who was going to show them the things that make for peace. If only you would learn the ways that make for peace, etc., but now you haven't, and they're hidden from you. And so now your enemies will surround you and the temple will be destroyed. So he takes the destruction of the temple at the hands of Romans as I think a punitive judgment for the rejection of not only the historic prophets but also John

and Jesus himself and so and he laments it he this is why I say he's pro temple he laments its destruction he does not he wished it had not happened right so then that helps explain how or at least that's why I take the temple action the way that I do of course the temple action I'm referring to is Mark 11 loop you know Luke 19 and 20 and Matthew gosh what is it Matthew 21, 22, where he goes into the temple, flips the tables, drives out the buyers and sellers, and says, you know, my house was to be a house of prayer for all the nations, but you've made it into a den of thieves or a den of robbers or a den of, you know, bandits or something like that.

And I think the mistake people make there, in my view, it's a mistake. And again, I've got a argument about this. They think that, oh, he's critiquing, he thinks the temple's become like, He's critiquing sort of some bad practice he sees there. Then when he gets there, he sees something that upsets him, like the fact that they're selling animals or something like that or this commercialistic or something like that. I problematize that view. I mean, again, I'm not alone here. I'm following Sanders and several others.

This is not a unique argument to me. And the ways that I problematize that are by saying that, well, first of all, if he's just mad about sort of the like sort of like the extortionary. prices or something like that, then it's odd that he drives out the buyers. Like, why is he mad at them? They're the ones getting fleeced, right? Like, why is he mad at them? Second is that it doesn't seem like, I mean, the selling of animals was a service. It was a good. Otherwise, people might have to like bring their sacrificial animals from afar and risk them getting, you know, blemished or something. And Deuteronomy talks about selling animals. It just says, it says, in that place, doesn't say precisely where, but it's

presumably Jerusalem or the temple area, the temple zone somewhere. And so Deuteronomy itself could be read to endorse this practice. So selling animals at the temple, in and of itself was not not necessarily. Not necessarily, yeah. There's no law against it. And there's a law that assumes the practice. At least it could be read that way in Deuteronomy. I think it's during the end of Deuteronomy 14.

or so. 14, yeah. It says, like, if you live far away, right, then, like, bring money. Yeah. Because you can't bring a sheep over your, you know,

right. You can bring money and buy your, I'm paraphrasing, but yeah, the assumption is you buy your sacrifice. You're going to buy your sacrifice there. The question is, though,

precisely where, like, so some people have said, well, yeah, sure, you can buy in Jerusalem, but they shouldn't be set up right there in the courts. That could be, it's just,

it just no argument. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Yeah. So then the question is, okay, so then what's he mad about, right um like what what is it then um and then i i take my cue from two two things first is that he's

already convinced that the temple will be destroyed before he gets there this is very key evidence he already thinks the temple is going to be destroyed before he gets there luke 19 is explicit about this he's as he's descending mount of olives headed toward jerusalem he's already weeping saying oh the text I just quoted, right? How often I wanted to gather you, da-da-da. But now your eyes are, it's hidden from your eyes, and your enemies are going to surround you and you'll be destroyed, da-da.

And then he walks into Jerusalem, sorry, into the temple and flips the tables, et cetera. He already thinks it's subject to punitive destruction for its rejection of him. And he knows this prior to his arrival, which clues me in on the fact that he's already aware that the temple is not doing what it's supposed to be doing before he gets there. So it's not something that he sees that reveals to him like, I can't believe they're doing this.

It's that he's going to the temple to do this action. And this action is itself an expression of a judgment that he's come to before he even gets there. Namely, the temple is going to be destroyed. Second key piece of evidence for me is the quotation of those passages. This was my house should be called a house of prayer for all nations is from Isaiah 56. And importantly, this is. again, I think is very important information. That is a description.

The Isaiah 56 passage is not a description of what the temple was just always supposed to be in a steady state sort of religion. Rather, Isaiah 56 is describing what the temple would be in the restoration. At this time, when I restore you and then I bring the nations in, then my house of prayer will be called a house of prayer for all nations. So in other words, House of Prayer for All Nations is not just sort of an idealized sort of general religious description of, oh, I wish the temple were like this, but it's not. It is a prophetic description of what the temple ought to be at the restoration. And so he's saying, look, I've been heralding the restoration and you all didn't repent. So now restoration isn't materializing. And so what the temple was to be in the restoration is now it's not.

It's not that because the Restorations has failed to materialize. Because you guys haven't repented. Because, in other words, you've rejected the prophets. And instead of it being the restoration temple, it's instead still the transgressive temple of Jeremiah's day. So that makes sense. What were the sellers and buyers then doing wrong? Like a den of thieves? Like were they ripping people off?

Oh, yeah. Good. No. I don't know. In fact, din of thieves, this is a. point, gosh, I should know, I think it was made by A.J. Levine. Den of Thieves is just a prophetic, it's what Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 7. He goes, you've done all these things, but you know, but this place has become a den of thieves.

But there, Den of Thieves is just a general description of the people as transgressive. Den of thieves doesn't identify them as sort of financially exploitative. He's just named that they've done all the transgressions, that they've done, that they, They've stolen, committed adultery, worship bail, committed murder, followed other gods, and have it listened to Jeremiah. And so,

therefore, they've turned that house of God into a din of thieves. So it's a general description. It's a general description of a lack of repentance. Yes, you're just transgressive. Not a specific indictment of what they're doing.

Precisely. And importantly, again, this is the point that A.J. Levine points out, all that stuff I just said about Jeremiah 7 is basic. The next point that AJ Levine pointed out is a din of thieves, is where the thieves hide out.

It's not the place that they rob. Oh. Right? If it's a den of thieves, they're not robbing the den. That's their hideout. Which means their banditry took place elsewhere.

So you've made this, in other words, like we call it a safe haven. You've made it into a safe haven of bandits. Well, then it's not a, right? It's not saying that the, temple is the locus of their banditry. It's the safe haven. You're taking it as a safe haven after having committed banditry everywhere else, which is not only is what Jeremiah says,

but it's what Jesus has been saying. Jesus has been calling people to repentance all throughout the land, right? And has said that the Pharisees are transgressive. And, you know, he's not identifying the temple as the place of banditry. It's the hideout. I was going to say it sounds so much like Jeremiah, Jeremiah 7, you know, you guys, say temple, the temple, the temple, you know, and like, you're finding security in the temple. And Jeremiah is like, this thing's going to be destroyed because you're unrepentant. That framework sounds very similar to how you're describing. It's Jesus.

Yeah, Jeremiah. Jesus and Jeremiah, they get along. All right. So, so I'm sure people. I have a lot of questions, but you're answering a lot of them. What is the relationship between the temple, Jesus' death? him becoming the temple, the body of Christ being the temple. Because if we can kind of look forward, it seems that somebody could interpret you as saying like,

oh, Jesus would have loved to, ideally had the temple standing forever and sacrifices. And like he wasn't doing away with anything. But that's not quite, I don't think, what you're saying. So what's the relationship between Jesus of view of the temple and what happens as we move along in the biblical story through his death? the church or, you know, be in the temple or whatever. Great question. Yeah. So this house should have been called a house of prayer for all nations is, again, what the temple ought to have been in the state of the restoration according to Isaiah 56.

And so if it were the, quote, restoration temple, yeah, I think Jesus would be on board with that. Like, it's what I think, that's why he's quoting Isaiah 56 there. Then the question is, if the restoration had materialized sort of in Jesus' earth, ministry before us cross, right? Let's just, there's a hypothetical, counterfactual that we can't know about. So this is pure speculation. But let's just, for the sake of the question, what if it, what if restoration and materialize? Resurrection happens.

Yeah. Utopia is there. Then what does Jesus think, right? Would be, would there be like a new temple? Would there be animal? Obviously, I don't know. We get pictures like revelation where, right, like, you know, the lamb comes, you know, the tabernacle descends and the earthly, the heavenly tabernacle,

and the earthly tabernacle become, you know, become one, or heavenly tabernacle and earthly space become one. And there is no temple in it for God and the lamb are their temple. Or, and then even you get in rabbinic texts where they envision, I mean, this is just one passage. It's not like all the rabbis think. This is one passage. Where they say, you know, in that age, all sacrifices will cease,

except the thank offering. Because the thank offer, you'll always have something to be thankful for, right? But, well, we won't be sinners anymore. commit sin anymore. So we, of course we won't make sin offerings anymore, right? Or guilt offerings or whatever. And so they say all sacrifices will cease except the thank offering and I guess maybe one more. But the point is, is that there was reflection in a lot of these texts about what what sacrifice, et cetera, would be like in the age to come, the world to come, the resurrection, whatever. And lots of those, how you answer that depends a lot on sort of a person's sort of,

metaphysics or ontology of what they think the resurrection life new creation or whatever will entail. Will it be the kind of place where sacrifice is even possible? You know,

just highly, highly speculative endeavor. So one thing I would say is that you know, this might take as far afield, but would you rather me answer this question

with respect to Hebrews or would you rather me go back to sort of talking about his death in relation to sacrifice? Let's do death in relation. sacrifice because that's still probably a lingering thought. Okay.

Yeah, part of my argument is that Jesus' death is not functioning like a regular atoning sacrifice. And so what I mean is something very, very specific. I'm not saying his death, you know, isn't atoning or that you couldn't use atonement to type language to refer to it. And that his death isn't salvific or anything like that. It is, it's unique and it's saving and it's all of those wonderful good things that we want to ascribe to, you know, to Jesus's death. My point in saying that it's not functioning

like a regular atoning, sort of covenant maintenance sacrifice is something very particular. What I mean is, is that sacrifice in the, in the, in the Lovitical system was given both at its inauguration, but also as a covenant maintenance thing. When a person commits a sin, they go make a sin offering. And annually, they have the day of atonement or the day of prigation, whatever that, you know, the ritual described in Levitica 16, where they have like an annual reset button, right? The, this whole sacred space gets purified through the blood of the various animals and the people, you know, receive atonement and then their, their, their, their, their, their iniquity and impurity is placed, you know, on this, or the iniquities that people are placed on

the goat and he's sent away, so that it's, it's like an annual reset button. And this is, that's, that is maintaining the covenant. It's maintaining the divine presence in the tabernacle, but it's also maintaining the intact nature of the covenant. My point is simply to say that those kinds of covenant maintenance sacrifices are very limited in scope and efficaciousness. Those kind of sacrifices cannot accommodate for all kinds of transgression. And once the covenant is violated, sacrifice does not renew it or repair the covenant breach. So those are two big points. Like if you are, if you've committed idolatry,

if the covenant, let's say the covenant is maintained and, but you as an individual, you commit idolatry. You worship other gods, etc. There's no sacrifice you can make to go repair that. Well, this is, right. Rilera pointed out. Yes, right. Andrew Rilera's done a lot of great stuff on it.

It's exile and death, right? Yeah, it's what, it's what Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 18 and 20 say. Like if you commit these kinds of transgressions, sexual immorality, bloodshed, and idolatry, worship of the God, et cetera, there's no sacrifice for that. Those things individually get you the death penalty and corporately, as if Israel just generally goes astray in those ways and never listen to the prophets, et cetera, then those are covenant breaching, covenant violating transgressions such that then Israel incurs the covenant curses, et cetera. And in a lot of prophetic texts, the only way out it is through it. The only way out of the covenant curses is through the covenant curses, right? You get this in various, I think, this is how I take Isaiah 53. There's this figure who takes on sort of the weight of Israel's covenant curses.

But you get it in Second Maccabee, 7, these people who are taking the seven rows, taking the wrath of God that has justly fallen upon our nation because of our sins. Or various, sorry, Baruch, Rook 4, it just says, you know, Jerusalem personified is telling, you know, Israelites, once the covenant curses come, just says, go, my children, go, for what can I do for you? That's Jerusalem. It's the temple personified speaking. Go into exile.

For what can I do for you? Bear with patience, the wrath that has come upon you. In some second temple text, the gospels included, and I think in my view, Paul included, the way out of the covenant curse is through them and sacrifice in and of itself cannot get you out of it. So in that sense, in that sense, Jesus's death is not functioning like a regular covenant and satoning sacrifice.

Instead, what I think it is, is an endurance of the covenant curse penalty on Israel's behalf and for them. So we can still say that, because that sounds exactly how I've understood it over the last several years, we can still say then his death. Oh, good, finally.

I mean, it's hard for me to use language that's not, well, his death paid the penalty for our sins. I don't know why. But I mean, because there's, you know, this ongoing conversation about pedal substitution. I think there's some wonky ways of understanding that as kind of this individual level. But from a covenantal level, God's wrath towards breach covenant. breach. It results in death, exile, and that's... And subjugation to the nations.

Subjugation in the nations, yeah. Which is important. The reason I add that one is because it's in the language that Jesus uses. I'm going to do something. They're going to reject me, and they're going to hand me over to the nations. Yes. And they, the nations, will put me to death. This is, this is lexically and thematically the content of the covenant curses, being handed over to the nations and being killed by them. This is it. I mean, and so when he says that, he's saying, I am going to endure the content, the brunt of, the content of the punitive curses that have justly fallen upon Israel for our transgressions, et cetera.

And so, yeah, I don't have like a catchy slogan for it, which I'm fine with. I don't want one. But I think it's penal because the covenant curses are. penalties. I think there's a judicial component in the sense that the covenant is a judicial legal arrangement. But there's also, I think people get weirded out because they just sort of envision sort of some sort of like God, you're sort of like throwing a lightning bolt at Jesus or just pouring wrath out of his mouth and it like falls onto him directly or something where it's just just not what I'm saying, no, that the content of this covenant wrath is the subjugation of the nations,

etc. And Jesus indoors that as them and on their behalf. And in exchange for them, he says, in Mark 1045, that's how to take the ransom language. So anyway, yeah, I don't know if that. No, that, that, that, we talked offline just briefly. It was really helpful to hear you unpack all that. That's how I've understood Galatians 3. You know, he became a curse for us. And, yeah, well, I do have to let you go. I mean, I don't think you over. But that's a great, way to end. I, yeah, for my YouTube watchers here, here is the book again. I, it's such a good book, man. And it's a beautiful blend of scholarly rigor, some level of textual, textually based originality. I mean, you're clear about where you're getting stuff from, but it's a fresh,

like, exciting read. And it's written really well, man. You've got a funny, for a scholarly book, man, you made me laugh a few times. So that's not. I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks for saying that both about the book and just for having me on. And it's true. Yeah, I've, none of this is just sort of no man's an island and no scholar is writing on his own. I'm deeply indebted to lots of people who came before me. So, yeah, but thanks for saying that.

Awesome. Well, thanks for being against the theology around, man. Appreciate you. Appreciate it.