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When I was a Baptist, I was stunned to learn that Martin Luther anachronistically read his disagreements with Catholics into the Bible, taking St. Paul out of his original context and making the text on salvation say something it doesn’t. During my time at Harvard, now as a Catholic, I’ve heard the same point on Luther reaffirmed, but this time directly from some of the world’s top biblical scholars. If Luther got justification wrong because he read his sixteenth-century context into the first century, then what else might be off?
The dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees on the tradition of the elders is another example of a Protestant misreading of the Bible. Although Jesus disputes the oral, extrabiblical tradition of the elders, which the Pharisees cite as an authority, Jesus does not reject oral tradition itself. In other words, Jesus rejects certain oral traditions here, but not because they are oral tradition rather than the written word.
Let’s first read the debate in context.
The argument erupts because the Pharisees note that Jesus’ disciples do not wash their hands before eating, which is a Jewish tradition or custom (Matt. 15:1-2, Mark 7:1-5). Jesus charges the Pharisees with hypocrisy, citing Isaiah 29:13, and says, in Mark 7:8, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” In Matthew 15:6, he says, “So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.”
How does Jesus back this charge? He seemingly changes topics by mentioning that the Pharisees would force someone not to help his mother and father, thus violating one of the Ten Commandments, if the money with which he would have helped his parents is declared “Corban,” or pledged as an offering to God (Matt. 15:3-6, Mark 7:9-13). Jesus emphasizes in both Gospels that the Pharisees are willing to side with a human tradition against the scriptures.
So how does Jesus’ argument deal with the hand-washing tradition? After all, this hand-washing ritual does not technically contradict anything in the Bible. The tradition is likely meant to make the everyday people pure, or pure according to the Pharisees, like the priests in the Temple who are biblically commanded to wash their hands (Exod. 30:17-21).
Rather than dealing directly with the hand-washing tradition itself, Jesus undermines the credibility of the Pharisees, or their vision of how to obey God, which calls into question their traditions, including hand-washing. It’s the equivalent of discrediting a politician and his policy proposals by mentioning a terrible law he once supported.
The earliest document of Rabbinic Judaism, the Mishnah, explains why the Pharisees had extrabiblical laws. It says in m. Avot 1:1, “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah.” The idea of building “a fence round the Torah” echoes Deuteronomy 22:8, where a fence is supposed to be made around rooftops so that it is impossible for someone to fall off.
The tradition of the elders is part of this fence. It is supposed to help people not to violate God’s law. Jesus, however, is calling into question the fence of the Pharisees and whether it successfully helps people follow God. Christ does this by questioning whether the Pharisees really understand what God wants, especially given what God has said in Scripture.
There are two things worth noticing. First, Jesus does not completely reject extrabiblical tradition. At most, Jesus is rejecting traditions that contradict Scripture or come from a system that fundamentally misunderstands Scripture. The burden of proof, then, is on the Protestant to show that Catholic traditions actually contradict the Bible or come from a system that fundamentally misunderstands Scripture. That’s a high burden of proof.
Second, Jesus’ argument in its original context concerns moral customs and not the later debates on Tradition between Protestants and Catholics. The fundamental debate between Jesus and the Pharisees is on righteousness according to the Torah. It has nothing to directly say about other kinds of oral traditions, meaning Jesus could technically agree that Moses and Joshua orally commanded later Jewish leaders to make a fence around the Torah, but Jesus simply questions the fence in operation during his time on earth.
Thus, the debate in its original context does not ultimately say what Protestant apologists need it to say.