Sola Scriptura From A Jewish Point Of View

A reader writes:

Over on the CA fora I made the following argument against Sola Scriptura from a Jewish religious and historical point of view. Do you think it holds water from a Catholic apologetical PoV?

Okay. Let’s take a look!

Being Jewish, I have always had a problem with the concept of Sola Scriptura, and I have always thought that there is a very good religio-historical argument against it.

Now I think we can all agree that Judaism is the foundation upon which Christianity of all types is built.

Any Christian with an ounce of historical consciousness will grant this, yes.

After all the Christian bible contains both an Old (Jewish) Testament and a New (Christian) Testament.

True.

And Jesus and the Apostles and (especially) St Paul were all brought up as Jews and had a firm grasp of Jewish Tradition.

Ah. Here is where someone wishing to oppose your argument may begin his case. An unsophisticated Protestant might simply say "Yes, but Jesus had a lot of criticism of Jewish tradition (cf. Matthew 15:1-11)."

A more sophisticated Protestant might ask: "What do you mean by ‘Jewish tradition’? There were several schools of Jewish thought that differed significantly from each other–the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, etc.–each of which was possessed of a substantially different tradition that it identified as the correct one. While St. Paul may have been a Pharisee, it is not clear that the others all imbibed that tradition or any particular tradition. Indeed, as they were ‘unlearned’ men, they may have simply been ‘am ha-eretz and not formal disciples of any particular school of thought apart from Jesus’."

A logical reply to both of these individuals would be "While there is truth to what you are saying, hear me out. It seems past dispute that Jesus and the apostles were inheritors of Jewish tradition in some sense in their formative years, which is all that is being claimed at this point."

That said Judaism has always had written law, the Torah, i.e. the first five books of the Old Testament. And it has an oral law, Mishnah, that expounds on and explains Torah.

This is certainly the Rabbinic understanding, and it thus naturally seems to be reflective of the Pharisee understanding (Rabbinic Judaism being descended, in broad strokes, from the Pharisee movement).

One might argue that the Sadducee movement did not have this understanding, but such an argument would be open to significant challenges, not the least of which would be that Jesus and the apostles, whatever they were, clearly were not Sadducees and thus would not be expected to share their understanding. You also have on your side Jesus’ "Do whatever they tell you" statement (Matt. 23:1-4), which seems to reflect the existence of a legal authority and, by extension, a legal tradition not arising exclusively from the text of the Hebrew Scriptures.

By way of an example there is a verse in Leviticus (unfortunately I don’t have a Bible handy so I can’t give an exact verse cite) that says "Thou shalt not scald a kid [i.e a baby goat] in its mother’s milk." This is Torah. Mishnah expands on that verse to provide a great deal of the basics of the kashruth food laws, namely things like not cooking meat in milk, not eating dairy foods and meat at the same meal, keeping separate dishes and utensils for cooking and eating meat or dairy, etc.

"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk" (Ex. 23:19) is indeed a good example of the phenomenon you mention. It may not, however, be pleasing to a person of Protestant background.

The unsophisticated may simply say, "Yeah! And that’s why I can’t get a cheeseburger in Jerusalem! McDonalds is a strictly BYOC affair over there!"

A more sophisticated individual might reply by saying, "While it’s true that this mitzvah is commonly interpreted to preclude any combination of milk and meat products, and thus is a good illustration of the kind of interpretation-by-tradition that you are seeking to document, it may not be the most persuasive example to me as there is significant question as to whether the mitzvah has been correctly interpreted in this case. On its face, not boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk is a very great distance away from forbidding any combination of milk and meat products in a meal. The latter seems not to be reasonably grounded in the former."

He might continue: "We don’t have to be legal positivists about this: We could grant that there is an element of propriety for the ancient Hebrews that made it seem ‘icky’ or otherwise perversely inappropriate to boil a young goat in its own mother’s milk, and we might grant that this rule of propriety should be applied in other contexts, such that one should not boil a calf or a lamb or any young animal in its mother’s milk. Those might be logical extensions of this mitzvah, but to forbid any combination of milk and meat products in a meal seems a sweeping generalization that is the kind of ‘heavy burden’ that Jesus faulted the scribes and Pharisees for creating via their interpretive tradition."

To which you might reply: "Yes, but I haven’t claimed that any particular item of tradition was or should be binding from a Christian point of view. I’m merely using the example to document the phenomenon historically so far."

So to recap, at the time of Jesus and the early Church there was a written law and and an oral law. And this is key, the oral law was not written down until around the 3rd or 4th century AD, where it became the basis for later Talmudic commentary.

The sophisticated Protestant may say at this point: "We need to be a little more nuanced here. The position you are representing is the classical Rabbinic view of matters, but it must be understod with some caution. The Rabbinic view is broadly reflective of the Pharisee point of view, as has been mentioned, not the view of all Jews prior to the dawn of the Rabbinic age. Further, it is not clear that all of the Talmudic traditions actually date back to the first century."

To which you might reply, "Perhaps, but the traditions recorded in the Mishna are sufficiently early that their broad outlines, plus many of their specific particulars, must date from that period and–further–were probably representative of a broad swath of Jewish practice and not simply representative of the Pharisee viewpoint."

Therefore since Jesus and the Apostles and St Paul were all Jews coming out of a Jewish tradition, it logically follows that the early Church would follow Jewish tradition and have it’s own written law (the Gospels and the Epistles) as well as it’s own oral law (Tradition).

The conclusion is plausible, though I have two suggestions to make regarding how it’s phrase:

1) I wouldn’t say that "the earl Church would following Jewish tradition." This is a phrase that may sidetrack the discussion as it may cause a misunderstanding about what it being claimed. The reader may think that you are saying that the Church should follow particular items of Jewish traiditon, e.g., the kashrut laws, which will provoke disagreement.

This, however, is not what you are saying. To avoid the confusion, I’d avoid the word "tradition" at this point and say something like: "Coming from a Jewish background that did not have the principle of sola scriptura and that was willing to rely on extra-scriptural material, we should expect Jesus and the apostles to do the same. They would naturally interpret Scripture by their own interpretive tradition, just as other Jews would by theirs."

2) There’s another potential confusion that might arise: The reader might think that you are making a kind of scriptural-theological argument here (e.g., "The Hebrew Scriptures needed an oral tradition to complement them, so the Christian ones do too"). This would provoke disagreement as well as a Protestant likely would not concede (without argument) that there needed to be an oral tradition to complement the Hebrew Scriptures.

It seems to me, though, that this is not the argument you are making. It seems that you are making a historical argument rather than a scriptural-theological one. In other words: Jesus and the apostles came from a world in which people did rely on tradition to inform their understanding of sacred texts, so we should expect them to use this principle as well.

To make it clear that you are making a historical argument and avoid confusion, I’d go to extra lengths to point this out when presenting the argument to Protestants.

The rejoinder that you will likely encounter is the first one mentioned: Jesus had a lot to say that was critical of Jewish tradition. An unsophisticated person will simply assert this flatly, while a more sophisticated person might say, "Your historical argument is sufficient to establish a presumption that this is how Jesus and the apostles would approach Scripture, but then we have to look at how they actually did approach Scripture to see if the presumption holds up. When we look at Scripture, we see that Jesus had a lot to say that was critical of Jewish traditions."

To which you might reply: "Yes, but it is clear that the authors of the New Testament also had a healthy respect for tradition. Look at St. Paul’s positive statements regarding it (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:2). So it isn’t the case that we have a presumption that is then defeated by an examination of apostolic practice. What we have is a presumption that is confirmed by apostolic practice, with the apostles simply rejecting the traditions of other groups the way each group of Jews rejected the tradtions of other groups. That’s why there were different groups: They didn’t all adhere to identical traditions. It then becomes a question of which group had the correct tradition, but not of whether tradition should be used at all."

Which is a point that the most sophisticated Protestant individuals will concede. Many Protestants, particularly in the scholarly community, have significant appreciation for the importance of tradition. How they square that with sola scriptura is what gets dicey.

In any event, I would say that your argument is helpful in that it helps illustrate the background with which the New Testament’s positive statements regarding tradition are to be understood, so it does make a valuable contribution.

Hope this analysis helps!