Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

The idea of charity in Torah is to avoid extreme hardship. Thus only widows
and orphans are entitled to glean. In order to survive, they need to eat,
and so only basic foodstuffs are tithed, not anything else. As Hebrew
society became more affluent, the definition in the later book was expanded
a bit to include basic crops, olive oil and wine.
Christianity set ideal goals, such as distributing all assets in order to be
perfect, and naturally expanded tithe to all products.
Rabbinic Judaism moved in the same direction likely when Jews in Diaspora
did not engage in agriculture. Jesus accuses Pharisees of tithing other
goods, but I am not sure whether that accurately reflects the first century
practice.

Vadim Cherny


> Just reading in Malachi 3 and a thought occurred to me:  Had the
definition
> of "tithe" changed from the one in Leviticus [crops and herds] towards the
> one used in Christianity [all income whether goods or money] or does that
> post-date the break between Judaism and Christianity.  I just had a
feeling
> I may have been reading something into the text that isn't there.
Checking
> the meaning of "McSR " didn't help as it was basically "tithe", "one
tenth".
>  Did Judaism move towards tithing other than agricultural produce?
>
> Kevin Riley
>
>
>