Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk>]

Liz Fried wrote:
Further, in response to an earlier comment about Jesus, it is a crux in
discussions about the historical Jesus what aspects of torah law he accepted
or did not. Although Mark (I think it's Mark) says that Jesus made all food
kosher, that has been disputed by scholars of the historical Jesus. We have
no information really about the historical Jesus, so it is impossible to
know what he thought. We see him only through the eyes of the early church
which was bent on distinguishing for the Romans the early Christians from
the Jews who had rebelled against Rome.


JCR:
Hi Liz, 
you might be interested to know that there are a number
 of people on this list (myself included) who consider 
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to be the only authorative 
scholars on 'the historical Jesus' and that they have 
provided a wealth of information on his thoughts. Your 
above comments are unlikely to provoke any kind of 
positive reation from such list members though they may 
be likely to provoke theological debates which we are
prohibited from entering in in this list. Just what
bearing your ideas that you know better than Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John have on the formulation of the law
code I'm at a complete loss to understand.

However, your comments on archeological testimonies
were interesting.
I would not be surprised to see evidence of preMosaic
circumcision because the command to cirumcise was given
to Abraham several generations prior.
Also, abstenance from certain foods dates back to
commands given to Noah so it is little surprise that we
see this behaviour before the time of Moshe.

Anway, perhaps I should have been more specific but I
was really talking about the niggly little specific
laws rather than the generic don't eat pork and get
circumcised rules.
ke