Debates about Jesus’ relationship to the Torah have long produced sharply divergent portraits in New Testament scholarship. Some scholars have seen fit to depict Jesus as rejecting the law’s precepts, while others have portrayed him as largely affirming them, but still nevertheless seeking to rework, reform or otherwise reinterpret them in new ways. Part of the problem has been New Testament scholars’ lack of familiarity with the complexity of Second Temple Judaism, which has led to scholarship that flattens Jewish legal discourse into simplistic frameworks or misunderstands its variegated terrain altogether. Paul T. Sloan’s Jesus and the Law of Moses ventures into this debate and offers a persuasive analysis of how the Synoptic Gospels position Jesus within the Jewish legal discourse of his day.
Sloan makes clear from the outset that his project is not a comprehensive study of the historical Jesus himself nor is the focus solely on a particular Gospel or its author. Instead, the book is an investigation into the ‘Synoptic presentation’ (p. 10) of Jesus. His central argument is twofold: 1) that the synoptic Gospels depict Jesus’s teachings as part of an ‘intramural discourse’ (p. 6) about Torah interpretation and 2) that Jesus’ restoration eschatology strongly influenced his legal reasoning.
For Sloan, the restoration motif in Second Temple literature is fundamental to making sense of Jesus’ teachings. Restoration texts wrestle with the belief that the people of Israel had violated their covenant with God, which, in turn, prompted God to impose discipline upon them (most significantly, the Babylonian conquest and subsequent exile). During this period of discipline, keeping the Torah remained a distinguishing feature of the people of Israel, signalling their desire to return to their covenantal relationships with God. Crucially, however, observing the commandments could not, in and of itself, repair the broken covenant. Even practices central to Israel’s religious life (e.g., temple sacrifice) were thought to be ineffective for restoration. Instead, restorationist texts suggest that the people must endure their discipline until it has run its course, after which God would initiate the restoration of the covenant. This basic restorationist framework, Sloan argues, is the worldview from which the synoptics write.
Several chapters then examine Jesus’ teachings and actions against this backdrop, with particular focus on how restorationist eschatology impacts his Torah interpretation. These discussions showcase a range of detailed and nuanced legal strategies in Second Temple Judaism that many New Testament scholars remain unaware of (perhaps sometimes as a consequence of implicit assumptions that Jesus was doing something novel with the law). One strategy is especially illustrative of how familiarity with Jewish legal discourse is utterly necessary for New Testament scholars: the interpretive principle of the override. This principle, widely attested in rabbinic writings, holds that when two commandments appear to conflict, the weightier obligation overrides the lesser one. Sloan sees this legal principle at work in a number of Jesus’ teachings; a telling example is his instruction to ‘let the dead bury their dead’ (Luke 9:60). Although scholars have sometimes interpreted this maxim as a countercultural attempt to flout Jewish and Graeco-Roman obligations to bury one’s relatives, Sloan contends that it instead reflects a reasoned legal judgement between competing duties. On the one hand stands the obligation to bury family members and on the other the urgent need to proclaim of God’s coming kingdom. Using the principle of overrides, Jesus ‘is weighing the importance of two conflicting duties and choosing the more urgent one’ (p. 152). In this example and many others in the book, the Torah remains central to Jesus’ mission, yet its application is shaped by his eschatological expectations.
Sloan extends this restoration-eschatological framework to the synoptic interpretation of Jesus’ death. Within this framework, Jesus’ death should not be understood as an atoning sacrifice, in large part because sacrifice simply cannot repair the covenant during a period of discipline. Instead, Sloan reframes Jesus’ death as part of the disciplinary process itself. His execution becomes intentional participation in the discipline of his people: Jesus ‘endur[es] the precise content of Israel’s covenant discipline: being handed over to the nations to be put to death’ (p. 189).
Some readers may wonder about the broader implications of this ‘synoptic portrait’ of Jesus. Does it possess coherence beyond the Gospels themselves? What accounts for this consistent portrait, if anything? How might differing dates of composition for Matthew and Luke especially (to say nothing of their socio-economic and cultural contexts of their composition) shape how we think about the emergence of this portrait? Such theoretical musings aside, there is much value in this study; above all, Sloan’s thoughtful attention to Second Temple legal discourse is commendable and a very welcome contribution to New Testament studies.
Indeed, Jesus and the Law of Moses deserves wide readership in our field. It compellingly situates Jesus within the flexible and pragmatic legal reckoning that characterised Judaism in the first century CE. By foregrounding that interpretive flexibility, moreover, Sloan shows well how the synoptic Gospels present Jesus, not as an opponent of the law but rather as a participant in an ongoing Jewish conversation about its observance in a period marked by longing for restoration.
