Immediately after responding to a commenter who accused me of “unwittingly propagating some rather nasty stereotypes about the differences between Jewish and Christian cultures”, Tom Tomorrow and I were sent a rather long email refuting our posts on the Talking Jesus Action Figure. Since I find theological discussion to be much more interesting than the current Tom DeLay deathwatch, I’m going to respond to the email here :

First of all, I should make it clear that it doesn’t matter if you believe that Jesus always really said what he’s quoted as saying in the Gospels. I personally don’t. It also doesn’t matter if you agree with Jesus’ idea of the Mosaic law. I personally don’t. These things aren’t the point.

The point is the question of whether not there’s something “wrong” with the portrayal of a Jesus who quotes the Mosaic law.

The latest version of the “Jesus shouldn’t quote the ten commandments” idea posted on the Tom Tomorrow site, and echoed at The Talent Show, misrepresents that question.

It’s not that he shouldn’t quote them, but that he didn’t quote them. Jesus said lots of good stuff, why not have a talking doll include something that he actually said??

It says that “various nitpickers are insisting that this would not be theologically inconsistent, because Jesus, as a Jew, would have been intimately familiar with the Commandments.”

This is, however, the least compelling argument for imagining Jesus quoting the ten commandments. I know there are better arguments, since I personally sent a few. Why pick the easiest simplified version of an argument to refute? Isn’t this what we all hate about Fox?

And speaking of Fox, why describe people who disagree with you, categorically, as “nitpickers,” if A) the question of the choice of words for a talking doll is – let’s be honest – a nitpicking question to begin with, and B) it’s far from clear that you’ve studied this question in any detail, as they may have done? If you don’t choose to know or care much about an issue, does it automatically make nitpickers of people who do?

The fact is, Jesus never recites the Ten Commandments in the Bible. Ever. Pointing this out isn’t nitpicking. Coming up with excuses for why it’s okay to misquote Jesus is nitpicking. (And by the same token, my going out of my way to respond to those justifications is also nitppicking)

Probably the most important part of the problem, though, is that dodging the argument in this way leads to ignorant repetitions of stereoypes.

The Talent Show site, for example, tries to show that Jesus rejected the Mosaic law by quoting him as saying that the most important commandments are to love God and your neighbor. The thing is, Jesus is quoting too, when he says that. Specifically, Jesus is quoting from the Mosaic law, more specifically from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. This example thus looks very wrong in an argument against the image of Jesus quoting laws.

It also complicates the easy stereotyped view of Christianity replacing the law, which was dreamed up relatively late by an anti-Judaic Church, and which is simply repeated as fact on The Talent Show site. It’s asserted there, for example, that Paul thinks “fulfilling the law” essentially means “getting rid of the law.” This is demonstrably false, even without knowing the connotations of the Greek word used (“telos”), especially since Jesus himself gives the same speech in the Gospels, all the while insisting that fulfilling the law from a Christian point of view is not to be misunderstood as scrapping it (Matthew 5:17).

Jesus says in that same speech that the Mosaic law is good and timeless, and not one little diacritical mark on its pages is expendable. He says that people who disobey or downplay it will be least in God’s kingdom and people who follow it and teach it will be great.

For those following along at home, I just “got served”. The verses for Matthew referenced here are really worth reading for yourself :

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Is there any flavor of Christianity that follows “the smallest letter” of Mosaic law? Have I missed all the sermons tha condemn people to hell for eating lobster? Or making a pass at menstruating women? Or shaving their unibrow? Are women who wear pants an “abomination”? Are you not allowed to go to church if you have crushed testicles? Should we closely follow God’s instructions for shitting outside and cleaning cum stains out of our clothes?

Yeah, I know it’s a littel hack-ish to point out some of the crazy stuff in the Old Testament, but if Jesus condemns anyone who “breaks one of the least of these commandments”, then then Hell’s gonna be a very crowded place.

These facts make it look like haphazard reconstruction to say, with The Talent Show site, that “The New Testament, by definition, is God’s way of saying ‘Let’s forget all those crazy rules and simplify things a bit.’”

The site goes so far as to say that “the Ten Commandments don’t appear anywhere in the New Testament,” even though it has just quoted him quoting from them in Matthew 19! One could argue that since they don’t appear one by one all the way from one to ten and in the right order, they’re not there, but this would require deliberately ignoring the loose and allusive way that scriptures are always cited in the biblical world. The Hebrew Bible itself quotes the ten commandments in this loose way (compare Exodus 20 with Deuteronomy 4).

Jesus mentions only six commandments in Matthew 19, one of which doesn’t appear in any of the original lists of ten. As I said previously, I find it interesting that when directly asked about the Ten Commandments, Jesus’s response was to mention the five that don’t involve blind devotion to god, staying home on Sundays, etc. While it’s fair to point out the “loose and allusive” way things are cited in the Bible, this does seem to fly in the face of Jesus’s whole “not the least stroke of a pen” stuff.

This “rabbinic” style of quotation exists in Paul and the gospels too. Jesus’ “sermon on the mount,” for example, would have been instantly understood by readers as a commentary on the ten commandments, and it’s significant for our purposes here that his teaching stresses internalizing the law, which he describes as timeless. We’re a long way here from “forgetting all those crazy rules.”

The commentary on the Ten Commandments is part of the Sermon on the Mount, but I have a hard time seeing the connection between the Ten Commandments and teachings like turning the other cheek, giving to the needy, or serving “two masters”.

In short, it’s not “wrong,” and it’s useless “nitpicking” to try to correct inaccurate stereotypes. This is especially true when they have to do with the false barriers of condescending anti-Judaic versions of Christianity, and especially when the current relationship between Jews and Christians is so already so burdened with antagonistic stereotypes.

Like I said in a previous comment, as an athiest, I’ve got no interest in maligning Judaism or elevating Christianity. My overall point, if there is one, is that I find it incredibly puzzling that so many Christians insist on elevating the Ten Commandments¹ over the things that Jesus actually said².

^{1 : Which consist of four religious and six secular laws written in negative language (“Thou shalt not…”)}

2 : Which nearly always used positive language (“Blessed are the…”) and concerned the ways people treat each other here on Earth.