Title: 13
Author: Joe Griffin
Last saved by: PaulD
Company: GDC

The Church of the Living God

		09-10-25-B.FBC08-196 /

Galatians Revert to Slavery of Present Jerusalem; Paul Asserts They Are of the Heavenly Jerusalem, Gal 4:26; Legalism of the Oral Law: Talmud: Mishnah & Gemara, Midrash: Halakah & Haggada; Torah Viewed as a “Living Document”; SCOTUS Has Same View of the Constitution

40.	In the allegory, Jerusalem is in bondage to the Mosaic Law whose spiritual code has been retired save those principles reiterated in the New Testament
41.	Not only this, she is in bondage to the oral law enforced by an apostate priesthood and in reluctant submission to the laws of the Roman Empire.
42.	In Galatia, the Judaizers were advocating a return to the Mosaic Law.  Present Jerusalem had taken Sinai and transferred it to Zion.  Jerusalem is now enslaved by the Mosaic Law and the legalism of the oral law.
43.	The Gentile believers in the cities of Galatia are told by Paul that they are citizens of a heavenly Jerusalem but have allowed themselves to be propagandized by an external fifth column to revert back to the earthly Jerusalem.
Galatians 4:25 -	Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
44.	The Galatians had be set free from the Law and apostate Jerusalem, but Hagar, the slave woman, was mother of a son who was born a slave and all his progeny are slaves.
45.	Therefore, the Jews of Jerusalem are involved in an anachronistic and apostate observance of Judaism.  Jerusalem is the site of the legalistic practices of a retired religion and, as Hagar and her children, her followers are in slavery to a system of works, entrapped in a self-selected destiny that culminates at the lake of fire.
46.	The children mentioned here are identified in the Greek as tšknon, teknon: a child as opposed to uƒÒj, huios: an adult.  Paul classifies the Jews at Jerusalem as children who have not broken free of their legalistic mother, Judaism.
47.	The natural born children of Abraham are described as teknon: children, while the spiritual children of Abraham are depicted as huios: adults.
48.	Hagar is the slave woman and her children are slaves.  Likewise, present Jerusalem is in slavery to the anachronistic Mosaic Law and the legalism of the oral law.  
Galatians 4:26 -	But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.
1.	This verse is introduced by the adversative conjunction of contrast dš, de, translated “but,” followed by the proper noun 'Ierousal»m, Ierousalēm plus the adverb ¥nw, anō, literally translated, “But the Jerusalem which is above,” which is idiomatic for: “But the heavenly Jerusalem.”
2.	The conjunction de contrasts the “present Jerusalem” of verse 25 with the “heavenly Jerusalem” of verse 26.  The present Jerusalem functions in the slavery of legalism that can be tracked back through Sinai, Hagar, and Ishmael.
3.	This line is unable to understand grace and therefore functions under the weight of legalistic standards that enslave its followers with the idea that rituals and sacerdotal functions earn salvation, i.e., the powers of priests as essential mediators between God and man.
4.	These priests, remnants of the Levitical line, had become political; they superseded the directives of the Old Testament canon with severe interpretations of the Torah through an oral law known as the Talmud.
5.	Beginning about 100 b.c., the rabbis began an effort to write down the oral law, an effort that lasted over 500 years during which several commentaries and sermons were produced, the major ones being the Talmud, with its two sections, the Mishnah and the Gemara, and the Midrash with its two sections, the Halakah and the Haggada.
6.	Vocabulary is important to understand these writings.  The Torah makes reference to the Old Testament but with emphasis on its first five books, referred to in the Greek as the Pentateuch.
7.	The Talmud is the written version of the oral law which was developed over about a one-thousand-year period.  
8.	The Encyclopaedia Britannica’s description of the Talmud is yet another testimony that there is nothing new under the sun:
Torah in Judaism refers to the divine guidance, teaching, or law for the Jewish people.  In its written form, it was considered to be especially present in the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch), which therefore came to be called Torah.  In addition to this written Torah, or “Law,” there were also unwritten laws or customs and interpretations of them, carried down in an oral tradition over many generations, which acquired the status of oral Torah.
The Talmud is the literary culmination of this oral tradition, which, according to the rabbis who created the Talmud, originated at Mt. Sinai as part of the divine revelation vouchsafed to Moses, along with the material recorded in the Pentateuch.  The oral tradition interpreted the written Torah, adapted its precepts to ever-changing political and social circumstances, and supplemented it with new legislation.  Thus the oral tradition added a dynamic dimension to the written code, making it a self-regenerating, endless source of guidance, a perpetual process rather than a closed system.

Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky, “Talmud and Midrash,” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979), 17:1006.

9.	The Talmud’s two sections are: (1) the Mishnah, a digest of the oral law’s interpretations of the Torah by the Great Rabbis, and (2) the Gemara, a commentary on the Mishnah by later rabbis.
10.	There are numerous other writings distilled from the oral tradition, the most significant of which is the Midrash.  The philosophy behind its contents is the same as that assumed by the sources that made up the Talmud:
MIDRASH.  A particular manner of interpreting the verses of the Bible, developed mainly in Judea during the period of the Second Temple [516 b.c.–a.d. 70].  The Jewish sages were convinced that the words of the Bible lent themselves to many interpretations, each interpretation intended for men of a particular level of understanding and culture.  They were anxious to teach these exalted ideas to the average men and women of the towns and villages of Judea.  On Sabbaths and holidays they would preach in the synagogues, using the verses of the Bible as their text, and revealing many profound interpretations of these verses.  So that their ideas might be understood by the people, they used illustrative parables, imaginative stories, and poetic interpretations of the verses.
Eventually (beginning with the fourth century) many of the sermons were collected and written down, as books of midrashim.

Irving A. Agus, “Midrash,” in the Junior Jewish Encyclopedia, 14th ed., eds. Naomi Ben-Asher and Haim Leaf (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1996), 216.

11.	The Jewish rabbis through the oral law adapted the Torah to “ever-changing political and social circumstances, and supplemented it with new legislation.  Thus the oral tradition added a dynamic dimension to the written code, making it a self-regenerating, endless source of guidance, a perpetual process rather than a closed system.”
12.	In other words, the rabbis made the Bible a “living document” that is reinterpreted according to “changing political and social circumstances.”
13.	Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have followed the rabbis lead.  Over much of the twentieth century, it has developed the notion that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be adapted to the changing times.
14.	This nefarious philosophy is on the verge of reducing our Constitution to an anachronism, a relic to be viewed at the National Archives in Washington as a reminder of good times past.

© 2009 by Joe Griffin Media Ministries.  All rights reserved.	www.joegriffin.org