"In saying, 'I did not come to do away with the law', and yet doing away with something, he indicated that what he did away with had not originally been part of the law."
That has to be one of the most warped, twisted rationales for doing away with
I've ever heard.
The Ebionites did away with the sacrifices the same way we did, as was in part of our quote above. The Temple was the only place sacrifices were allowed. So when it was gone, we could no longer sacrifice.
Let's get one thing absolutely clear before we go on. Yeshua did not do away with animal sacrifice
Dan, what part of your quote were you referring to when you wrote: "as was in part of our quote above"?
In
Question 3, I was pointing to the contradiction in that on one hand, the Ebionites demanded
observance, like circumcision, but on the other hand, their Gospel quoted Jesus as saying: 'I am come to abolish the sacrifices, if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you'. Yet animal sacrifice was a major part of the
.
In the Ebionites' Gospel, Jesus would have been saying this before the Temple's destruction. So He seems to be demanding that the Jews stop sacrificing even before their Temple was destroyed. In fact, his warning seems to imply that if they continued their sacrifices, then they would continue to receive wrath (like the Temple's destruction). But this does not really explain why Christ would have been demanding that they stop sacrificing.
I can think of seven explanations for why they might demand ceasing sacrifices:
(1) They might have seen the Jews as performing the sacrifices incorrectly. For example, the rightly priestly line may have been rejected and living in exile, while the Sadduccees might have had wrong teachings or procedures. But the quote from the Ebionites' Gospel sounds like it is demanding that people stop sacrificing "per se". He says to cease sacrificing, not to cease sacrificing incorrectly.
(2) There is a polemic against sacrificing in the TaNaKh, which seems strange because the
says to perform sacrifices. For example, Isaiah 1 says:
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Although it's directed at Sodom, it sounds like it really means Judah, because Sodom had been destroyed. The priests' hands were bloody from sacrificing.
Amos 5 says something similar:
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Jeremiah 6 says:
But the conclusion that I draw from these passages is that God rejects the sacrifices when the people sacrificing them are in sin, not that God rejected the Israelites sacrificing per se.
(3) As you explained it, the Temple's destruction obviates the ability to sacrifice: <<The Ebionites did away with the sacrifices the same way we did, as was in part of our quote above. The Temple was the only place sacrifices were allowed. So when it was gone, we could no longer sacrifice.>> As I understand it, sometimes Orthodox Jews do sometimes still perform some sacrifices, since some sacrifices do not require a Temple. Even before there was a Temple and the
was in effect, there were sacrifices that didn't use the Ark.
Anyway, it sounds like the Ebionites rejected even Temple sacrifices, since in their Gospel Yeshua would have said to cease sacrificing even when the Temple still stood.
(4) The Christian understanding is that Christ served as the ultimate Passover Sacrifice who takes away the sins of the world, so that continuing to sacrifice animals to perform a spiritual Passing Over or to take away sins like in the Day of Atonement ritual is obviated.
So in Hebrews 10, Paul explains:
But we know that Paul was involved in the Nazirite sacrifice in Acts 21, so while it looks like he did not want to get involved in more sin offerings, considering Christ to have taken away the sins once for all, Paul was not rejecting all sacrifices like it seems the Ebionites were.
Epiphanius referred to the Ebionites' practice of abstaining from "meat with soul in it", and said that they celebrated the Eucharist with unleavened bread and water. Oskar Skarsaune writes that "The 'Ebionite' reason for not eating meat seems to be based on a fear of eating souls, which was the main reason for Pythagorean vegetarianism."
Their vegetarianism can explain why they switched to water (it's less representative of blood than wine is), why their Gospel doesn't mention John the Baptist eating locusts, and why it has Jesus say 'I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you'."
But vegetarianism isn't a full logical justification for demanding
observance yet ending sacrifice. Animal sacrifice was a major component of
, so even if one believes in vegetarianism, how is the person going to explain the
instructions on animal sacrifice?
(6) The hypothesis that the sacrifices were not part of
. Wikipedia gives the theory that the Ebionites shared the same way of thinking that is found in the Pseudo-Clementine Literature. In the Ebionites' Gospel, while the Temple still stood, Jesus told people that if they didn't stop sacrificing, that the wrath wouldn't cease from them.
("I came to abolish the sacrifices, and, if you do not cease to sacrifice, the wrath will not cease from you.")
It looks like this is the Ebionites' re-writing of Matthew 5:17's quote from Jesus:
In the Clementine literature, this can relates to two different theories. One is the theory in the Homilies 3.51 that sacrifices were not part of the law, which runs:
This would mean that the animal sacrifices were not really part of
.
But this theory is really hard to sustain. It looks really clear that in Moses'
in the first five books of the Bible there are repeated prescriptions for numerous kinds of sacrifices, going back to the Passover Lamb Sacrifice that originated in Egypt. These sacrifices were meant to point to Yeshua's sacrifice centuries later, so it seems like they must have really been part of Moses' instructions. Plus, in saying that Yeshua "abolished" the sacrifices, the quote implies that the sacrifices were originally part of the
. I guess that someone could rationally imagine that the original
didn't have these prescriptions, but that doesn't seem realistic or reasonable.
I don't know if it's even arguable that God's covenant didn't include instructions that are found in the first five books of the Bible. Yeshua repeatedly argued against performing - or certain performances of - different observances or instructions found in
, but I don't know if He ever made the argument that God's Law never actually included those observances or instructions.
(A) In Matthew 5:38-39, Yeshua says: "
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person." This is a strange way to introduce a teaching from the
. Instead of beginning by saying that God commanded this, Yeshua said "you have heard" this "said", as if this was some unnamed person's "saying".
(B) Yeshua complained that the pharisees taught commandments of men as if they were commandments of God. This seems to get into a confusing issue where Isaiah made the same complaint about the elders' rules, which in turn gets into the issue of the authority that God bestowed on Israelite elders in the
.
(C) After the time of Solomon, there was a weird event where an Israelite king's people found a series of religious laws in the Temple, yet when they performed the seemingly sacred instructions, catastrophe befell the nation as a result.
(D) There are the theoretical suggestions in modern Jewish circles that seem to run against the essentiality of the ancient sacrifices. Rabbi Jack Abramowitz writes in his article "How Could The
Be True When It Includes Sacrifices & Genocide?":
Contrast this with shuls the way we have them now (and, by the way, shuls did exist in Bible times as well). Shuls are everywhere and we go to them all the time. Halacha minimizes going to the Beis HaMikdash and maximizes going to shul – clearly, going to shul is the thing G-d wants us to do more!
If this is the case, why did G-d command that the Beis HaMikdash be built at all? Why didn’t He just tell us to build shuls wherever we might live? The answer, the Rambam explains, is that the Mikdash was kind of a “halfway house.” The Jews were surrounded by cultures that had temples, priests and sacrifices – it was all they knew! If G-d said, “Effectively immediately, sacrifices, incense and libations are replaced by reciting Shemoneh Esrei and reading the
,” the people would not have been able to adjust. The Temple was designed to transition the Jews from the practices of an idolatrous society to the way we have davening now.
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Rabbi Marc Gruber writes something similar in his article "Reaching Even Higher":
But these two articles above don't deny that sacrifice was ever actually part of the
like the Clementine Homily, they just deny or downplay sacrifice being an essential permanent element.
(7) Clementine Recognitions 1 (below) has a theory similar to the one in the Ebionites' Gospel in that they both suggest that the failure to cease sacrificing brought God's wrath:
That is, in the Ebionites' Gospel, Jesus says that He came to abolish sacrifices, and that the failure to cease sacrificing would bring wrath, whereas in the Clementine Recognitions 1, the speaker says along similar lines that the time for sacrifices has ended, yet the audience won't recognize that this time has ended, and so the Temple will be destroyed.
This is actually a bit different line of logic from Paul's in Hebrews 10 that I laid out in Number (4) above. Paul is just talking about the end of the sacrificial sin offering, not all sacrificial offerings, as Paul himself was involved with a Nazirite offering. The Ebionites, on the other hand, appear to be declaring against sacrifices per se, and the passage above from the Clementine Recognitions also does not draw a distinction between sin and non-sin sacrifices. Also, even the EO Church does not, I believe, ban all the Old Testament animal sacrifices. The Armenian "Oriental Orthodox" practice ritual "Matagh" animal sacrifice. There are just certain prohibitions like against bringing meat behind an altar or against priests being involved in butchery, as well as practical obstacles like having an Orthodox rabbi performing them.
I guess you could say that in the Ebionites' Gospel Yeshua announced that He came to abolish sacrifices, and so this would be enough authority since He is the Messiah. But then one would want to know why Yeshua chose to abolish it. It doesn't sound as if even the Ebionites claimed that Yeshua instituted vegetarianism.
The way that in Christian thought that any sacrifices were abolished is that they were fulfilled and thus unnecessary. For example, Christ dying for one's sins obviated the usefulness of continuing to perform the Yom Kippur atonement sacrifice. But it is not clear how Christ's sacrifice would obviate all animal sacrifices like the Nazirite one. I think that you could make the argument that these sacrifices like the Nazirite one were ordained in order to point to Christ and His sacrifice, and so since the fulfillment of those prefigurements has occurred, the prefigurements are no longer necessary to perform. Let me make two critical observations about this:
I) This same logic of fulfillment that one might apply to sacrifices would by nature apply to other unique Mosaic prescriptions that pointed to Yeshua. For example, ritual purity rules pointed to spiritual purity. Paul wrote that circumcision is really of the heart, not of the flesh. Augustine theorized that circumcision pointed to the putting off of the flesh. Christ fulfilled the Sabbath rest rule in that He was in the tomb on the Sabbath. So if one believes in the abolition of all sacrifices because Yeshua fulfilled their purpose as a prefigurement of His sacrifice, then wouldn't one be led to similarly believe in the abolition of other
ritual practices that served as prefigurements?
II) Why would their failure to cease sacrificing incur wrath? Per Psalm 50, it seems that continuing in sin while sacrificing would make the sacrifices hateful. Per the Clementine Recognitions, failing to recognize that the time for ending sacrifices came brought the wrath. In the Ebionites' Gospel, it just seems to say that the wrath comes because the abolished sacrifices have been performed. ie. Jesus just says that He came to abolish the sacrifices and that if you continue them then the wrath will continue. The document does not really give an explanation of why continuing the abolished sacrifices would incur God's wrath, but one could infer that it's because one continues to perform something that God has put an end to. Still, this logic goes beyond just simple abolition. In the text, Jesus doesn't just put an end to the need or spiritual value of the sacrifices, but he also adds a punishment for continuing them. This suggests that sacrifices themselves are something that God opposes and dislikes. But why would God oppose sacrifice per se? It seems to me that this actually reflects the Ebionites' underlying vegetarianism and opposition to killing animals.
Out of all these potential responses to Question 3, Number 7 above seems to make the most sense, but I can't find a logical reason why
all the
's sacrifices would be abolished and yet the other
rules like circumcision would remain in force.
Can you think of a rational explanation?
- there are 70 faces to 
