Seat of Moses

To understand Jesus and the New Testament in their Jewish context, we need to be familiar with the conversation they were part of. Central to the Christian faith is the idea of discipleship. In the Great Commission, Jesus told his disciples to go out and make more disciples, but the rabbi-disciple paradigm didn't begin there. It goes back much further. This week, we'll begin looking at an extra-biblical document called Pirkei Avot (the Chapters of the Fathers) that traces the discipleship tradition in Jesus' time all the way back to Moses, and introduces the most important figures and viewpoints in the conversation Jesus was part of.

Pirkei Avot begins:

Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah. (Pirkei Avot, 1:1)

This week we'll trace that line through the biblical text. Exodus 18:13-27 tells how Moses spent his days answering people who came to inquire of God or to ask for judgment in disputes. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, advised him to appoint other judges to handle the easier inquiries so that Moses only had to answer in the hard cases. Moses took Jethro's advice.

Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people, chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And they judged the people at all times. Any hard case they brought to Moses, but any small matter they decided themselves. (Exodus 18:25-26)

Later God tells Moses to gather seventy of these elders together.

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. And I will come down and talk with you there. And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone" (Numbers 11:16-17).

Throughout his life, Moses has a unique connection to God that the other elders lack. Moses had final authority over the cases they can't handle. In Numbers 27, on God's instructions, he transfers some of this unique authority to his successor Joshua.

So the LORD said to Moses, '"Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him. Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey. And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the LORD. At his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he and all the people of Israel with him, the whole congregation." (Numbers 27:18-21).

Israel is told to obey Joshua as Moses' successor, but Joshua has to talk to God through Eleazar, Aaron's son who succeeded him as High Priest in Numbers 20:26. Moses warns the people that when they go into the Promised Land, they must be careful to obey the rulings of the elders.

Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the LORD will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. (Deuteronomy 17:10-11)

Almost none of these verdicts are recorded in our Bibles. They were passed on as oral tradition from one generation to the next. Joshua doesn't name a single successor to carry this tradition, but instead he summons all "the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel" (Joshua 24:1) before his death to make a covenant with them.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the LORD. (Joshua 24:25-26)

In the days that followed, God raised up successive generations of judges, but the people didn't obey them.

Then the LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the LORD, and they did not do so." (Judges 2:16-17)

Eventually Israel's spiritual leadership was transferred to the prophets. There is a popular conception of the lone prophet hearing only from God, without any human accountability, but the Scriptures paint a different picture. We find Samuel at the head of "the company of the prophets" in 1 Samuel 19:20. In 2 Kings 2, we find groups of "the sons of the prophets" in Bethel (v.3) and Jericho (v.5) who had advanced knowledge of Elijah's departure. These groups were fairly large. Fifty of them followed Elijah and Elisha down to the Jordan river (v.7) and after Elijah departs, they formally confirm that his mantle has been passed on to Elisha (v.15). Later, we find the "sons of the prophets" at Gilgal eating together, suggesting these groups were fairly close knit.

The line of prophets continues unbroken to the end of the Old Testament. The Great Assembly came about between the Testaments and is said to have included Ezra and some of his contemporaries. Extra-biblical sources like Pirkei Avot describe a continuous chain of authority transmitted from the men of the Great Assembly to the Pharisees of New Testament times, including Paul's teacher Gamaliel. This authority was passed from rabbi to disciple, with each subsequent generation of disciples raising up the next. Transmission of the tradition is the purpose for the entire rabbi-disciple paradigm.

A disciple's job is to learn the tradition from his rabbi and pass it on to the next generation of disciples.

Rabbis weren't just teachers; they were the inheritors of the tradition and the authority that came with it. This continuous chain of transmission, beginning with Moses, is why Jesus told his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you..." (Matthew 23:2-3). Scribes studied and taught the tradition, but they didn't have the authority of the rabbis to rule on legal issues themselves. Matthew 7:29 says that Jesus taught as one who had authority, not as one of the scribes.

Pirkei Avot records the sayings of the line of rabbis. These sayings can help us to understand the world of the New Testament and how Jesus and his disciples fit into the broader Jewish conversation. Everything we know about that tradition is now in written form. The same can be said for Jesus' teachings. Everything we know about what Jesus taught is in written form. This begs the question: if the purpose of disciples is to pass on the tradition, and the tradition is now in books, why do we still need disciples? The answer remains the same: to pass on the tradition. Jesus' concluded the Sermon on the Mount with a parable.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7:24–27)

The difference between the wise man and the foolish man wasn't that one heard the words and the other didn't. It was that one heard the words and did them. The other heard and did not do them. Being a disciple isn't about passing on information. It's about passing on a way of life.

Next time we'll consider the three sayings of the men of the Great Assembly, and I'll introduce you to Rabbi Daniel Zion, a Bulgarian Jew who had an extraordinary encounter with Jesus that changed his life forever.