Disagreement about the Law

How Disagreements about the Law led to conflict:  Ritual Cleanliness

·         “They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean” In the minds of Pharisees – Jesus is disobeying the food laws – disrespectful to Jewish law and to God.

·         “Why is it that your disciples do not follow the teaching handed down by our ancestors?” The Jewish people went through extreme trials and hardships before they could receive the Commandments from God; and Jesus ignoring all this. The Jewish authorities think that this is very disrespectful to both them and God.

·         "How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! You are hypocrites.”  Jesus called the Jewish authorities hypocrites who pretended to be better than they really were – showing how they had taken the rules to the extreme and forgotten why they should follow God’s law.

·         "These people, says God, honour me with their words, but their heart is really far away from me.”  Jesus quoted the OT prophet, to suggest that the Pharisees simply paid lip-service to God as they worshipped him only superficially.  This would have been particularly insulting to the Jews as the Pharisees were meant to be experts in the law and teach it to others.

How Disagreements about the Law led to conflict:  Corban

Jesus incurred the wrath of the Pharisees in this passage because:

·         “But you teach that if people have something they could use to help their father or mother, but say, "This is Corban' (which means, it belongs to God), 12 they are excused from helping their father or mother.” Pharisees putting their own tradition above the Law of Moses.   Pharisees would think somebody very holy if they had given such a large amount of corban in the Temple that they had nothing left to help their parents out.  But in fact, 10 Commandments states honour thy parents.

·         Don't you understand? Nothing that goes into you from the outside can really make you unclean, 19 because it does not go into your heart but into your stomach and then goes on out of the body."  Jesus challenged the kosher rules that tell Jews which foods can and can’t be eaten for religious reasons.

·         “All these evil things come from inside you and make you unclean." It is evil thoughts that  come from inside a person that make them unclean, not the food they eat.  This is not what the Jewish authorities upheld.  The thoughts Jesus listed are ones which could cause harm to another person