“The Pharisees cared about the Talmud, Jesus cared about the Torah. The Torah is the five books of Moses.
The Talmud is a huge collection of rabbinic discussions and interpretations of the Torah. In my Bible, the Torah is about 270 pages. The Talmud, by contrast, is more than 2,700 pages! Ten times as long! They were convinced they had figured out spirituality through systems and boxes. It didn’t seem to bother them that God had been silent for 400 years. “What do we need to hear from God for? We’ve solved the equation.” But what a terrible irony that the people in the room who spent the most time and effort being religious were furthest from the Lord.
Jesus asks this question in an effort to show them that their whole perspective on spirituality was skewed. They broke everything down into the minutiae of how many steps you can take and how many pounds you can carry and how you need to portion out your spices in order to please God.
But here Jesus says, ‘Zoom out. Let’s not talk about cumin or sewing needles. Does God want you to do good on the Sabbath or do evil?'”
