I’ve been reading Rob Bell’s book, Velvet Elvis after watching a few of his Nooma DVD series. I’ve been learning about about Hebrew culture and such. For example, in Flame (#2 in the Nooma series) Bell goes through 3 words that describe love in the Hebrew language: Raya, Ahava, and Dod. Raya is translated as a friendship type love. Ahava is the commitment type love and Dod is the sexual part of love. You can read the transcript for Flame here. But this post is not about love, it’s about Rabbis.

When a student of a Rabbi would come up with an interpretation of the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) that the Rabbi believed completely missed the point, the Rabbi would say, “You have abolished the Torah.” If the interpretation completely got the point, the Rabbi would say “You have fulfilled the Torah.” Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” It brings a contextual solid feeling to how Jesus is addressing the culture in their own words.

Here is another example that Bell notes. When a Rabbi has a new interpretation of the the scriptures, he is validated or protected perse against accusations of blasphemy by having two other Rabbi’s support him. They would lay hands on him and say something like, “We believe this rabbi has authority to make new interpretations.” So at Jesus baptism, there are two “rabbis” who validate him: 1. John the Baptist and God the Father himself. That’s exciting.

My last note from Bell’s book on this topic is that supposedly in the Jewish context, action was the goal. Living out what you believed was the perspective that everyone had.