Reporting From Ehrman’s New Insights into the New Testament 2025 Conference Part 4: Jesus and the Law with Joel Marcus

Previously I did a brainstorm / activating prior knowledge here: Jesus and the Law: Prep for the Joel Marcus Lecture

Overview: It is difficult to pin down the attitude of the historical Jesus to the Mosaic Law, since our main sources, the first three (Synoptic) Gospels, have all been influenced by the anti-Torah attitude of Paul and the reaction to it from more conservative Christians. The historical Jesus, like other ancient Jewish teachers, interpreted the Law creatively, but he may also have believed that a different version of the Law would arrive/had arrived with the eschaton — the end of the world.

It is difficult to say Jesus’ opinion on the law since for example Mark’s Jesus seems to abandon a central identifier of early Jews in a pagan rule of the kosher laws, whereas Matthew seems to offer contradictory views where Jesus says the law is eternal, but at the same time has his antithesis statements where “you have heard …, but I say …”  It seems unlikely the historical Jesus fully abandoned the kosher law because in Acts we read: