OK, here\u2019s the thing.<\/p>\n
Many Christians are taught to believe that keeping the Law of Moses is an all-or-nothing deal. And the fact that no one can actually<\/em> keep all of the Law means that, well, if you try to keep it to please God, you\u2019re doomed to failure.<\/p>\n Christians get that idea from Paul<\/a>, specifically\u00a0from Galatians 3:10-11, where Paul cites Deuteronomy 27:6.<\/p>\n 10<\/b>\u00a0For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, \u201cCursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all<\/span> the things written in the book of the law.\u201d\u00a0 11<\/b> Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for \u201cThe one who is righteous will live by faith.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n So there it is, in black and white. Failure to obey\u00a0all<\/em> of the Law results in being accursed. Since no one can keep it all, everyone is accursed who is \u201cunder the Law,\u201d as Paul puts it elsewhere.<\/p>\n And this verse has contributed to common\u00a0Christian thinking that either vilifies the Law (and therefore the core of the Old Testament) as essentially useless legalism, or ignores it as over and done with.<\/p>\n Now, I don\u2019t mean to get into the whole complex Law\/Gospel thing here. It\u2019s complicated. I think there is both continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, and working that out is the very stuff of the long history of Christian theology. So let\u2019s stay focused and not go there.<\/p>\n Paul\u2019s claim doesn\u2019t sit well with the tone and tenor of the Old Testament. The Israelite legal system had ways of addressing individual failure to keep certain laws, some means of atonement or purification to remove the offense toward God.<\/p>\n Or does their very legal system assume the opposite, that \u201call-or-nothing\u201d isn\u2019t the deal?<\/p>\n And what to do with the passionate\u00a0praise of the Law that we see in places like Psalm 1 and 119?<\/p>\n OK, but what about Deuteronomy 27:26, a passage right out of the Old Testament that Paul is citing to make his point?<\/p>\n Yes. Well. This is where it gets a bit interesting.<\/p>\n Benjamin D. Sommer points out in Revelation and Authority<\/a> Paul, as was his custom, was likely working off of the Greek version that read \u201call.\u201d<\/p>\n Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, here; I think Paul could still have made his basic point without \u201call.\u201d But still, Paul is making his case using a translation that is probably not faithful to the original, and that can easily lead to readers like us to draw the conclusion:<\/p>\n Old Testament = Law = impossible and oppressive legalism, \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n which is not only a rather\u00a0distorted reading of the Old Testament as a whole, but a simplistic reading of Paul, who has some quite positive\u00a0things to say about the law now and\u00a0then in his letters.<\/p>\n But more to my point, what intrigues me about examples like this is the reminder that Paul as a writer of the New Testament was not protected by God to ensure he used the proper translation and avoided all confusion. And I do wonder what how he would have rephrased things in Galatians had \u201call\u201d not been part of his translation.<\/p>\nWas it really the case that the ancient Israelites thought \u201call-or-nothing?\u201d<\/h2>\n
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