What is the Authority for Judaism? | Rapp Report Daily 0076 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to the Rapid Bull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity. I'm going to take a look at what it is that Judaism believes.

When we speak of Judaism today, we're speaking of Second Temple Judaism, which is different than Biblical Judaism. As we look at Second Temple Judaism, we see that they have four sources of authority.

First is what's called the Tanakh. It's what we would call the Old Testament. This is broken up into three sections.

You'll often see it referred this way in the New Testament, even. It is referred to as Moses, referring to those first five books.

The prophets, referring to the major and minor prophets, and the writings. Those would be the three subdivisions of what we would call the

Old Testament, or what would be referred to as Tanakh. Now, there is a Midrash. The Midrash is an interpretation or commentary on the

Tanakh. And then you have the Mishnah. Now, where the Tanakh is the written law, the

Mishnah is the oral law that was supposedly handed down from generation to generation and eventually written down.

And this is where things like Kabbalah focuses much of their time. It's a very mystical book. Then you have the commentary on the

Mishnah, which is called the Talmud. This is where you get rabbinical law from. Much of what we say with Second Temple Judaism is from the

Talmud. And the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah, which again is that oral tradition, oral law.

So this is a commentary. This is also something that gets changed over time. But when we look at modern

Judaism, it is based mostly from the Talmud and not the

Tanakh, or what we would call Old Testament. That is what we see as the authority in Judaism. This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content, or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.