What Was The Teaching of Moses?

The Oral Teaching Was The Teaching of Moses

The Teaching of Moses was, and still is, a specific body of knowledge which began as an oral Teaching that God instructed Moses to hand down to the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. Although many Christians believe the Mosaic Law and the writings of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) comprise all that Moses taught the sons of Israel, the Jews have long known that is not so. They accurately insist that Moses delivered both an oral Torah (oral Teaching) and a written Torah (written Teaching) to the sons of Israel at Mt. Sinai. (The Hebrew word torah, which is normally translated “law,” actually means “teaching.”)

The Jews today claim the Pentateuch is the written Torah that Moses handed down to the sons of Israel, but that is not true. The Truth is, the written Torah was inscribed on the two stone tablets on which God Himself wrote the Ten Commandments. One of those commandments contains Torah. But the Pentateuch is just a written historical record of God’s dealings with mankind from Adam to Moses that, among other things, records various statutes and judgments prescribed by the Mosaic Law.

The statutes and judgments Moses recorded in the Pentateuch are primarily concerned with the proper conduct of symbolic rituals associated with the sacrificial cult—the feasts, sacrificial offerings, etc.—that the sons of Israel were supposed to observe as parabolic pantomimes to remind them of things that are explained in The Teaching of Moses.

Although God expected Israel to observe the statutes and judgments of the Mosaic Law, He required much more of them than legalistic adherence to a set of laws that prescribed and proscribed external behavior. (Unfortunately, the Pharisees in the time of Christ were completely ignorant of this fact.) The Truth is, God expected the sons of Israel to believe and keep in their minds an oral Teaching that informed them of the meaning and significance of the parabolic pantomimes they were to conduct in accordance with the statutes and judgments of the Mosaic law. This oral Teaching was The Teaching of Moses. As the Jews today still accurately understand, it was an oral Teaching that Moses handed down to the sons of Israel as the Word of God with the explicit instruction that they were to hand it down to their children:

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
(Deuteronomy 6:4–7) —NASB

“You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
(Deuteronomy 11:18–19) —NASB

The Teaching of Moses fully explains the meaning and significance of the parabolic images and Hebrew idioms that make up the parables that Moses used in his prophecies to teach concerning the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel. The Teaching of Moses also explains the meaning and significance of the symbolic rituals that God commanded the sons of Israel to conduct as parabolic pantomimes for the purpose of parabolically depicting the meaning and significance of the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For instance, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb as a communal sacrifice and the requirement that every family in Israel remove all leaven from their house prior to Passover are part of one such parabolic pantomime. But as the Apostle Paul knew, the symbolic rituals (parabolic pantomimes) that ancient Israel were expected to conduct according to the dictates of the Mosaic Law were nothing more than a “shadow”—a parabolic image—of things to come:

Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a {mere} shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
(Colossians 2:16–17) —NASB