One Law and the Gentiles

One Law and the Gentiles                                                        FFOZ

Not all of the commandments of the Torah apply to everyone equally.

There is to be one law and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:16)

The Torah says there is to be only one law for both Jews and aliens sojourning with the Jewish people. On the surface, this appears to be a simple statement, but when we dig deeper into biblical studies and interpretations, it becomes a complicated issue.

Judaism teaches that Gentiles are not obligated to keep the Torah’s ritual laws: Sabbaths, festivals, dietary laws, and symbols of Jewish identity like wearing tassels, phylacteries, or putting up a mezuzah scroll on the doorpost. The apostles applied that same standard of distinction in Paul’s epistles and the decision in Acts 15. Jewish believers are certainly obligated to keep the whole Torah, but the New Testament does not ask Gentile believers to observe the commandments that mark out Jewish identity. Jews should be Jews and Gentiles should be Gentiles.

But does the Torah really make different laws for Jews and Gentiles? According to Numbers 15:15–16, there is to be only one law for both Jews and Gentiles:

As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the alien who sojourns with you, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the alien be before the LORD. There is to be one Torah and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:15–16)

This seems simple enough. According to these verses, there is one law for both Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, Gentile believers should keep the whole Torah.

But wait. It’s not that clear.

First of all, the context deals not with the application of Torah as a whole, but specifically with the sacrifices. In other words, if an alien wanted to offer a sacrifice in the Temple, he needed to follow the same Torah guidelines as the Israelite, e.g., sacrifice must be unblemished, not taken from an animal less than eight days old, etc. The passage is not saying that all the laws of Torah apply equally to Jews and Gentiles.

Second, by the time of the apostles, the word translated as “alien” (ger, גר) was no longer understood as just a Gentile non-Jew. The Hebrew word had shifted its semantic value to refer specifically to a Gentile who had gone through a full, legal conversion to become Jewish, i.e., a proselyte. That conversion process included circumcision, immersion, and a sacrifice. That’s how the Greek version of the Torah (LXX) translates the word, too. That’s probably how the apostles would have understood it.

They would have interpreted Numbers 15:15–16 to read as follows:

As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for Jews and for the proselyte, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as a Jew is, so shall the proselyte be before the LORD. There is to be one Torah and one ordinance for Jews and for the proselyte who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:15–16, my paraphrase)

This is what Paul meant when he said, “I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Torah” (Galatians 5:3). In other words, everyone who legally becomes Jewish is obligated to keep all the commandments that apply specifically to the Jewish people.

That reading makes it clear that both Jews and proselytes to Judaism are obligated to the same laws of Torah, but it does not help clear up the question of Gentile believers who have not become legally Jewish through a conversion. One might suppose that the Gentile believers should fit into the category of “proselyte,” but when the apostles considered this question in Acts 15, they came to a different conclusion. They gave the Gentile believers four additional commandments (above and beyond the basic Noachide laws), but they did not require them to keep the whole Torah.

The same open posture of Acts 15 seems to be reflected in the Didache. The Didache is allegedly a collection of apostolic instructions for Gentile believers. When discussing the question of how much Torah a Gentile is obligated to keep, the Didache leaves the question open:

If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be complete;  but if you cannot, then do what you can. (Didache 6.2)

The Didache agrees with Numbers 15:15–16. There is not supposed to be a different Torah for Gentile believers. The Gentile believers are not supposed to have a different type of worship or religion. There is only one Torah for God’s people. The only question left open is to what extent the Gentile believer is obligated. Most of the laws of the Torah apply equally to Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua.

The apostles make it clear in other places that the Torah’s ethical and moral commandments governing interpersonal relationships certainly do apply to the Gentile believers. For example, all the Torah’s commandments about how to treat one another and how to behave toward others apply directly to all believers.

On the other hand, Gentile believers are not obligated to keep all of the ceremonial laws as the Jewish believers such as circumcision and other distinct markers of Jewish identity like the calendar, the holy days, the dietary laws, and so forth. Despite that, the Bible does not create alternative Gentile versions of these institutions.

In the days of the apostles, the Gentile believers kept most of those things along with the Jewish believers as part of their participation in their shared religion.