Mosaic Law

Mosaic Law appears in Shmuel Ash’s research as a central point of dispute in the history of Jewish interpretations of Jesus. Medieval Jewish writers invoke Jesus’ relationship to the Law to portray him as a Jew who did not intend to found a new religion; Shmuel’s own speculative reconstruction also makes familiarity with both its written and oral forms central to Judas Iscariot’s identity.

The Law in Jewish accounts of Jesus

Rabbi Yehuda Arie de Modena, writing in the seventeenth century, presents Jesus as a genuine Pharisee who differed from his teachers only over marginal legal matters and never renounced the principles of his faith. In his reading of the Gospels, Jesus affirms the authority of the Law rather than abolishing it: he instructs his followers to observe what the scribes and Pharisees teach, and says that he has come not to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them. De Modena also emphasizes Jesus’ description of himself as a servant and as the Son of Man, not as God. His argument uses the Gospel accounts themselves to challenge the claim that Jesus sought divine status.

This interpretation belongs to a broader range of medieval Jewish responses, not a single settled position. Rabbi Gershom ha-Cohen objected to degrading stories about Jesus, even as his work questioned the New Testament’s validity. Yehuda ha-Levi presented a Christian sage’s account of Jesus and the Trinity in The Kuzari without distortion or mockery, while the Khazar king rejected the argument as illogical. Maimonides, by contrast, called Jesus a false prophet but regarded Christianity as a step in humanity’s movement from paganism toward belief in the God of Israel. Together, these examples show that affirming Jesus’ Jewish observance could form part of an argument about his identity without implying acceptance of Christian claims about him.

Written and oral tradition

De Modena’s account distinguishes the written Law from the oral tradition and presents Jesus as aligned with both. In the Gospel passages he cites, Jesus affirms the Law and tells his followers to observe the teaching associated with Moses’ seat. De Modena treats this as evidence that Jesus stood within the interpretive world of Jewish teachers, rather than outside it. His claim is a historical and theological interpretation of the Gospel material, not a neutral statement that resolves the dispute over Jesus’ identity.

The distinction also shapes Shmuel’s imagined account of Judas. He describes Judas as a Judean man of means, educated and sober, well versed in both the written and oral Law, and close to the Pharisees and priests. These qualities explain why Jerusalem’s priestly authorities would select him to join Jesus’ followers and report on the Galilean preacher. The Law functions here not only as religious teaching but as the expertise that equips Judas for his supposed mission.

Shmuel’s reinterpretation

In the notebook passage, Shmuel proposes that Judas was initially sent to spy on Jesus and determine whether he posed a danger. Judas joins the group, gains the trust of its members, becomes Jesus’ confidant and treasurer, and is eventually transformed by his attachment to Jesus into a devoted disciple. This is Shmuel’s reinterpretation, not an established account of the events. By giving Judas a grounding in Mosaic Law and placing him among the authorities who send him, the theory recasts the familiar figure of the betrayer as a Jewish insider whose religious and intellectual formation precedes his allegiance to Jesus.

Significance in the novel

The Law connects the novel’s discussion of Jewish reception of Jesus to Shmuel’s attempt to rethink Judas. De Modena uses Jesus’ fidelity to Jewish teaching to contest the idea that Jesus founded a separate religion; Shmuel uses Judas’s knowledge of the same tradition to imagine how a suspected agent might become a believer. In both cases, the written and oral Law serve as evidence within competing interpretations of religious identity, not as a simple boundary separating Judaism from Christianity.