Law = Nomos = Torah = Pentateuch = Book of Moses

The wife & I have been reading through the Bible chronologically, we are behind, but happy that our method is working so good. I got us hung up on Nehemiah Chapter 8 for 2 days.

I have been wrestling with a concept in my head for awhile and its importance and the answer is becoming clearer. Its importance was illuminated by Nehemiah 8:1-12 , the reading of the scroll of the “LAW” of Moses by Ezra in the temple.

The key for me being —

“And they read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading. “(Nehemiah 8:8 ASV)

When the people heard and understood they wept at first, but then —

“And all the people go to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great joy, because they have understood concerning the words that they made known to them.”(Nehemiah 8:12 YLT)

What has been bothering me for a year is the term “law” that all Christians hear and read constantly, it is a word that most of us feel pretty negatively about, I think we see it pretty much as the opposite of “freedom”, a word we have been trained to revere.  I have heard and read a bunch of theologians struggling to try and explain away “the law” I guess in an effort to fill pews. I’m not positive how we got here, stuck with this ugly word for such a big concept.

In Nehemiah, they are rediscovering the law at the new second temple – it is ridiculous, to me, to think that they are talking about the Levitical law, they are talking about “The Torah”, “the scroll of Moses”,  that includes the 5 books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy .

I have been reading that to biblical scholars it is obvious that some of, if not all of the gospels were originally written in Hebrew, and that Jesus and the apostles obviously spoke Hebrew, Josephus in Antiquities 20.11.2 tells us they certainly didn’t speak Greek.

So, I guess when Matthew wrote down in Hebrew what Jesus said in Hebrew, he would have written “I did not come to destroy the TORAH – in other words, the first 5 books of the Bible.

Below, Matt 5:17, in King James with Strongs numbers, we have G3551 the Greek word Nomos – translated “law”

And in King James with Strongs numbers in Nehemiah 8:8 we have H8451 the Hebrew word Torah – translated “law”

Below, in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the old testament, in Nehemiah 8:3, we have H8451 the Hebrew word Torah translated as G3551 the Greek word Nomos –  “law”.

I have read that when Plato used the word nomos in 380 BC, sometimes he meant custom or convention. It appears that the term nomos was being debated by the Greek philosophers, I can’t tell that they knew exactly what all, the word meant. In the 200’s BC the Torah portion of the Septuagint was translated and the remaining books of the Bible in the 100’s BC. The Rabbis of the time chose nomos as the Greek word closest to “torah” ???

Philo and Josephus are said to have ascribed divine inspiration to the Septuagint translators.

Thayer’s Greek Definitions says:

G3551
νόμος
nomos

1) anything established, anything received by usage, a custom, a law, a command
1a) of any law whatsoever
1a1) a law or rule producing a state approved of God
1a1a) by the observance of which is approved of God
1a2) a precept or injunction
1a3) the rule of action prescribed by reason
1b) of the Mosaic law, and referring, acc. to the context. either to the volume of the law or to its contents
1c) the Christian religion: the law demanding faith, the moral instruction given by Christ, especially the precept concerning love
1d) the name of the more important part (the Pentateuch), is put for the entire collection of the sacred books of the OT

A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number:

from a primary nemo( to parcel out, especially food or grazing to animals )

 

To me, the root word in Greek, “nemo” sounds more like feeding-teaching-filling than a law.

 

Below Malachi uses the Hebrew word – chôq – H2706, usually translated as statutes or ordinances, that seems closer to “law” to me.

And, one of the last things said in the old testament is– God differentiating between the Torah and the statutes:

I re-translate the ending of the Bible that Jesus used in His Ministry, where His Father says,

“Remember the Books of Moses, My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of Jehovah. “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”
(Malachi 4:4-6)

 

Our Father says “Remember” – then why are the theologians trying to “nail the law to the cross”?

If we let the theologians do away with the books of Moses, we do away with God the Creator – it is very important to “remember” that God created all of us and everything that we see, touch and feel, that God, has every right to Command us.  I guess if the theologians get rid of Genesis and the Creator they can get rid of His pesky Commandments in Exodus too. . .