Mt. 9:14-17 is a very misunderstood passage.
Here I will take issue with David Stern’s Jewish New Testament Commentary on Mt. 9:16 and 9:17.
On this material David Stern is dead wrong!
His identification of “old coat” = “Judaism” and “unshrunk cloth” as “messianic faith” is completely unfounded and has absolutely no basis in the text. It is merely an echo of the wildly inaccurate eisogesis of the text made by replacement theology Christians.
The same is true of his identification of “new wine” = “messianic fath” and “old wineskins” = “traditional Judaism” in verse 17.
Stern has done the best to adapt the EISOGESIS of Replacement Theology
Christian commentators to somehow be fitted into his theology (and it does not work).
There is no need. The text here has NOTHING to do with this EISOGESIS.
Let us apply the seventh rule of Hillel and read the text in context:
I will use a modified KJV reading:
Then came to him the talmidim of Yochanan, saying,
Why do we and the Pharisees fast often,
but your talmidim fast not?
(9:14)
That establishes the subject. The topic is not Judaism vs. Messianic faith
or Judaism vs, Christianity. The subject is why Yeshua’s talmidim are not
fasting.
And Yeshua said to them,
Can the children of the bridechamber mourn,
as long as the bride groom is with them?
but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them,
and then they shall fast.
No man puts a piece of new cloth onto an old garment,
for that which is put in to fill it up takes from the garment,
and the rent is made worse.
Neither do men put new wine into old wineskins;
else the wineskins burst, and the wine runs out,
and the wineskins perish
but they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
Notice the poetic parallelism.
Notice that their are three sets of lines and that each begins with a
parallel statement:
Can the children of the bride chamber mourn,
as long as the bride groom is with them?…
No man puts a piece of new cloth onto an old garment,…
Neither do men put new wine into old wineskins;…
Yeshua is answering the question posed to him “why do not your talmidim fast?”
He replies that they do not because the bridegroom is still with them, but that they will fast later when he is gone.
Yeshua does not say that fasting (an observance of the Torah) has been abolished, to the contrary he indicates that it will be time to fast when he is gone.
Then he gives two illustrations of things that are inappropriate but become appropriate later.
Thus the identification is:
new piece of cloth = new wine = fasting
old garment = old wineskin = Messiah present with us
The identification of the Messiah with the wineskin is also in keeping with a similar allegory found in the Mishnah (m.Avot 4:20) in which a teacher of Torah is likened to a wineskin:
…He who learns from children– what is he like?
he who eats sour grapes and drinks new wine.
And he who learns from old men– what is he like?
he who eats ripe grapes and drinks old wine.
You can have a new wineskin full of old wine,
and an old wineskin which has not even new wine in it.
Now Yeshua claimed that his teaching was older than himself (Yochanan 7:16) This ties into the traditional understanding of a teacher as a wineskin and his teaching as wine. Yeshua’s teaching was here with us while he was here and thus it was not a time to fast but to drink the wine and rejoice.
In fact the teaching here indicates that his talmidim would be fasting (an observance of Jewish Law) after he left.
We must raise at least $375 by the end of the day today (5/15/23) to prevent our account from plunging into the negative tonight and starting a cascade of returned items and fees!
I want to thank all of you supporting this work. I literally could not do it without you!
This work takes hours of my time. As many of you know, my wife is very ill, and I spend most of my time at home as her caretaker. I work at a desk less than six feet from her bed. So I am in a position to dedicate many hours to this important work that I have been directed to do.
But I also realize that it is not the activity of James Trimm alone who is responsible to do this work, it is all of us together who are charged with the responsibility of accomplishing this work. I very much look on the efforts of this restoration work as a cooperative one with each one of you. We are all joint heirs with Messiah and should always be about our Father’s business. I am honored to be able to be partnered with truth seekers as this restoration of Scripture moves forward in fulfillment of prophecy.
