Was Messiah the End of the Torah?
By
James Scott Trimm
This is such an informative post (from a Facebook thread), I decided to post it here in my blog. Someone had tried to claim that the Greek word “telos” in Romans 10:4 proves that the Torah ceased, in response to my blog The Torah Appeared upon Earth and Lived Among Men . This was my response:
You are so wrong I am not even sure where to start. I guess we will start with the Greek word τέλος which also does not always indicate a termination. The word appears 42 times in the Greek NT and in some few of these it does indicate a termination (four or five) but in the majority it does not. In several places it indicates an outcome, a result or culmination (see 1Tim. 1:5; 1Kefa 1:9)
If Christians claim the Torah has ceased based on the Greek word “telos” for “end” in Romans 10:4 then they should also argue that faith and salvation have ceased based in the use of “telos” for “end” in 1Peter 1:9.
So no, the Greek word τέλος in Romans does not indicate a termination. However, from a Nazarene standpoint, Romans was not written in Greek, but in Hebrew or Aramaic. The Aramaic word used in this passage in the Aramaic Peshitta is סכה Saka, which has the same ambiguity as telos. In fact Murdok’s 19th century translation of the Peshitta has a marginal note in this verse indicating that the Aramaic word סכה could be translated “aim”. In fact in the Talmud this same Aramaic word is used to mean “sum total” indicating that the “sum total” of the number of students in a class was a certain number. The Hebrew word behind all of this was probably תכלית (Strong’s 8503) which also shares this meaning. The idea Paul is presenting is that Messiah was the goal of the Torah and even that Messiah is the sum total of the Torah, which is why he goes on to (in Rom. 10:6-8) quote Deut. 30:12-14 except where Deut. 30:12-14 is clearly in context speaking of the Torah, Paul inserts “Messiah” instead.
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