Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism

by Paul T. Sloan

Publisher:

Baker

, 2025

Overview

Jesus regularly engaged the law and its interpretation in his interactions with both crowds and other teachers. While many scholars have interpreted his teaching as criticizing legalism, nationalism, or externalism, in this study of Jesus and the law in the Synoptic Gospels, Paul Sloan suggests an alternative.

Sloan argues that the proper framework for understanding Jesus’s teaching is Israel’s Scripture and Second Temple expectations of the restoration of the covenant between God and Israel. Consequently, this book focuses on the Gospels’ depiction of Jesus as both the herald of this restoration and the authoritative interpreter of the law. Within this perspective, Jesus’s legal disputes constitute interreligious debate about the law’s interpretation and his claim to be the divinely commissioned herald of the restoration. In addition to legal disputes, Sloan interprets Jesus’s action in the temple and his crucifixion within this restorationist context, and he concludes by showing congruity between Jesus’s teaching of the law and the use of the law in Acts and in Paul’s Letters.

This thorough yet accessible book contributes to the ongoing discussion of Jesus and the law in the first-century Jewish context. It will challenge students of the Gospels and readers of the broader New Testament to reconsider some common understandings of the law and its reception in early Christianity.

Key Features

• Argues that the proper framework for understanding Jesus’s teaching is Israel’s Scripture.
• Interprets Jesus’s action in the temple and his crucifixion within this restorationist context.
• Concludes by showing congruity between Jesus’s teaching of the law.

Contents

Introduction

1. Israel and the Law of Moses

2. How Shall We Return? Restoration Eschatology in Early Judaism

3. The Beatitudes and the Law

4. Conflict and Controversy

5. I Came to Call Sinners: The Restoration and Eschatological Nomism

6. The Temple and the Cross

Conclusion: The Law in the New Testament

Indexes

Praise for Jesus and the Law of Moses

Sloan makes a powerful argument that scholarly study of Jesus’s teachings on the Law of Moses must attend much more closely to Jesus’s alternative interpretations (not rejections!) of the Law as well as Jesus’s eschatological conviction that he has inaugurated Israel’s restoration. Truly a fresh, creative, and convincing argument!

—Joshua W. Jipp, professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Who do you say that I am?’ the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels asks. In Jesus and the Law of Moses, Paul Sloan answers, ‘Jesus is God’s eschatological agent sent to Israel to unleash a renewed fidelity to both the covenant and the Law of Moses.’ If you want to understand the Synoptic portrayal of Jesus, you need to read this book!

—Matthew Thiessen, associate professor of religious studies, McMaster University

Product Details

• Title: Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism
• Author: Paul T. Sloan
• Publisher: Baker
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 288
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Jesus Christ— Views on Jewish law; Bible. New Testament
• ISBNs: 9781493450206, 1493450204
• Resource ID: LLS:JSSLWFRSTCNJDSM
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-08-19T20:28:40Z

About Paul T. Sloan

Paul T. Sloan (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is associate professor of early Christianity at Houston Christian University in Houston, Texas. He is the author of Mark 13 and the Return of the Shepherd and the coeditor of Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity, New Studies in Textual Interplay, and Visions and Violence in the Pseudepigrapha.