Mosaic law or new law in Jesus' moral outlook?

Some interpreters anxious to demonstrate the Jewishness of Jesus, have argued that the “antitheses” of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 are not a supersession of the Mosaic Torah but a heightening of the divine demand by going inward to their motivation and intention. Hence, God requires not only abstention from violence and killing but also an inner transcendence even of anger.

However, this move to spiritualize the hard sayings of the Sermon on the Mount by asserting that Jesus is here calling for an adoption of an inner attitude to undergird the unchanging moral attitudes of the unchanging Torah only works for a couple of the antitheses – anger and lust, most notably.

Law typically regulates external conduct. And here, Jesus commands overt action: The employment of simple oaths, yes or no; non-retaliation – going the second mile; giving up one’s cloak. How does one love the enemy except by succouring him in his hour of need?

Jesus operates within a Jewish framework of moral obligation. The divine moral demands are formulated as the “do and don’t” of law. However, Jesus departs from the elaboration of Torah carried out by the scribes and Pharisees. He is moved by a moral sovereignty that appropriates literally some elements of the Torah. But other parts he, in effect, rejects.

Additionally, he amplifies God’s moral requirements with original material mainly to do with the inner life of attitudes and motives with which overt acts are performed. It seems more straightforward to see Jesus as the promulgator of a new law which appropriates the underlying and formative divine command to serve and obey God but prescribes a new righteousness which is disclosed in the antitheses.

The intense hatred and opposition of the Jewish religious leaders reflected in the Gospels is more readily grasped in this light.