Tradition vs. Scripture - Human Teachings That Killed Jesus
The Pharisees knew the Torah by heart, yet killed their own Messiah. How tradition blinds people to God's truth and why the same mechanism operates today.
Here is a paradox that should open every theology course: the most devout, most biblically educated people in human history - murdered their own Messiah.
Not pagans. Not atheists. Not people who had never heard of God.
Pharisees. Scribes. Chief priests. Men who knew the Torah by heart. Who devoted their entire lives to studying God’s Word. Who prayed three times a day, meticulously observed the Law, wore phylacteries on their foreheads and tassels on their garments.
And when the God they worshipped stood before them in the flesh - they did not recognize Him. Worse: they condemned Him to death.
One word explains why: tradition.
Human tradition that grew around God’s Word like coral around a shipwreck - until the wreck became invisible. Tradition that was meant to protect the Law but actually replaced it. Tradition that was meant to lead to God but walled Him off behind human teachings.
This is not a historical problem. It is a mechanism that operates today - in every church, every denomination, every generation.
Jesus vs. the Tradition of the Elders
One of the sharpest confrontations in the Gospels is Jesus’s clash with the Pharisees over the “tradition of the elders.” Matthew and Mark both record this scene in detail:
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?”
- Matt 15:1-3 (ESV)
Notice the dynamic. The Pharisees attack the disciples for breaking tradition. Jesus counters with a question about breaking the commandment of God. This is no accidental juxtaposition - it exposes a fundamental problem: human tradition had taken the place of God’s Law.
Jesus gives a specific example - Corban:
For God commanded, “Honor your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If anyone tells his father or his mother, ‘What you would have gained from me is given to God,’ he need not honor his father.” So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.
- Matt 15:4-6 (ESV)
Jesus concludes this confrontation with a quote from Isaiah:
You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
- Matt 15:7-9 (ESV)
“Commandments of men” - not God’s. “Lips” - not hearts. “In vain” - without effect, empty, worthless. The entire religious system of the Pharisees, with all their prayers, rituals, and regulations, was in vain in God’s eyes. Because it was built on human teachings, not on God’s Word.
In Mark’s account Jesus adds an even stronger summary:
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!”
- Mark 7:8-9 (ESV)
“A fine way” - that is sarcasm. Biting irony. Jesus says it plainly: you chose tradition instead of God.
What Was the Tradition of the Elders? - Historical Context
To understand the depth of the problem, we need to understand what the “tradition of the elders” that Jesus references actually was.
The Pharisees believed in two Torahs given at Sinai: the Written Torah (Torah she-bi-khtav - the Pentateuch) and the Oral Torah (Torah she-be’al peh). According to rabbinic tradition, God gave Moses at Sinai not only the written Law but also oral explanations and interpretations, which Moses passed to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly.
This Oral Torah - unwritten for centuries - grew into a massive legal system. Around 200 AD, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi compiled it as the Mishnah. Later, commentaries (Gemara) were added, creating the Talmud - a monumental work spanning thousands of pages, far more extensive than the Bible itself.
The Talmud contains detailed regulations for every aspect of life. Take the Sabbath. The Torah says simply: do not work on the Sabbath. But what does “work” mean? The rabbis defined 39 categories of forbidden work (avot melachot), and for each category - dozens of subcategories. You must not kindle fire, but is moving a candle “kindling”? You must not carry burdens, but is a handkerchief in your pocket a “burden”? You must not write, but is drawing in sand “writing”?
Another example: netilat yadayim - the ritual hand-washing that the Pharisees confronted Jesus’s disciples about. The Torah does not command hand-washing before meals. This was a requirement of rabbinic tradition - a precisely defined ritual: how much water, what kind of vessel, how many times to pour over each hand, in what order.
Or the eruv - an ingenious system of strings and wires strung around a city that “merged” private spaces into one shared domain, allowing people to carry objects on the Sabbath without (technically) breaking the prohibition. To this day, in New York, London, and many other cities, eruvim exist - physical structures that circumvent God’s Law through legal fiction.
Read that again. The words of Scribes - humans - more important than the words of the Torah - God. This is not a marginal text. It is in the Talmud. It is the official position of rabbinic tradition.
Departing from God’s Word - Always Ended in Catastrophe
The problem of human tradition replacing God’s Word did not begin with the Pharisees. The entire history of Israel is a repeating pattern: whenever the people turned from God’s Word to their own inventions, tragedy followed. The Pharisees were only the last link in a long chain.
1. The Golden Calf (Exod 32)
Moses is on Mount Sinai. He is receiving the Law from God - the very tablets that will become Israel’s foundation. At the foot of the mountain, the people lose patience. “We don’t know what happened to this Moses,” they tell Aaron. And Aaron, the high priest, Moses’s brother - makes a golden calf.
And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.”
- Exod 32:4-5 (ESV)
Notice: Aaron did not proclaim a feast to Baal or Molech. He said “a feast to the LORD” (YHWH). The Israelites were not claiming to reject God. They wanted to worship Him - but on their own terms. Through a visible image, the way surrounding nations did.
The result: 3,000 killed that day.
2. The Queen of Heaven (Jer 7:18; 44:17-19)
Centuries later, Jeremiah rebukes the people for burning incense to the “Queen of Heaven” - a pagan deity. The people’s response is astonishing:
“As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials.”
- Jer 44:16-17 (ESV)
“As we did - both we and our fathers.” This is the argument from tradition in its purest form. We’ve been doing this for generations. Our fathers did it. It must be right because it’s always been this way. Tradition became more important than the word of a prophet.
3. Baal Worship Under Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kgs 16-18)
Under Ahab’s reign, Israel fell into syncretism - mixing the worship of Yahweh with the worship of Baal. On Mount Carmel, Elijah put it bluntly:
How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.
- 1 Kgs 18:21 (ESV)
The people were silent. Because they didn’t want to choose. They wanted both - Yahweh and Baal, Scripture and pagan tradition, truth and comfortable lies. Syncretism - the blending of religions - is a form of tradition that dilutes the purity of God’s Word.
4. The Lost Book of the Law Under Josiah (2 Kgs 22-23)
This may be the most telling example of all. During King Josiah’s reign, the priest Hilkiah discovers the Book of the Law in the Temple - likely Deuteronomy. In the Temple. They literally lost the Scriptures in the very place designed to safeguard them.
For generations no one had read it. Priests conducted worship, the people came to the Temple, sacrifices were offered - but no one knew God’s Word. When Josiah heard the Law read for the first time, he tore his robes in horror:
Go, inquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.
- 2 Kgs 22:13 (ESV)
Our fathers have not obeyed. For generations - no one read, no one listened, no one obeyed. And yet religion carried on.
The tradition of worship - rituals, ceremonies, priestly hierarchy - had replaced the Book so thoroughly that people forgot it existed. Religion functioned, the Temple operated, the priests served. But God was not in it.
5. Nehemiah and the Rediscovery of the Forgotten Law (Neh 8)
After returning from Babylonian exile, Ezra reads the Torah publicly. The people’s reaction is heartbreaking: they weep. Not from joy - from shock. Generations of exile had cut them off from Scripture. Exilic tradition had replaced direct contact with God’s Word. When they finally heard it - they realized how far they had gone.
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
- Judg 21:25 (ESV)
This is the summary of the era of Judges - but it could summarize every era in which people departed from Scripture.
They Searched the Scriptures but Refused to See
Let us return to the Pharisees. For their story is the most terrifying version of this pattern. The others - the golden calf, Baal, the Queen of Heaven - at least openly broke the Law. The Pharisees did not. They knew it. They studied it. They observed the letter of the Law with surgical precision. And that is precisely what makes their story so chilling.
Jesus told them plainly:
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
- John 5:39-40 (ESV)
“You search the Scriptures” - yes, they searched. Better than anyone before them. They knew the Pentateuch by heart. They could quote the prophets with their eyes closed. They knew the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem (Mic 5:2). They knew He would come from David’s line. They knew the healer would restore sight to the blind (Isa 35:5).
And when He came - they rejected Him.
For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?
- John 5:46-47 (ESV)
Jesus makes a radical claim: the Pharisees did not believe Moses. The very people who claimed to be guardians of Moses’s Torah did not believe what Moses wrote. Because Moses wrote about Christ, and they rejected Christ.
The most dramatic example is the healing of the man born blind in John 9. Jesus heals a man blind from birth - an unprecedented miracle in Israel’s history. No one had ever restored sight to a person born blind. The prophets did not do this. It was a messianic sign.
The Pharisees’ response? Not “Praise God, the Messiah has come!” but “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). He healed on the Sabbath. He broke tradition. Therefore - he cannot be from God. Tradition more important than a miracle.
They interrogated the healed man. They interrogated his parents. They looked for any way to discredit the miracle. And when the healed man told them, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” - they cast him out of the synagogue.
The truth stood before them. Literally - a man who had been blind his whole life now stood before them seeing. But acknowledging the truth would mean questioning tradition. And that they could not bring themselves to do.
Another moment: when the temple guards return empty-handed after being sent to arrest Jesus, the Pharisees ask: why didn’t you bring Him?
The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.”
- John 7:46-49 (ESV)
The argument from authority in its purest form. They do not ask: “Is what He says true?” They ask: “Have our people believed in Him?” If no scholar believed - then it’s not worth believing. And those who do believe - “an accursed crowd that doesn’t know the law.” Spiritual elitism.
When Nicodemus - one of their own - cautiously suggests that perhaps they should hear Jesus before judging Him, they reply:
Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.
- John 7:52 (ESV)
Interestingly - they were wrong. The prophet Jonah came from Gath-hepher in Galilee (2 Kgs 14:25). Possibly Nahum and Hosea had Galilean origins too. But tradition said otherwise - and tradition won over facts.
Woe to You, Scribes and Pharisees!
In Matthew 23, Jesus delivers the most severe speech recorded in the Gospels - a series of “woes” directed squarely at the Pharisees and scribes. This is not gentle criticism. It is an indictment.
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
- Matt 23:2-4 (ESV)
Burdens on people’s shoulders - hundreds of rules, regulations, prohibitions. And they themselves “are not willing to move them with their finger.” They knew the loopholes in the system they built. They knew how to get around their own rules - as with Corban.
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
- Matt 23:13 (ESV)
Shutting the Kingdom. Not opening - shutting. A double tragedy: they themselves do not enter - because their hypocrisy, their heartless system of rules, their tradition without God leads nowhere near the Kingdom. But that is not all. Those who want to enter - ordinary people seeking God - they shut the door on them. They block the way with their regulations, their elitism, their “accursed crowd that doesn’t know the law.” Those who were meant to guide people to God became a barrier between people and God.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
- Matt 23:15 (ESV)
Zealous evangelism - but toward what? Converts became “twice as much a child of hell.” Why twice? Because they were not converting people to God - they were converting them to the system. To tradition. To human teachings dressed in divine garments. And these people - sincere seekers of God - entered the system convinced they had found the truth. They thought they were worshipping God. They thought they were on the right path. They were further from Him than before their “conversion.”
This is worse than atheism. An atheist at least knows he does not believe. He may one day hear the Gospel and be converted. But a person who thinks he already believes, who thinks he is already saved, who thinks he already knows God - yet in reality knows only a human system - that person is nearly unreachable. Why would he seek if he has already “found”? Why would he repent if he is already “converted”? False conversion is a vaccine against the real thing.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
- Matt 23:23-24 (ESV)
Tithing mint. Dill. Cumin. They counted out a tenth of their garden herbs - with the precision of an apothecary. But they neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. The gnat and the camel - an image of absurd disproportion between meticulousness in small things and blindness to great ones.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
- Matt 23:27-28 (ESV)
Whitewashed tombs. Beautiful on the outside - spotless garments, lengthy prayers, public almsgiving. Dead on the inside.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.
- Matt 23:29-32 (ESV)
And that is exactly what happened. They inherited the spirit of their fathers - murderers of prophets - because they brought about the death of Jesus. He foresaw it.
The Testimony of Stephen
After Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, the pattern did not change. Stephen - the first Christian martyr - stood before the Sanhedrin and delivered a speech that recaps the entire history of Israel. He walks through Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David - and each time shows the same pattern: God sends, Israel rejects.
His conclusion strikes like lightning:
You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.
- Acts 7:51-53 (ESV)
“Stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears.” “You always resist the Holy Spirit.” “Betrayed and murdered.” “Received the law and did not keep it.”
But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
- Acts 7:57-58 (ESV)
“Stopped their ears.” Literally - they did not want to hear. The truth was too painful. The confrontation with tradition too drastic. So they killed the messenger.
And that young man Saul, who held the garments of the stone-throwers? He was the future apostle Paul. A zealous Pharisee, student of Gamaliel, destroyer of the Church - who would one day experience what the Pharisees refused to experience: an encounter with the living Christ.
Paul - From Zealot of Tradition to Apostle of Grace
No one understood the problem of tradition better than Paul. Because he himself had been its embodiment.
For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
- Gal 1:13-14 (ESV)
“Extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers” - Paul was no ordinary Pharisee. He was a fanatical devotee of tradition. So zealous that he persecuted and killed people who in his view threatened that tradition.
In Philippians, Paul presents his Pharisaic résumé:
Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.
- Phil 3:5-8 (ESV)
“Rubbish” - the Greek skybala is closer to “dung” or “refuse.” All Pharisaic tradition, all rabbinic education, all religious zeal - rubbish. Not compared to another tradition, not compared to better theology - compared to knowing Christ.
That is why Paul, writing to the Colossians, warns from experience:
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
- Col 2:8 (ESV)
The Same Mechanism Today
I wish I could say that the problem of tradition replacing Scripture is purely historical. That the Pharisees were the last to fall into this trap. But that would be a lie.
The same mechanism operates today - in every corner of Christianity. The form changes, but the essence remains identical.
1. Church teaching above Scripture. “The Church teaches this” - and that closes the discussion. Not “the Bible says this,” but “the Church teaches this.” Catechisms, encyclicals, creeds, conciliar tradition - placed on par with Scripture or even above it. When church teaching contradicts Scripture, the faithful are expected to choose the church.
2. Questioning tradition = rebellion. Try questioning an established practice in many communities - you’ll hear: “Who are you to challenge centuries of tradition?” They don’t ask: “Are you right?” They ask: “Who are you to ask?” The same argument the Pharisees threw at the temple guards: “Have any of the authorities believed?”
3. External religiosity instead of heart transformation. Church attendance, participation in sacraments, reciting prayers, putting money in the plate - treated as evidence of faith. Without asking about the heart. Without asking about fruit. Without asking whether the person truly knows Christ. Whitewashed tombs in modern form.
4. Scripture filtered through denominational tradition. Every denomination has its own “glasses” through which it reads the Bible. Calvinists see predestination on every page. Pentecostals see gifts of the Spirit in every passage. Catholics see Tradition with a capital T. But who reads the Bible without glasses? Who lets Scripture speak for itself?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
- 2 Tim 3:16-17 (ESV)
“All Scripture” - not “Scripture plus tradition.” Not “Scripture as interpreted by the Church.” Scripture. God-breathed. Sufficient. Equipping for every good work. If Scripture is sufficient - why add anything?
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
- 2 Tim 4:3-4 (ESV)
“Teachers to suit their own passions” - teachers who say what people want to hear. Not what the Bible says - but what feels pleasant. Not truth - but myths. Has that time not arrived? If you want to see what this mechanism looks like in modern Christianity, read my article on sleeping Christianity.
Since tradition can so deeply distort the image of faith, it’s worth asking: what should the Church actually look like without these additions? The answer is found in Scripture - read my article on what the Church is according to the Bible.
Return to the Source
What do we do with this? Three steps - simple in theory, revolutionary in practice.
1. Read the Bible yourself.
Not commentaries. Not catechisms. Not books about the Bible. The Bible. Open the Scriptures and read. Let them speak to you directly - without filters, without imposed interpretation. Many Christians have never read the entire Bible, yet they know their church’s catechism by heart. That is exactly the same problem Israel had under Josiah: the Book of the Law lay in the Temple, and no one opened it.
2. Test everything against Scripture.
Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
- Acts 17:11 (ESV)
The Bereans - a model for every believer. Even while listening to the apostle Paul, they checked whether what he said aligned with Scripture. Not because they didn’t trust him - but because they trusted Scripture more than any human being. If the Bereans checked Paul - then you have the right and the duty to check your pastor, priest, or teacher. And even me.
3. Be willing to be wrong.
This is the hardest step. I know. You’ve been going to church for years. You pray. You raised your children in the faith. Your parents did the same. And their parents before them.
But this is not an attack on your faith. It is a plea: test it.
If what you do aligns with Scripture - you have nothing to fear. But if even one thing turns out to contradict the Bible - wouldn’t you want to know? Do you really want to worship God in a way that He rejects?
I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
- Amos 5:21-23 (ESV)
God said this to His own people. To people who thought they were worshipping Him.
Josiah discovered that generations before him had lived in error. He did not say: “Since my fathers did it this way, it must be right.” He tore his robes and returned to the Word.
The Pharisees were not willing to be wrong. They preferred to kill the Messiah rather than admit their system was flawed.
Open the Bible. Check for yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask.
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
- John 5:39-40 (ESV)
The Scriptures bear witness about Christ. Not about tradition. Not about denominations. Not about church hierarchy. About Christ. The purpose of reading the Bible is not to acquire theological knowledge, win arguments, or confirm your preexisting beliefs. The purpose is to encounter the living God.
The Pharisees had tradition, knowledge, and status. They had the finest religious education in history. They had authority, power, and the respect of men.
But they did not have Jesus.
And remember: the Pharisees were not a fringe group. They were the majority. They were the official voice of religion. They ran the Temple, taught the people, decided doctrine. If you had lived in those times and asked, “Who is right?” - everyone would have pointed to them. Yet they were wrong about the most important thing in history: they failed to recognize their own Messiah.
If it could happen to them - why couldn’t it happen again? Why would your church be infallible when theirs was not?
Don’t make their mistake.