Basic rules, but too much is invested in arguing dogma. That could be interpreted as an anything goes attitude, that truth is not valued or defended, but that assumes dogma is truth.
Heh, I just took one look at the word dogma and it says, “go mad”.
That about sums it up. Jesus went around pointing out simple stuff, and the Establishment flipped out when he attempted to correct their dogma and assumptions.
He wasn’t blaspheming because he wasn’t claiming to be God, he showed how a man can forgive sins (when they thought only God could do that), and that “son of David” (or Abraham) doesn’t just mean a genetic line, it’s about character - mainly love and mercy.
He certainly wasn’t a pushover. He’d had it with the MSM of his day, always setting him up for Gotcha! traps under the pretext of sincere questions or heresy checks.
The message is as simple as saying “I love you” or “It’s okay.” But that doesn’t work when people exploit love and mercy to beat others down. Sometimes people treat their own family members way worse than strangers because the attitude is, “Hey we’re family, you’re supposed to forgive me”. Free license to abuse in the name of family means somebody missed the memo.
The Redemption is all about dumping the dead weight and starting to actually live, starting from scratch. Not any new rule, but understanding the old. Back to basics. The one covenant is really the Din Shamayaim, the higher law of conscience and consideration for others.
Can it ever be written down and codified? With any law or contract, the second it is put into writing there is a line created. But the line is easily blurred by circumstances or lack of precision, and people set on law-breaking will find a way to skirt the spirit of the law or covenant by using the letter of the law to claim innocence.
Then a new line is needed, and the process repeats forever until one day people wake up and realize that they are in a bondage of their own making. If they wake up and see the problem.
The solution floats over and above all the covenants. God is a spirit. Heart/mind/soul. There’s the connection point (gate of Heaven).
Maybe my reply doesn’t seem to relate to your post or the thread topic. It does though because the entire concept of eternal covenants supersedes all the debates about the covenants. Truth is one truth, and truth never changes.
The Medes and the Persians claimed that their laws couldn’t be changed. Achashverosh still found a way to negate the law, by making one that would supersede the other, such that in practical terms the decree to destroy the Jews was made null and void. Not by the letter, but another way that involved the reality on the ground.
My understanding of Jesus - and it is a very under-informed opinion (I’m Jewish, and thus don’t believe that he is the promised Moschiach, so why bother studying about him that much?) that he essentially was very upset about the corruption in the Temple hierarchy, and very upset about people not abiding by the principles in the Torah. IOW, he was an idealist. So (again, in my understanding) he went around doing things to get people to pay attention to him, so that he could then get them focused on what was important in the Torah (to be kind and forgiving to others, and to obey and honor God, among others). In the process, he really ticked off the Temple hierarchy and, thus, the Romans (who had hand-picked the High Priest for his fealty to them). He was a revolutionary in the (supposedly, because it is not entirely clear that he said this) Orwellian sense of the word - “In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” But, in reality, he just wanted to return to the times when the Jewish People abided by The Law. Just my $0.02.