Dear Rough Beast Sloucher, if you remove the 106 sacrificial laws you get 507.
The 507 laws (especially the poor laws) were what Jesus wanted to be reintroduced AND KEPT, because the Priesthood had long since deteriorated into corrupt, hypocritical, careless, greedy hellenist ways.
And The Baptist (and Jesus) were both totally against the whole Temple corruption.
You claim to know the NT cold, so you probably do know that Jesus was for MERCY BEFORE SACRIFICE.
The argument with the Pharisees in Mark 7:1-13 shows Jesus upholding the Written Torah as opposed to the Oral Torah, rules over and above what was written. The Shammai Pharisees who were predominant at that time were sticklers for slavish obedience to the letter of the law.
In Mark 2:23-28 Jesus excuses his followers gathering grain on the Sabbath by referring to David and the consecrated showbread in 1 Samuel 21:1-6. (Not really a good argument, but let that be.) The point Jesus was making was that there are circumstances when the rules should be set aside. His followers were hungry, they ate some grain despite it being the Sabbath. This is also the case with Mark 3:1-5 when Jesus heals on the Sabbath.
This is reminiscent of the attitude of Hillel, Shammai’s predecessor as head of the Sanhedrin. In the famous story contrasting them, Shammai said that it was a sin to say a bride was beautiful if she was not. Hillel replied that all brides are beautiful on their wedding day. To indulge in some speculation: If we take Matthew 2:1 and Luke 3;1,23 as reasonable estimates of when Jesus was born, he would have received his religious education when Hillel was the dominant voice of the Pharisees.
The priests would have been entirely concerned with their complex Temple obligations. Despite your repeated, still unsupported and repeatedly debunked claims, it was not the priests that either John or Jesus opposed. If we take Mark as closest to accurate, it was the Pharisees that baited Jesus while he mostly just responded reasonably without much rancor. Only in Mark 7:1-13 does Jesus come on really strong and that about the Oral Torah, although Mark does call them hypocrites in Mark 12:15
In Mark, John the Baptist never says a word about Pharisees or Sadducees and certainly not priests. One needs to go to Matthew’s elaborations on Mark to see John berate them.
Matthew 3:7-10
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
What reasons might Matthew have for enhancing the story this way? Matthew’s intended audience consisted of Jewish Christians, who held Jesus to be the Messiah while continuing to observe Jewish Law. The Temple was gone and the Pharisees who escaped Jerusalem before the end were now rebuilding Judaism on a rabbinic basis. To Matthew, the Pharisees were not just the ones from Mark who opposed the living Jesus. They were also the contemporary Pharisees who denied the Messiah had come. They were competitors for the hearts and minds of Matthew’s community. Matthew has Jesus really do a number on Pharisees with the standout example being Matthew 23.
In the decades following the War, the Sadducees were a vanishing breed. With the destruction of Jerusalem and the entire region for that matter, there was no longer a place in society for these once-wealthy upper-class collaborators with the Romans. They represented the old Temple-centric order. So why mention them? Mark mentions them only briefly when they question Jesus about marriage in the afterlife. (Mark 12:18-27)
The Sadducees rejected the portion of the Jewish scriptures known as the Prophets. This amounted to rejecting the idea of a messiah and an afterlife. Without these, the message that Mark and Matthew have John deliver is that the Messiah is coming and there will be a judgment so repent your sins. This would have been nonsense to the Sadducees. Matthew uses this opportunity to emphasize his point, the Messiah has come and the judgment is coming by invoking the image of the unbelieving Sadducees. Since Matthew uses quotes from the Prophets very often, putting down the Sadducees would be only natural.
Bottom line: Since the above quoted portion of Matthew does not appear in Mark and since Matthew has good reason for making it up, reasons related to his contemporary situation, it can be excluded as non-historical.
The quote from Hosea 6:6 about God desiring mercy and not sacrifice appears in Matthew 9:10-13. It is Matthew’s adaptation of Mark 2:15-17. Matthew’s version is mostly unchanged except for the insertion of the Hosea quote. The idea of desiring mercy not sacrifice more or less fits with the idea introduced by Mark that over-obsession with the law can defeat the law. But in the end, it seems out of place here. What does it really mean in this context?
Matthew 9:10-13
10 And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.
11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth,
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
The absence of the phrase from Mark and the rather poor fit here points to this being just another example of Matthew finding an opportunity for quoting the Prophets.
