The twenty-third passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Mt 13:45-46. Thomas 76.1-2 is very similar.
23. 1Yeshua said, ‘The kingdom of God is like a pearl of great value, which a merchant found while examining a consignment of pearls. 2So he went and sold everything he owned, and then came back and bought the whole consignment. 3But that merchant was shrewd; he sold the consignment, while keeping the one pearl for himself.’
The differences between the two versions
Unlike the Matthew version, in Thomas the merchant doesn’t sell what he has in order to buy the pearls; he buys everything, keeps the one pearl for himself, and sells the rest of the consignment. In Thomas, he buys the entire consignment, whereas in the Matthean version he ignores the rest; he only buys the one pearl and nothing else. There may have been an original that Yeshua told, which contained elements suggested by both versions; what you see above is my attempt to recreate that original. The likeliest thing to have happened, is that the original parable seems to have been changed by both Matthew and Thomas to suit their individual emphases and theologies (The Five Gospels, p. 197).
Background
This pericope, and the teachings contained within it, are not merely those of the previous saying (the Parable of the hoard of money found in a field). In both parables, there is something of great value that is found by chance, and for which one needs to sell everything one has in order to acquire what is found. However, the underlying symbolism is considerably different in the two parables.
In Jewish symbolism, Torah is sometimes compared to a gold ring, and the pearls that the ring is studded with represent the most insightful of its individual teachings and commandments. Metaphorically, the word ‘pearl’ was generally used to describe anything valuable or precious. In Aramaic, ‘pearl’ is מרגניתא margānītā.
In all the gospel commentaries I read on these verses, not one mentioned the symbolism of what pearls would mean in the teaching’s native Jewish environment– not one, single commentary. Not one mentioned any connection of ‘pearl’ with ‘Torah’. They simply implied that this parable is just a different way of re-telling the lessons of the previous parable. It almost seemed as if revealing even a hint of what it meant to Jews, would open a Pandora’s box for their regular readership!
A merchant in those days looking to buy pearls might travel to distant lands, such as the territories around the Persian Gulf. This was the centre of the ancient pearl trade for traders in the Middle East. Because of their scarcity, sometimes being worth even more than gold, rich women would put on an ostentatious display of their personal wealth by wearing pearl necklaces and wristlets. The great value of pearls in ancient times was also the reason why the gates of the new Jerusalem, in Rev 21:21, are symbolically made from giant pearls, not gold.
Who is the man? The Greek word used for ‘merchant’ is ἔμπορος emporos, which implies a merchant who travels to different places, for the purpose of buying merchandise in order to sell it on again. The same is implied by the Jewish Aramaic חזרא chazzarā: travelling tradesman, from the Aramaic chazar: to go around to various places (see Sokoloff’s Dictionary of Jewish Aramaic, p.195). In terms of his relevance to this parable, he is someone who has devoted himself to actively seeking in order to find. The Jewish Aramaic word for ‘to look for’ is taba‘, which also means ‘to enquire after something’, e.g. answers or knowledge, or even seeking for wisdom.
Why is he examining a consignment? In Thomas, the consignment is understood to be general merchandise (i.e. not just pearls), but in Matthew, the merchant is specifically looking for fine pearls within a consignment of pearls. In the consignment, he finds one particularly excellent pearl among them. Furthermore, being a consignment of pearls, Matthew’s merchant is looking in the right place for what he wants, as opposed to the version in Thomas, which turns the find even of the one pearl into a case of something being found completely by accident – he wasn’t intentionally looking for anything remotely like a pearl. The Matthew version, where the merchant is already looking for pearls, fits better into a Jewish context.
Why does he buy the whole consignment? This detail is from Thomas. We are meant to assume that the consignment cannot be split up – it is a bulk purchase. In Matthew, the merchant impoverishes himself in order to buy this one pearl, and the parable ends there. However, such an action would seem like an obscene extravagance, and a cruelty to one’s family – to get rid of all one’s possessions, just to be in possession of something of great but unusable value, admiring it and obsessing over it, while your family starves and their clothes wear down to shreds.
I personally think the detail from Thomas, of the merchant buying the whole consignment in order to get hold of the one pearl, is the more practical and astute option. He can then sell the pearls he doesn’t want, recouping most of his money, and so continue to provide for his family.
This specific detail in Thomas’s version also fits a Jewish scenario better. Buying the whole consignment is like accepting the whole of Torah, so that we can have the one pearl of great value – which is perhaps an understanding of the one great ethical ideal which stands out in Torah above the rest.
Why does it say he was shrewd? – Again, this part is from Thomas. Describing the merchant as ‘shrewd’ may have been Yeshua’s own euphemism for a wealthy person (see also Luke 16:8 – the term is not that unusual for Yeshua). As his audience, we would not expect the term ‘shrewd’ or ‘cunning’ to be used as a word to describe a seeker of the Kingdom, but Yeshua’s style is to use words to jar our awareness, to give us a jolt, so that we take notice of the message within. To buy and trade in fine pearls, one needs to already be a man of means, someone who is familiar with pearls and who knows precisely what he is looking for.
With these images in mind, a rich person who is unselfish and moral, doesn’t need to become poor in order to find the Kingdom of God. Not everyone has to live in poverty to follow Torah – there are blessings to be had from God through following Torah, even by a person of considerable means.
Why does he sell the consignment? By analogy, the merchant is like someone who has found the one teaching in Torah which is greater than all the other teachings; the pearl is the one key which unlocks one’s understanding of the entire Torah. The merchant is like someone who realises that the one teaching they have found, can now become the overall rule by which they can observe and live out the true spirit of the Torah – the lens through which they can now reveal and understand Torah more clearly.
What does the Pearl of Great Value symbolise?
The pearl could represent the one commandment or teaching in Torah, which enables someone to make a self-transformation, and change the spirit in which they observe all the other commandments in Torah. Or it could represent an entirely new understanding of Torah itself, which enables us to see the entirety of Torah in a whole new light. Or perhaps it could be both.
What could be the one teaching in Torah that affects one’s observance of all the others? As we find in Mt 22:34-40 and Mk 12:28-34, Yeshua taught that to love God with all one’s being was the greatest commandment, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself was the second: ‘Upon these two commandments hang the whole of the Torah and the Prophets’.
The key that binds the two together is the observance of one’s religion with love. Love is the key to discovering how to apply the commandments of Torah. If we have no desire to have kind regard for others, then any subsequent way in which we might observe God’s commandments will show no love for God either. Blind and literal obedience of scriptural writ is not showing love for God – it is showing a lack of concern for one’s fellow human beings, and an absence of any love for YHVH.
When you start viewing Torah as an act of love from God to Israel, and through Israel, to the Nations, you begin seeing a whole new side of Torah. You begin to understand what it is for – its good and wise purpose. It’s not a burden of rules and regulations; it’s an ‘operations manual’ for the whole of Israelite society, as well as a guidebook for the individual.
‘But what about all the harsh commandments?’
We all know that there are some pretty harsh commandments in Torah, but as Talmidis, we are not trying to hide them, or pretend they are not there. However, there is always a compassionate way to apply most commandments, if you have a compassionate and merciful heart.
Nevertheless, some harsh commandments are there to teach us the seriousness of a particular statute, not for them to be literally carried out. This is the principle of lege in terrorem, a law designed to shock and act as a deterrent, such as the one for a disobedient son to be stoned to death (Dt 21:18-21). When Yeshua intimated that he would not be in favour of carrying out this punishment (see the Parable of the Disobedient Son, Mt 21:28-31), he was not teaching anything radical; most Jews in his day would have agreed with him. His parable was teaching a very Jewish approach to the commandment, not one that he himself invented.
The religion-wide, common understanding of harsh laws like this, among all Jewish sects and denominations, is that they were never actually meant to be carried out; they were there to shock a drunk and gluttonous son into turning his life around. Dt 21:21b explains the purpose as, ‘All Israel shall hear {this law} and be afraid’.
The same was true of the law for executing those who worshipped other gods – it was never meant to be carried out, only to shock people.
People who have contempt for Torah will point out that this and that law literally asks us to do cruel things. However, if our God had meant these laws to be taken literally, at face value, then the Jewish people would have become a wicked and cruel people no different from ISIS, the Taliban, or Al Qaeda. But we didn’t. Think on that: We did not become a bloodthirsty or cruel people. There’s no archaeological or historical evidence that any of these harsh laws were ever enacted (see the JPS Commentary on Deuteronomy on all the appropriate verses). We don’t execute people for leaving our religion; we don’t stone our children to death, and we don’t burn down cities that have changed their religious affiliation. Our religion was meant to be applied with God’s love; there is no love in the use of violence and cruelty in the application of religion.
‘We don’t need any rule-bound religion’
One can confidently say that anything which was originally created for good intent, can also be perverted and turned to evil purpose. This can happen if sociopathic or psychopathic individuals are able to get control of their religion’s teaching and application, and then persuade people to go along with them. As a consequence of the misapplication of something good, the good thing (Torah itself) comes to be seen as something oppressive, controlling and authoritarian.
Because of how Christianity portrays Torah (as a book of pointless rules), and because of how fundamentalist Jews use Torah (as an end in and of itself, to be followed slavishly without any thought to its spirit), some people looking in from the outside have come to understand Judaism as an outdated, rule-bound religion, and that any decent religion would not need any rules at all.
The sad thing though about the nature of human beings is: ‘give them an inch, and they will take a mile’. For example, if you have no rules about the behaviour of ministers, people with dubious morals will see that as permission to become ministers, so that they can abuse their authority and take advantage of congregants (and we know this happens). If you have no rules about the ethical conduct of your national army, unsavoury people will see that as permission to use the army to enforce a totalitarian regime.
If you have no rules about the ethics of government, you will end up with a government who fleeces the public for all the money they can get out of it, enacts laws which divert money from the poorest to the richest, makes the suppression of political rivals easier, as well as the disabling of the rights of those who disagree with them. If you have no rules about the organisation of religious faith, then your faith will not survive the onslaught of persecutions, pogroms, wars, or genocides.
Israelite society was never envisioned as an anarchist society, but then it was not envisioned to become an authoritarian one either. When you realise the original intent of Torah, you will come to realise it has rules for good and very wise reasons. It is not there to oppress our personal faith; it is there to keep the worst elements of human greed, exploitation and authority in check, so that ordinary people are freed to flourish in faith. The rules are there to protect us, not oppress us.
What Torah is not for
In order for the ordinary individual to get the most out of their observance of Torah, it is vital to have a right and healthy mindset towards it. One therefore needs to rid oneself of misconceptions about Torah, and then realise the true purpose of it – this realisation would be like finding a pearl of great value.
Here are a few things which Torah is not intended for:
* guaranteeing that someone who observes all the rituals and customs of Torah will get into heaven
* guaranteeing that God will approve of you and love you if you follow all the rituals, customs and practices of Torah
* guaranteeing that God will protect you as long as you follow the rituals of Torah, as if they alone are the most important part of Torah
Another misconception still believed by some Christians, is that Jews want all Gentiles to follow Torah. This is not true. Torah is not obligatory on Gentiles – it was never intended to be imposed on unwilling non-Jews. In some Muslim-majority countries, Shariah law has obligations and restrictions even on non-Muslims, so that non-Muslims will feel a cultural pressure to convert; also, to keep them in check, so they cannot object to how they are treated.
In Israelite society, no such pressure was ever intended to be put in place against non-Jewish citizens in our midst – in fact, on numerous occasions we are commanded to treat non-Jews among us fairly and justly. A Gentile converts to the Jewish faith because they want to, not because they have to. In modern Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, whose laws and government are meant to be run on Jewish principles of freedom and conscience, no one who is not Jewish is ever coerced into becoming Jewish – there are even laws in place which protect the rights of its non-Jewish citizens, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Druze, Baháʼí, or any other faith. Even atheists have rights in Israel.
The biblical prophets spoke against those who followed only the rituals and customs of Torah, without following God’s ethical demands. Rabbinic teaching says that all ritual laws and ethical laws are of equal importance, but the biblical prophets taught otherwise. If a human being were to follow all the ritual laws, but none of the ethical laws, such a person will never find the Kingdom, and will never be able to find God. However, if a human being followed all the ethical laws, and none of the ritual laws – such as a righteous Gentile does – then that does not lower such a person’s standing before God.
The purpose of Torah
There is wisdom and purpose in Torah, if you approach Torah in the right way, and with the right mindset. Torah was intended, not only for the individual practice of faith, but also to act as the constitution of a nation – Israel.
Below are the main reasons why the rules and commandments in Torah exist. I am not saying that Israelite and Jewish society was ever like this, because we are only human beings after all. However, these are the ideals behind the rules of Torah (I know lists can be boring, but please read them all, because they are all important).
These are the underlying purposes of Torah:
1. to enable the individual to live a holy life, in order to enable Israelites to experience the blessings of the Glory of God, without being harmed by the great power of God’s Glory
2. to act as a visible representation of an otherwise invisible and intangible God, by following a culture which is practically and visually distinctive
3. to build a society that acts as a vehicle for exemplifying YHVH’s ethical values and ideals, so that other nations can see them in practice, and be encouraged to follow them too (thus spreading the Kingdom of God, without requiring other nations to observe Torah)
4. to protect the poorest and most vulnerable in Israelite society, by making helping them an obligation, and by putting laws in place which give them rights
5. to ensure that Israelite society has adequate provision for its poorest, so that no one is driven to live in abject poverty; and to give people a realisation that one’s wealth belongs to God, and so can legitimately be disposed of by God, thus ensuring that no one is obscenely rich (intended to keep the gap between rich and poor at a manageable level)
6. to ensure that the wealthy and those in power do not treat their citizens like disposable commodities
7. to set up laws which teach us the ethics of government, as well as laws which make unjust and oppressive government more difficult
8. to make certain ethics and morals into obligations, in case there are sociopathic individuals who would rather not follow them, and would instead prefer to exploit society for their own benefit
9. to enable those who are inherently unable to experience the presence of God (e.g. ‘natural agnostics’) to experience God through the ethical society that God desires to create with Torah, and also through the cultural traditions proposed by Torah
10. to ensure that the rulers or kings of Israel do not exploit their people or become authoritarian (because by becoming authoritarian, the rulers of Israel bring the reputation of the God of Israel into disrepute – not only with their fellow Israelites, but also in the eyes of the Nations)
11. to protect the majority of Torah-observant Israelites from the abuses of those in Israelite society who might wish to exploit them
12. to ensure that the Israelite religion and faith endure forever, and that the people of Israel never go extinct, but last forever
Now ask yourself: How many of these aims could have been accomplished, if the Israelite religion had no rules at all?
When you realise that these purposes are themselves pearls, and you take these purposes to heart, you will come to realise why the rich, the powerful, and those who prefer authoritarian rule do not like Torah, and why the poor in ancient times were the greatest proponents of Torah. Moreover, you come to realise why totalitarian dictators and authoritarian rulers do not like the presence of Jews among their people, because our ideals and values give their people too many radical ideas – that there is a better way, and that they don’t have to accept living in an oppressive society.
Some final thoughts
Torah is a ring of gold, and its highest teachings are priceless pearls.
However, if you want to see Torah as just another set of pointless rules, outdated customs and irrelevant traditions, and are determined to understand it that way, then that is all it will ever be to you. If you are determined to practice Torah only as a set of rigid laws that must be followed perfectly and without error, then that is all it will ever be to you.
However, if you are willing to see and practise Torah for what it was originally intended to be – if you are willing to buy the whole consignment of Torah, so that you can have that one pearl of great price – then it will be a treasured inheritance, a valuable family heirloom to be passed on from one generation to the next.