Mishnah and Midrash: What Jesus Says in Matthew 15
Short answer: Mishnah and midrash are two related Jewish traditions: the Mishnah is the written collection of earlier oral legal teaching, and midrash is the practice of interpreting Scripture by searching it out and applying it. Neither term appears in the Bible. Jesus did not condemn every tradition or every interpretative method; in Matthew 15:1-9 he confronted teachers who handed down human rules as binding commands and in doing so set aside the word of God. The issue was authority, not merely custom. Jewish interpretation could be faithful when it served the text; it became deadly when it stood over the text. Paul himself was shaped by these traditions, and he did not describe his training as worthless in itself. He described his former confidence in it as loss compared with knowing Christ.
What the Mishnah actually is
The Mishnah is a collection of Jewish legal teaching compiled around AD 200, though much of its material is far older. It records rulings about Sabbath, festivals, purity, marriage, oaths, damages, and temple practice. It is not a Bible commentary in the modern sense. It is a code-like record of how the law was to be applied, and its authority rested on the claim of an unbroken chain of transmission from Moses onward. When Paul wrote of being exceedingly zealous for the traditions of his fathers in Galatians 1:14, he described a world in which this kind of tradition was not casual. It was the air a serious Jewish man breathed from childhood.
This is why the New Testament cannot be read as though the Pharisees were simply petty rule-makers. Many of them were serious, disciplined, devout men who wanted to obey God in a pagan empire. The tradition existed to protect the law, to build a fence around it so that no one would accidentally break it. That instinct is not automatically wrong. Parents build fences around children for the same reason. The problem arises when the fence is treated as though it were the field itself, when the safeguard is elevated until it can silence the command it was meant to protect. That is precisely the charge Jesus brings in Matthew 15.
It also matters that the Mishnah as we have it was written down after the time of Jesus. The debates recorded in it often preserve earlier positions. So when Matthew describes Pharisees and scribes coming from Jerusalem, he is describing representatives of a living, developing tradition, not a finished printed book. They travelled to examine Jesus, and their opening question in Matthew 15:2 concerns washing hands before eating. The question is not about hygiene. It is about whether Jesus' disciples honour the ancestral teaching that devout Jews regarded as binding. Jesus answers by going behind the question to the command of God.
Midrash: searching the text rather than mastering it
Midrash comes from a Hebrew root meaning to seek or inquire. It describes the practice of searching the Scriptures in order to draw out teaching for the community. Midrash can be legal, asking how a command applies to a new situation, or it can be devotional and homiletical, connecting one text to another to illuminate God's character. The Bereans in Acts 17:10-11 were doing something akin to this when they examined the Scriptures daily to test what Paul taught. Their method was noble not because it was novel, but because it took the existing word of God as the standard and tested every claim against it.
This distinction is vital because mishnah and midrash are not the same problem. Midrash, done well, submits to the text. It asks what God has said and how it should shape life. It can be imaginative and still be faithful, in the way a preacher today uses a psalm to teach patience, provided the psalm keeps its place as the authority. The danger appears when the interpretation becomes the thing believed in, when a teacher's application is repeated so often that hearers can no longer tell it apart from the commandment itself. Jesus addresses that danger directly, and his words are sharp because the stakes are not academic.
The early chapters of Genesis and the legal sections of Exodus and Deuteronomy generated centuries of this kind of work. Jewish teachers wrestled with how to keep Sabbath when a person is sick, how to treat a creditor, how to prepare food when travellers arrive. Some of their conclusions are careful and humane. F.F. Bruce noted that Jewish interpretation often showed real reverence for the text even when the conclusions were debatable. The New Testament nowhere forbids careful application. It forbids teaching the applications as God's own commands, because that confuses the voice of God with the voice of man.
The confrontation in Matthew 15:1-9
Matthew 15:1-2 says, "Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying," and they ask why his disciples break the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating. Notice the phrasing: the tradition of the elders. They are not quoting Moses. They are quoting the chain of teachers. Jesus does not deny that the tradition exists or that his disciples ignored it. Instead he asks why they themselves break the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition. He has reversed the charge, and he does it with a concrete example in the verses that follow, the practice of Corban, which Mark also records in Mark 7:1-13.
The Corban example is devastating in its simplicity. A person could declare a possession dedicated to God and so keep it from being used to help his father or mother. The tradition had a mechanism for this. The commandment said honour your father and mother. The mechanism allowed a man to look pious while neglecting the very duty God had named. Jesus calls this making void the word of God for the sake of tradition. He does not say the tradition was evil in every instance. He says that in this instance it was used to cancel a plain command, and that is the heart of the indictment, and it stands as a warning to every generation of teachers.
Then Jesus quotes Isaiah. These people draw near with their mouth but their heart is far from him, and they worship in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. That last phrase is the controlling idea for the whole passage. The problem is not tradition as such, but the transfer of authority. When a human ruling is taught with the weight of divine doctrine, worship itself becomes empty, because the congregation is being asked to give God's own allegiance to something God never said. That is why this passage reads so uncomfortably to anyone who teaches. It is a warning aimed at the teacher's mouth, not only at the ancient Pharisee.
Why Paul still valued his heritage
Paul's testimony in Galatians 1:14 is worth sitting with. He says, "I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." He does not mock this. He reports it as a fact and as the thing that made his conversion and calling remarkable. His learning was real, and God later used it. When he stood in synagogues and reasoned from the Scriptures, he knew the texts, the arguments, and the objections. The tradition shaped him, and grace redirected him. That is a different posture from contempt.
At the same time, Paul could be blunt about tradition as a source of confidence. In Philippians he counts his pedigree as loss for Christ, and in Colossians 2:8 he warns, "Be careful that you don't let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ." The test he applies is not age or sincerity but whether a teaching is after Christ. Ancient origin does not sanctify an error. A practice can be old, widely accepted, and still not be from God. Paul learned that lesson at cost, on a road, and he never forgot it.
This cuts against two errors at once. One error treats all tradition as rubbish, which is arrogant and historically naive; the church has always needed teachers, summaries, and handed-down wisdom. The other error treats tradition as though it were revelation, which is the error Jesus names in Matthew 15. Faithful believers have differed about how much weight to give post-biblical teaching; confessional traditions value it highly, others less so. But all should agree on the principle: nothing merely human may be taught as the command of God, and nothing human may be used to cancel what God has plainly said.
Testing teaching the way the Bereans did
Acts 17:10-11 says, "The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea. When they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue." The Bereans heard Paul, and they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Their nobility lay in the combination: they received the word with eagerness and they tested it. They did not reject apostolic teaching, and they did not swallow it unexamined. That is the pattern every Christian teacher should want in a congregation, and every congregation should practice toward its teachers, including this one.
Practically, that means asking three questions of any teaching. First, what text is being appealed to, and does it actually say this? Second, is this command presented as God's word or as human wisdom offered for consideration? Third, if I obey this, will it help me keep God's commands or give me a way around them? The Corban rule failed the third question spectacularly. It produced a religious feeling while enabling disobedience. Teaching that leaves a person feeling righteous while neglecting parents, justice, or mercy is suspect no matter how old it is or how confidently it is delivered.
2 Timothy 3:14-17 says, "But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them." Paul then grounds that confidence in the sacred writings, which are able to make a person wise for salvation and are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. The Scriptures are the equipment of the teacher. Not the teacher's cleverness, not the tradition's antiquity, but the God-breathed text. Timothy had a godly heritage in Lois and Eunice and in Paul, and Paul still sent him back to the writings themselves as the final court of appeal.
What this means for how we handle Scripture today
Every church has a mishnah, whether or not it uses the word: shared rulings about dress, music, alcohol, schooling, politics, and attendance. Most are not written down, which makes them harder to examine. The danger is identical to the first century. A preference becomes a conviction, a conviction becomes a test, and a test becomes a gospel, until a believer who differs on a matter God never addressed is treated as though they had denied the faith. Matthew 15 is a standing rebuke to that whole process, and it does not discriminate by denomination.
The remedy is neither to abandon all teaching nor to multiply rules. It is to keep the categories clear. This is what God commands, and here is the text. This is what wisdom suggests, and here is why. This is what our community has historically practiced, and here is its limit. Teachers who name their categories can be trusted and questioned. Teachers who blur them, whether by accident or design, end up doing what the Pharisees did, not because they are wicked, but because the pattern is so easy to fall into. Jesus named it plainly so that his disciples would recognise it when they saw it.
There is also a positive side. Midrash at its best, the humble searching of the text for the sake of obedience, is precisely what a good sermon does. It reads a passage in its context, compares it with the rest of Scripture, and applies it to real life, while keeping the application in its proper place. Done this way, tradition becomes a servant. Creeds, confessions, and the wisdom of older believers can keep us from repeating ancient errors and from thinking our own generation invented the faith. The test is always whether the word of God stands, or whether something else has been set on its throne.
Biblical fidelity check
What Matthew 15:1-9 establishes is that Jesus rejected the practice of teaching human tradition as divine doctrine and of using tradition to nullify God's command. It does not establish that all tradition is sinful, that all Jewish interpretation was corrupt, or that Jesus abolished the Law. He quotes Isaiah and sides with God's commandment against the human rule that contradicted it. It also does not establish that every dispute about religious practice is a Matthew 15 situation; the passage concerns teaching that cancels a clear command of God, which is narrower than mere difference over customs that Scripture leaves open.
A common misreading says Jesus condemned tradition altogether, so believers should reject all church history, creeds, and inherited teaching. That is wrong because it proves too much. Jesus observed Passover, attended synagogue, and used traditional forms of teaching. Paul told Timothy to entrust truth to faithful people who would teach others. The error Jesus names is not the existence of tradition but the transfer of divine authority to it. Another misreading says the issue was merely hand-washing hygiene. The text will not allow that, because Jesus immediately raises the Corban practice, where the tradition produced direct disobedience to a named commandment. The passage is about authority and worship, not about soap.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 15:1-9
Several surrounding texts help frame the issue of teaching and authority. For a careful look at how the gospel summary was handled in its own setting, see What Does 1 Timothy 1:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the broader theme of grace, mercy, and sound doctrine in the same letter, see 1 Timothy 1: Grace, Mercy, and Sound Doctrine. The qualifications and conduct expected of those who teach in the church are treated in 1 Timothy 3: Overseers and Servants in God's House. And the ongoing work of guarding the faith against error is developed in 1 Timothy 4: Guarding Faith and Godliness. Each of these passages assumes that truth is handed on by people, and that those people are accountable to the text they claim to serve.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Mishnah the same thing as the Old Testament?
No. The Old Testament is the inspired Scripture Jesus appealed to. The Mishnah is a later collection of Jewish legal teaching and debate, compiled around AD 200, and it claims to preserve earlier oral tradition. It is historically valuable for understanding the world of the New Testament, but the New Testament never treats it as Scripture. When Jesus said the Pharisees taught as doctrines the commandments of men, he was drawing exactly that line. Jewish tradition deserves study and respect; it does not carry the authority of the word of God.
Does Jesus forbid all religious tradition in Matthew 15?
He does not. Jesus kept Passover, taught in synagogues, and used recognised methods of argument. His charge is that the tradition of the elders was being taught as God's command and was being used to cancel God's command, as in the Corban practice. Tradition that serves the text and points to Christ is a gift; tradition that replaces the text or shields disobedience is the problem. The passage calls for clear categories, not for the abolition of all inherited teaching.
How can I tell whether a teaching is from God or from men?
Ask what text is being appealed to and whether it actually says that. Ask whether the teaching is offered as God's command or as human wisdom. Ask whether obeying it helps you keep God's plain commands or gives you a way around them. Then do what the Bereans did and search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Teachers are not the standard; the God-breathed writings are, and they are sufficient to equip God's people for every good work.
