Reading Moses, Seeing Jesus: Seth Postell

A Messianic Jewish Scholar Reads the Torah on Its Own Terms

The following is a summary of Naked Bible Podcast Episode 371, a conversation between scholar Michael Heiser and author Seth Postell. Postell is Dean of Israel College of the Bible (One for Israel), a Messianic Jewish scholar working in Israel. His book Reading Moses, Seeing Jesus is significant for our study of NCT because he arrives at conclusions consistent with what we have been studying, not from Paul or Hebrews first, but from inside the Torah's own literary structure. I encourage you to listen to the entire conversation. Below is a helpful highlight of the discussion with links to the timestamps.

Click here to listen to the full conversation on YouTube

The Torah Is a Narrative, Not a Law Code

The Torah's genre shapes everything. Read as narrative, the five books of Moses tell a story with a direction, and that direction is not "keep the commandments." The story moves through the law toward something the law itself cannot supply.

The Torah's Own Structure Anticipates Failure

The introduction (Genesis 1-11) and conclusion (Deuteronomy 29-34) both center on exile and disobedience, not successful law-keeping. Deuteronomy 31 has God telling Israel plainly: I know you will break this covenant. A law code with a built-in prediction of its own failure is not presenting itself as a permanent arrangement.

Hear Postell on the Torah's introduction and conclusion (23:06)

The Law Raises the Stakes but Does Not Fix the Problem

The wilderness narratives before and after Sinai mirror each other (same complaints, same failures) with one difference: before the law, violations go unpunished; after the law, thousands die. The law doesn't resolve Israel's rebellion. It exposes its depth and increases the consequences.

Hear Postell on the Sinai narrative structure (28:06)

The Torah's Anthropology Is Pessimistic by Design

The Hebrew word yetzer (human inclination) appears only three times in the Torah, and every instance describes a heart bent toward evil. The Torah's own diagnosis of the human condition is that the law cannot cure it. The solution Moses points to is a circumcised heart (Deuteronomy 30:6), language Jeremiah will later develop as the New Covenant. Moses got there first.

Hear Postell on the yetzer and Deuteronomy 30 (31:34)

The Torah Points Forward to a Coming King

The Torah's major poems (Genesis 49, Numbers 24, Deuteronomy 32-33) all share the same features: blessing, a royal figure, and the phrase "in the last days." These are not decorative. They are the Torah's own signposts pointing beyond Sinai to the seed of Abraham who will bring what the law never could.

Hear Postell on the last days poems (37:38)

The Law Is Scripture, Not the Covenant

Postell's key distinction: "The law is not covenant, but it's scripture and there's a big difference. I'm not under the law, but I certainly meditate on the law as scripture." The law remains fully profitable for the believer, just not as a covenant to keep. He identifies several functions it serves as scripture:

• Tutor: a temporary guardian exposing sin and pointing toward maturity in Christ
• Shadow: the Tabernacle, feasts, and sacrifices point to the reality now arrived in Jesus
• Theology: the laws reveal God's holiness, zeal, and the costliness of sin
• Wisdom: enduring ethical insight even where the cultural form no longer applies
• Prosecuting attorney: silencing excuses and driving the sinner to grace

Hear Postell on law as scripture, not covenant (54:15)

Full Torah Observance Is Structurally Impossible Now

The feasts, the sacrifices, and the calendar all presuppose a temple, a Levitical priesthood, and a central location. There is no footnote in Deuteronomy for what to do when those are gone. The system was designed as a whole, and its incompleteness now is not an accident. It was always pointing toward a priesthood that would replace it.

Hear Postell on the impossibility of Torah observance (55:34)

The Bottom Line

The believer who wants to return to Sinai is not being more faithful to Moses. They are misreading him. The Torah on its own terms refuses to be the destination. It is a road, and Moses himself built the signs pointing to where that road ends.

Hear Postell's closing summary (54:38)

Book: Reading Moses, Seeing Jesus by Seth Postell, Eitan Bar, and Erez Soref