Q. A Jewish friend of mine said that Gentiles are under the Noahide Laws but not the Torah. Could you explain this?

A. The Noahide Laws is a rabbinic interpretation of some of the laws found in the Scripture. They are called the Noahide Laws because these laws were binding upon all people who descended from Noah, therefore universal and by their interpretation there are only 7 but in actuality there are 30 or more. They say these laws predated Mt. Sinai. Any law repeated at Sinai applied to Gentiles and Jews, and any law not repeated applied to only Jewish people. The seven basic laws are in regard to idolatry, not to blaspheme the name of the Lord, establishing courts of justice, murder, adultery, robbery and not to eat the flesh cut from a living animal. These laws required a lot of speculation on the part of the rabbis and leave out pre-Sinaitic laws like circumcision and the Sabbath to name a few. The current idea that your friend was talking about is that rabbinic Judaism today does not believe that a Gentile should obey the commandments given after Mt. Sinai. This interpretation is of course preposterous and does not even warrant serious consideration but there is a growing movement called “B’nai Noach”” or “sons of Noah” in the orthodox Jewish world that attracts many Gentiles into rabbinic indoctrination, which also includes the rejection of Yeshua as the Messiah. The mindset behind this is the exclusion of Gentiles into Jewish community life basically. If a Gentile followed just these seven laws he could not fellowship with orthodox Jews unless he converts to Judaism and that seems to be the idea behind it quite frankly. Messianic Jewish leaders are beginning to say the same thing in such movements like the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America. They say that the Gentiles are not to follow the Torah because that is a “culturally distinctive” aspect of their walk with Yeshua as Jews and for a Gentile to follow Torah “confuses” the difference between Jews and Gentiles. Also, the major Messianic movements want to be accepted eventually as a part of mainstream Judaism and they can’t have Gentiles observing laws that would offend other Jews. So, in short there is no biblical evidence that there are only 7 Noahide Laws that Gentiles need to obey with the exclusion of other Torah commands. Jews and Gentiles are to obey the Scriptures as they apply to each person (1 Cor. 7. 17-24). This is a very basic explanation of this concept. For more information on this subject do a search on the Internet or go to “ Jewish Encyclopedia.com” and find out more.