AUTHORITY Authority

Authority

Religious authority is always vested to some extent in the whole community. Those with authority may wish to lead the community in a certain direction, but find that their followers simply are not willing to be led in that direction.

During his public life of ministry, Jesus of Nazareth rejected the authority of the oral Torah in Judaism, which is often referred to in the New Testament as the "tradition of the fathers." For this he substituted his own authority as interpreter of the written Torah (the Mosaic Law), namely, the authority of the one who proclaimed, in word ...