As Christians, are we required to observe Jewish tradition?

No one can deny that Christianity adopted much from the Jewish heritage, having stripped it of its literalism that kills [see 2 Cor. 3:6], given it an anointing of the true Gospel, and purified it of all that contradicts the spirit of the Holy Bible. Thus, Christianity raised this tradition from its spiritual childhood to spiritual maturity. I have written elsewhere of the relationship between the Lord Christ and Jewish tradition.¹¹⁹ The Church continues to sanctify certain hours of the day as a sign of sanctifying the whole day to the Lord.

At any rate, the Lord Christ Himself did not refrain from Jewish worship, but practiced it together with the Jewish people (Luke 4:16; Matt. 4:22) to bring them to the perfection of Christian worship. And so that no one would think that after the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples the Church was isolated from the Jewish heritage and Jewish worship, our teacher Luke the evangelist reminds us that they were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple” (Acts 2:46). Thus did they persisted in fellowship with the Jews in their daily worship through hymns, psalms, petitions, and readings from Scripture. But that was not the limit of their worship, for they gathered in the church (a house) to offer the mystery of the eucharist (Acts 2:47). The disciples would not have left the synagogues had the Jews not

118 Also known as the “Community Rule.” The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (revised edition), trans., Geza Vermes (Penguin Books, 2004): pp. 111–112.

119 See Fr Tadros Yacoub Malaty, Tradition and Orthodoxy (Sporting, Alexandria: St. George’s Coptic Orthodox Church, 1979).

insisted on their expulsion; while at the same time they were never bound in their worship by Jewish literality that kills.