Appendix B: The Proof-Text Ledger
This trial made one claim over and over: that when the verses the tradition uses to retire the Torah are read in the original Greek with their context restored, not one of them says what it is quoted to say. This ledger logs the receipts — verse by verse, with the finding and an honest tag — so you can test each one against your own Bible rather than take the verdict on trust.
Three tags. ROCK SOLID marks a finding the text establishes plainly — the Greek word, the grammar, or the immediate context settles it. PLAUSIBLE marks a real and well-grounded reading that still requires an interpretive choice. TENSION marks the one place a genuine conflict remains, named rather than smoothed. Unmarked entries are ROCK SOLID.
The Big Five — the verses the whole case is built on
1. Romans 10:4 — "Christ is the telos of the law." Telos means goal, aim, destination — not termination; Greek had katalyo / apollymi / katargeo for "abolish" and Paul used none of them. Confirmed in-letter: "we uphold the law" (3:31), and 10:5 quotes Torah approvingly the very next verse.
2. Galatians 3:13 — "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law." The genitive = the penalty the law pronounces on violators (Deuteronomy 28), not "the law which is a curse." Exagorazo = slave-market "bought out"; the penalty was paid. "Is the law contrary to the promises? By no means" (3:21).
3. Galatians 3:24–25 — the law as paidagogos. Not a teacher — the household slave who escorted the child to the teacher. Torah brings you to the Messiah; "no longer under a paidagogos" means the child matured (Torah moved from stone to heart, Jeremiah 31:33), not that the road was demolished.
4. Ephesians 2:15 — "abolishing the law of commandments in dogmasin." Dogmasin leans toward human decrees in its other New Testament uses; the entolon-versus-dogmasin split is a real reading but more than the grammar guarantees (the phrase can be read as one unit, "the law of commandments in decrees"). The verse's weight rests instead on what it names outright two lines up: the "dividing wall of hostility" — the soreg that fenced gentiles out of the Temple — torn down. The wall, not the Torah. PLAUSIBLE.
5. Colossians 2:14 — "canceling the cheirographon." The word (used only here in the New Testament) means a certificate of debt, an IOU. Context: "having forgiven us all our trespasses" (2:13) — the record of trespasses was nailed up, not the Law. And 2:16 confirms the believers were still keeping food laws, festivals, and Sabbaths.
The Supporting Cast — the verses that reinforce the Five
6. Romans 6:14 — "not under law but under grace" = not under the penalty; "shall we sin because we are not under law? By no means!" (6:15) — sin is still defined by Torah (3:20; 7:7).
7. Romans 7:4–6 — the marriage analogy: dead to the penalty, released to the risen Memra; the same law called holy, righteous, good, delightful six verses later (7:12, 22).
8. Galatians 2:16 — "works of the law" (erga nomou, the credential system) cannot justify — true; Torah instructs, it was never meant to justify. "We uphold the law" (Romans 3:31).
9. Galatians 2:19 — "through the law I died to the law" — the Torah's death-penalty borne on the Memra; dead to the condemnation, alive to God.
10. Galatians 5:18 — "led by the Spirit, not under the law" — the flesh-works listed next (5:19–21) are all Torah violations, and the Spirit's fruit (5:22–23) is entirely Torah-compatible: "against such things there is no law."
11. 2 Corinthians 3:7–11 — what is "brought to an end" is the fading glory on Moses' face (3:7), not the commandments. Two delivery systems — stone and heart — one Torah.
12. Colossians 2:16–17 — "let no one judge you in food, festival, or Sabbath" only makes sense if the believers were keeping them; "a shadow of things to come" — the shadow proves the substance. Don't let the decree-system condemn the practice; he never says stop.
13. 1 Timothy 4:4–5 — "everything created by God is good." In context (4:1–3) Paul is condemning ascetic heretics who forbid marriage and foods; he defends God's good creation — the foods Torah permits, received with thanksgiving — not repealing Leviticus 11.
14. 1 Corinthians 8 / Romans 14 — the idol-meat teaching is about idolatry and the weaker brother's conscience, not species or license; it climaxes in "flee from idolatry" (1 Corinthians 10:14) and forbids the idol-temple feast (10:21).
The Life — what the man actually did
15. Acts 18:18 — cuts his hair under a Nazirite vow, in private devotion.
16. Acts 21:20–26 — at James's urging, purifies himself in the Temple with four men under a vow and pays their expenses, to prove publicly that he "lives in observance of the law."
17. Acts 24:14 — under oath: "I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets."
18. Acts 25:8 — "I have committed no offense against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple."
19. Acts 28:17 — "I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers."
The Apostles — tested and kept
20. Acts 15:19–21, 29 — the Jerusalem Council requires no circumcision for salvation, sets four baseline prohibitions, and assumes ongoing Torah-learning ("Moses is read every Sabbath"). Torah affirmed, not abolished.
21. Galatians 2:9 — the pillars "added nothing" — imposed no new requirement — and gave Paul "the right hand of fellowship." Recognition, not defiance.
22. Galatians 2:11–14 — at Antioch Paul withstood Peter over hypocrisy (withdrawing from gentile tables under pressure), a conduct dispute between brothers, not a war over Torah. PLAUSIBLE as proof of standing; ROCK SOLID as a conduct rebuke.
23. Acts 10–11 — Peter's Cornelius vision opened the gentile door before Paul's mission; the apostles agreed it was God's doing.
The Witness of Peter
24. 2 Peter 3:15–16 — "our beloved brother Paul," writing "according to the wisdom given him," in "all his letters," ranked "as the other Scriptures" — letters that are "hard to understand," which "the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction." The fault is placed in the reader, not the writer. (On authorship: contested, but the warning holds either way; the acquittal does not hang on this letter.)
The One God — Paul the monotheist
25. 1 Corinthians 8:6 — Paul splits the Shema across one sentence: "one God, the Father, from whom" (the Source) and "one Lord, Yeshua, through whom" (the Manifestation). He sets the Word inside the creed, not beside it.
26. Colossians 1:15–17 — Yeshua is the eikon (image) of the invisible God; "firstborn" (prototokos = rank/heir, not first-created — Exodus 4:22; Psalm 89:27); and "by him all things were created" — the Creator is not one of the creatures.
27. Colossians 1:19; 2:9 — "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" — the Father's own fullness, in His Manifestation, in flesh. Not a second God.
28. Philippians 2:6–7 — "though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself." Paul is the one who tells us the fullness was real and was poured out.
29. Romans 9:5 / Titus 2:13 — Paul may call Yeshua "God" outright. PLAUSIBLE — Romans 9:5 turns on a comma; Titus 2:13's grammar (Granville Sharp) favors it. Kept as corroboration, not as load-bearing.
The one honest tension
30. 1 Corinthians 9:20–21 — Paul becomes "as one under the law" and "as one outside the law." TENSION — adaptive ministry or behavioral inconsistency; both readings are supportable. Named, not resolved — and far too small to overturn a lifetime of Torah-keeping.