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10.4.13


John Locke understands the mitzvot of the Torah as being directed towards the Jewish people specifically. This to some degree makes sense. We know that Christians do not consider themselves to be under the obligation to keep the Torah. This is I think the reason that they do not spend much effort ironing out the details of how to do so like the Talmud does --because to them the whole issue is irrelevant. And in fact we know the letters of Paul the very first Christian documents came out against keeping the Law. [However it is true that this is against the opinion of Mathew].
At any rate we see from John Locke that he held from the Divine Command Theory of Morality at least in terms of Jews. God said to us Jews so we have to do. And that is that and Shalom on Israel. Nekuda. Period.
The fact that Divine Command is a problem because of Plato's question is it good because the gods command it or do the gods command it because it is good?
This brings me to the point of this essay. Now we know why the Rambam and Saadia Geon abandoned
Divine Command theory and went for Natural Law.
This has lots of implications. First it means that gentiles are under the Law. After all it is natural. It also means that how we understand the law is significantly different. And this changes how we keep it. Now even though we do not poskin (decide the law)  like R Shimon ben Yochai considering this question of dorshin taama dekra [We do go by the reason for the verse as opposed to the literal meaning.] still you can see in the Rambam that understanding the reason for the mitzvah does change how we keep it.