Jesus' view of Scripture did not simply accommodate his culture, a fact that has implications for the view of Scripture Jesus' followers should hold (J. Wenham 1977:21; D. Wenham 1979). Here Jesus responds to false charges that he and his followers undermine the law. First, when Jesus says that he came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, he uses terms that in his culture would have conveyed his faithfulness to the Scriptures (v. 17).

Second, Jesus illustrates the eternality of God's law with a popular story line from contemporary Jewish teachers (5:18). Jesus' smallest letter (NIV), or "jot" (KJV), undoubtedly refers to the Hebrew letter yod, which Jewish teachers said would not pass from the law. They said that when Sarai's name was changed to Sarah, the yod removed from her name cried out from one generation to another, protesting its removal from Scripture, until finally, when Moses changed Oshea's name to Joshua, the yod was returned to Scripture. "So you see," the teachers would say, "not even this smallest letter can pass from the Bible." Jesus makes the same point from this tradition that later rabbis did: even the smallest details of God's law are essential.