Why Jesus disagreed with the Jewish leaders on their teaching and practices?
There was no prophet in Israel for over four centuries after the Prophet Malachi who lived around 450 BC. During this inter-testamental period with no prophet, the Jews developed diverse groups and interpreted the holy scriptures according to their own ideas and interests. They promoted certain ancestral traditions as divine laws and made people’s lives unnecessarily burdensome (Mt 23:4). This is precisely what Jesus strongly objected to and tried to restore the God-given laws to their original spirit and intentions. That unfortunately caused conflict between him and the Jewish groups. According to Jesus, the ceremonial laws attributed to the ancestors were not binding. So, Jesus was not a destroyer of the Law and the Prophets and an abolisher of ancestral traditions. He came to fulfill them by restoring the true spirit behind them (Mt 5:17).