Charles
Unfortunately we did not have the opportunity to complete our talk on Easter day so I am now responding to what we spoke about.
On Easter, you said to me that Christians ought learn about Judaism in order to understand Christianity better. However this does not ring true since in the next breath you said that the TORAH which IS Judaism is invalid since no one can completely obey every single commandment in it.
I understand this sentiment because I understand that as a nonJew you really know nothng about our TORAH other than what your prophet Paul had to say about it, and from what i have read about him, he seems to be as uniformed as many Christians appear to be when it comes to our TORAH, and because of the implications of what it means that people cannot follow the TORAH instructions given them by God. It implies that God is so perverse and has illwill to people that He delivers a book of Instructions to people knowing full well that they cannot obey it. Why on earth He would do it can only be that He wants us to feel bad about how woefully inadequate we are as worshippers and creations. Well just think about that.
However, as I said, I will attempt to tell you about a few things which may give you an understanding of some Jewish understandings about how Christians can benefit from knowing the Jewish undercurrents of the faith.
This may appear at first to be a great deal of material but if you stick to it and read it, you'll gain a new understanding of where Jews stand in regard to TORAH and in regard to Rabbi YESHUA. Thanks for the opportunity.
I am aware that in your scripture, that Paul wrote:
Galatians 5:3, KJV: "For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole TORAH." ... If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole TORAH of Moses."
You see, it isout of ignorance, that Paul has misled Christians. Many may assume that the TORAH is one giant responsibilty consisting of 613 parts. No. The truth is that the TORAH instructs us in 613 separate responsibilities. Between and among all the House of Israel, all responsibilities will be assumed.
When we do one MITSVAH, it is accounted to us that we fulfulled the whole of the TORAH.
Now see the following:
Matthew 5:17-18
Do not think that I have come to abolish the TORAH; I have not come to abolish the TORAH but to obey it. For really I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not one YOD nor one VAV will by any means disappear from the TORAH.
These Hebrew letters are the smallest letters in the alphabet but YESHUA says nothing of the TORAH is to disappear.
Our TALMUD quotes a saying of YESHUA that was taken from an early Nazarene work called GOSPEL OF THE HEBREWS. It is this Jewish gospel that forms the basis of what later became the Gospel According To Matthew. A later Christian scribe edited it to make it more appealing to gentiles just as another Christian scibe did with the book of Revelation, also an original Jewish apocalypse.
The TALMUD quoting YESHUA:
"I did not come to take anything away form the TORAH of Moses; neither did I come to add anything to the TORAH of Moses" - found in Jeffrey J. Butz' work, THE SECRET LEGACY OF JESUS.
Jerome, a leader of the early Catholic Church, wrote the following:
"The Gospel that the Nazarenes use, which I recently translated from Hebrew into Greek ... most people consider the authentic version of Matthew."
Butz writes that what is striking to him is that this GOSPEL OF THE HEBREWS "never once tries to prove that Jesus was the Son of God ___ or to bring people to have faith in Jesus." Their evangelistic movement was "not so much on the basis of claims made on behalf of Jesus, who was absent, but on the basis of their experience of the way of [the TORAH] life of members who were very much present to them."
Similarly, he quotes from the same Jewish gospel:
"A rich man said to him, 'Teacher, what good thing can I do and live'? He [YESHUA] said to him, 'O man, peform the commandments of the TORAH'".
Similarly, he quotes Irenaeus, an early church father who says that the Jewish followers of YESHUA regarded YESHUA's birth as a natural one. They regarded YESHUA as King of the Jews and "in fact, all the kings of Israel were called 'sons of God' ___
Gentile Christians were unfamiliar with the Jewish understanding of the term 'Son of God' and understood it in its Hellenistic [pagan] sense of a king literally born of a god." No religiously educated Jew would ever think of YESHUA or any other messiah figure as divine. He would consider that to be against the teaching of the TORAH.
But most gentiles are neither familiar with nor interested in the TORAH, the gift of God to the Jewish People. They only have Paul's unenlightened view of the TORAH, the view expressed by you to me on aster.
Justin Martyr, another early church father, even wrote to pagan gentiles that in propagating the idea that YESHUA is a divine son of Christianity's "God the Father", wrote "__ we propound nothing different from what YOU BELIEVE REGARDING THOSE WHOM YOU ESTEEM SONS OF JUPITER ___ WHO SAY THAT MERCURY IS THE ANGELIC WORD OF GOD --- IF WE EVEN AFFIRM THAT HE WAS BORN OF A VIRGIN, ACCEPT THIS IN COMMON WITH WHAT YOU ACCEPT OF PERSEUS."
Justin is saying nothng more than Christianity has more in common with the religion of pagans than with the religion of the very Jewish TORAH.
Butz goes on to say that this Greek understanding of YESHUA as similar to the Greek gods became an embarrassment to later Christians and continues as an embarrassment to many even to this day.
The next church father, Hippolytus, to speak about the beliefs of the Jewish folowers of YESHUA, said that they believed YESHUA "became the Christ as a result of his exceeding righteousness and STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE TORAH!"
But these Jewish followers also said, according to Hippolytus, that anyone who observed the TORAH perfectly could become messiah [Christ].
Obviously, the church fathers regarded the Jewish followers as heretics and that their [Nazarene] heresy began after the Roman destruction of the Nazarene mother church in CE70, and were completely oblivious of the fact tha these Jewish followers were carrying on in the faith of YESHUA's family and first disciples, especially the faith of YAKOV [James], the brother of YESHUA, the real faith of what became known as "Christianity".
In turn, the later Jewish followers of YESHUA regarded the gentile church as a false understanding of who YESHUA was. They rejected the "blending" philospohy of Paul's teaching in contradistinction to their own ideas of what was acceptable to God and what was forbidden by Him.
"The failure to distinguish between the clean and the unclean was for them the mark of a life alienated from God. ___
Peter ___ washes his hands after contact with nonJews, before eating, before prayers ___
The church father, Ambrosiaster, considered [them] as Pharisees ___
a leading rabbi, Resh Laqish, writing around the year 250, praised [them] for their adherence to the TORAH ___ [and they believed that] the TORAH is for all people and not just the Jews ___ [and by them]
Paul is considered a false apostle because he preaches the abrogation of the TORAH and teaches that the [Christian] gospel is a replacement for the TORAH ___ saying that he was not a Jew but a Greek who converted to Judaism only because he wanted to marry the high priest's daughter, and when he was spurned turned his anger against the Jewish people."
- THE SECRET LEGACY OF JESUS by Jeffrey J. Butz'
What is confusing to many Christians is that YESHUA's family and earliest followers were called Nazarenes. It's stated in Acts 11:26, that the disciples of Jesus Christ "were first called Christians in Antioch where Paul started on his missionary journeys. And isn't it interesting that the very place where Christianity began is named after the Greek king Antiochus who tried to destroy the TORAH of Judaism which is what Paul's mission to the gentiles also tried to do?
The true Jewish followers already had the name of Nazarenes. So why was it necessary to establish a new name for them other than that Paul wanted to distinguish his gentile converts and his gentile understanding of who YESHUA was from the real apostles of Jerusalem who INSISTED that any follower of YESHUA had to FOLLOW THE TORAH which Paul despised. He was no Jew, and if he were, he then became as nonJewish as his converts. He even identifies with them by using the expression "we" -- "we are no longer under the Law" as if Chrtians were EVER under the TORAH. The TORAH was given to Jews and to no one else.
What is interesting is that when Paul had his vision of Jesus admonishing him, and he became blind, some Nazarenes brought him to their community in Damascus where he was ministered to by a man named CHANANYAH who was a devout observer of the TORAH.
Acts Of The Apostles: chapter 22:12,13
“A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the TORAH and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.
So Paul's first encounter with the "Jesus" people was with a person in a position of authority among the Jewish followers of YESHUA. Yet Paul himself later turned against the TORAH of the man who saved and cured him! Yes, Paul the Chameleon true to his own word was "all things to all men."
- 1 Corinthians 9:19-23
But who knew YESHUA best? Paul or his own brother, YAKOV HATSADIK, James the Just? Of ourse his brother YAKOV.
Acts 21: 20-22
Then YAKOV said to Paul, You see how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the TORAH. But they are under the impression that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to forsake the TORAH of Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or observe our customs.
Unlike the gentile Christian church which condemned the unbelieving Jews, the Jewish followers of YESHUA did not condemn their unbelieving brothers but contunued to support them. This attitude probably represented their animosity to Paul's belief that the gospel of Jesus replaced the TORAH of the Jews.
Oh how awful. YOU say that the TORAH is now null. What would you then have us do? Forsake the TORAH? But if we do, then we are no longer Jews for what makes us Jewish? Nothing but the TORAH. If you tell Jews that their religion is null, you should be prepared to tell them what to do about it, and be prepared for their response.
It might be you who see Jesus as king of the Jews, who should follow the same Jewish TORAH that your lord and savior followed.
Thanks again for the opportunity. Please feel free to respond.