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Sukkot: The Man Who Had No Coat

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There was once a man, whom we will call Andy, who was diagnosed with a rare and severe illness. Unique conditions often call for unconventional treatments, and he was advised to try psycho-physical therapy: he was told to find someone who lives in complete joy with no worries, ask him for his coat, and wear that man’s coat for seven days. Hopeful that he would soon feel healthy again, Andy embarked on his mission to find such a person. He searched everywhere, asking everyone he met if they or someone they knew was completely happy without worries. Unfortunately, after many months he still hadn’t found anyone who fit the description.

Finally, with the debilitating illness still progressing, Andy was referred to a man named Sam who, he was told, was happy and had no worries at all. It was winter, yet Andy anxiously trudged through the snow to a park bench where he was told Sam could be found. Andy sat down next to Sam and began his inquiry.

“Are you Sam, the man they say is filled with joy, who has no worries?” Andy asked.

“Yes, indeed I am,” Sam replied with a smile.

“Wonderful! May I borrow your coat for seven days? It would really mean a lot to me.”

“Of course! I would love to lend you my coat, but there’s just one problem.”

“What’s that, Sam?”

“I have no coat.”

-Rabbi Mordechai Dixler
Program Director, Project Genesis/Torah.org
“The Party That Never Ends”
ProjectGenesis.org

This lesson from Rabbi Dixler somewhat reminds me of something that the Master taught:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. –Matthew 6:19-21 (ESV)

But what does all this have to do with Sukkot? Plenty.

As Rabbi Dixler points out in his commentary, during Yom Kippur, observant Jews immerse themselves in prayer and supplication before God, turning aside from physical pleasures and imploring their Creator to help them build a new future. Immediately after such a time of plunging into the intense personal and spiritual depths, emerging after the fast and knowing that Sukkot is immediately upon them, the soul rebounds and rises into great joy.

Interestingly enough, Jews are to leave their regular dwellings and reside in “simple huts with deliberately poor roofing” for this week-long holiday, entertaining their guests including, traditionally, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David…a different guest each night. It would be like welcoming a different king on each successive night, and entertaining them in a makeshift lean-to. After the personal deprivation of Yom Kippur, why eat and drink and sleep in, what for some of us, might be a small, damp, cold, flimsy shelter?

I think the secret is in what we read from Matthew’s account of the teachings of Jesus. With the roof of the tent purposefully incomplete, allowing in rain and letting us see the stars above us at night, we are trading our physical, secular home for one which Rabbi Dixler calls a “new spiritual home” which “serves to inject the spiritual, genuine, joy experienced on Yom Kippur into common daily activities.”

But what about Andy and Sam?

One does not need a coat to be the happiest man alive. In fact, if we rely on non-spiritual pursuits for our joy, we’ll never be satisfied. As the Sages say, “a person does not leave this world with even half of what he wanted” (Koheles Raba, 1:34). Nothing in this world can live up to our dreams, and a non-spiritual focus ultimately ends in disappointment.

The answer is not asceticism. As one of my teachers, Rabbi Berel Wein, used to say in this context, “this is not a plea for poverty, my friends!” We do learn, however, that for any material pursuit or attainment to last, it must at least be rooted in spirituality. If we buy delicious food to share with others, buy a house to raise a family and welcome guests, or pursue a lucrative career to have money to help those in need, we’ll experience the spiritual joy along with the physical joy, and then it is guaranteed to last. (Based on Nesivos Shalom)

Under the sukkahI suspect that Andy was relieved of his disorder, not by wearing Sam’s non-existent coat for the next seven days, but by understanding why he didn’t have one. Although you and I might consider spending seven days and nights living, eating, and sleeping under the clouds and the sky as a bit uncomfortable (one or two nights might seem like a camp out), there is joy in relying on God. Our immediate surroundings may seem poor, but we are inundated by the boundless treasures of Heaven. By living in a flimsy structure and yet decorating it elaborately, often with lights, trinkets, pictures and such, and then, inviting guests, from the poorest to the richest, into our hovel, and feeding them abundant food and drink, we are experiencing the reality of our existence. We live on earth and are able to enjoy all that it has to offer, but we are also dependent on the blessings of Heaven above us to shelter our heads from the harsh elements of this life.

One can take pleasure in what the world has to offer and this, God approves of. But the world will not be our lasting joy. Only God can give that.

Sukkot begins tonight, September 30th, at sundown. Here’s an infographic that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Sukkot.

Chag Sameach and Good Sukkos.

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Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 4

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Her unifying thesis is that modern Jewish thinkers invented the notion that Judaism is a religion in response to the distinctive challenges of European modernity. In the pre-modern period, “it simply was not possible…to conceive Jewish religion, nationality, and what we call culture as distinct from one another.” This was because Jewish communities were corporate entities whose authority over their members was recognized by the state. The community collected taxes, adjudicated civil disputes through rabbinic courts, and enforced halakhic norms by punishing religious deviants through fines, corporal punishments, or excommunication.

-Michah Gottlieb
“Are We All Protestants Now?”
from his review of Leora Batnitzky’s book
How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought
at Jewish Review of Books

Why Native American religions, when scholars acknowledge that Native American tribes do not traditionally distinguish between religion and the rest of life?

-William T. Cavanaugh
Chapter 1: “The Anatomy of the Myth”
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

When I was reviewing Part 3 of this series, (which inspired a very spirited conversation) I realized that there were actually two overlapping topics involved. The first I’ve already attempted to address, which is whether or not Rabbinic authority is Divinely sanctioned or inspired. The second is implied but you have to be paying attention to see it. Is Judaism a “religion?”

Gottlieb’s review presents Batnitzky’s understanding of “the Protestant conception of religion” this way:

  1. “Religion denotes a sphere of life separate and distinct from all others” such as “politics, morality, science and economics.”
  2. Religion is a “largely private affair, not public.”
  3. Religion is “voluntary and not compulsory.”
  4. Religion is about “personal belief or faith,” which she contrasts with the view that religion is primarily about ritual practice or “performance.”

This very much reminds me of a significant point Cavanaugh made in his book about the problem in defining religion as a separate entity from other social, political, and cultural realms. Prior to the rise of the modern, western culture, it was impossible to separate religion (Christian, Jewish, Islam) from those other entities. More specifically, for the Jewish people historically, being “Jewish” wasn’t just a matter of what you believed but rather, it was an individual’s full, lived, experience and identity, biologically, culturally, ethnically, nationally, and communally.

The fact that Judaism has multiple expressions, both in ancient and modern times doesn’t change this understanding. Each community established and maintained its own local, internal standards across the boundaries of politics, social norms, morality, legality, spirituality, and more. Most likely, before a certain point in human history and development, so did Christianity, at least according to Cavanaugh.

While none of this speaks to the idea that the Rabbinic sages ever had “Divine authority” to establish binding halakhah for their communities, it does address strongly the right of Judaism to define itself biologically, conceptually, ethnically, culturally, educationally, communally, and behaviorally.

In Part 3 of this series, I presented a challenge to the Divine authority of the Rabbis as offered in a paper written by Tim Hegg: What Version of the Mishnah did Paul Read? (PDF). Hegg doesn’t specifically address the Jewish right to self-definition or self-government, but, for the Messianic Jewish believer, he does say that “there is no historical nor biblical case for accepting oral Torah as divinely sanctioned. Nevermind that all that encompasses the Talmud cannot simply be reduced down to the concept of “oral Torah,” as the initial writings of the Talmud (Babylonian and Jerusalem) and their subsequent commentaries, arguments, and judgments cross multiple expressions and sects of Judaism over nearly 2,000 years and are incredibly vast and complex. The question isn’t whether or not ancient oral Law is Mishnah. The question is whether or not the Mishnaic Rabbis have Divine authority to write Mishnah.

But setting aside the Biblical implications and matters of “Divine inspiration” for a moment, let’s take a look at Talmud in a different manner (I’m going to be compressing a lot of history into just a few sentences, so please be forgiving). After the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of most (but not all) Jews from “Palestine,” Jews, as a people, were at dire risk of dissolving and assimilating into the surrounding cultures. The very heart of Judaism up to that point, the Temple in Holy Jerusalem, had been leveled and pillaged. The majority of the Jewish people had once again been exiled; barred from the Land that was the home and lifeblood of every Jew. What most defined Judaism and Jewish people was now gone and within a few generations, everything that history had once recognized as Jewish would follow.

The “salvation” of the Jewish people was that compilation of texts, wisdom, and rulings that we consider the Talmud. No, it was not an immediate “fix” and in fact, it would be centuries before the Talmud would become the central feature in Jewish life.

But it did become that central feature, replacing, in some manner, the Temple and the sacrifices with prayers and charity. Instead of Jews making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover or Sukkot, they fervently beseeched God to bring the Messiah and to restore all that was lost. Judaism was functionally reorganized to exist and in many instances, to thrive, as locally internal communities which both adapted to historical and environmental imperatives and preserved the essence of Judaism, the practice of the Torah and the mitzvot, and the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, both as individual and communal faith.

But as we’ve seen, it was impossible to separate the religion from the people. The definition for everything that was (and is) Jewish was (and is) encapsulated in that expansive collection of tomes known as the Talmud.

No one in their right mind is going to dispute the Jewish right to self-identification and self-definition. No Christian is simply going to walk into a synagogue and start lambasting the Rabbi, the Cantor, and the worshipers for following “man-made traditions” while ignoring the Bible.

However, the world of Messianic Judaism is unique. There are few halalaic Jews currently occupying Messianic Judaism, but their number is growing. Imagine being Jewish in that fully lived, experiential, educational, cultural, communal, ethnic (and so on) manner I previously described. Now imagine that fully lived Jew coming to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as the one, true Messiah of God. This is not a Jew, like so many in the past, who has converted from Judaism to Christianity, leaving Mishnah and Torah in the dust. This is a Jew who has come to faith in the Jewish Messiah and who sees no dissonance in remaining fully and completely Jewish and acknowledging that the “Maggid of Natzaret” is the prophesied Moshiach.

Why can’t this Jew continue to live out the same Jewish experience he or she always has? Why can’t this person remain a Jew in every sense of the word, including all those words I used above to define a Jew? The Talmud, the historic and ancient Rabbis, the judgments, rulings, experiences, and everything else that is wrapped up in what is Jewish, cannot be separated out and compartmentalized for observant Jews (yes, different Jewish religious traditions do minimize certain aspects of that identity and Jews who are atheists may remove major portions of it altogether). For a Gentile and/or Christian individual or entity to demand that a Jew remove, discount, eliminate, or modify Talmud, halakhah, the mitzvot, and so on would result in removing Judaism from the observant Jew (Messianic or otherwise). What defines Judaism as Judaism would be gone.

Now, why in the world would Christians, including One Law, One Torah, and Hebrew Roots Christians, want to tell a Messianic Jew that, in order to be accepted by them and (in theory) by God, they had to do away with everything that made them Jewish?

If the Gentile Christians in these varied “Hebraic” Christian congregations and movements choose not to employ the Talmud or halakhah into their worship practices or lifestyles, it is probably for the best since they are not Jewish. But it is the height of presumptive arrogance to declare that any Jew who has faith in Yeshua as Messiah must dispense with the Talmud, and thus their Jewish identity, as well.

Whether the Talmud is an expression of the Divine will or not, it is illogical, unreasonable, and perhaps even a little cruel to demand that a Jew stop being a Jew in order to worship the Jewish Messiah. But by requiring that Messianic Jews devalue the Talmud, that’s exactly what many Gentile Christian pundits in the Hebrew Roots space are doing.

I’ve been accused of being overly concerned with the issue of Supersessionism, (I think “supersessionoia” was the term that was coined to describe me) but if you look at the dynamics I’ve been illustrating in this blog post, it seems rather plain that, even unintentionally, certain elements in the Hebrew Roots (One Law, One Torah, Two-house, etc…) movement are suggesting that the “Jewishness” of Jews in the Messianic movement be diminished in order to fulfill a Christian imperative.

My final note for this missive is one of irony. If written Torah, the Christian Bible, and Jesus are the only valid authorities for religious practice and lifestyle in the Hebrew Roots movement (including One Law/One Torah, and so on), then why do all of their groups and congregations follow a modern Jewish synagogue model when they worship? Why do all the men where kippot? Why do all the men wear tallit gadolim with tzitzit that are halalically correct? Why do they daven with modern Jewish siddurim? Why, in less than a week, will they construct their sukkot according to Rabbinically prescribed specifications?

In other words, why are you guys trying so hard to look and act Jewish when you’re not?

How can you disdain the authority of Jewish halakhah and Talmudic practice when virtually every religious act you diligently perform comes from the rulings and decisions of the Talmudic Rabbis?

Part 5 will continue with investigating the concept of “Messianic halakhah” and whether or not any of it apply to non-Jews within the various contexts of Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots.

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Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 2

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Who were the Jewish followers of Jesus?

The members of the Jesus sect were clearly religious Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. They could not have believed that Jesus was “god” and remained Jewish, as such a belief would have been complete idolatry in Jewish eyes and would have appeared closer to the Greco-Roman pagan beliefs where gods took on human form and had relations with humans.

At any rate, the Jesus sect, like numerous other sects in the Land of Israel, would certainly have died out even if its members had survived the revolts against Rome in the first and second centuries. (The Pharisees survived in part due to the vision of their leader, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai)

So where did all the Christians comes from? Indeed, where did Christianity come from?

For the answer, we must look at another colorful personality who appeared on the scene after the death of Jesus, and who is given the credit by virtually every historian of Christianity for spreading the message of Jesus worldwide, if not fashioning Christianity for the consumption of the pagan world.

He was a Jew—originally known as Saul—who became famous in Christianity as “Saint Paul.”

–Rabbi Ken Shiro
“Seeds of Christianity”
#40 in the “Crash Course in Jewish History” series
Judaism Online: SimpleToRemember.com

Do religions evolve? That is, can we believe that it is reasonable and expected for any given religious structure to evolve over time in order to adapt to changes in the environment that affect the requirements of the religion’s followers? I asked that question in Part 1 of this series and it stands before me, taunting me, and perhaps even haunting me.

Among people of faith, Christians particularly tend to believe that the truths we possess about God and who we are in Christ are fixed, immutable, unchangeable information that exists and is applied universally in the same manner as when Jesus walked the earth.

That’s not actually true, of course. Over the past 2,000 or so, the Christian faith has metamorphosed tremendously. It’s extremely unlikely that the Apostle Paul, walking into a modern Baptist church, would recognize anything as familiar, even understanding that the church was for only Gentiles and that no observant Jews would be present. What would Paul make of Constantine? How would he perceive the ancient Holy Roman Catholic church? And what about Martin Luther and the reformation? How would Paul look at a 19th century American “fire and brimstone” preacher leading a tent revival meeting somewhere just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma?

(If you want to get a sort of “snapshot” of the changes that Christianity has undergone over the long centuries, visit Wikipedia’s History of Christianity page)

Wait a minute. Doesn’t the title of this series say “the Evolution of Judaism?” Yes, it does. However, in trying to figure out how to write Part 2 of this series, it was easier for me to approach the evolutionary progression of Judaism by way of Christianity. After all Christianity started out as a small sect of Judaism and, through an extraordinary process, spread like wildfire through the Gentile diaspora world of the First and Second Centuries C.E. Since a large part of the audience for this series are both Jews who have come to faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah, and non-Jews who worship Jesus and yet, in some manner or fashion, are attracted to Judaism, my decision to access Judaism by accessing Christianity makes sense to me (though you may not agree).

While the changes that have occurred within Christianity and it’s somewhat fragmented nature in the early 21st century are undeniable, are these changes actual developmental or evolutionary stages that are required of this, or any religion, in order to survive? After all, like many species of plants and animals, over the long centuries many religions and faith groups have died out. They existed once, even flourished for a time, but are no more.

I can’t say that they ceased to exist because they failed to adapt, although that’s certainly an interesting thought. I can’t really find much (at least that’s readily available online) to support what I’m trying to say, but a site called TED.com (Technology, Entertainment, Design: a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading), presents the following questions:

Have religious belief systems evolved over time?

While many religious believers do not accept the theory of evolution in regards to the development of life, from a historical perspective it seems religious and spiritual belief systems themselves have evolved and developed over time.

From the earliest Venus figurines, cave paintings, early burial sites, naturel and ancestor spirits, polytheistic beliefs to the monotheistic, to deist and others.

Do the strongest survive? Do they adapt? Do they interbreed and influence each other? Do they go extinct? Is there some natural selection process that passes on religious ideas memes, and sees others become extinct?

What properties help a religion survive and thrive? Invisible gods perhaps. Evangelical rather than hereditary. Religions linked to economically and militarily strong cultures perhaps. Do religions have a symbiotic relationship with their host cultures – making them stronger and more united supporting development and progress and hence protecting the religion itself.

What are the greatest challenges to the survival of different religions today, and what will help them survive and thrive?

from “Do religions evolve?”
TED.com

I could probably study for years and eventually write a paper trying to answer those questions. But maybe the seeds of the answer are found in Judaism:

“I think sometimes Christians read the Bible and think, ‘Oh, this is what Judaism is,’” he says. “Judaism is a living tradition that continues to grow and adapt and change well beyond the Biblical age.”

-Greg Johnson quoting
Rabbi Mike Uram, director of Penn Hillel
“Tracing the Talmud’s journey”
upenn.edu

Rabbi Uram is describing the point that I’m trying to make: that religions, particularly Judaism, aren’t fixed and static entities with wholly unchanging rules, commandments, and practices that are frozen across history, geography, and culture. The Talmud and how it is studied and understood in Judaism helps us (well, it helps me) comprehend how religious structures can purposefully adapt and change over time and across sub-groups of the religion, in order to better serve the needs of each generation of followers.

PogromNaturally, I can’t say that all changes across Christianity and Judaism have always been beneficial and productive. Certainly the schism between the church and the synagogue that occurred in the early centuries of the common era has resulted in tremendous harm to the Jewish people. The church is guilty of a long list of crimes against the Jews, including the pogroms, the inquisitions, the burning of synagogues, the destruction of Torah scrolls and volumes of Talmud, and quite horribly, the wholesale slaughter of Jewish men, women, and children. All committed in the name of Christ.

But all of that is rapidly (relative to the speed of history) changing. There is more interfaith cooperation between many Christians and religious Jews. It is common to find Christians supporting Israel and Jewish Israeli causes. If the church is currently evolving, it definitely does seem beneficial in terms of its current viewpoint toward Judaism.

The dark side of suggesting that religions evolve is that such change may be at the cost of the enduring truths of the Bible and the will of God. Such change may be solely for the purpose of fitting in with the surrounding culture, while throwing principles, morals, and ethics under a bus.

I can’t say that hasn’t happened in either Christianity or Judaism.

But I can’t say that all change is bad, either. It seems, especially in the case of Judaism, that a fine balance must take place between adapting to environmental changes and protecting the inner core of the faith. I believe that, more than anything, that is exactly the function of the Talmud in Judaism. In spite of overwhelmingly hostile attempts to eradicate Judaism and exterminate anything that might appear distinctively Jewish (including the people), not only do Jews remain in the world today, but a significant portion of the practices established in the Torah 3,300 years ago continue to be performed in some manner.

Jewish men still wear fringes on their clothing. The Shabbat rest is still observed. Prayers are still offered while facing Jerusalem. Meats are still slaughtered in the customary fashion, and prepared in accordance to the traditions. Men still daven in minyans and their prayers are spoken in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Why am I writing this? I live in the world today, so why should I be concerned about whether or not the church has evolved? The church is what it is today and I live in today, so why does it matter? Here’s what I said in Part 1 that’s relevant to these questions.

Now that we’ve seen evidence that it is reasonable to believe Jesus could have accepted Pharisaic authority to establish ancient halakhah and that he not only upheld portions of that halakhah but practiced it as well, (see the full text of Rabbinowitz for details) Part 2 (although I’m not sure when I’ll write it) will examine the “reasonableness” of Christianity and Judaism evolving or developing from ancient to modern forms. After examining that point, we shall try to see if it is even possible for a returning Jewish Messiah King to accept the halakhah that will exist on the day of his return to Jerusalem.

I have no way to really prove that religions evolve or develop forward in time in a productive and beneficial manner. There are hints that how Talmud and tradition is applied in Judaism is both adaptive and stabilizing, and that this is what has enabled religious Judaism and Jews as a people to be preserved throughout their history.

But what does God think about it all?

I have no idea and I don’t believe anyone can know.

But we can speculate (and speculate and speculate, the blogosphere is full of speculation). In Part 1, I presented some information that seems to support how Jesus upheld the authority of the Pharisees (and the larger structure of religious Judaism) to establish and apply halakhah, and how Jesus even advised his Jewish disciples to follow the halakhah of the Pharisees.

But the Rabbinowitz paper (PDF) also said that the authority of the Pharisees was destined to pass away. Eventually, it would no longer be valid. So what would replace it, not just among the small sect of Jewish “Nazarenes” who followed Jesus, but for all of Judaism in its various divisions, both during the life of Jesus and well beyond?

If Jesus established a distinctive halakhah for his Jewish disciples, it died with the passing of ancient “Messianic Judaism”. The Gentile church moved far, far away from anything even remotely Jewish, so they wouldn’t have carried his halakhah forward, and the descendants of the Jews who were disciples of Jesus fell away in only a few centuries or less. After that, only a Judaism that did not recognize Jesus as Messiah remained to establish law, interpretation, tradition, and halakhah for the Jewish people.

the-teacher2All we have of the teachings of Jesus are what is recorded in the Gospels. The early days of the First Century church are seen mainly through the eyes of Paul and a small group of other disciples. We aren’t even sure of who really wrote most of the New Testament, but if there was a “halakhah of Jesus” that deviated from the halakhah established by Second Temple period normative Judaism, only tiny bits and pieces survived in what became canonized into our Bibles.

I’m not proposing any answers today. I just need to throw some large, sweeping concepts out into the open, because I can see them better there than inside the swirling maelstrom of my thoughts.

Ultimately, the questions are:

  • Do religions naturally evolve in productive ways, both to preserve the core faith and to adapt to external changes in history, geography, and culture?
  • Can we see and trace the evolutionary mechanisms and stages in order to differentiate between productive, expected changes and developmental dead ends?
  • Has Christianity evolved in a productive manner and can we identify the benefits (local or global) of that evolutionary process today in the church?
  • Has Judaism evolved in a productive manner and can we identify the benefits (local or global) of that evolutionary process today in the synagogue?
  • At the coming/return of the Messiah (your specific viewpoint on this depends on whether you’re a normative Jew, Messianic, or a Christian), how might the Messiah view and judge Christianity and Judaism relative to how they have changed in the past 2,000 years?

I guess I should have added one last question: “Do I have a prayer of even beginning to answer those questions in a meaningful way?

Probably not, but as I’m fond of saying, this blog is more about chronicling whatever I’m thinking about at any given point in time than actually doling out satisfying answers to complicated questions.

That said, Part 3 of this series, which will be tomorrow’s “morning meditation,” takes an extremely interesting direction, leveraging the opinions of a particular and well-known (in some circles) “One Torah” scholar who believes that Mishnah and “Divine authority” have nothing to do with each other.

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Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 1

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The ever present studentMoses received the Torah from [G-d at] Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua gave it over to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] would always say these three things: Be cautious in judgment. Establish many pupils. And make a safety fence around the Torah.

-Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers) 1:1

Our first order of business must be to determine the meaning of the phrase “the Seat of Moses”… The precise meaning of the term remains a subject of much debate among scholars. Resolving this question is important, because it has direct bearing upon our understanding of the Pharisees authority and influence in Second Temple Judaism. If Jesus uses “the Seat of Moses” pejoratively, this weakens the argument that the Pharisees exercised any real, or at least any legitimate, authority within the religious and social life of Israel. If, however, he uses the term positively, or as a statement of fact, this strengthens our conviction that the Pharisees had become the authoritative interpreters of the Torah and that their halakhic decisions were accepted by most people within Israel.

-Noel S. Rabbinowitz
“Matthew 23:2-4: Does Jesus Recognize the Authority of the Pharisees
and Does He Endorse their Halakhah?”
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46:3 (September 2003): 423-4 (PDF)

Yes, I know…another series. But this has been on my mind for awhile and during the Rosh Hashanah celebration, I decided to put it into words.

I’m hoping some of my loyal readers who are educationally equipped to examine this information will comment on this topic as it is quite complex and controvertial. Keep in mind, that’s not a promise that I’ll always accept whatever is posted as a response. Your priorities and perspectives may not agree with my own. For example, I reject the common Christian viewpoint that Jesus dismissed all Jewish oral tradition and halakhah of his day, as well as the Torah outright, and replaced it with grace. You’ll see support for my opinion in a minute.

This blog post quotes heavily from Noel Rabbinowitz’s paper “Matthew 23:2-4: Does Jesus Recognize the Authority of the Pharisees and Does He Endorse their Halakhah?” which was published in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46:3 (September 2003): 423-47. I want to acknowledge that I first found this paper linked to the Rosh Pina Project blog post, “Did Jesus Recognize Halakhah?” Although I don’t frequently visit their site, Rosh Pina has a good reputation in the Messianic Jewish space and they’re considered a good and fair source of information.

Why am I writing this?

There have been numerous suggestions on the web that there is no validity in the authority of the Talmudic sages to establish halakhah that would apply to the Messianic Jewish community. By “Messianic Jewish,” I specifically mean a form of Judaism, in its ideal expression, that is wholly “owned and operated” by people who are halachically Jewish (having at least a mother who is Jewish) and (again, ideally) raised in a Jewish home, possessing of a Jewish education, and who are fully identified as ethnically, culturally, and religiously Jewish.

OK, that’s a tall order, since even in the most “Jewish” of Messianic Jewish congregations, the majority of members, and probably a good number of the leaders, are non-Jews. But the idea is that people who come from a very Jewish lived experience and who have come to faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Jewish Messiah King, must have a completely appropriate synagogue setting at which to worship, daven in a minyan, celebrate the holidays, and be part of a fully Jewish community that is dedicated to the Jewish Messiah.

A Rabbi TeachingThe problem is that a significant number of non-Jews who are loosely associated with the Messianic Jewish movement via Hebrew Roots, One Law, and Two-House groups, mildly to vehemently oppose any authority outside of the written Torah, as having the ability to dictate religious and ritual practice. This sort of makes sense given the fact that all of the non-Jews and most of the Jews who make up any portion of Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots entered the movement through the church. There’s an enormous perceptual and conceptual hold over from the church in the minds of these folks that says Jesus replaced, if not the Law, halakhah and oral tradition with a type of “grace” and pure interpretation of the Torah that doesn’t require Rabbinic judgments or rulings.

But if you’re Jewish in a fully lived and experiential sense and it is your complete identity, then one does not simply do away with the Talmud with a bit of theological slight-of-hand. My dear wife keeps trying to tell me that it’s impossible to understand and interpret the Torah apart from the traditions. For a Jew, this is obvious. For a Christian (and I include Hebrew Roots in this category), it is practically heresy.

But to delete the Talmud or even to substantially alter it such that it becomes more palatable to Christian Gentile theology and doctrine (again, I’m including Hebrew Roots here), results in the deletion of anything “Jewish” in that theology and doctrine. Jews get a little nervous when someone comes along and tries to invalidate their entire religious and cultural lifestyle.

The detractors and “enemies” of Talmudic authority say that they only recognize Jesus Christ has having authority to interpret Torah and establish a type of “Messianic halakhah” for at least Gentiles and maybe Jews in the modern Messianic movement. But doing away with Jewish “Rabbinics” to define Jewish (including Messianic) practice means that these detractors must discover or recover a complete understanding of how the First Century CE church was organized and operated…

…and we don’t have that. Right from the start, recreating the Church as it actually was in the day of Peter, Paul, and James is doomed to fail.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s OK for the Judaism and Christianity of today to not be exactly the same as it was 2,000 years ago. Maybe it’s even impossible to work from a twenty century old model of these ancient religious forms.

What if we don’t have to?

One of the problems with accepting modern Jewish halakhah as authoritative, is the question of whether or not Jesus even accepted the halakhah that existed in the Second Temple era. That’s where Rabbinowitz’s paper comes in. I intend to use his work to address the question of whether or not Jesus was likely to have accepted even some of the halakhah of his day. If he was, my next question (which will be the subject of a future “meditation”) will be whether or not, at his second coming (assuming it occurs within the reasonably forseeable future) he might accept modern Jewish halakhah. I know, that requires speculation and more guesswork than I probably should consider, but it’s a compelling question.

This also addresses a larger and related topic: Do religions evolve and is that acceptable to God? Yes, we know that Christianity today isn’t the same as it was when Paul was planting his first churches. Modern Judaism as well is, by requirement, practiced in a different manner than when the sacrifices could still be offered in the Temple of God.

But is “evolution” of religion reasonable, expected, and acceptable to God? I suppose there’s no way to know this in an absolute way, but we can take a stab at it. The first step is an examination of Rabbinowitz’s paper, “Matthew 23:2-4: Does Jesus Recognize the Authority of the Pharisees and Does He Endorse their Halakhah?”

The first question we look at in the paper is whether or not Jesus accepted the scribes and the Pharisees legitimately possessing the authority to interpret the Torah for the Jewish population and to establish and enforce specific halakhah?

Rabbinowitz suggests (pp. 429-30) that “the scribes and Pharisees were the authorized and legitimate teachers of the Torah.”

But even if authorized, did Jesus endorse the Halakhah of the Pharisees? What did Jesus mean when he said, (Matthew 23:3 ESV) “…so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do.”

When Jesus said to practice what the Pharisees taught, did he say this in reference to their teachings regarding the Torah or was he referring to Pharisaic halakhah as well?

-Rabbinowitz (p. 435)

What’s really interesting, and perhaps exceptionally relevant to our conversation, is the footnote (62) for this text:

“It is unlikely that any group of early Christians ever acknowledged without further ado the authority of non-Christian teachers.” On the other hand, they insist that “the extra-canonical halakhah on tithing is neither dismissed nor belittled but affirmed” (Matthew 3.269–70, 295).

Further commentary adds illumination to whether or not it was even possible for Jesus to have separated Torah from halakhah.

Stein states that disciples were to practice what the Pharisees taught regarding the OT but not regarding their “oral traditions.” We must ask, however, is such a bifurcation possible? Can exegesis be so neatly separated from application and practice?

…Jesus’ own observance of oral tradition creates a very strong argument that “all things” includes at least some halakhic traditions. Even though Matthew is unrelenting in his criticism of the Pharisees, he nevertheless presents Jesus as adhering to the halakhah of his day. Contra Banks, Moo is most certainly correct when he states that “the verdict that there is no evidence that Jesus kept any of the oral law cannot be sustained.”

(pp. 435-6)

This is the same today in modern Judaism where one cannot properly read and interpret the Torah apart from halakhah and the traditions. Rejecting halakhah is only conceivable in religious groups existing wholly outside the ancient and modern structure of Judaism.

Rabbinowitz further nails his point home with the following:

The very fact that Jesus even engages Pharisaic halakhah implies that it possessed a certain legitimacy in contradistinction to other traditions. He acknowledges the authority of the Pharisees but rebukes them for violating the very law they claimed to protect (Matt 15:1–6). Jesus does not reject Pharisaic purity laws concerning the eating of food (Matt 15:10–11) or the washing of vessels (Matt 23:24–25), but he does excoriate the Pharisees for their moral and ethical failure to understand the Law’s true intent. Likewise, he upholds Pharisaic halakhah regarding the tithing of herbs but repudiates the Pharisees because they have stressed that point and neglected the Law’s emphasis upon justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matt 23:23).

(p. 437)

According to Rabbiniowitz, Jesus didn’t have a problem with the fact that authority to interpret Torah was legitimately in the hands of the Pharisees, nor did he object to their halakhah, his problem was “for they do not practice what they preach.” (Matthew 23:3 NIV)

Interestingly enough, to those critics of Rabbinic Judaism who accuse the Talmudic scholars and judges of continuing to be afflicted with the “leaven of the Pharisees,” it should be noted that Rabbinic Judaism is also critical of the Pharisees.

Our final observation concerns rabbinic Judaism’s own critique of Pharisaic hypocrisy. Weinfeld demonstrates that Jesus’ accusations of Pharisaic hypocrisy are identical to charges of hypocrisy leveled against the Pharisees in the rabbinic material. To cite but one example, the rabbinic literature condemns the arrogant demonstration of piety by the Pharisees. Regarding the midrash on Eccl 4:1, we find the following condemnation of “Pharisaic pea-cockery”…

(p. 441)

The problem that most Christians (and probably some Jews) have with understanding Jesus upholding Pharisaic halakhah is encapsulated by Rabbinowitz:

To the modern reader, halakhic regulations regarding minute aspects of the Law may indeed seem legalistic and onerous. This perception, at least in part, arises out of the fact that the Torah is no longer the central structure around which we organize our daily lives. We no longer ask the all-important question, “How do I fulfill these commandments today?” But for the messianic Jews of Matthew’s Gospel, this was a very real and very practical question.

(p. 443)

Actually, in modern Judaism and especially among the Orthodox, this is a question that is very prominent, very real, and very practical today. Why shouldn’t it be a real and practical matter for some Messianic Jews as well?

Now that we’ve seen evidence that it is reasonable to believe Jesus could have accepted Pharisaic authority to establish ancient halakhah and that he not only upheld portions of that halakhah but practiced it as well, (see the full text of Rabbinowitz for details) Part 2 will examine the “reasonableness” of Christianity and Judaism evolving or developing from ancient to modern forms. After examining that point, we shall try to see if it is even possible for a returning Jewish Messiah King to accept the halakhah that will exist on the day of his return to Jerusalem.

Is the continuing authority of Talmud sustainable in 21st century Judaism? I’m not a Jew so I’m probably not qualified to respond, but maybe the following makes the most sense, given the context:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

–Anais Nin

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The Jesus Covenant, Part 3: The New Covenant

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The New Covenant is a concept originally derived from the Hebrew Bible. The term “New Covenant” is used in the Bible (both in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament) to refer to an epochal relationship of restoration and peace following a period of trial and judgment. It is often thought of as an eschatological messianic age or world to come, and is related to the biblical concept of the kingdom of God. Generally, Christians believe that the epoch of the New Covenant began at the first coming of Jesus, who began his ministry saying “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel”. (Mark 1:15) They believe the New Covenant (along with the concept of the kingdom of God) defines and describes the ongoing relationship between Christian believers and God, and that it will be in full fruition after the second coming of Jesus; that is, it will not only be in full fruition in believing hearts, but in the external world as well. Christians believe that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant, and that his blood shed at the crucifixion is the required blood of the covenant. As with all covenants between God and man described in the Bible, the New Covenant is considered “a bond in blood sovereignly administered by God.” (from O. Palmer Robertson’s book “The Christ of the Covenants”) The connection between the blood of Jesus and the New Covenant is seen at the Last Supper where Jesus institutes the rite of Communion saying “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”. (Luke 22:20)

-from New Covenant
Wikipedia.org

In Part 2 of this series, I addressed the blessings for the nations that we find in the Abrahamic Covenant. Now we progress to the New Covenant that we find in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36. Remember, I’m learning all this as I go, so I’m not acting as a teacher, but as a student.

Talking about the New Covenant is tricky because of all the covenants in the Bible, this one has been so intensely seized upon by Christianity and reworked as a substantial part of the church’s “replacement theology.” As you can see from the description above, the New Covenant as viewed by the church, has precious little to do with the Children of Israel and everything to do with Christianity. And yet, that’s not what the New Covenant actually says:

The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. –Jeremiah 31:31 (ESV)

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. –Ezekiel 36:22-23 (ESV)

The House of Israel and the House of Judah are the focus of the New Covenant. The people of this covenant, like the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, are the Jewish people, not the non-Jewish people of the world (i.e. Gentile Christians). As you may recall from Part 1 of this series, based on Derek Leman’s material, we know that, like the Abrahamic Covenant, the people of the New Covenant are the Jewish people, but this covenant also has blessings for the people of the nations.

However, because of the long history of supersessionism in the church, it’s more difficult to identify the New Covenant blessings for the nations while preserving the essential and primary promises for the Jewish people. When examining this covenant, it’s important for us to remember that once the Jewish people, or for that matter the Christian church, are called by God, His calling cannot be reversed: .

“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable ” (Romans 11:29). It is on this basis that we can declare today that unbelieving Jews are still God’s people, even though they have rejected the Messiah. In the same way, mainstream Christians are still God’s people, even if they have generally rejected the Jewish people as God’s continuing covenant people and the Torah as God’s blueprint of faith for the Jewish people .

-Boaz Michael

But to try to “balance” the scales somewhat between the Christian and Jewish viewpoint on this covenant, I have chosen what I consider to be a very Jewish perspective on the New Covenant, Jews for Judaism:

The term “new covenant” would be meaningless unless what Jeremiah meant by it was the renewing of the old covenant, which will thereby regain its full original vigor. The covenant of old is of eternal duration, never to be rescinded or to be superseded by a new covenant (Leviticus 26:44-45). The covenant between God and Israel is frequently referred to as everlasting (e.g., Genesis 17:7, 13, 19; Psalms 105:8, 10; 1 Chronicles 16:13-18).

The Christian position concerning Jeremiah’s covenant is the complete opposite of what the Jewish Scriptures teach. Hebrews 8:13 states: “In that he says, a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete. Now that which is being made obsolete and growing old is near to vanishing away.” In stark contrast to this statement, the Scriptures state: “The works of His hands are truth and justice; and His precepts are sure. They are established forever and ever, they are done in truth and uprightness” (Psalms 111:7-8); “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God shall stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Since Jews for Judaism is an “anti-missionary” organization and thus, not exactly “friendly” towards Christianity, I can’t expect them to define how the nations are blessed by this covenant with the Jewish people, but they are very clear (and in my opinion, very correct) that the people of this New Covenant are the Jewish people. Further, they are correct that the New Covenant is actually a renewal of the covenants God previously made with the Jewish people and that nothing from the prior covenants was invalidated or eliminated.

A more benignly worded description of the Jewish view of the New Covenant is from Wikipedia:

The Jewish view of the mere wording “new covenant” is no more than a renewed national commitment to abide by God’s laws. In this view, the word new does not refer to commitment that replaces a previous one, but rather to an additional and greater level of commitment. (Jewish Encyclopedia: New Testament) Because Jews view the Mosaic covenant as applying only to Jews and any New Covenant merely a strengthening of the already existing one, Jews do not see this phrase as relevant in any way to non-Jews.

But having established that the New Covenant is directed at the Jewish people and renews and expands Israel’s national commitment to the Torah, where do we find that it has any blessings at all for the nations?

Perhaps part of the answer is here:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” –Jeremiah 33:14-16 (ESV)

Here we have the Messianic promise, which is certainly a hope of the Christian church, but again, the complete focus of this promise is upon the Jewish people. This recalls the Davidic Covenant we see in 2 Samuel 7 but does nothing to illuminate the blessings to the Gentiles. About the only references I can find that even mention the non-Jewish peoples are those saying we will know that God is the Lord when we see a restored Israel (Ezekiel 36:37-38, 37:28).

Is the secret elsewhere or is traditional Judaism right in saying that the New Covenant is only for the Jews with no blessings for the Gentiles?

It seems that the next part of my journey takes me to other Prophets:

Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and that shall not be cut off.

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.” –Isaiah 56:1-8 (ESV)

“Holds fast my covenant?” Which covenant and what part of it? And are these foreigners “converts” or people of the nations outside of Judaism?

We know that Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah in Matthew 21:13 when he said, “My house will be called a house of prayer,” but he was addressing and rebuking the money changers in the Temple courts at the time. Regarding the prophet’s statement, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered,” Jesus seems to have uttered something parallel.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. –John 10:14-16 (ESV)

We also have other Prophets who seem to describe blessings for the nations:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. –Micah 4:1-5 (ESV)

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Peoples shall yet come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’ Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” –Zechariah 8:20-23 (ESV)

Path of TorahThe problem with all this is that prophesies are not covenants, though I suppose they could be used to describe some of the blessings of covenants. When we examined the Abrahamic covenant, there seemed to be a very clear picture of the blessings it contained for the nations as well as those reserved for Israel, but in trying to examine the New Covenant, there seems to be no direct connection between the covenant with Israel and the blessings for the nations. It has to be inferred by reading from the other prophets.

Another problem is that what these prophets are saying all seems to be “future tense” even from our point of view in the 21st century. Virtually none of the events being described has happened yet, unless you want to count the existence of the modern state of Israel as the prophesied “in-gathering” of the Jewish people from exile. I suppose we could consider that the Torah has gone forth from Zion by way of the Christian church since even the Rambam once mentioned that Christianity and Islam has spread the knowledge of ethical monotheism to the four corners of the earth.

But can the prophesies we read in Isaiah, Micah, and Zechariah be reasonably connected to the New Covenant from Jeremiah and Ezekiel and more importantly, can all this then be attached to what we read in the Gospels and Epistles. Can we attach these prophesies to the blessings of the New Covenant, and can they then be logically joined with the coming of the Jewish Messiah and his command to make disciples of all nations? (see Matthew 28:18-20)

We’ll take a look at all that in Part 4 of The Jesus Covenant.

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The Jesus Covenant, Part 2: Abraham

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What is the intent of a covenant? (See Likkutei Torah, Devarim 44b.) When two people feel a powerful attraction to each other, but realize that with the passage of time, that attraction could wane, they establish a covenant. The covenant maintains their connection even at times when, on a conscious level, there might be reasons for distance and separation.

-Rabbi Eli Touger
“Standing Before G-d”
from the “In the Garden of Torah” series
Commentary on Torah Portion Nitzavim and Rosh Hashanah
Chabad.org

A biblical covenant is an agreement—generally between God and humanity—recorded in the text of the Bible, the common Holy Scriptures of both the Jewish and Christian religions.

-Covenant (biblical)
Wikipedia.org

In Part 1 of “The Jesus Covenant, I started exploring my (mis)understanding of the covenant(s) that attach me, as a Christian, to God. To that end, I accessed some textual and video information produced by Derek Lemen, including his Covenants video (it’s very brief and straightforward, so please give it a look).

In the video, Derek outlines the five covenants that are described in the Old Testament or the Tanakh, three of which are in the Torah or the Five Books of Moses.

  • Noahide
  • Abrahamic
  • Mosaic
  • Davidic
  • New Covenant

Of these five, only the Noahide covenant (see Genesis 9) includes all humanity universally as the people of the covenant. It is God’s promise never to destroy the world again by flooding, and the sign of the covenant is the rainbow. For the other four covenants, the people of each of them is specifically the Jewish people (the specific descendants of the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). Of those four, according to Derek, only the Abrahamic and New Covenant contain blessings for the non-Jewish people of the world, although the Davidic covenant, which declares that a descendant of David will always sit on the throne of Israel, has certain Messianic applications.

It is through the blessings of the Abrahamic and New Covenant, that we who call ourselves Christians, are able to enter into a covenant relationship with God through the Messiah and Savior, Jesus Christ.

But from here on in, the path gets a little muddy. Traditional Judaism disagrees with the statement I made in the previous paragraph, and believes that only (or primarily) the Noahide covenant applies to the nations. Traditional Christianity believes that the New Covenant is specific to the church, deletes the previous covenants (except for certain aspects of the Abrahamic covenant), and transfers all the relevant covenant promises from the Jews to all of Christianity, creating new, “spiritual Israel”

I’m going to set aside traditional Judaism’s viewpoint here and focus on Christianity, since after all, I’m a Christian. I’m forced to disagree with the teaching we see in many churches that tells us Christianity has superseded Judaism in the covenants. This is a very old and well accepted belief in the church, but as my long time readers know, I strongly oppose any sort of replacement theology and believe that God did not reject the Jewish people when He allowed His blessings to flow through them in order to touch the Gentile.

So where does that lead us?

It leads us, and I’m continuing to use Derek as my source here, to the understanding that God chooses to bless the Gentiles through Israel without doing away with Israel or fusing the original Israelites with the later occurring Christians, essentially forming a new corporate entity which I’ve previously called “spiritual Israel.” In fact, the concept of “spiritual” vs. “physical” Israel requires more than a little theological and “exegesic slight of hand” to pull off. Also, there’s nothing I can see in the Old Testament prophesies where God comes right out and says to the Children of Israel that they’ll eventually become obsolete, replaced, or watered down by the inclusion of the rest of the world into their ranks. Isn’t Israel always supposed to be a special, unique, and set apart people before God? (see Jeremiah 31:35-37)

I suppose the next step in my quest is to examine the Abrahamic and New Covenants more in detail to try to find where the blessings are for the nations and how that translates into a covenant relationship with God for “the rest of us.”

I found a pretty good summary of the Abrahamic Covenant at GotQuestions.org and looked at the three main features of this covenant. Only one feature directly provides blessings for the nations (the other two apply exclusively to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).

The promise of blessing and redemption (Genesis 12:3). God promised to bless Abraham and the families of the earth through him. This promise is amplified in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34; cf. Hebrews 8:6–13) and has to do with “Israel’s spiritual blessing and redemption.” Jeremiah 31:34 anticipates the forgiveness of sin. The unconditional and eternal nature of the covenant is seen in that the covenant is reaffirmed to Isaac (Genesis 21:12; 26:3–4). The “I will” promises suggest the unconditional aspect of the covenant. The covenant is further confirmed to Jacob (Genesis 28:14–15). It is noteworthy that God reaffirmed these promises amid the sins of the patriarchs, which fact further emphasizes the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic Covenant.

More specifically, it is the fulfillment of this feature that most concerns Christianity.

The Abrahamic Covenant finds its ultimate fulfillment in connection with the return of Messiah to rescue and bless His people Israel. It is through the nation Israel that God promised in Genesis 12:1–3 to bless the nations of the world. That ultimate blessing will issue in the forgiveness of sins and Messiah’s glorious kingdom reign on earth.

It should be noted that I reject the idea that the Jewish people will need to “convert to Christianity” and abandon Judaism in order to fulfill the prophesy of Israel’s national repentance and forgiveness as we see in Zechariah 12:10-14 and Romans 11:25-27. There’s no logic in a Jew having to stop being a Jew in order to give honor and devotion to the Jewish Messiah King and to worship the God of Israel.

However, we’ve discovered the blessing that comes to us through the Abrahamic Covenant and the Jewish people that allows our covenant connection to God. The promise of the blessings of Messiah are for the Jewish people and the rest of the nations through faith.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. –Romans 4:9-12 (ESV)

The blessing is for the circumcised (Jews) and the uncircumcised (people of the nations) alike and the way to access the blessing is through faith. Non-Jews do not have to take on the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant (circumcision), since that is not a requirement to access this particular blessing. Abraham had faith prior to circumcision and thus it is our faith as well that binds us to God through this blessing. Faith is the medium that connects both Jew and Christian to our Creator, and it is specifically in faith that all people are equal before God.

Thus the ancient Hebrews (circumcised) and their descendants have access to all of the features of the Abrahamic Covenant, while we non-Jewish Christians (uncircumcised) have access to one of the covenant features, which is specific to the blessings for the nations. I suppose I could say a lot more about this, but it seems clear that we Christians are connected by faith to God through this blessing which is the promise of the Messiah, and that promise is realized in the coming of Jesus Christ.

But GotQuestions.org also says that this feature of the Abrahamic Covenant “is amplified in the New Covenant.” That’s where we’ll pick up this discussion in the next part of the series.

In the meantime, feel free to comment, ask questions, and add details to the elementary understanding I’ve presented here. As I keep telling people, I’m not a theologian, Pastor, teacher, expert, or anything else lofty. I’m just a guy; an average Christian (sort of) who is trying to get a better handle on my faith. I don’t think that you have to be an expert or a scholar with a ton of degrees to understand what we believe as Christians and why we believe it. I invite everyone like me, and everyone else, to join me for Part 3 of “The Jesus Covenant.”