Tag Archives: messianic judaism

Prologue to the Irony of Galatians

January 20, 2014 James Pyles 27 Comments

Finally, I want to acknowledge the victims of certain interpretations of Paul’s voice, especially those who have suffered the Shoah. Their suffering cannot be separated from the prejudices resulting from those interpretations any more than it can be wholly attributed to them. To them I dedicate the effort represented in this book.

-Mark D. Nanos
from the Acknowledgments, pg ix
The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context

Such a strange way to end a series of acknowledgments for a book. The author usually thanks his/her publisher, editor, spouse, and whoever else contributed to or who were sometimes inconvenienced by the author’s writing of the book. Occasionally, religious people will thank God, their congregation, and so forth, in addition to the “usual suspects.” Having written a few books myself (though not in the religious studies space), I know the author’s side of composing acknowledgments.

That said, I normally blow past the acknowledgment page quickly when I get a new book in my hands, but something told me to slow down a bit before getting to the “meat” of the content. What we have here is a suggestion that the traditional way Paul has been understood by Christian interpreters has, in some manner or fashion, contributed to the injury of the Jewish people, including the most glaring injury in recent history, the Holocaust. There have been two injustices committed by the “consensus view” of Paul which includes his letter to the Galatians: a gross misunderstanding of Paul himself and his missives to various First Century churches, and as a result of that misunderstanding, a terrible injustice to Jewish people across the last nearly two-thousand years of history.

That’s a heavy burden to place upon collective Christianity, but it’s not a burden that is undeserved, nor is it one that cannot be lightened. What is needed is a fresh reading of Paul from a First Century Jewish context.

While Nanos states in the book’s Prologue that he attempts to make no direct comparison between the Paul of Galatians and how Nanos depicted Paul in his previous book The Mystery of Romans, I don’t doubt that I’ll be making the comparison anyway, considering my several recent reviews of that work. After all, we are talking about the same human being, and unless Paul received a “personality transplant” between writing one letter and the next, he should be transmitting the same basic understanding of the role of Jews and Gentiles in the Jewish religious stream once known as “the Way.

Because the prevailing interpretations have probed Paul’s text without sufficient appreciation of the powerful role of ironic inversion at work, at the formal as well as functional level, the interpretation of the apostle’s scathing rhetoric has exaggerated and, regardless of other plans, continues to accentuate the differences that are imagined to separate Christian and Jewish identity, behavior, and even intentions toward God and neighbor. The legacy of this perception of the Jewish other has proven often tragic for the Jewish people, at least in a world that has been often dominated by those who look to Paul to shape reality, and for others, as a foil to justify their twisted construal of what is right.

-Nanos, Prologue, pg 2

This reads more like an indictment than, as Nanos puts it, a project that “represents a revised and expanded version of (his) Ph.D. dissertation…in 2000.” There’s a sense that Nanos has more invested in this project than simply a serious and scholarly re-investigation into the traditional interpretation of Paul relative to ancient and modern Christian and Jewish relationships and identities.

No interpretation is independent of context, that realized or assumed for the original author and audience, and that of the interpreter him-or herself. I am a product of many factors, not the least the long shadow of the Holocaust, which claimed so many Jewish people, my people, as well as exposure to critical tools now available to the interpreter.

ibid, pg 4

Nanos goes on in the Prologue to compare the “Consensus View” which he states has “not changed that significantly in the history of Christian interpretation” to his perspective which he calls “The Irony of Galatians,” characterizing Paul’s letter as an “ironic rebuke”. He challenges the consensus view of Paul as Law-free and in opposition to Jewish Law (Torah) and religiously obedient Jews, which is an interpretation of Paul’s message in Galatians that has been “undeniably colored by the interpreter’s understanding” rather than “producing a disinterested portrait” of the subjects of the letter, “considering their identity, motives, messages, or methods on their own terms.”

Of course, we have to consider that Nanos, in partially attributing Shoah and the murder of six million of his people to the traditional interpretation of Paul renders him less than completely objective, but then again as Nanos has already alluded, no one fails to bring something to the table when interpreting the Bible. In the book’s Prologue, Nanos leaves it up to the reader to determine if he has “constructed a probable context for interpretation of Paul’s voice…”

I know a fellow who is quite an erudite scholar and it is his opinion that more often than not, a book’s prologue may contain enough of the contents of the book itself to tell the entire story, sort of how some movie trailers give away most or all of the story of the films they are advertising. This may also be true of Nanos’ “Irony,” but not having cracked even the first page of the first chapter yet (as I write this), I’ll have to wait and see.

On the other hand, Nanos does reveal that he considers the “influencers” to also be Galatians and Jews who have a certain responsibility to initiate the Gentiles in the Galatian synagogues into their entry into Judaism. If these influencers were like those Jewish people we encounter in Acts 15:1-2, we may be seeing a heavy bias in the non-believing and believing Jewish communities in the days of Paul toward the proselyte ritual as the only means by which a Gentile may enter “the Way.” That makes Paul’s Galatian letter, according to Nanos, an “ironic rebuke” to the Gentile readers and an intra and inter-Jewish communal dispute between Paul and the Jewish influencers.

As I read in Nanos’ “Romans” book, he continues to depict Paul as Torah-observant, which only makes sense, given that Paul wrote that a Gentile being circumcised and converting to Judaism is obligated to the full yoke of Torah (Galatians 5:3). Being Jewish then, by definition, would mean that Paul considered himself as obligated to said “full yoke” of Torah in the same manner as his fellow believing and unbelieving Jews.

Paul is himself an example of status and observance, and his message in this letter does not abrogate the identity or observance of Torah for Jewish people (i.e. Israelites) in the least but is instead predicated upon their continued validity for himself and other Jewish members of this movement.

-Nanos, pg 9

The remainder of the prologue covered a summary of each of the three parts of the book and what the reader can expect to discover. What remains are the detailed arguments presented by the author, which I have yet to experience.

For the “Romans” book, I reviewed the material almost chapter by chapter in some cases, and I have a tendency to write book reviews in parts, often before I’ve completed my reading of the entire work. I don’t know if I’ll do that here since such an analysis takes a fair amount of time. On the other hand, it’s difficult in just a few sentences, to impart complex ideas and descriptions accurately when presented in a “book-length” form. Also, as much as I report for the sake of my audience, I write these blogs to process my own experience as I encounter new thoughts and concepts, so the level of detail in which I engage is sometimes more for me, the writer and learner, than it is for you the reader. Of course, my benefit is also your benefit as long as you don’t mind having to consume the output of my internal dialogue.

Since I’ve liberated myself from having to produce daily morning meditations, I can’t say when the next installment of my review on “Irony” will be written, but know, compulsive blogger that I am, that it will appear before too long. Galatians is one of my Biblical “pet peeves” along with the traditional Christian interpretation of Paul as either suffering from multiple personality disorder or as a liar and hypocrite.

I’m searching for an interpretation of Paul’s letters that renders him sane, internally consistent, consistent relative to his personal history as an observant Jewish Pharisee, and as a living expression of generations of Torah-observant Jews who came before him, worshiping the God of his fathers, obeying the Torah, and honoring the Temple, all within the context of a zealous faith in the Jewish Messiah. No other Paul makes sense, and a Paul (as the Christian consensus view defines him) who is mentally ill, a duplicitous liar, or a two-faced hypocrite makes the apostle completely disingenuous and an unreliable author of the majority of the canonized New Testament.

So much for the Christian faith if the consensus view is true.

I can only take Paul seriously if I can find another way to hear his voice. I believe I have found that sane and reliable Pauline voice. Now I want to see how that voice speaks in Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

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Gifts of the Spirit in Review, Part 1

January 13, 2014 James Pyles 23 Comments

On the last, great day of the festival, Yeshua stood and called out, saying “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. One who believes in me, as the word is written, from his belly will flow rivers of living water.” He said this about the spirit that those who believe in him would receive, because the Holy Spirit was not given before Yeshua was glorified.”

–John 7:37-39 (DHE Gospels)

We confuse ourselves regarding the giving of the Holy Spirit when we assume that, prior to the Shavu’ot event described in Acts 2, Jewish people did not have the Holy Spirit. That assumption also leads us to believe that non-Messianic religious Jews after that could not possibly receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit, act in any capacity of the Holy Spirit, or perform miracles by the Holy Spirit. These assumptions, I believe, are based squarely upon a misunderstanding of John 7:39 where it says, “He said this about the spirit that those who believe in him would receive, because the Holy Spirit was not given before Yeshua was glorified.”

-D. Thomas Lancaster
“Chapter 3: A Pledge of What is to Come,” pg 39
Gifts of the Spirit

I so agreed with Lancaster’s statements in the third chapter of this book, and as originally presented at the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) Shavuot Conference “Gifts of the Spirit” last May at Beth Immanuel Sabbath Fellowship in Hudson, Wisconsin, that as I was mentally planning to write this blog post, I couldn’t imagine it being something that John MacArthur and the other presenters at last October’s Strange Fire conference would criticize. Then I re-read the opening of the chapter again and realized they would not only be dismayed, they would be startled. I mean, how could any “normative” Christian believe that “non-Christian” Jewish people would have any access at all to the Holy Spirit post-Acts 2?

But what I was considering was that Lancaster didn’t offer any commentary on the “gifts of the spirit” as being apprehended by the faithful in the modern era. His entire talk centered about “the ministry of Jesus” and the Messianic promises presented in the gospels and other areas of the Bible that involve the Spirit of God.

Consider Ezekiel 45:4-5 and the filling of the Third Temple by the Divine Presence, or Joel 2:28 where God’s Spirit will be “poured out on all flesh.”

But there is no Third Temple containing the Shechinah, and the Holy Spirit has yet to be poured out on all living beings of flesh, so obviously, the work of the Spirit and of Messiah is not complete. Not by a long shot. In fact, Lancaster considers the giving of the Spirit as we see it in Acts 2 and subsequently in the New Testament as a down payment on the future, and a promise of what is to come.

Where both Boaz Michael and Rabbi Carl Kinbar linked the Holy Spirit with the Torah, Lancaster associates the Spirit with the Temple.

The whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy Temple of the Lord. In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (emph. Lancaster)

–Ephesians 2:21-22

Lancaster employs a play on the words “mishkan” and “mashkon”, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll have to refer you to the book for the details.

When we think of gifts of the Spirit, our mental image naturally reflects Pentecostal Christianity, since this is the denomination and movement that sought to restore the spiritual gifts of the church. And as we in the Messianic Jewish movement seek to objectively analyze and possibly incorporate the gifts of the Spirit, it is natural that we would begin by looking at Pentecostalism. But we should at least understand what Pentecostalism is and the mind-set that results in the outward expressions that we associate with the gifts of the Spirit. If we accurately understand Pentecostalism’s attitude toward the implementation of the gifts, then we can evaluate that viewpoint fairly and can determine which aspects of it are in line with a Messianic Jewish worldview and which are not.

-Aaron Eby
“Chapter 4: The Pentecostal Experience,” pg 53
Gifts of the Spirit

The first sentence Aaron uttered when he began this presentation was, “I spent most of my childhood years and my early adulthood in an Assemblies of God church.” Aaron brought a wealth of history and personal experience in describing how the “gifts of the Spirit” were practiced within his early church experience and then offered the counterpoint from a Messianic Jewish perspective. He was fair and honest in his appraisal of both without at any time denigrating or belittling anyone else’s religious orientation or perspective.

He did have this to say, which I tend to apply to the aforementioned “Strange Fire” conference, even though the “Gifts of the Spirit” Shavuot conference occurred a full five months before MacArthur’s gathering:

I saw another category of responders to Pentecostalism as well: the detractors, who thought we were either insane, demonic, or charlatans. That mind-set always offended me, and it still offends me to hear people speak of charismatics that way. There are probably all three kinds of people in the charismatic movement, but in my experience most of us were sincere, intelligent, sane, and spiritually healthy people who loved God.

-Eby, pg 54

To which any “Strange Fire” speaker would probably add, “…and you were also wrong.”

I think what I took away from reading Aaron’s presentation and the very well-balanced nature of it, was how the focus between “Gifts of the Spirit” and “Strange Fire” were so different. Basically, they were addressing the same topic: the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit in our world today, but while MacArthur and Strange Fire defined itself as who and what they were against, FFOZ and Gifts of the Spirit defined themselves by who and what they were for.

That didn’t mean they didn’t tell the truth or watered down criticism. It meant that they did what Aaron said he wanted to do. They were fair.

I find that’s what attracts me to FFOZ and certain other individuals, organizations, and books: the desire to be fair and to be defined by what they believe in rather than who their “enemies” or “opponents” are. I can only imagine that if I were a Pentecostal sitting in a pew at Beth Immanuel and listening to these presentations (and I know some Pentecostals were present), I would be more inclined to listen and take note of what was being said, even when it contradicted my stated beliefs, than if I attended or listened to the podcasts of the Strange Fire conference.

Wearing a bow tie and jacket that clearly indicated that he was channeling his inner “Dr. Who,” Jacob Fronczak began his presentation “The Historical Context of Pentecostalism” (Chapter 5) with the words, “I love history.”

Though actually a Pastor, Jacob looks the part of the young history instructor at a liberal arts college who has just started teaching after receiving his degree. He did take the historical approach to Pentecostalism by way of nineteenth-century evangelicalism, enlightenment and post-enlightenment, heresy trials, modernism, fundamentalism, and finally, “Azusa Street.”

The “Strange Fire” conference also provided a historical approach, specifically with Steve Lawson’s presentation on Charismatic Calvinists, as well as Lawson’s commentary on Puritans vs. Quakers, but the difference was that Fronczak refused to take any sides, presenting history as history, a series of influential events that shape our understanding of both the past and the present, in an attempt to discover why “do some (churches) believe that these gifts were temporary means to grow the church in the first century while others believe that they are valid expressions of faith today” (pg 76).

There was also a more pointed reason for Fronczak reviewing the history as he did (pg 89):

Understanding how and why these movements came to be is a prerequisite to fully understanding their traditions — why their adherents practice the way they do. Once they are understood, these traditions can be analyzed, sorted through, and brought into line with the Scripture and with the emerging Messianic Jewish corpus of tradition.

He further said that we “must have a balanced, historical perspective on our own faith as well as on the faith of those who do not share our convictions.” Yet another piece of evidence that trying to authentically understand even those with whom we do not agree is a better and more noble road to communication and promoting healthy change (in my opinion, anyway) than wholesale “demonizing” of Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Aaron Eby returned to the podium for his presentation “The Miracles of Yeshua” (Chapter 6) to explain the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit relative to the miracles of Christ.

That Jesus had the Holy Spirit rest upon him is not in dispute (Matthew 3:16, Luke 3:22) as well as the fact that he performed many miracles in the three years of his ministry, but the question Aaron raised at the conference and in the pages of this chapter is the purpose of those miracles.

Somewhere in my “Challies Chronicles” notes, there is a reference to one presenter (it may have even been John MacArthur) stating that miracles were to validate the message of the gospel and that the speaker was an apostle (this also presumably applies to validating Jesus as “the Christ”). Once that need was fulfilled, according to cessationists, the “gifts of the spirit” stopped.

Aaron disputes that the miracles of Jesus were to validate the authenticity of his teachings or his identity as Messiah or Divine.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, “Let us go after other gods,” which you have not known, “and let us serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

–Deuteronomy 13:1-3

The Bible is replete with tales of prophets and magicians who did not serve God and who were able to perform miraculous signs and wonders, so the fact that someone can perform miracles is no indication at all that they must be a servant of God. So much for the cessationist rationale for the purpose of miracles in the New Testament.

There were a number of episodes in the FFOZ television series A Promise of What is to Come that touched on what the miracles of Jesus and the apostles were supposed to communicate: the Gospel message of the coming Kingdom of God. If you followed my reviews of the show, you’ll likely see the connection.

That said, Aaron concluded (pg 110):

There are a few things that we can take away from this. First of all, miracles and signs should not be our primary focus. If they are, we place the cart before the horse, since miracles are simply the byproduct of the nearness of the kingdom. It is not for us to decide whether or not miracles should be happening in our day and age. Our particular beliefs on the matter do not dictate to God whether he will or will not do miracles for us. Rather, our Master taught us, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Thus, our goal should be to bring the kingdom nearer and to bring ourselves nearer to the kingdom.

What we believe, the theology to which we cling, and the doctrine we espouse, does not define God to God, it only helps define God to flawed and imperfect human beings.

In “Chapter 7, The Age of Miracles,” Toby Janicki asks if the age of miracles ended with the closure of canon or the death of the last apostle. And if miracles are happening today, where are they? Why don’t we see them?

Toby didn’t use the terms “cessationist” or “continualist” but he did say that the proponents of the end of the age of miracles often use 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 to justify their point of view. The problem is that “when the perfect comes” is up for grabs. How could “the perfect” be the death of the last apostle or the canonization of scripture (it wasn’t finally canonized for several centuries after John, the last of original apostles, died)?

From Toby’s point of view, “the perfect” can only mean the Messianic Age (see Jeremiah 31:34 and Joel 2:28-29 for instance).

Cessationists say that miracles were only to get the Church “off the ground,” so to speak. If that’s true, what about all of the miracles in the Old Testament (Tanakh)?

Of course, it depends on what you define as a miracle. I just read about a miraculous healing of a Christian woman being treated for a cancerous tumor in Israel in the Israel Today online magazine. No special “faith healer” was involved, nor did anyone claim they utilized a “gift of the spirit” in her healing. It was just God. Her doctors had no explanation for why her tumor so dramatically reduced in size.

Toby says that a miracle doesn’t have to break the laws of physics. First off, our physical laws just describe what we observe about the usual behavior of the universe, it’s not a law code like the Torah. Toby pointed out that famed Christian theologian C.S. Lewis had much to say about miracles and their continuation in our world.

Of course, we’re not apostles, who were unique witnesses to Messiah, and so we shouldn’t expect to operate at their lofty spiritual level, but that doesn’t prohibit God from acting supernaturally, even today. In fact, if the Holy Spirit wasn’t active, no one would ever come to faith, which I consider a miracle. Toby also mentioned, that it doesn’t matter what a person does or doesn’t believe (relative to cessationism or continualism), since God acts according to His own will, not ours.

He made a number of other good points (buy the book if you want to find out what they are) but I thought this part of his conclusion was important (pg 131-2):

Miracles, as we have said, are not an end in themselves; they are not the goal for which the disciple labors. They are evidence of the Holy Spirit working among us, and they should, as they did with the apostles in Acts, instill in us the fear of the Lord. Miracles should cause us to tremble as we realize that God is among us and we become aware of his presence.

If the goal of our faith is receiving spiritual gifts of supernatural powers for healing or whatever, then we are nothing more than “spiritual thrillseekers.” Toby’s right. Seek first the Kingdom of God. God will take care of the rest.

There are four more chapters in this book and for the sake of length, I’ll cover them in Part 2 of this review.

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Christianity’s Love for Israel and Other Pretty Lies

January 10, 2014 James Pyles 29 Comments

I just read a profound essay on the relations between Christians and Jews in America, Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them? by James Q. Wilson. It’s deep, thoughtful, intriguing and asks a very legitimate, even existential question.

Wilson, who passed away in 2012, was a favorite of American conservatives, especially since he is considered the father of the “broken windows theory.” On the unusual relationship between evangelicals and Jews he wrote:

Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction—about 16 percent—of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists.

While conceding that “it is quite possible that Orthodox Jews welcome evangelical support while Reform and secular ones oppose it,” Wilson nevertheless tries to explain this phenomenon from conservative eyes…

-Yori Hanover
“Must Jews Dislike the Christians who like Them?”
JewishPress.com, Originally published Jan. 7, 2014

I read this article with interest mixed with a dash of dismay. It’s the Jewish voice saying to evangelicals, “Yes, like us, love us, just keep your Christianity to yourselves.” That’s actually a reasonable request from a Jewish point of view. To punctuate that statement, here’s more of Hanover’s commentary:

As an observant Jew, I endorse all the facts in Wilson’s article, and offer an honest, heartfelt response. Accounting only for my own feelings, but certain they are common to many Jews like myself, I must tell Evangelicals: You annoy the goal post hockey stick hockey stick out of us.

For a Christian, to love someone is inseparable from sharing with that person (or group) the gospel message of Jesus Christ, the message of personal salvation, the invitation to convert to Christianity and to share the blessings of a risen Jesus.

But for nearly two thousand years, that invitation of Christians to Jews has been seen by Jewish populations as an extreme threat, in many cases resulting in pogroms, torture, maimings, and murder. While such violent means are not currently employed against Jews (and others) by “the Church,” the “racial memory” in Jewry is long and intransigent. Most Christians are so inured, so hopelessly devoted to the system of the “salvation plan” for everyone (especially Jews), that they can’t see why Jewish people feel so threatened by the “love” of Jesus Christ.

Hanover goes on to say:

I have no problem with your discovering Jesus and embracing Jesus and putting your faith in Jesus – I actually support that.

But why can’t you keep it to yourselves? Why must you insist that I, too, reject my grandfather’s Torah, stop praying the way my family has done since the minus fifteen hundreds, and accept your Jesus, and in my heart, no less?

I suppose I could invoke the modern Messianic Jewish movement and the Messianic Jewish luminaries of the 19th century, but it would still be difficult to break through the preconceptions most Jewish people have about Jews who actually have come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, as Hanover describes:

The majority of you don’t speak Hebrew well enough to even understand my Bible, never mind assert foolish things about prophecies predicting Jesus. And those of you who do have a half decent command of Biblical Hebrew either lack the scholarship to understand why those “proofs” are idiotic, or are outright swindlers, looking to mislead innocent, ignorant Jews.

From necessity, normative religious Jews must believe that any Jewish person who has converted to Christianity is ignorant of the truth of the Jewish scriptures, and thus easily swayed by the inaccurate Christian interpretation of said-scriptures. Worse, some Christians are characterized as “outright swindlers,” wolves in sheep’s clothing, out to do what the Holocaust started, destroy Jews and Judaism, not by murdering Jewish people in gas chambers, but turning them from Jews into Goyishe Christians, effectively reducing or eliminating the remaining Jewish population of our planet.

In other words, while I and my fellow faithful Jews like the fact that the next pogrom will not come from an Evangelical torch and pitchfork crowd, we still don’t trust you. You can’t say you love me for who I am, because who I am includes a thorough rejection of the essence of your ideology, all of it, completely, I hold that there’s no truth to it whatsoever.

I’m sure it must be painful for many Christians who authentically love Israel and the Jewish people to discover that you (we) are not trusted by the objects of your (our) love for the reasons I’ve stated above and for the reasons Hanover outlines.

And this is an amazing follow-up question:

Now do you love me? Do you love me in a future in which Jesus doesn’t come, and you continue to hold on to your faith, and I to mine?

Christianity, and I include the Hebrew Roots movement and all of its divisions here, loves the Jewish people only as long as the Jewish people are Christians/Messianics. We talk about love of Jews but those are only the Jewish people we know and who we imagine believe and think about God, Messiah, and the Bible the same way we do.

But what if they don’t or worse, what if Jewish people who were once Christians or Messianics leave the fold?

I previously wrote a blog post on this topic called Apostasy, Pentecostalism, and Other Things That Go “Bump” in the Night that took heavy criticism in multiple arenas of the “believing” world. One reason I was criticized was because the author of a blog significantly disapproving of Jewish “apostates” (from Christianity) said he was only looking “at several examples of apostasy among friends and family, and what steps we can take to strengthen faith.”

However, that can be taken as, “I love the Jewish people and Israel only as long as they profess faith in Jesus Christ, and the minute they undergo a crisis of faith, and for any reason whatsoever leave the faith (in Christ), I will publicly brand them with a scarlet letter ‘A’ and make an already agonizing personal and spiritual situation and decision more difficult and embarrassing for each and every one of them.”

I included commentary on John MacArthur and his Strange Fire conference in my previous blog post because I believe MacArthur’s approach to Charismatics/Pentecostals was in the same vein, as if he were saying, “I love you but if you fail to accept my interpretation of your religious practices, I will ‘demonize’ the whole lot of you as publicly as possible.”

I consider the conference and book, Gifts of the Spirit produced by First Fruits of Zion to be a much more measured and reasonable approach to the issues raised in an examination of those “gifts of the spirit,” but where is the more reasonable Christian/Hebrew Roots approach to the world of non-Messianic Jews?

Do we love those Jewish people and that Israel? Is our “love” so conditional that we automatically condemn and defame the majority of Jewish people living on the earth? Do we defame and humiliate their ancestors, from the great Rabbinic sages to the lowly Jewish farmers or shepherds who were struggling to barely support their families in some part of Eastern Europe or Russia while, Tevye-like, they all opened their hearts to the God of their fathers?

I previously reviewed Dr. Stuart Dauermann’s article “The Jewish People are Us — not Them,” written for the Fall 2013 issue of Messiah Journal where part of this concern is addressed.

It’s tragic to imagine that Jews who have come to faith in Jesus within a traditional Evangelical or Pentecostal framework assign the identity of “otherness” to their Jewish brothers and sisters who are not Christian/Messianic. It’s as if, even from a believing Jewish perspective, faith in Jesus Christ separates a Jew from the larger Jewish community and Judaism rather than expressing the height of what it is to be a Jew.

Of course, Christianity and Judaism have traveled wildly differing trajectories over the past twenty centuries or so, but if Gentile and Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah are ever to experience any unity before the throne of the King of the Jews in the Messianic Era, then those trajectories must be reunited.

In reading Hanover’s article, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the different spiritual trajectories traveled by me, a Christian husband, and my spouse, a Jewish wife. For her, like Hanover, any overt “Christianity” must “annoy the goal post hockey stick hockey stick out of” her.

If it were just a matter of me being “annoying” to Jewish people because I’m a Christian, I could cure that in an instant by withdrawing from any contact with the Jewish community (although I must say that currently, I am not involved in any sense), but this is personal and this is family.

To be fair, my wife accepts and shares my viewpoint on supporting Israel and sends me emails and even the occasional religious/rabbinic commentary if she thinks I’ll find it interesting. But I can’t get past the idea that she must think she’s “sleeping with the enemy,” so to speak.

I don’t know. My faith says that I must share the truth of the good news of the Messiah with everyone. Further, as I’ve stated many times on this blog, I believe the good news is actually good news to the Jews first, and then also to the Gentiles (though “the Church” has this completely backward).

If I were to follow the “apostasy police” model, I’d have to offer my wife a divorce since she refused to “convert to Christianity,” as well and embarrass her in as public a manner as possible, all for the sake of “love” and “strengthening the faith” of my fellow Gentile and Jewish believers.

But I’m not going to do that, not to Jewish friends and absolutely not to my Jewish family. I’ve already said that if the Apostle Paul never abandoned his unbelieving brothers and sisters, I certainly don’t think God left them in the dust either:

I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

–Romans 9:1-5 (NASB)

But intermarriage, just like an “interfaith” community, doesn’t come without strings attached, as Hanover concludes:

But you must keep your missionary urges to yourselves. You can even lie to me and say you don’t have them – I’ll accept it. I’ll lie to you in return and say that my tradition says your teachings have value. We can co-exist this way for generations, bettering our societies and contributing good to the world. (emph. mine)

Just do something about your impulse to convert me.

In 1970, singer Joni Mitchell wrote a song called The Last Time I Saw Richard which includes the lyrics:

You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies pretty lies

I can’t stop being who I am and that’s a disciple of the Master, King of the Jews, and I can’t stop walking the path that the Master has set before me, but I won’t let that path take me into the fork in the road that leads to “crypto-anti-Semitism,” either. So what’s left? Unlike the person in Mitchell’s song, I can’t shut out reality and listen to “pretty lies” about the peaceful co-existence between Christians and Jews, and I do believe there will be a co-participation between Jews and Gentiles in the future Messianic Kingdom (and if it be Hashem’s will, before).

Maybe the modern Messianic Jewish movement is the “first fruits” of that “re-unity,” but I have to believe that, both personally and corporately, we still have a long way to go before the love of many Christian/Hebrew Roots folks for the Jewish people and Israel is more than just a “pretty lie” with strings attached.

I know this all sounds very cynical, but if you are a non-Jewish believer who says you love the Jewish people and Israel, remember that for the most part, those people and that nation may not love you in return and may never desire to hear the “good news of Jesus Christ.”

Tell me, do you still love them? Do you still accept them unconditionally as who they are, knowing they believe that Jesus could never, ever be the Messiah?

I didn’t plan on writing this “meditation.” I didn’t want to open up wounds that never seem to quite heal, especially in public. But the scabs keep getting picked at whether I want them to be or not.

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The Consequences of Gentile Identity in Messiah

January 3, 2014 James Pyles 48 Comments

Soon after, Minister Flores made the decision to convert to Judaism. But he struggled to find a way to tell us, as he didn’t want to tear down Christianity without being able to offer us an alternative. So he kept teaching Torah, but in a way that was as subtle as possible. He gradually peeled away the things that were wrong and got us closer to Torah. Our church started replacing Jesus’ name with Jewish, Hebrew names of God, and the songs became Hebrew songs. We began to incorporate real Jewish traditions into our festivals, and we even got a Torah scroll for the church.

At that point we resembled more of a Jews for Jesus group, in the sense that we were Christians with a lot of Jewish traditions. The difference, of course, was that we were moving in the direction toward authentic Judaism, not the other way around.

-Yosef Juarez
“The Torah in Our Church”
Aish.com

Ever since I published Nanos, Paul, and the Consequences of Jewish Identity in Messiah as well as witnessed/participated in the subsequent online discussion, I’ve spent a great deal of time pondering the idea of exactly how the early non-Jewish disciples of the Messiah entered into what was originally a wholly Jewish religious stream. Up to the time of Paul, the only way for a non-Jew to formally enter into any form of religious Judaism was to convert via the proselyte process and become “a Jew by choice,” to use the modern parlance.

In the aforementioned blog post inspired by an article written by New Testament scholar and historian Mark Nanos, one blog commenter asked (tongue-in-cheek):

Then what were gentiles converting to? Christianity?

No, of course not. Christianity, as we understand it today, did not exist when Paul walked the earth. But the Gentiles were not converting to Judaism either…well, not exactly.

Or were they?

No, I’m not suggesting that the early Gentile believers actually converted to Judaism and took on all of the obligations and identity markers of their Jewish mentors, but they did join “the Way” as fully equal co-participants in Yeshua-faith with the Jewish disciples.

But how can you convert to Judaism and not be a Jew?

It gets complicated from here on in, but that’s the mystery we struggle with twenty centuries later as we look through the lens of scripture, history, archeology, and any other tool at our disposal, and try to apprehend not only the intent of Paul and the Council of Apostles in Jerusalem, but of Messiah and God the Father.

That Gentiles were always intended to be reconciled with the Creator and to worship the One God alongside Israel is a foregone conclusion based on many of the Messianic prophesies chronicled in the Tanakh (Old Testament), but exactly how it was to happen is still somewhat hidden in the shadows of time.

Well, maybe.

The only conclusion I can come to with my present understanding of Paul is that he did “convert” non-Jews into a Jewish religious space, not by the proselyte rites, or as “guests” in the manner of the God-fearers, but into a life within Judaism specifically developed for Gentiles in Messiah, and lived out as non-Jewish co-participants, equal in the blessings of reconciliation, justification, and salvation, but not identical to Jewish participants in identity or responsibility.

Not that the Gentiles didn’t have responsibilities. We can start to see the skeleton of their (our) duties in the apostolic decrees (see Acts 15) and fleshed out just a bit more in many of Paul’s letters.

I wrote a number of detailed reviews of the Nanos book The Mystery of Romans including this one that described a sort of mutual dependency Paul characterized between the believing Gentiles and believing and non-believing Jews in Rome.

For the believing Gentiles, their duties to their Jewish hosts did not end at complying with principles designed to avoid offending Jewish sensitivities and facilitating fellowship, but also included provoking jealousy by showing themselves to be the first fruits of the prophecies of the Tanakh that speak of Gentiles “taking hold” of Jews, and going up to the House of the Lord, the House of Prayer, with the devout Jewish people in order to worship the God of Jacob.

That would mean separating from their former lifestyle, from paganism, and in most cases from family, leaving civic cult practice to honor God within the context of a Jewish worship designed for Gentile identity and legal status, but remaining non-Jews in order to clearly show themselves to be the fulfillment of prophesy rather than proselytes or some form of “pseudo-proselytes”.

In my previous blog post, I characterized Nanos’ opinion on Paul relative to Gentile conversion to Judaism within the framework of “the Way” as being firmly against such a proselyte conversion, but subsequent reading has brought up some questions. It’s very possible Paul was convinced that the Messianic return was only decades away and as such, he felt there just wasn’t time to do anything but spread the gospel message to the rest of the known world as quickly as possible. He may have thought that issues of conversion or even marital status (1 Corinthians 7:8 for example) were of a lesser priority than the imminent return of the Moshiach, so there was no need to develop rulings that would cover the requirements of later generations of Gentile believers.

However, history as shown us that the window for Messiah’s return is a rather lengthy corridor and we still have yet to reach the end. That being said, and keeping a Jewish perspective in mind, since Judaism is adaptive and halachah is continually or at least periodically in a state of development, is the issue of Gentile conversion to Judaism within the modern Messianic Jewish movement something that is, while Paul may not have pre-supposed it, nevertheless completely valid in the present, given the requirements of Jewish and non-Jewish disciples within the context of a Jewish faith in Yeshua the Messiah some two-thousand years down the road?

That question (and it was a long one) might not make sense to Christians who state they observe the “commandments” of the New Testament as a closed canon and an unchangeable decree, but that actually isn’t the case. While Christians sometimes criticize the various modern streams of Judaism for maintaining a quasi-open canon via the Talmudic rulings of the Rabbinic sages, in reality, the Protestant church in all its incarnations, more closely follows a 16th century (and even later) set of interpretations of the New Testament, rather than the original, apostolic understandings and teachings of the people who participated in spreading the good news from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the diaspora nations of the first century of the common era.

Both Christianity and Judaism have their own methods of keeping one foot firmly rooted in the Bible and the other one wandering up and down the passageways of time.

This idea of how Paul, James, and the apostles of the council conceptualized the role of Gentiles in their Jewish religious world has profound implications, not only on how we read and understand the New Testament, but how we view the role of the Church today, as well as modern Christian/Jewish relations.

We may have it all wrong when we think of the exact mechanism by which Gentiles entered “the Way,” and that, in a sense, they were not “converted” to Judaism or became citizens of Israel (and thus “Israelites” as opposed to “Jews”), but entered a unique legal status that at once made them equal relative to certain covenantal blessings without being identical, for the sake of fulfilling Messianic promises, to the Jewish people in identity and obligation, but still actually practicing Judaism as a way of life specifically crafted for the Gentiles by legal decree and the will of the Holy Spirit. I’ve heard it said that the short definition of a Jew is one who has rejected idolatry (obviously the long definition contains a lot more details). In that manner, while we can’t count the Gentiles in Messiah as Jews, they (we) are practicing a form of Judaism styled for them (us), at least within the ancient “Way” and in modern Messianic Judaism.

Although Christianity and Judaism (in all their various flavors) have described quite different trajectories across history, it is foolish to imagine that One God and a returning Messiah King will allow such a state to remain as we have constructed it, through it’s within the realm of possibility (considering the beginning verses of Matthew 23), that Messiah may allow a certain amount “halachah” to remain in place based on his giving the apostles the authority to make binding rulings in his name (assuming any of that trickled down to the Christian or Messianic movements of today as we imagine it has in parallel process to the modern, normative Judaisms).

Prophesy states that Messiah will return all of the Jewish exiles to their Land and their place, but it may be that he will also return the Gentile disciples to an understanding of who we are and where our duties lie in relation to the King of Israel, the nation of Israel, and the Jewish people.

I have a lot more reading to do in order to more completely explore this concept, but it’s heading in a direction I’ve been approaching for a while now.

I think there are a number of Christians and Christian groups who are feeling the pull of prophesy, but in most cases, such as in the above-quoted article written by Yosef Juarez, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. Messiah never meant for us to believe that we had to choose between him and our devotion to Jewish people and Israel, rather he desires that we arrive at a proper understanding of our role in relation to Israel and her King, where King and Country are not mutually exclusive as most people believe is true of Jesus and Israel.

While we don’t see entire church groups converting to Judaism en masse very often (as Yosef Juarez describes in his article), we do see Gentile Christians entering into Hebrew Roots congregations and attempting to fulfill their roles (mistakenly in my opinion) by apprehending Jewish identity rather than their (our) own, or even more tragically, Gentiles in Hebrew Roots and Messianic Judaism leaving Messiah Yeshua behind and converting to one of the modern Judaisms of our day.

There are few things sadder than seeing a Christian begin to develop a sincere love of Israel and the Jewish people and then to allow misunderstanding and a misguided sense of purpose to cause them to completely overshoot the target, missing the point and mistaking the background for the goal.

“One who romanticizes over Judaism and loses focus of the kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a carpenter who is infatuated with the hammer, rather than the house it was meant to build.”

–Troy Mitchell

It may not be entirely inappropriate to consider, under certain specific circumstances, Gentile conversion to Judaism within a Messianic Jewish venue, but again, in my opinion, this should be a rare occasion. Gentiles will never be able to take their (our) place in God’s Kingdom as the crowning jewels of the nations if we convert or quasi-convert to Judaism in significant numbers. To be “crowning jewels” we must remain among “the nations” or fail prophesy, Messiah, and God.

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FFOZ TV Review: The Restoring the Kingdom

January 1, 2014 James Pyles Leave a comment

Episode 26: The disciples ask Jesus “Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were looking for a physical kingdom. Was the kingdom only spiritual, or were the disciples right to expect a physical, future kingdom? Episode Twenty-six will show the viewers that the kingdom of Messiah is not just spiritual. There is a literal, coming, restoration of the kingdom of Israel. Although we believers have laid hold of the kingdom and enjoy a foretaste of it, we have not entered the kingdom yet. It’s still ahead.

-from the Introduction to FFOZ TV: The Promise of What is to Come
Episode 26: Restoring the Kingdom (click this link to watch video, not the image above)

The Lesson: The Mystery of Restoring the Kingdom

In this final episode of the first season of A Promise of What is to Come, First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) teachers Toby Janicki and Aaron Eby address the question of exactly what is the restoration of the Kingdom of God. From traditional Christianity’s point of view, the Kingdom has often been described as being Heaven, or being the Church, or being an invisible, spiritual Kingdom, the spirit that is in our hearts.

But this show uses a specifically Jewish perspective to read the Bible and understand how to interpret ancient prophesies. We can’t go only by what the words say themselves. We need to know how the original speakers and audiences in the Bible would have comprehended what was said. What did the disciples mean when they asked the following question to Jesus?

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

–Acts 1:6 (NASB)

It was at this point that Jesus was about to ascend into Heaven to take his place at the right hand of the Father. He was leaving his disciples on Earth. They must have been puzzled that Jesus was leaving without finishing his work. Where was the Kingdom? Why hadn’t he established it? How could he depart when there was so much left for him to do?

Christian Pastors often criticize the ancient Jewish disciples for misunderstanding what Jesus taught. In the eyes of many modern believers, the Kingdom is a spiritual Kingdom, not a physical reality. But even today, devout Jews believe that one of Messiah’s major tasks is to restore the nation of Israel as a physical Kingdom on Earth, return all of the exiled Jews to their Land, and elevate Israel as the head of all the nations.

This is one of the reasons why most Jewish people don’t believe Jesus could have been the Messiah. They don’t believe he was resurrected and that he died without restoring and redeeming physical Israel. Even from a believing Jew’s point of view, Jesus as Messiah left before completing his work. That means he must come back at some point to finish the job. Otherwise, he can’t be Messiah.

Toby suggested at this point in the program, that it would be a good time to review some of the information about the Kingdom presented in previous episodes of the series. To this end, he quoted:

After Yochanan was arrested, Yeshua came to the Galil and proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God. He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe the good news.”

–Mark 1:14-15 (DHE Gospels)

As you may recall, the Kingdom being “drawn near” or “at hand” meant that it was something that had arrived and could be appropriated at any time. It’s like standing at a doorway of a house. All you have to do is open the door and walk inside. In this case, the message was to repent, which was what Jesus was telling national Israel to do, in order to enter the Kingdom, the restoration of Israel to be accomplished by the Messiah.

The Torah, many of the Prophets, and even the Psalms, all speak of these Messianic promises, of a nation restored, a Holy people redeemed, a Land flourishing, the world at peace, all under the rule of King Messiah, Son of David. Here Toby paints a portrait of the prophesies that are continually additive, one linking to another, and to another, and to another, through the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) and across the so-called barrier between the Old and New Testaments, describing in a single, unbroken thread in the tapestry of God’s restorative and salvational plan.

It was this Jewish and Biblical understanding that told the disciples of the Master what to expect and led to the question we read in Acts 1:6. The Church says the ancient and modern Jews are all wrong and that no physical Kingdom was ever planned by God, in spite of the overwhelming evidence otherwise stated in prophesy. But what did Jesus say?

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority…”

–Acts 1:7 (NASB)

Here, Jesus isn’t saying that they’ve misunderstood him, or that there would never be a physical restoration, or that his Kingdom is purely spiritual. He’s saying that he wasn’t going to tell them when the Kingdom would be restored, only that it would be restored at a time fixed by God’s own authority.

In other words, Jesus didn’t contradict the expectations of his disciples, he only said he wasn’t going to restore the Kingdom of Israel at that very moment and that they had to wait. He also said this:

“…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

–Acts 1:8 (NASB)

The Kingdom of Israel would be restored, but before that was going to happen, Jesus said they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and with that power, they were to be Messiah’s witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the four corners of all the Earth.

It’s not that Messiah won’t restore physical, literal Israel as a Kingdom; the Kingdom above all nations, it’s only a matter of when.

Clue 1: Jesus taught that the Kingdom has not yet happened.

If you were to ask a room full of Christians if Jesus had finished his work in the first coming, most of them would say “yes” based on this:

Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.

–John 19:30 (NASB)

But Toby says Jesus was most likely speaking of his suffering and the atonement of sins, not his entire mission as a Messiah. I agree. If Messiah’s work was finished, then where is the world at total peace? Why don’t we all act as we should? Why is there still sin? And why is there a predicted second coming of Jesus?

Both Jews and Gentiles say today “Maranatha,” which means “O’ Lord, come.” Why do we say this if he has already finished everything he was supposed to do?

The scene shifts to Israel and FFOZ teacher and translator Aaron Eby for a brief word study of “Maranatha.” As it turns out, in the Church, we get this word from two words in Aramaic Paul inserted at the end of 1 Corinthians. Aaron said, and I learned recently, that there were no spaces between words in the Bible. For instance, if we were to translate a portion of Romans 1:32 into English but not insert spaces between the words, it would look something like:

thoughtheyknowgodsrighteousdecreethatthosewhopracticesuchthingsdeservetodie

What a mess. No wonder Biblical translation is so challenging. No wonder there is such a great difficulty in organizing the context of the Bible and how creating chapters and verses can lead to misunderstanding of the original message.

But Aaron says that even though we don’t know how the Aramaic word “Maranatha” is separated, it still means the same thing: “O’ Lord, come.” Aaron believes that Paul not only acknowledged and preached about the great accomplishments of Messiah during the first advent, but longed for the Messiah’s return and all that he would do at that future time.

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,
And declare in the coastlands afar off,
And say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him
And keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.”
For the Lord has ransomed Jacob.

–Jeremiah 31:10-11 (NASB)

This is a key Messianic prophesy describing what Messiah will do for the Jewish people and for Israel, and describes the responsiblity of the nations to listen (and obey) the words of Israel’s King.

Aaron pointed to the miracle of modern Israel’s very existence and the restoration of the Hebrew language, which had vanished for many centuries. He used Zephaniah 3:9 as a prophesy of the restoration of Hebrew, and expressed what a miracle it is for even an Israeli child to be able to read from an ancient Torah scroll and grasp its meaning.

But as exciting as this all is, Israel is still in exile as long as even a single Jew does not live within her borders, and as long as it is still threatened by its enemies, and as long as it is still largely secular, and as long as there are still two foreign Mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the most Holy place on Earth.

Believing and non-believing Jews all still cling to the twelfth of the Rambam’s thirteen principles of faith:

I believe with a perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may delay, still everyday I pray that he will come.

The modern state of Israel is a good start, but it is hardly finished. There is so much more left to do.

Back in the studio, Toby gives us the second clue:

Clue 2: Jesus had not yet fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies.

We may not know when the Messianic Kingdom will come, but we know what it will be like. Toby links a number of passages in scripture together including Matthew 16:27, Isaiah 40:10, and Revelation 22:12. And Jesus himself said he had much work left to do. We read in Matthew’s gospel how he described his own return:

Then the son of man will appear in heaven, and all the families of the earth will mourn, as they will see the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven in power and great glory. He will send forth his angels with the sound of the great shofar; they will gather his chosen ones from the four winds, and from one end of heaven to the other.

–Matthew 24:30-31 (DHE Gospels)

Jesus was referring to this prophesy:

It shall be on that day that a great shofar will be blown, and those who are lost in the land of Assyria and those cast away in the land of Egypt will come [together], and they will prostrate themselves to Hashem on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

–Isaiah 27:13 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

Jesus was speaking of what he had yet to do beyond his first coming, and that renders the third and final clue:

Clue 3: Jesus did not think his work was finished.

Unless you think the world is as it should be and that we have peace among the nations and kindness between human beings, then you must believe his work isn’t finished either.

What Did I Learn?

In this final episode of the first season of The Promise of What is to Come series, I learned pretty much what I already knew. It seems silly to imagine that Jesus had fulfilled all that he was supposed to do in his first coming. The world is still a mess and still needs a lot of fixing. Unless you are prepared to throw out large portions of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and replace the content with how the Church understands the apostolic scriptures, you must believe that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus does not fulfill all of the Messianic promises we see in the Bible.

This is also where I believe embracing a Jewish understanding of those scriptures is handy. It does not require that we refactor what Jews believe as a physical Kingdom of God in Israel into some sort of spiritual environment we enter when we die. Jewish and Gentile disciples of Jesus the Messiah can all believe that what God said through Isaiah and Jeremiah and how it was understood was still true in the world of Jesus, Peter, and Paul and still is true in our world of the 21st Century of the Common Era.

As I’ve said before, many of the beliefs in the modern Christian Church have their origins in the earliest expressions of anti-Semitism and supersessionism created by our so-called “Church Fathers,” and preserved by the men of the Reformation many centuries later. What was once invention and tradition created to separate a nascent Gentile Christianity from normative Judaism (that is, how the Church sees the Jewish people, modern Israel, and the ancient Messianic prophesies), is now believed to be rock solid fact. It doesn’t occur to many Christians to question any of these assumptions.

The FFOZ TV show is dedicated to thoughtfully suggesting to its Christian audience that its assumptions be questioned in the light of a Jewish interpretation of Biblical truth. The numerous other resources offered at First Fruits of Zion and her sister organization Vine of David are designed to provide that perspective and expand upon it for both traditional Christians and the Jewish people who have yet to recognize the face of the Messiah as the Jewish face of Rabbi Yeshua in the Gospels.

But even learning this does not summon the Promise of the Messiah to our world. In order to finish our own work so that he may come, we must live out those truths that have been revealed to us. Visit the sick, give charity to the poor, donate food to the hungry, act only with kindness to any person that you encounter, speak of the good news of the Messiah to a damaged and dying humanity.

Only then will we be pursuing the path of our Master by participating in tikkun olam, repairing our desperately broken world.

It is said that the Messiah will return only when all of Israel, all the Jewish people, keep the Shabbat as one. It is also said that the Messiah will return only when all of Israel and the world has reached a level of deepest depravity.

I don’t know what to think. I only know that we introduce a tiny bit of the Messianic Kingdom into our world every time we extend a helping hand to another person. If we all committed one unasked act of kindness each day, then how Messiah-like would the world begin to appear? We wait for Messiah to return to finish what he started, but in the mean time, we can all do what we can, as we have faith in the promise.

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Nanos, Paul, and the Consequences of Jewish Identity in Messiah

December 26, 2013 James Pyles 42 Comments

For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

–Romans 3:28-31

The discovery of the Shema Israel as central to Paul’s theology was a profound moment for me, and has shaped my reading of him ever since. If I was writing a theology of Paul, it would be the center around which all other topics turned. Here we see it employed clearly and in a pivotal point in his argument in Romans for why non-Jewish believers in Christ must remain non-Jews and not become proselytes, and by the implication of his logic, why Jews remain Jews after faith in Christ: “since [if indeed] God is one.” Paul’s language here, and throughout Romans and Galatians, calls to mind the central prayer of Judaism, repeated twice daily, and the last words a pious Jew hopes to pass his or her lips, which begins: “Hear [shema] Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

-Mark D. Nanos
“A Torah Observant Paul?: What Difference Could it Make for Christian/Jewish Relations Today?” (pg 45)
May 9, 2005 (PDF Version Sent – Endnote Formatted)
marknanos.com

Since I completed my final summary of the classic Mark Nanos book The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letters, I’ve been wondering how Nanos’ research into and perspectives on Paul have progressed. After all, the “Romans” book was published in 1996, almost two decades ago. What’s Nanos been up to since then?

The paper I’m quoting from gives a compressed answer, though it is still almost nine years old. I find the same voice and the same perspectives in the “Torah Observant Paul” paper as I do in “Romans,” with just a hint of additional development. The paper, as a whole, addresses the more “troublesome” passages in Paul’s epistles as they appear to conflict with the life of a Torah-observant Jew in the late Second Temple period. Nanos points out the overwhelming body of Christian scholarship that paints Paul as a traitor to his own people and the “inventor” of Christianity, and seeks to refactor the Biblical record by deliberately viewing Paul as a devout Jew with a life-long devotion to Hashem, the Temple, the Torah, and Judaism.

I’m not going to review the entirety of this lengthy paper right now. I’m focusing only on a small portion of it so I can extend the Nanos commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans, gleaning additional insights and sparkling bits of wisdom as they are scattered ahead of me on my path of faith.

In the “Romans” book, Nanos also mentions the Shema as the central element required in understanding the Jewish apostle’s message to the non-Jewish believers in Rome. Built on his commentary on Romans and Galatians, Nanos, in addressing Jewish and Gentile identity in Messiah, believes Paul is not only discouraging Gentiles from converting to Judaism as a means of justification before God, he’s forbidding its as contrary to prophesy and to the “oneness” testified to by the Shema.

Likewise, somewhere halfway between Paul’s time and our own Rashi wrote, to explain the repetition of the Name (Hashem, the Name, a rabbinic circumlocution for YHWH/Lord) in the Shema:

“The Lord who is our God now, but not (yet) the God of the (other) nations, is destined to be the One Lord, as it is said, ‘For then will I give to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent’ (Zeph 3:9). And (likewise) it is said, ‘And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; on that day shall the Lord be One and His name One’ (Zech 14:9).”

Paul’s argument is that the God who now righteouses (sic) Israel is the same God who now righteouses (sic) non-Israelites who turn to Israel’s God in Jesus Christ as the Lord of all the Nations too. He is the one whom both the members of Israel and of the other nations within the Christ-groups choose—like the special one that someone falls in love with like no other, thereafter the only one for themselves. For Paul, if non-Jews in-Christ become Jewish proselytes, and thereby Israelites, they do not bear witness to the arrival of the day when representatives from all of the nations turn from idols to the worship of the One God, but simply to the truth that in the present age Israel represents the righteous ones of God, members of which they become by proselyte conversion. That identity transformation for non-Jews is available apart from the confession of faith in Jesus Christ in most other Jewish groups of the time, which provide for proselyte conversion to join the family of Abraham, of God, within the present age, and await with Israel the hope of the age of reconciliation of the nations, when the wolf (such as is Rome) will lie down with the lamb (Israel), without devouring her.

Nanos, pp 46-7

For Nanos as well as for Paul, it was not a matter of Gentiles having the option to convert to Judaism within Yeshua-faith, it was strictly forbidden, for prophesy tells of both Jews and Gentiles worshiping alongside each other, Israel expressing devotion to Hashem beside all the other nations (i.e. non-Jewish people) of the Earth, acknowledging that God is One and His Name is One. Even if a Gentile converted, not for the purpose of justification (for only faith justifies) but for some other reason (the desire to take on the full beauty of the Torah, an intermarriage of a Gentile with a Jew), it contradicts God’s Word and intent for both Jewish and non-Jewish humanity.

Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the entire law.

–Galatians 5:3

Many seek to phrase the issue of proselyte conversion for non-Jewish Christ-believers from Paul’s point of view thus: Paul sought to communicate that one did not “have to” become a Jew in order to become a Christian, or if a Christian, in order to be a good one, or some such thing. Paul in Galatians, especially 5:2-6, makes it plain that a non-Jewish Christ-believer “cannot” become a proselyte.

-Nanos, pg 30

Cannot? Why not? Or have I already tipped my hand?

However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything. Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.

–1 Corinthians 7:17-20

The point Paul drives home is that regardless of which state one was in when called, their present state requires attending to obedience to God’s commandments—even guarding the interests of these commandments rather than the interests of identity as Jew or non-Jew. The noun (in Greek) can be translated as “keep,” or “obey,” and carries the sense of “guard” or “watch over.” There is no shadow of concern with works-righteousness, but rather, with failure to behave appropriate to the state of Christ-believingness…

Paul’s language here brings up a point that corresponds to several points in the previous discussion of Gal 5:3. In Paul’s propositional arrangement, a Jew — such as he was — remained in-Christ a Jew, and thus obligated to observe Torah. However, a non-Jew in-Christ remained a non-Jew, and thus not obligated to observe Torah on the same terms as a Jew, since not a Torah-person. Nevertheless, a non-Jew was now obligated to turn from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness, which was defined in terms that embody an essentially Torah-observant life (cf. Rom 6:14-23; 13:8-14; Gal 5:6-6:10), the lifestyle incumbent upon a so-called righteous non-Jew (something of an oxymoron).

Nanos, pp 32-3

Nanos not only emphasizes that Paul forbids a Gentile in Yeshua faith from converting to Judaism as a contradiction to the prophets, but he sees the co-participation of righteous Jews and Gentiles in Messiah expressed relative to identity issues, with Jews who came to Christ as Jews remaining Jewish with continuing Jewish obligations to Torah observance, and Gentiles who came to Christ as Gentiles not assuming a Jewish obligation to Torah but nevertheless, requiring a behavioral as well as “heart change” relative to lifestyle (probably as defined, at least in part, by the Acts 15 letter to the Gentile believers).

All this certainly reiterates my own opinion that Gentiles coming to faith within the ancient (or modern) Jewish religious stream of “the Way” (or its modern expression, Christianity, including within the such groups as Hebrew Roots and Messianic Judaism and their variations) that we (Gentiles) are not obligated to the Torah of Moses, at least not in the manner of observant Jews (Messianic or otherwise).

Many ancient prophesies cite how the nations (i.e. non-Jewish people) in Messianic days will take hold of the tzitzit of a Jewish man (Zechariah 8:23) and go up to the Mountain of the God of Jacob (Isaiah 2:3) to worship, because the House of God, the Temple, is a House of prayer for all people (Isaiah 56:7). In Nanos’ opinion, how did Paul see this, since he was living out the first fruits of those prophesies?

At issue is not that most other Jewish groups would likely disagree with Paul’s proposition that such reconciliation will occur when that day arrives, so that members of other nations do not then join Israel to join with her in worship of the One Creator God of all humankind. Some may believe that day will be accompanied by the conversion of the nations, in the sense of proselyte conversion to Israel; others might await the destruction of those of the other nations as foremost in their hopes. These expectations and others can be gleaned from the Scriptures and other writings of Paul’s time.

But even those who hope for reconciliation with the nations and expect them to remain not-Israel would not agree with Paul that this moment had arrived in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or even just begun to arrive and be witnessed in the life of the communities of believers in that proposition—unless sharing Paul’s faith in Christ. In their groups the distinction and membership that follows from it remains between Gentiles, however welcome as friends and guests, and Jews or Israelites, a category that includes (albeit with some variety among groups) proselytes, those who have turned from idolatry to worship the One God and have completed the rite of conversion signaling that they have joined the people of that God in full membership, so that they are no longer regarded as mere guests.

-Nanos, pg 47

Nanos continues with this point:

I do not agree with the view of many interpreters of Paul—Jewish as well as Christian—that Paul taught the dissolution of differences, that there were no longer Jews and Gentiles in Christ, but a kind of new, third race, as some have phrased it. I grant that he does sometimes write that there is neither this nor that. But it cannot be so. There remain fundamental biological differences between women and men, for example, and the male penis has either been circumcised or remains in its foreskinned state. Recognition of this reality is witnessed in his arguments, including about just this matter, and in his continued employment of this distinction to address and explain the composition of the world from an Israelite-based conceptualization of reality: he does not address anyone as “Christian,” but as Jew or non-Jew, circumcised or foreskinned, and within those categories, as having faith in/of Jesus Christ (Messiah), or not.

-Nanos, pg 48

Equal co-participation in the Messiah did not include obliteration of identity. Jews remained Jews and Gentiles remained Gentiles, with one primary indicator of distinction being relationship with Torah obligation. This did not, in Nanos’ opinion, inherently create class differentiations between Jews and Gentiles. Salvation, justification, intimacy, accessibility to God were all equally within the apprehension of Jewish and non-Jewish Yeshua-believers, but none of this required Jews to abandon Judaism and become Gentiles, nor Gentiles to convert to Judaism (or conversely not convert) and take on the Jewish obligatory observance of the Torah mitzvot.

In fact doing so, in Paul’s opinion (according to Nanos) would be an affront to God and a violation of the ancient prophesies of the Tanakh (Old Testament).

Today’s commentary is a mere subset of the Nanos paper and I hope you click the link to read the full contents of what he wrote. For me, this information is an affirmation of the original intent of God for both the Jewish people and the nations of the world, that He desires all to be reconciled before Him, and that the flow of prophesy from the earliest books of the Bible through the apostolic writings, proceed in a comprehensive, consistent, and additive manner, painting a unified portrait of the people of God moving forward through history, rather than a cosmic “bait-and-switch” whereby God attracts Israel to Himself, and then in the final act of his drama, summarily abandons his bride for a more “youthful” partner, as traditional Christian doctrine demands.

Nanos applies his research to the last part of his paper, suggesting what Christians and Jews can and should take away from this information and how it facilitates modern Christian/Jewish dialogue. Perhaps I’ll address this important issue at some future time. However, I do want to mention one important point:

In a slightly different direction, Michael Wyschogrod suggests that Christians should change the church policy that holds Jews to be no longer Jews upon becoming Christians, so that after baptism they cannot observe Torah, or if they do, that it cannot be respected as an act of faith, so that the difference between Jews and non-Jews in church is erased in the direction of Gentile-only identity. This posture infers that the election of Israel is superseded by that of the church and that the covenant with the Jewish people is regarded to be over. In other words, not urging Jews in Christ to remain Jews betrays disrespect for the place of empirical Israel.

-Nanos, pg 55

Even in churches that generally support the Jewish people and Israel, in expecting the “Jewish Christians” within their own walls to not have a continued obligation to the Torah is, in and of itself, “cryptosupersessionism” (a term I attribute to Rabbi Dr. Stuart Dauermann), which is a tragic consequence of nearly twenty centuries of anti-Jewish theology in the Church.

The irony of all this is that, from Nanos’ perspective (and mine), it may well be discovered that it is the duty of the Church to encourage its Jewish members, who have abandoned Jewish practice and assimilated within Gentile Christianity, to re-engage Judaism and Torah observance as an act of “Christian” faith.

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman