Tag Archives: messianic judaism

Uncategorized

The Jesus Covenant, Part 7: Sampling Ephesians

6 Comments

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands — remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

–Ephesians 2:11-22 (ESV)

I suppose this is something of a detour from the recommended reading list for the New Covenant I presented in Part 6 of this series, but a person named “Zion” (presumably, not his real name) suggested I put it at the top of my list in a comment he made on another one of my blog posts:

Ephesians 2 establishes gentiles as now part of the covenants, which I wonder how you deal with such, as I have never seen you address Ephesians.

Really? That only sort of lines up with the path I’ve been following thus far. On the other hand, I do want to be fair, and hence, my taking a small detour into Ephesians 2 and sampling the relevant verses in that part of Paul’s letter.

I feel that after reading the relevant portion of Paul’s aforementioned letter, my original response to Zion on the previously referenced blog post will do quite nicely as my analysis of this scripture’s relationship (or not) to the New Covenant.

The quote begins here (I’ve edited my original comments somewhat to make it more relevant)—

I read Ephesians 2 (ESV) and particularly verses 11-22 which are supposedly the ones that should lead me to believe that Jews and Gentiles in Christ have both been made “one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.” (vv 14-15)

So Christ made Jews and Gentiles one by abolishing the law, which is how most traditional Christians read it. Sorry, but I disagree. Being “one” doesn’t necessarily mean we’re a single, great, homogeneous mass of humanity (but I know you don’t believe this because of our past conversations).

However, if you don’t believe in the absolute obliteration of Jewish and Gentile distinctions, then “one new man” can’t possibly mean to you what it means to a lot of traditional Christians. For all I know, the law of “commandments expressed in ordinances” that was abolished was the halakhah of Paul’s day that erroneously stated that a Jew even entering a Gentile’s home made the Jew unclean (see Acts 10). That’s just a guess of course, but it’s as good as any.

I’ll assume (though I’ve been wrong before) that you’re focusing on vv 19-20:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, (or sojourners) but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…”

I suppose another way of saying it would be that “you are no longer strangers and God-fearers…” meaning that the non-Jewish disciples entered into a covenant relationship with God through Israel and specifically the living embodiment of Israel, Jesus Christ.

Verse 22 is interesting: “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

In fact, this whole sequence of verses reminds me of an argument I once made relative to the Good Shepherd:

“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 10:16 (ESV)

I once tried to make an argument that Gentiles and Jews are equal in the Messiah across all theological attributes because we are two pens that have been merged into a single flock with Jesus as our good shepherd. Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the results of a conversation between Gene and I which I called Lamb Chop. You can read the whole blog rather than have me copy and paste all the text over here. You should know that Ovadia’s blog no longer exists (that info will make sense when you read “Lamb Chop”) and I can only find “Shelters and Housing for Sheep and Goats” at issuu.com now, which is not the ideal interface for reading the document (but it’s better than nothing).

The core statement from “Lamb Chop” is this:

“Farmers have many sheep pens on a farm for the same flock. When it’s time to lead the flock to pasture you let them all to lead them to pasture. After they return from feeding, a shepherd separates each sheep into their respective pens.”

You can be part of the same flock but for various reasons, still be kept in different “pens”. That’s how I consider myself as being “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…” (Eph. 2:19) We can be fellow citizens of the household of God as covenant people, and I believe we all are, Jews and Christians alike, but trying to either eliminate our covenant distinctions or “shoehorning” the Sinai covenant into the Gentile sheep pen (forgive the mixed metaphor) seems a bit of a stretch given the text available.

—That was the entirety of my blog comment response but not of my thinking on the matter.

So what were we before we came to God through Christ and what are we now? Consider something from last week’s Torah Portion:

They provoked Me with a non-god, angered Me with their vanities; so shall I provoke them with a non-people, with a vile nation shall I anger them.

–Deuteronomy 32:21 (Stone Edition Chumash)

This compares well with both of the following:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

–Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

–1 Peter 2:10 (ESV)

The commentary for Deut. 32:21 in the Chumash states:

Israel angered God by worshiping deities that had no power or value. Measure for measure, God will let them be defeated and subjugated by nations that have no cultural or moral worth…

All of that describes us, the nations of the earth before coming to Christ and through him, being reconciled to God.

Not a pretty picture, but it gets worse.

Not for our sake, Hashem, not for our sake, but for Your Name’s sake give glory, for Your kindness and for Your truth! Why should the nations say, ‘Where now is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; whatever He pleases, He does! Their idols are silver and gold, the handiwork of man. They have a mouth, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; they have a nose, but cannot smell. Their hands – they cannot feel; their feet – they cannot walk; they cannot utter a sound from their throat. Those who make them should become like them, whoever trusts in them!

–Psalm 115:1-8 (Stone Edition Tanakh)

That’s us, or rather, that was us before turning away from our sins, repenting, confessing Christ, and coming to God. That was the state of Paul’s audience in his letter to the Ephesians before they too became disciples of the Master and worshipers of the God of Israel.

But what did they become and indeed, what do we become when we start calling ourselves Christians; when we choose to escape our fate as people of “nations that have no cultural or moral worth?”

Did we become “Jews” and convert to “Judaism?” It would appear not, even though it seems possible that some non-Jews did convert to Judaism in Paul’s day. In fact, the formerly-pagan Gentiles couldn’t have automatically converted to Judaism when they first became disciples of the Jewish Messiah. Here’s why.

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

–Galatians 5:2-3 (ESV)

So when we stopped being pagan idol worshipers, if we didn’t become Jews and start practicing Judaism, what did we become and what did we start doing? Did we become “Israelites” and convert to some sort of “Israelism”. I’ve recently discovered a term and a movement called Adonaism, so did we convert to that and become “Adonai-ites?”

For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

–Acts 11:26 (ESV)

According to traditional Christianity, it was the Jews who surrendered their Judaism and converted to Christianity, but my long-term readers know I reject this claim. Rather, the Jews who came to faith in Jesus as Messiah became one of the number of sects of Judaism that existed at that time, in this case, a Judaism referred to as “the Way” or “the Nazarenes.” Christianity is just another way of saying “Messianism” or “Messianic,” so I suppose we could render Acts 11:26 as saying in part, “And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Messianics.”

But that still doesn’t appear to provide any differentiation between the Gentile and Jewish believers. We only know that prior to coming to Christ, the Gentiles were totally lost, separated from God and from His covenant people Israel. In entering into covenant with God through Christ (through the Abrahamic and New Covenants, though they are not specifically mentioned in Ephesians 2), we, along with Israel, have entered into closeness with our God.

But Israel was a covenant people long before the coming of the Messiah as recorded in the Gospels. We Gentiles depend totally and completely upon Christ to enter into any kind of relationship with God at all. The Jews, on the other hand, have had such a relationship with God since Moses and arguably, since the days of Abraham. We have not. That does not mean that the Jews do not need the Messiah. Far from it. In Judaism, it is well-known that the Messiah will restore all of Israel; all of the people; all of the Jews, to national and personal redemption and reconciliation with God, restoring them as the most honored among all nations; bringing to them the full measure of the promises.

And if their nation is not restored and their covenants are not all upheld, we Christians have no hope, because it is through those covenants; through Israel itself; through her firstborn son, the Jewish Messiah alone that we are also saved. It is in our own best interest as Christians to uphold and support the Jewish return to Torah as their birthright as a people, and to claim all of Israel as their national heritage.

So who are we?

We are sheep. We are sheep from a certain pen, a really, really big pen. The Jews are also sheep in a pen but a different pen from ours. Yes, we were all brought together in the same flock and indeed, we all answer (or someday will answer) to the voice of our one “good shepherd.” We Gentiles were once far off but have been brought near (which is not the same as being fused into) the people of Israel. We have commonality with the Jews in that we enjoy covenant relationship with God, but this does not change or diminish the specialness and the uniqueness of the specifically Jewish covenant responsibilities they alone must discharge for Hashem.

But why should we complain? We have been grafted into the root and from its sap, we are given life; eternal life with God through Jesus Christ. What more could we want?

Part 8 goes back to the roots of this series and takes a closer look at Abraham and why the covenant he made with God is so important to Christians.

Update, October 18, 2012: I found a rather interesting interpretation of Ephesians 2 and the “one new man” passage that quite clarifies my position. Go to a comment made by someone named “benkeshet” on Gene Shlomovich’s blog for the details.

Uncategorized

Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 5

48 Comments

The RabbiIn addition to Tanakh, we as Messianic Jews have another authoritative source for the making of halakhic decisions: the Apostolic Writings. Yeshua himself did not act primarily as a Posek (Jewish legal authority) issuing halakhic rulings, but rather as a prophetic teacher who illumined the purpose of the Torah and the inner orientation we should have in fulfilling it. Nevertheless, his teaching about the Torah has a direct bearing on how we address particular halakhic questions. As followers of Messiah Yeshua, we look to him as the greatest Rabbi of all, and his example and his instruction are definitive for us in matters of Halakhah as in every other sphere.

In addition, the Book of Acts and the Apostolic Letters provide crucial halakhic
guidance for us in our lives as Messianic Jews. They are especially important in
showing us how the early Jewish believers in Yeshua combined a concern for
Israel’s distinctive calling according to the Torah with a recognition of the new
relationship with God and Israel available to Gentiles in the Messiah. They also
provide guidelines relevant to other areas of Messianic Jewish Halakhah, including
(but not restricted to) areas such as distinctive Messianic rites, household relationships,
and dealing with secular authorities.

-from “Standards of Observance”
Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council (MJRC)
Section One: Halakhah and Messianic Judaism
1.1 Halakhah: Our Approach (pg. 2)
OurRabbis.org (PDF)

This series isn’t taking the direction that I thought it would. At the end of Part 4, I really thought I’d return to a high-level view of the evolution of Judaism, perhaps lightly going over the development of the Talmud. This would mean doing a bit of reading and probably delaying Part 5 (this part) of the series for a while.

Then, on a whim, I decided to read “Standards of Observance,” which is the MJRC’s treatment of “Messianic Jewish halakhah;” certainly a controversial subject given the responses I’ve been fielding in Part 3 and Part 4. Thus, another “meditation” was born.

As I’m writing this, I haven’t gotten past page 2 of the 39 page MJRC document, but when I read the portion that I quoted above, I got to thinking. I generally consider halakhah to be a matter of how Jewish people operationalize their observance of the 613 mitzvot, which is how contemporary Judaism codifies the commandments to Israel in the Torah. But if “the Book of Acts and the Apostolic Letters provide crucial halakhic guidance for…Messianic Jews,” by definition, it must also provide relevant halakhah for the non-Jewish believing community as well.

This is complicated by two potentially competing positions: the halakhah as it is presented in the New Testament (NT) Gospels, book of Acts, and Epistles, and how the MJRC chooses to conceptualize, organize, and apply that halakhah. Actually, even within the context of the New Testament, how we view the relative authority of this halakhah upon the daily lives of non-Jewish Christians depends on whether or not we see this NT halakhah as fixed, static, pronouncements that were intended to be inflexibly binding on all Christians everywhere across time, or whether at least some of this halakhah was specific to individual congregations, situations, and other contextual factors, and was meant to be adaptive across time, to the point in some cases, of not applying significantly or at all to Christianity in the 21st Century.

I’ll give you an example.

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. –1 Corinthians 11:4-7 (ESV)

Taken literally and in its simplest form, Paul would seem to be saying that when men pray, our heads should not be covered, but when a woman prays, her head must be covered (presumably in a public setting such as communal worship). According to the notes for vv 5-13 at BibleGateway.com, “the Greek word gunē is translated wife in verses that deal with wearing a veil, a sign of being married in first-century culture.” This adds some context to what Paul is saying that we would miss by reading it in English. The head covering that is to be applied to women is specific to their marital status in specific cultures as they existed nearly 2,000  years ago. There are no immediately available notes for why a man’s head must be uncovered, but this would seem to go against the later tradition that men wear kippot when in the synagogue, although, of course, Paul is addressing non-Jewish believers in this case (keep in mind that any blanket declaration of halakhah forbidding men to cover their heads in prayer directly contradicts the modern practice of Gentile men in Messianic, One Law, and Two-House congregations to wear kippot).

My example seems to show us that it is certainly possible and likely that not every single pronouncement of halakhah that flowed from Paul’s pen was supposed to apply generally across all churches everywhere and “everywhen.” That is, we can believe that some “Messianic halakhah” as it applies to non-Jewish believers was never originally intended to be permanent, fixed, static standards of practice religious practice.

Which means we’re going to have an interesting time trying to figure out which portions of the halakhah in the NT continues to have force today and how we are to observe said-halakhah in our local communities in the present age.

I want to make certain that I communicate the following clearly. Whatever definitions that the MJRC has produced relative to “Messianic halakhah” can only apply to Messianic Jews who are members of congregations affiliated with the MJRC. This is certainly in keeping with halakhah in any other Jewish community, regardless of scope, since, for example, how halakhah is applied within the context of Chabad is most likely different from its application within Conservative or Reform Judaism. For all I know, there may be variations within specific local synagogues that are “contained” within the same sect of Judaism.

That means that not only does the MJRC understanding of halakhah not apply to wider Christianity (and you wouldn’t expect it to, since it seems to be written specifically for its Jewish members), but it doesn’t apply to any other organizations of Messianic Judaism and clearly not to any of the groups contained within “Hebrew Roots.”

(Arguably, and I haven’t read the entire MJRC document yet, any halakhah developed by the MJRC would have some sort of impact on the non-Jewish membership of each affiliated congregation, but I don’t know yet what the scope of that impact might be. However, if you are a non-Jewish believer and you choose to attend an MJRC affiliated congregation, you agree to become subject to their authority. Keep in mind that even in the most “Jewish” of Messianic Jewish congregations, the majority of members and perhaps a few folks in leadership, are non-Jews).

The next question is whether or not it is appropriate and desirable for groups of non-Jewish believers to also attempt to organize a sort of “Christian halakhah” from the NT that would apply to churches and Hebrew Roots groups.

I suppose Christians have been doing that ever since the invention of movable type and the first mass printing of the King James Version of the Bible (probably well before, but availability of the Bible prior to that time was severely limited, and the common man had no ready access to the written Word). In other words, developing “Christian halakhah” is an old story for Christianity, they (we) just don’t call it “halakhah.”

Of course, the result is what we see before us…about a billion (I’m grossly exaggerating) different Christian denominations covering the face of the earth, each with their own special take on what the Bible is trying to tell us, at least at the level of fine details of practice. Hebrew Roots organizations are no different, they just re-introduce the word “halakhah” into the mix. Viewed at in this light, it is understandable that the various Gentile expressions of Hebrew Roots including One Law/One Torah and Two-House, either formally or informally establish a set of accepted religious and lifestyle practices based on various parts of the Bible including the New Testament “halakhah.”

However, where it might get a little strange is when/if such Gentile organizations access the larger body of Jewish halakhah that extends well beyond the pages of the NT and into the writings of the Mishnaic Rabbis. While I can understand why organizations that are formed by Messianic Jews as a resource for Messianic Jews and Messianic Jewish congregations would want to delve into the accepted body of Talmudic thought, it’s puzzling why a Gentile would choose to do so. And yet, we see Gentile groups forming “Beit Dins,” wearing tzitzit and laying tefillin in accordance with traditionally accepted Jewish halakhah, and performing other Jewish religious practices that cannot be found in the NT and indeed, practices that weren’t codified (such as wearing kippot) until many centuries after the writers of the NT books and letters had died and their bones had turned to dust.

I made an observation in the previous part of this series that was never answered by any of the relevant parties:

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?

It is completely understandable why any Christian church or congregation of Gentile believers in Jesus, regardless of their emphasis, should want to carefully study the NT documents and to derive whatever practical knowledge it contains for Christian religious practice in the modern era. On the other hand, it’s rather mysterious what some Hebrew Roots groups believe they will get out of studying the extra-Biblical Rabbinic texts and applying practices and concepts related to a Beit Din, Farbrengen, Ritual purity, Shmita, and so on.

If halakhah has the ability to evolve over time within the Jewish context, we can expect Jewish communities to practice one of the current forms within their local boundaries. The same can be said for Christian religious and lifestyle practice relative to the various Christian churches and denominations. I would never expect a Christian church to borrow significantly or at all from any Jewish halachic source in establishing accepted Christian religious behaviors. Why then, as I’ve asked before, should Gentile Hebrew Roots organizations desire to borrow heavily or almost exclusively from post-Biblical Jewish halachic practices, especially if said-groups only recognize the “written Torah” and New Testament as their only legitimate authoritative documents?

I know all this sounds like I’m trying to pick a fight, but given all of the “resistence” to the Talmud registered by Hebrew Roots people and how they say they don’t consider Talmud as an authoritative guide, the fact that virtually all such groups model their worship practices on modern Jewish synagogue services is truly baffling.

This series continues in the blog post: Messiah in the Jewish Writings, Part 1

Uncategorized

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

53 Comments

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.

Uncategorized

Jesus, Halakhah, and the Evolution of Judaism, Part 3

65 Comments

The title I have chosen for this study is a “tongue-in-cheek” attempt to highlight something that seems to be missed by many, namely, that the Mishnah did not exist as a written document in the pre-destruction era, so it is quite obvious that no one, including Paul, could have possibly read what is known in our day as the Mishanh (sic). In fact, as we shall see, the Mishnah was not widely read by Jewish communities in the centuries immediately following the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) either, for the Mishnah was not “published” as a written document until much later.

Along the same lines, it is a methodological error to speak of “1st Century Judaism,” for no such monolithic Judaism existed. We must rather speak of “Judaisms” (plural) in the pre-destruction era. Granted that a variety of Judaisms extant in the 1st Century surely had some things in common (Shabbat, circumcision, Tanach, etc.), it was nonetheless their clear and (in some cases) radical differences that produced the variegated Judaisms of that era.

Unfortunately, the presupposition of some in the Messianic movement is that the later corpus of rabbinic literature presents a monolithic, historically accurate description of “the Judaism” practiced by Yeshua and His disciples.

-Tim Hegg
from the Introduction (pg. 1) of
“What Version of the Mishnah did Paul Read?” (2012)
TorahResource.com

Since writing Part 2 of this series, I’ve been pondering how to proceed, since, as I’m sure you’ve gathered if you read the questions I’ve been posing, the scope of my inquiry is rather ambitious. Then the answer landed firmly in my lap. I’m indebted to Peter at Orthodox Messianic Judaism (something of a misnomer given the theological nature of his blog) for providing a link to Tim Hegg’s article. I read it through once, meaning to go over it again and eventually write something about it, but as I was getting into the shower, I had an “epiphany” and quickly rushed to my computer (I put a robe on first) to compose the paragraphs that are the heart of this missive (we’ll get to those by the by).

I should say at this point that I like Tim Hegg. He has been very gracious to me. I’ve spent Erev Shabbat in his home, I’ve been treated well by his family and his congregation, and I admire and respect him as a leader and a scholar. All of which added to my surprise when I realized in reading the Introduction to the above-quoted paper, that he had made some glaring and erroneous assumptions.

I can’t think of anyone in Messianic Judaism who believes that the Mishnah we have today is a direct reflection of how Judaism (or “Judaisms”) functioned back in the late Second Temple period, when Jesus walked among his people Israel. I have no idea, even after reading Tim’s paper in full, where he got that idea. Certainly my drive to investigate the evolution of Judaism as it relates, both to the ongoing authority of Judaism to define itself across time, and whether or not First Century halakhah and modern halakhah can be considered equally valid for the Judaism of their times, doesn’t assume a fixed, static, and non-adaptive set of applications of Torah over a 2,000 year span.

Also, his point that in the day of Jesus, that there were multiple “Judaisms” (Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, and so on) is hardly a revelation. Again, I don’t know anyone in the Messianic Jewish movement who would deny the “multi-sect” nature of First Century Judaism. On the other hand, if we look at modern Judaism or modern Christianity, we could say the same thing. If there was no, one unified “Judaism” in the day of Jesus, there must certainly be no one, monolithic, unified modern Christianity either. The fact that the Christian church exists as perhaps hundreds of denominational models and their variants, (including One Law or, if you will, “One Torah”) establishes this firmly. Nevertheless, no one balks at talking about “Christianity” or “Judaism” in the 21st Century as if they were specific, unified entities, since at their cores within each individual religion, they contain a basic, common set of theologies, doctrines, dogma, and the like that identify them as either “Christian” or “Jewish.”

It’s as if Tim constructed a very well written and organized paper based on faulty assumptions about Messianic Judaism. It’s never been about the Judaism of late Second Temple times being one unified entity, and it certainly has nothing to do with the belief that the Talmud, (which is comprised of Mishnah, Baraita, Gemara, Halakhah, and Aggadah) as we understand it, having existed as the same body of information in the days of Jesus and the Apostles as it does today.

(The evolution of the Oral Torah and halakhah of Christ’s day into what eventually became known as the Talmud is well beyond the scope of this article, but the seeds of what became Talmud certainly must have existed in some form in the Second Temple period and before. What we know of Hillel and Shammai is recorded in Pirkei Avot, which is the “ethical teachings and maxims of the Rabbis of the Mishnaic period,” and yet both Hillel and Shammai pre-dated Jesus by a generation, and the formalization of Mishnah by centuries.)

In the Conclusions section of Tim’s paper (pg. 23, point 5), he states:

We see, then, that there is no historical nor biblical case for accepting oral Torah as divinely sanctioned. Even the suggestion itself is ill-founded, for it both presumes a monolithic “oral Torah” and that the rabbinic authorities who formulated and compiled the current corpus of rabbinic literature did so by the leading of God.

Point 7 of his Conclusions (pp 23-4) states:

As we avail ourselves of the wealth of rabbinic literature and gain value from the study of it, we must also keep in mind that it is the product of men and not that of divine revelation. It does not come to us with any sense of divine imprimatur nor should the rabbinic literature be considered as having sacred value greater than the works of non-rabbinic authors or sources. All the writings of men must be equally scrutinized in the light of the eternal word of God, the Bible.

There’s a certain irony in Tim’s statements if you fix your gaze, not on the Rabbinic writings that are encapsulated in Talmud, but on another “Rabbi’s” writings, which we find in “the light of the eternal word of God, the Bible.”

We take it on faith that the Bible, the Holy Scriptures of God, are Divinely inspired and not merely the writings of human beings, but even then, most of us don’t believe that God simply dictated the Bible to myriads of human beings over several thousand years of history, and that the authors involved were only human word processors. In fact, how much of the personalities and viewpoints of all of these authors made their way into our Holy Scriptures is a hotly debated point among religious scholars and worshipers.

Add to that the suggestion that the New Testament Epistles, which make up the majority of the Christian texts, were actually letters written mostly by Paul, with smaller contributions by a handful of others, to various early Christian churches, and you begin to wonder about the nature of “Divine inspiration.” More than one source has said that the New Testament letters could be of a “lesser authority” than the Torah, for example, and may indeed be Paul’s midrashim or commentaries on Torah, the Messiah, and on the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and New Covenants. If this is true, then the barrier between “Divine authority” and “human agency” in many of our holy writings is a lot thinner than most Christians (perhaps including Tim Hegg) would be comfortable with.

What if there’s merit to the idea that the Talmudic writings and subsequent commentaries, judgments, and rulings have a “Divine authority” involved, at least to a degree? If we can say that Paul’s letters are “Divine” in some manner or fashion, and yet were written by Paul with his mind and emotions fully engaged, (and who knows how “Divine inspiration” does and doesn’t work) then in Galatians, Ephesians, or Colossians, where does Paul leave off and God begin? There’s no way to know. Maybe God just “wired” Paul’s brain to write letters in a way that reflected His will and intent within the context of Paul’s personality, the place and time in which Paul was writing, who he was writing to, and the issues at hand that prompted the letter in the first place.

How is that different from the acknowledged and legitimate Rabbinic authorities issuing rulings, based on and extrapolating from Torah ideals and principles, and then applying them to their local populations?

Who can say if the Mishnaic Rabbis were Divinely inspired or not. How do you measure “Divine inspiration?” I suppose you can, as Tim says at one point, compare the Rabbinic rulings to the canon of Scripture and where they agree, you can say the Rabbis have produced value. Where they disagree, you can say they produced error. Detractors of the Talmud, as applied to Messianic Judaism, say that since “Rabbinic Judaism” does not recognize Yeshua (Jesus) as the Jewish Messiah, it invalidates everything produced by that “Judaism” including the Talmud as a whole (as far as Messianic Jews are concerned, anyway). On the other hand, as my friend Gene Shlomovich said recently in this blog comment:

If you want to believe, as much of Christianity and Islam does, that G-d has virtually abandoned the Jewish people by leaving them to fend for themselves without authoritative leaders and teachers because “they rejected Jesus”, that the Jewish people corrupted the interpretation of scriptures and have lost their right to interpret them, that G-d has removed his Spirit from my people, it’s your prerogative. You would not be the first or the last.

Traditional supersessionism states that God withdrew His Spirit from the Jewish people and transferred it to “the Church” because Judaism rejected the Messianic claims of Jesus. Not only do I believe that theology represents a tremendous error in thinking, but it is a gross simplification of a very complex set of events that occurred over decades and even centuries.

The paper Matthew 23:2-4: Does Jesus Recognize the Authority of the Pharisees and Does He Endorse their Halakhah? written by Noel Rabbinowitz, which I introduced in Part 1 of this series, suggests that not only did Jesus acknowledge the legitimate authority of the Pharisees, but also of the scribes, who, as Carl Kinbar explains, were:

…an independent group affiliated not only with the Pharisees, but also with the Sadducees, Chief Priests, and elders. In fact, in Matthew, a quick check shows that 10 references to the scribes relate them to the Pharisees and 10 to other groups!

As soon as we grant the scribes the same place that Yeshua does in Mt. 23:2, it seems that Yeshua was not promoting the idea that one group should be in control of the halakhic process. Rather, he acknowledges the vital role of Torah teachers but criticizes them as part of his teaching on humility (read to verse 12).

In essence, it seems Jesus, to some degree, acknowledged the legitimate authority of the religious leaders in the various “Judaisms” of his day to have the right to establish halakhah for their communities. Of course the Mishnah as we have it today didn’t exist when the events in Matthew 23 were happening and later recorded, but if Jesus could recognize (and still criticize) Jewish religious leaders as having the right to establish religious practice for the First Century Judaisms, and if that authority was maintained across time as granted by God (I know…a big “if) and perhaps even as a function of an evolutionary process occurring within global Judaism and the local “Judaisms,” then maybe we can say that Jewish authority to legitimately define itself and it’s practice didn’t come to an abrupt end when it was “nailed to the cross with Jesus.”

No one is saying that the Mishnah existed in the days of Jesus, Peter, and Paul. But even Tim Hegg must acknowledge that some sort of halakhah did exist as established by the Pharisees and scribes. Factor in Rabbinowitz, and you have established that Jesus agreed in principle, that the Jewish religious authorities were legitimate and he acknowledged much of their halakhah. We can build on this to explore the possibility that God did not turn His back on all of His people Israel across the last twenty centuries, and that He maintained His presence among them. If God abandoned Judaism totally, and completely “threw in” with Christianity, then whatever the Rabbis came up with was inspired by human imagination alone. But if God is with all of His people, those of the Covenant of Abraham and Sinai, as well as those of us who benefit from some of the blessings of the New Covenant, then both Christianity and Judaism have a place in God’s heart and in God’s plan.

Have God’s blessings continued to be with the Jews as well as the Christians? Considering the fact that Jews even exist today, let alone retain the faith, practices, and traditions of their Fathers, with some teachings stretching back over 3,300 years, it would seem the answer is “yes.” Has He let them spin out of control, creating laws, rules, and statutes that are made up of wishful thinking and pipe dreams, while only showering His “Divine inspiration” on the laws, rules, and statutes of the unified Christian church (I hope you’re picking up on my attempt to be ironic)? I seriously doubt it.

Tim Hegg, in point 6 of his Conclusions (pg. 23) states:

Our conclusion is that, while rabbinic literature does have much value, it is not to be received as having divine authority in matters of our faith and halachah.

Tim may esteem Rabbinic literature in terms of its historic value, as well as for its insights into “the perspectives, beliefs, and worldview of modern Judaisms,” which “aids Messianic believers in appreciating and understanding the religious perspectives of observant Jews in our own day,” but for those “observant Jews,” Messianic and otherwise, the meaning of Mishnah is a great deal more. It doesn’t have to mean the same thing to us, including me or Tim, as it does to observant Jews, since the vast majority halakhah does not apply to Christianity.

Will Jesus Christ, upon his return and when he establishes his reign over the earth and his throne in Holy Jerusalem, recognize the authority of the Jews of that day as he recognized the authority of the Jews of 2,000 years ago? I don’t know for sure. But as we’ve seen, Jesus didn’t reject the Jewish authorities of ancient days out of hand, though he didn’t completely agree with them, either. Perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of Jesus seeing modern Judaism in the same light, particularly because God doesn’t seem to have dismissed His Jewish people…ever.

Part 4 in this series will examine another aspect of the authority of the Talmudic sages and of modern Judaism. Does Judaism have the right to define itself, including Messianic Judaism? Find out in tomorrow’s “morning meditation.”

Uncategorized

The Equality Puzzle, Part 3

9 Comments

To be perfectly blunt: I must say the Christians have robbed the Jews! And perhaps what is worse is that this thievery has been encouraged by theologians, pastors, and even Sunday School teachers, where small children are taught to sing the song, “Every promise in the book is mine, every chapter, every verse, every line.”

Every promise in Scripture in some way benefits Christians, but it is not all promised to Christians. Sometimes the thievery has been inadvertent and unintentional. It’s like thinking that the raincoat hanging in the office closet is yours for wearing home because of unexpected showers. Hopefully, you will discover the raincoat belongs to a fellow worker and you will restore it. It is not as if Christians do not have the greatest promise of God, which is 1 John 2:25: “And this is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life.”

–Moishe Rosen
from his Foreward to Barry Horner’s book
Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged

This is Part 3 of a four-part series. Go to Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t already read them.

I know that Mr. Rosen was addressing concerns with the traditional Christian church and the effects of Christian supersessionism on the Jewish people, but given what I said in Part 2 of this series, he could just as easily have been addressing Christian “One Law” proponents. I know “thievery” seems like a strong term to apply to people who want nothing but to obey God and all of the Torah mitzvot, but from a Jewish point of view, (even a “Jews for Jesus” point of view in the case of the late Mr. Rosen) that’s how it looks.

But Rosen says something curious at the end of the above-quoted statement. He says, “It is not as if Christians do not have the greatest promise of God, which is 1 John 2:25: “And this is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life.”

The greatest promise of God means that we Christians are the direct beneficiaries of the promise of eternal life. What more do we want of God but what He has already granted us by His bountiful grace and mercy?

However, as human beings, we have a tendency not only to want what we can’t have, but to believe that we’re being shortchanged if, for instance, “Moishe” has been given a unique gift or responsibility that was not granted to “Barry” as well.

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. –Romans 3:1-2 (ESV)

I agree, being a Jew, including a “Messianic Jew,” has many advantages in relation to God. But saying that, and getting back to Mr. Rosen for a moment, I believe there are many advantages to being a Gentile Christian as well.

In the “Messianic” world, there’s a sort of covert bit of jealousy going on, at least with some of the non-Jewish participants, because these Gentiles see the beauty and wonder of living a Jewish religious lifestyle and they desire to live that life as well, but without converting to Judaism. More conservative elements in Messianic Judaism are echoing Moishe Rosen’s words and crying “foul” when One Law Christians demand the right to be obligated to the full weight of performing the 613 mitzvot, including those behaviors that specifically point to Jewish covenant status and Jewish identity markers. Those Jews cry out, (again, echoing Rosen) “Hey, that’s my raincoat. Give it back,” and in response the “Jewish raincoat wearing” Gentiles retort, “It’s mine, now.” as if they’re still singing the old Sunday School song, “Every promise in the book is mine, every chapter, every verse, every line.”

I said clearly in Part 2 of this blog series that there is nothing preventing the Christian who finds meaning and beauty in the Torah from adopting many of the mitzvot in their worship lives. Please, you can joyously light the candles on Shabbos, pray the Shema, and daven facing toward Jerusalem. You can even feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, help a lame person cross a busy street, and give abundantly to charitable causes. All of these are Torah mitzvot and if performing these deeds brings your heart closer to God, who am I as one lone Christian to tell you that they are forbidden you?

Oh wait.

What did I say? What were those mitzvot again?

I’m trying to clean up something that has become terribly muddied and messed up in translation. In “hosing off” the muddled confusion, I have “discovered” (no, it’s no great secret) that a great deal of the Torah is stuff that Christians all over the world have been doing for uncounted centuries. You want to “obey Torah?” It’s not complicated in its essence. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love justice. Do mercy. Smile at a stranger. Hug a small child with a scraped knee. Honestly, where’s the mystery? How hard is it to obey God? It’s a no brainer.

If, in the middle of all that, you want to order Kosher meals on your next international flight, or wear a head covering to honor the God who is always above you, I don’t think there’s much of a problem. No one is locking you out of the Torah or keeping the God of Israel hidden in a room with a sign on the door that says, For Jews Only.”

D.T. LancasterBut I keep saying that Christians are not Jews and I also keep saying that there are great advantages to being a Christian. But what are those advantages, I mean besides eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord? If there are advantages to Jews that uniquely belong to Jews, can the same be said about Christians?

I should say at this point that even if, beyond having our sins forgiven, coming into a “right relationship with God,” and being granted eternal life, there are no other “special advantages” to confessing Christ and coming to faith in the Jewish Messiah, is it really our place to complain to God about it? Hasn’t He done enough for us? If he chooses to assign additional obligations to the Jew, including the Messianic Jew, that He does not apply to the Gentile Christian, isn’t that God’s right? Maybe we can apply one of the Master’s parables to our own situation by way of an answer.

And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.” –Matthew 20-8-16 (ESV)

I know it seems as if I’m contradicting myself because the parable is actually about how God’s love, grace, and salvation are applied in equal measure regardless of what age a person is when they come to faith. That is, everyone, no matter who they are or how old they are, eight years or eighty, when they become disciples of the Master, receives the same gifts from God as equals. Couldn’t this also mean that the obligations of Torah should be distributed evenly to both Jew and Christian as equals?

But look at it another way. The workers who were hired early and worked longer received the same wages as the workers who were hired later and worked less…and the “early hires” were ungrateful and jealous, even though it’s the Master’s money and he can pay as he pleases.

It’s also God’s Torah and He can apply it as He pleases. Are we really going to “get in God’s face” and kvetch about it? Just how ungrateful and ungracious do we want to be?

So what advantage is there in being uniquely Gentile Christian? As Paul might say, “much in every way.”

Instead of attacking Christianity, Messianic Gentiles would do well to focus on what is good about Christianity. This is necessary for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that Messianic Gentiles, as stated above, are Christians. Just as important, though, is the impact this positive attitude will have on any effort to bring Christians to recognize the Jewish roots of their faith.

It isn’t difficult to find good things to say about Christianity. First, Christianity has brought billions of people to Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah and King of the Jews. This is a non-trivial accomplishment. Even some Jewish scholars have recognized the significance of this fact. In Hilkhot Melakhim 11:10–12, Maimonides credits Christianity with preparing the Gentile world for the arrival of King Messiah by spreading knowledge of the Bible far and wide. If even those who do not claim Yeshua as Messiah can affirm the good that has come from Christianity, certainly believers should be able to as well.

Second, Christianity has helped uncountable numbers of poor, hungry, destitute, abandoned people. Myriads of counselees—drug abusers and alcoholics, victims of abuse, troubled spouses—have benefited from a pastor’s biblical advice. From Carey and Wilberforce’s campaigns against satī in India to the modern phenomenon of “adopting” starving African children, Christians everywhere have expended their resources to help those less fortunate. Today, Christian orphanages in India take in abandoned children with nowhere else to turn, just as devout Christian George Müller did over a century ago in England.

Most of these people—the poor, the abandoned, the disenfranchised, and the abused—will never understand how Yeshua fulfilled the Passover. They may never taste matzah. They may never utter a single word of Hebrew or even be able to read the Bible in their own language. Yet they rely, just as we do, on the saving grace of God through Yeshua the Messiah.

-Boaz Michael
from an early manuscript of his forthcoming book
“Tent of David: Healing the Vision of the Messianic Gentile” (pp 50-51)

For nearly twenty centuries, the church has preserved the Gospels of Christ and the letters of Paul, James, Peter, and others, and that “good news” has brought countless millions of human beings into covenant relationship with God. How many people found faith who would have otherwise been hopelessly lost without the church? How many people have been given clothing, food, medicine, companionship, mercy, and kindness by Christians whose only motivation was to serve the Savior and to the will of God? I admit that many terrible things have been done in the name of Jesus, but that’s the fault of flawed and damaged human beings, not the will of the Creator of the Universe. When we actually do His will, it always is for the good.

But you might be saying right now, “So what? Haven’t Christians have always done that?”

I’ll answer that question and more in the Fourth and final part of this series.

Addendum: Derek Leman has written a blog post called Is MJ Guilty of Jewish Elitism? The theme is substantially similar to this series of “meditations” and I recommend that you stop by Derek’s blog and have a read.

Uncategorized

The Equality Puzzle, Part 2

57 Comments

Part 2 in a four-part series. Go to Part 1 before continuing here.

While Christians and Jews rarely get hung up on who is obligated to what under usual circumstances, there is a “middle area” where Christians and Jews meet and sometimes enter into conflict. Of course I’m talking about Messianic Judaism which, in its ideal, is a form of normative Judaism (modern traditional Judaism and the traditional church will disagree with me here) that allows halakhic Jews who have come to faith in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, to give him honor and to worship God in a wholly religious Jewish context and environment. It could be thought of as a Judaism like other sects of Judaism in the 21st century, but one acknowledging that the Messiah has already come and will come again.

As I said, the rest of normative Judaism in our world completely rejects any suggestion that Jesus could possibly have been (or will be) the Jewish Messiah King and thus (for the most part) rejects all Jews who “believe in Jesus.”

Christianity sometimes struggles with Messianic Judaism as well, since the phrase “under the Law” is virtually a curse word in most churches. “Jewish Christians” who continue to observe the mitzvot are considered to be a slap in the face to Jesus Christ and his bloody, sacrificial death on the cross, which, after all, was supposed to have freed all men from the Law.

OK, not all churches believe in such supersessionist ideas and many churches are slowly progressing forward, but for a large number of “average Christians,” Messianic Judaism is at least a mystery if not an actual affront to their concept of the work of Christ.

Somewhere in the midst of all this is a group of Gentiles who believe in Christ as Lord, Savior, and Messiah, but who disdain not only the church as a whole, but even the name “Christian,” preferring to refer to themselves as “One Law” or “Messianic Gentile” or some other circumlocution.

Last week in Journey to Reconciliation, Part 1 and Part 2, I said that many people who make up the Hebrew Roots/One Law movement became disillusioned with the traditional church and feel that some form of “Judaism” is the key to returning to the true intent of Christ and the “grafting in” of non-Jewish believers into the Hebraic root. However, it becomes amazingly confusing when large groups of Gentile Christians start attempting to absorb and live out Jewish religious customs and identity markers, often without a very good understanding of the underlying traditions, definitions, and methods of operationalization of a Jewish religious lifestyle.

In other words, many One Law practitioners are only “quasi-Jewish” in appearance and otherwise don’t typically conform to actual Jewish religious behaviors. In any event, a group of Christians practicing modern Jewish Halacha is not the same thing as the first pagan goyim abandoning idolatry and starting to worship in a First Century church established by the Apostle Paul.

It gets even more confusing when, confronted with hundreds of years of Jewish Rabbinic judgments, rulings, and education, some Hebrew Roots Christians either decide to toss the Talmud out altogether or reinvent it for their own purposes. However, any attempt to live out even the semblance of a Jewish lifestyle, either without the Talmud or using it in a drastically altered version, is ultimately doomed to failure.

The ability to even understand how to enact the basics of Torah doesn’t exist without some form of interpretation. Whether you choose to believe in the authority of the Rabbis to make halakhic rulings or not, they did establish a standard of Biblical interpretation and behavior that has served to safeguard the Jewish people for the past 20 centuries. Granted, the Rabbis never intended the vast majority of the Talmud to ever apply to non-Jewish people, but once you commit yourself to a Jewish lifestyle, it becomes impossible to avoid significant encounters with the Talmud.

Any Gentile who chooses to pray with a Siddur has encountered the Talmud and probably the Zohar. Any Gentile who dons a tallit gadol has encountered the Talmud. Any Gentile who attempts to “keep kosher” beyond the limits of Leviticus 11 has encountered the Talmud. The Rabbinic Sages and their rulings are so integrated into modern Judaism that for all intents and purposes, they are modern Judaism. You cannot adopt any item or element from modern Jewish religious and worship life without encountering and adopting some aspect or ruling of the Sages.

There’s no such thing as a “Bible-only” Jewish life (there’s no such thing as a “Bible-only” Christian life either, since we too have a rich history of tradition and ritual…we just pretend their is). Any understanding and implementation of the mitzvot at all is heavily interpreted and filtered through hundreds of years of Rabbinic commentary.

I mentioned in another blog post that, while Rabbis discourage non-Jews from taking on Jewish identity customs such as wearing kippot, they also recognize that we non-Jews may want to adopt the underlying intent of those markers. There are some Gentiles who refrain from wearing a kippah outside of an authentic Jewish synagogue setting, but who honor God by covering their heads with a hat or similar article when in public. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The Messianic educational and publishing ministry First Fruits of Zion has written an overwhelming number of books and articles outlining the appropriateness and desirability of Christians keeping significant portions of the Torah, including the correct Halacha involved, so it’s not as if we Gentile believers are cut off from the beauty of wonder of the traditions and prayers. However, it is one thing to be a grafted in branch being nurtured by the “civilized” root, and another thing entirely to say that we now own that root and that it is totally ours to do with as we please.

We cannot throw out the Jewish lifestyle without exterminating the historic link that connects Judaism (and thus any Jewish application to Christianity) back 2,000 years to the days of the Messiah’s earthly existence. We cannot take the Jewish lifestyle and morph it into something that pleases we Christians better without destroying the authenticity and the “Jewishness” of that link. In our ignorance or our arrogance, (or both) we are continuing to do what we did in the darkest days of the history of the church; invalidate and destroy the history of the Jewish people and claim its “first fruits” as belonging only to us.

If anyone in Christianity desires to address some form of “Torah observance,” it hardly makes sense for us to reinvent the wheel by redesigning Halacha. If we want to “keep kosher,” for example, the standards for keeping kosher are well established. We don’t need to “fix” them or rewrite them. How could we do better? Where do we get the authority to try to take Jewish life and “Gentilize it?” If some Christians want to pray with a siddur, then you will have to get used to the idea that most of the prayers were written post-Second Temple, and a significant portion of the content originated with the ancient Jewish Sages.

Actually, I don’t blame “One Law” Christians and even the more moderate “Messianic Gentiles” (a category to which I probably still belong, although I think of myself as “Christian”) for being confused as to what aspects of Torah are allowable and which are considered “forbidden” to Gentiles by the Jewish people.

(I suppose now would be a good time to mention that Judaism can’t actually walk into some Gentile’s home or congregation and say, “You can’t do that. Only we can do that.” If any non-Jews refrain from Jewish dress or practices that uniquely identify the Jewish people, it would have to be out of respect for the Jews and the desire to honor the Jewish forefathers who brought the first Gentiles into faith and discipleship under the Jewish Messiah King. If you choose not to show that type or level of honor, then I guess you’ll do as you please.)

For people who are intermarried and interfaith like me, it’s a little simpler in that, having a Jewish spouse, whatever Jewish practices the Jew in the home performs, the non-Jew is involved. Thus if my wife should choose to light the Shabbos candles and say the blessing, I, as her husband, would be able to enjoy the full flavor of the Shabbat entering our home. Of course, I’ve blogged many times in the past about the conflicts and dissonance that can also be involved in an intermarried home, so in some sense, a husband and wife who are either both Christians or both Jews (or both Messianic Jews) have certain advantages.

In the home, there is no problem for the Christian who loves welcoming in the Shabbat, praying with the Siddur, and even wearing tzitzit and tefillin in prayer since, in privacy, it is between the Christian and God. In public, it becomes more “dicey” as I’ve already mentioned, especially once the Gentile individual or group purposefully adopts Jewish practices and dress and then deliberately alters time-honored Halacha and tradition because they believe they have the “right,” and what the Jewish people have established either doesn’t fit, or isn’t “good enough” somehow.

As I said, this issue is already hopelessly confused, which is one reason why I simply put the brakes on my own “One Law” religious practice, put my tallit, my kippah, and everything else “Jewish” in a box, and hit the “Reset” button. If a Christian has to adopt Jewish practices in order to feel religiously significant, spiritually closer to God, or validated in their faith in Jesus, then something is terribly wrong.

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith – just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? –Galatians 3:1-6 (ESV)

Some people get so involved in adopting or adapting the “mechanics” of modern Judaism into their lives that they effectively forget that Jesus does matter. In fact, they forget that he matters more than anything because without the Messiah, we Gentiles could never become Christians and as such, enter into a covenant relationship with the God of Abraham.

But if the Torah is not our “keys to Heaven” so to speak, and if focusing on the mitzvot or our own adaptations of Halacha are not the most significant things in our lives, then on what do we base our hope? Where does our treasure lie? Are we always, as Christians, the “little brother” tagging along behind the older and “cooler” Jewish Messianics?

Absolutely not! But if not, then who are we and, in terms of anything “Messianic,” where is our significance, our role, our purpose in God’s Kingdom. We’ll cover that in Part 3.