Shabbat Shalom!

The Sabbath has always been and will always be one of the biggest facets of Judaism. Similarly, the Sabbath should be one of the biggest traditions of the Christian faith. Why? Because it is the very first thing in history that God called holy. While creation was merely “good,” the sabbath day was “holy.” Jesus the Messiah observed the Sabbath, as well as the apostles and early Christians whether Jew or non-Jew.

There is massive amounts of division within the Christian community, whether Messianic, Seventh-Day baptist, adventist, or a Lord’s day observer. Paul spoke sharply against such division caused over someone else’s holy day not being the same holy day as someone else. I am not here to point fingers. It is of my conviction that I observe the Sabbath Friday evening to Saturday evening as it originally was/is. If your day is on Sunday, then observe it on Sunday. The key is that it should be a day that is set apart for God and not like the other six days of the week. The entire point of the Sabbath is that we rest from our normal routine and make the day stand out from amongst the others in acknowledgment of God and all that He continues to do.

There should not be any division over what day the Sabbath is on or how one goes about observing the Sabbath, as long as it is observed. This is one commandment that is eternal in the eyes of God.

With that, I say Shabbat Shalom!

Attention Christians: Where’s the Standard?

This post is being written more out of frustration. My wife is, by far, the most practical Christian (Messianic, to me) I have ever encountered. Granted, she is not well-learned in the ways of theology and has absolutely no desire to learn the stuff that I am interested in, but she approaches the Bible with such openness that I can genuinely say that I know someone who reads Scripture with zero presuppositions. She was not raised in a spiritual home (she was raised in a broken home) and not once attended church growing up. However, she found herself at church one night and placed her trust in Adonai. She is a role-model for me. When I get too full of knowledge (or the thought of being full), she unashamedly slaps me spiritually and tells me to get practical with my faith. While she may not know much theology or history of the faith, she lives life for Adonai and that is what makes her beautiful. For these reasons, it pains me to see her passions be spit on by friends and family.

She is a big pro-life advocate, and not just in the form of innocent children. She could not harm a person, is against guns and weapons, and sees the need to love on everyone regardless of what they do because that’s what Yeshua said to do. Easy enough right? (I wish) So tonight she voiced her approval of defunding Planned Parenthood, which is easily the first thing that comes to mind when people think abortions and where to get one. She would love to see a reduction in abortions because she loves babies. I would love to see a reduction in abortions because I love babies and having a two year old daughter is LIFE-CHANGING. People are missing out. But even deeper then that, I think Adonai should only have the power of life and death, not us mere humans.

She was inundated with family and friends opposing her views on her facebook. I understand it is a public forum and people can view and comment at will, like a blog. But the comments that were being posted were down right wrong, hurtful, and volatile. There were Christians denouncing her beliefs and saying they do not read the same Bible as her, among other things. I distance myself from such debates until I see comments that deal with theological matters, and then I feel it is my duty as  her husband to defend her. I guess you could call it the “being the man” attitude I’ve been born with (thanks Adonai!).

I told her I blame the church for the influx of Christians that back abortion, and I proclaim that here. I think there are issues in our culture that are blatantly misrepresented within the Church because people see the Bible as culturally irrelevant. I do not hold to such facts. I see the Bible as completely relevant, but we are choosing to make it irrelevant to cater to our beliefs and our ideals.

The church has often regarded the Old Testament as Old, hence the name. Because of this, there is an abundance of Christians within the evangelical movement, and outside of it, that live by their own ideals and, essentially, claim to believe in Yeshua yet distort his teachings into their own ideals.

What is the standard for Christians? To live like Yeshua? What does that look like? How did Yeshua live? By what knowledge did Yeshua know how to live? These are vital questions that are often not addressed because the common trend is to throw the “legalist” card into the discussion. Stop saying “legalist” because you are NOT using the word correctly.

Torah was the Yeshua’s standard of living. Torah was Paul’s standard of living. This is what defined holiness; better yet, this is STILL what defines holiness. Yet, the church claims it is old and done away with and thus comes the influx of Christians who have no standard of holiness to live by.

Where is our standard as Christians derived from? How are we to live? These are questions that should be blatantly obvious to Christians, yet there appears to be a lack of fundamental understanding regarding what is holy and pleasing in Adonai’s sight and what is NOT holy and pleasing in Adonai’s sight. Much of the time, what is holy and pleasing in Adonai’s sight is not pleasing to us and so we claim it is simply “OLD TESTAMENT” and not applicable to our times. To that notion, I EXCLAIM RUBBISH.

Complete Jewish Bible.

I see that people have visited my blog according to the stats through WordPress (not sure if it counts my own views?), so I figured I would throw a question out there for whoever feels compelled to answer or whoever so desires.

I have been doing some reading through David Stern’s Complete Jewish Bible translation, and based on what I have read thus far I am rather impressed. My understanding of Greek is embarrassing, so I cannot offer any impressive insights into his New Covenant Scripture translation. All I can offer at this point is that he bases his translation primarily off of United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament. I may be wrong, but is this not the same Greek text used for NIV/TNIV? Once again, I only have a semester of Greek so I would need clarification of this.

As for the Tanakh, he consults the Masoretic Text and he says that he “very rarely” deviated from it. He has problems with consulting the Vulgate, Syriac, Targum, Yonatan, and other versions. He gives his reason for this as: “Scholars frequently find historical, archeological, literary, theological or logical justification for emending the text itself–that is, correcting it to what they believe it must have originally said.”

Quite frankly, I enjoy his translation very much. I find his Hebrew translation to be quite impressive and refreshing. It is a more Dynamic Equivalence translation, but still very thorough. I don’t necessarily mind that it was a one man translation instead of a committee because so far I enjoy his translation and do not find too much fault with it. This, however, is based largely on my understanding of Hebrew and not my Greek.

So for you Greek nerds–or anyone in general–have you experienced Stern’s Complete Jewish Bible?

Was Paul Converted or Called?

In Marvin R. Wilson’s Our Father Abraham, the topic of Paul’s “conversion” from Acts 9 is discussed. Marvin denies the notion that Paul experienced a conversion because the text of Acts 9 and Paul’s retelling of the events in Acts is absent of any conversion language. Dr. Wilson, instead, opts to use the word “calling” instead of conversion. He quotes Krister Stendahl in support for his claim:

“Here is not a change of ‘religion’ that we commonly associate with the word conversion. Serving the one and same God, Paul receives a new and special calling in God’s service. God’s Messiah asks him as a Jew to bring God’s message to the Gentiles.” p. 7 of Stendahl’s Paul Among Jews and Gentiles.

Dr. Wilson then concludes his point with his own take on the experience of Paul:

“…at no point in his life did Paul leave Judaism; rather, he understood his relationship to the Messiah as the full blooming of his Jewish faith.” p. 46 of Our Father Abraham

Having growing up in congregations that often overlooked the Jewish implications of scripture, I found these points to be rather refreshing and intriguing. Instead of taking Dr. Wilson’s word for it, I decided to take a look at the stories themselves.

In Acts 9, after Jesus had revealed himself, Paul is consequently blinded and receives orders on how to bring his sight back. Paul was baptized and then ate some food. The next scene is Paul immediately preaching Jesus as the Son of God in the synagogues. The problem that I find with Dr. Wilson’s claim is that Paul was baptized which was common for new converts. I think it speaks volumes as to why we can safely assume that Paul’s experience was a “conversion;” maybe not in the same sense of the word as used today, but certainly a conversion from old to new. If this in fact is a calling, why create the distinction from one to the other? What is necessarily wrong with calling (no pun intended) it a conversion?

However, in looking at the other accounts where Paul retells his story to King Agrippa, it appears not so much like a conversion story but a calling. In Acts 26:16-18, Jesus says to Paul:

“But get up, and stand on your feet! I have appeared to you to appoint you to serve and bear witness to what you have already seen of me, and to what you will see when I appear to you in the future. I will deliver you from the People and from the Goyim [Gentiles]. I am sending you to open their eyes; so that they will turn from darkness to light, from the power of the Adversary to God, and thus receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who have been separated for holiness by putting their trust in me.”

Very much a calling, indeed. From Paul’s own telling of the event, it seems like it was a calling and not exactly a conversion like many hold “conversion” to mean today.

In light of what I read from Dr. Wilson and the actual texts themselves, I can see how Dr. Wilson can reach a conclusion regarding the calling of Paul. However, when the text speaks of a baptism, it is difficult for me to break away from the automatic inclination that a conversion has occurred. Nonetheless, I agree with Dr. Wilson’s premise that Paul did not “convert” like many use the word today. What is often overlooked within the Christian faith is that the God of the Jews who do not affirm Jesus as Messiah is the same God that Christians serve; the only point of disagreement is Jesus. With this idea in mind, it makes the story of Paul on the road nearing Damascus sound more like a calling and not a conversion. Even more, it makes Paul’s discourse on the wild olive tree and grafted branches look extremely Judaic, which is often not well received by non-Jewish Christians.

Heed the Root

Heed the Root is a call for believers of Yeshua to become reacquainted with their Hebraic roots. As a non-Jew myself, I found this task particularly useless considering my family comes from a strict “Gentile” upbringing. In fact, much of my life was surrounded by the B’rit Hadashah [New Covenant ] while a cold shoulder was unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) turned towards the Tanakh. Not until within the last couple of years have I discovered how vast the Hebraic influence is on the New Covenant writings. In fact, it has been suggested (and this is of course debatable) that approximately 90% of the New Covenant Scriptures come from Judaic understanding. I wonder how a modern-day Marcion would enjoy that stat? Probably not very much and it would be highly contested. Either way, whether we like to admit it or not, the church has unintentionally (or intentionally) become semi-Marcionites in their ignorance towards the Tanakh. In the 21st century, legalism is so very quick to be labeled to areas of theology that people do not agree with or want to agree with.

And so coming from such a background, I stumbled upon scholars that I greatly admire and am thankful for their influence. For without certain scholars, I never would have been open to the possibility of seeing the Hebraic influence and nature within New Covenant writings. Even more, I never would have realized how amazing the Tanakh and rabbinical literature truly is. I am in no way advocating a rigid or strict adherence to the Torah commands, as I affirm that the early emissaries of Yeshua dealt with such in much of their writings (i.e., Jerusalem Council for non-Jews). What I am advocating is that the old adage, “A plain reading…” is no longer viable. While there may well be instances where a plain reading can give insight into the meaning of the passage, more often than not there is a meaning behind the words that must be sought out in order to grasp the full meaning (i.e., much of Yeshua’s interaction and responses to the Pharisees is filled with rabbinic implications).

Heed the Root, then, is a place for reflection and discussion on the Hebraic nature of the Christian faith. I am in no way an expert (or even close to being considered an authoritative voice on this subject), but I am an earnest student wanting to see where the Christian faith came from. The root, as described by Paul in Romans 11, is holy and the branches (non-Jews) are grafted into the wild olive tree to be sharers in the root. What is the root? Many people, automatically assume that the root of the wild olive tree is Yeshua HaMashiach [Jesus the Messiah] (probably because of the influence of prominent church fathers and Karl Barth), but this does not fit with the flow of the context. The root is Abraham, and/or all the patriarchs. This topic will be discussed next.

The key point here is that the Gentile believers have been grafted into the wild olive tree, not the other way around. The root supports the branches (Rom. 11:18). Marvin R. Wilson, one of the scholars who has influenced by thinking, wrote a great section on the grafting in of the Gentile nation in his book, Our Father Abraham. The idea of this blog is to heed the root of the wild olive tree and realize where the Christian faith ultimately lies. Encompassing this is the necessity of understanding the Hebraic influence of the writings of the new Covenant, as well as the influence early rabbinical literature had on the early Christian church. So, Heed the Root is a place of discussion on such matters. Topics will not be limited to this line of though, however. Many topics that are not involved with Hebraic influence and nature will be discussed as well, ie., Divine Providence in a general sense.

The first topic that will be discussed is the idea that what many people call Paul’s “conversion” was never a “conversion” but rather a “call.” This, of course, has everything to do with his Judaic beliefs. I leave you with a quote from Abraham Heschel, one of my favorites:

“The vital issue for the Church is to decide whether to look for roots in Judaism and consider itself an extension of Judaism, or to look for roots in pagan Hellenism and consider it an antithesis to Judaism.”
Taken from: Abraham Heschel The Insecurity of Freedom(New York : Schocken Books, 1972), 169-170.