Followers of Jesus who call yourself messianic or fulfilled Jews - a Fact question?

Tsk, tsk. You're being logical again. When will you learn?

<grin>

I've read the biographies of some of these so called 'Messianic Jews'. One thing that stands out is how highly dysfunctional their families were. You can't help but wonder if the beliefs are a way of getting revenge on those families.

One is also struck by how little they knew about Judaism and the Hebrew scripture.

I would like for you to suspend your belief for a brief time and examine some of the things that you have said. Was the New Testament ratified by a Roman government? I hardly think it was. Anyone who knows anything at all about the Roman government in the time of Constantine knows that the Sabbath has switched from Saturday to Sunday, Passover was replaced by Easter, the Amidah and Shema replaced by Christian prayers, the priesthood and the temple replaced by "Catholic" priest who were never Jewish and the church and the list goes on and on my friend.

This is not a ratification nor acceptance of the methodology presented in the New Testament.

I do not want to speak evil of the Tanach but, in truth, an evil mind could easily find examples from the Tanach to demonize the Jewish people. People have been twisting bible verses since the time they were first written. So the fact that Gentiles hunted down Jews is nothing new. However, this does not make it right (especially in God's eyes).

So a Messianic Jew wants nothing to do with the evil practices of a Roman, Gentile, church. The methodology that is presented in the New Testament is Jewish. Nowhere do we see references to a Sunday Sabbath, a Christmas celebration, a replacement of a Jewish priesthood with a Gentile priesthood, the replacement of the temple with a Gentile church, or any other such replacement or amendment.

The New Testament is not a Roman book. It may not be Orthodox, and you may not believe what the New Testament says, but do not think for a second that the New Testament is Roman.

Response: You are right that the Roman government made a decision to include or exclude which books went into the New Testament. But you are leaving out some important facts. For the most part, only a few books were in any danger of being rejected. Most of the books proposed were agreed upon by everyone. And those that were argued over were all eventually included. Only those that were not included were "The Shepard of Hermas" and heretical books from the gnostics.

There were Romans that wrote the New Testament but these Romans were also Jews. Paul was both a Roman citizen and a Jew. In fact he was the student of the great Gamaliel. Only Luke was not a Jew. Even then, as a Gentile, he was well versed in the Jewish scriptures and knew a lot about Jewish customs.

Yes there have been many who have hated and persecuted Jews. This is obviously wrong. I think we are in agreement here. But being a Messianic Jew does not mean that one becomes an automatic anti-Semite.

I have not read Percy Jackson and I am not very knowledgeable on the Dionisian mysteries. But there are many scholars who have debunked such claims in the past. If you have anything else to share, I would be happy to receive it.

Why, as a Jew, do you buy the claims of a Roman book in preference to the tradition of your people?

>The collection of writings known as 'new testament' are not Roman, or Jewish, but created by people thoroughly Hellenised, who had a very small idea about Torah practice which Jesus probably practised. The problem with this collection is that they are not 'a testament' in a legal sense, but 'testimonies'. However, by neither Roman nor certainly Jewish law are they legally acceptable because they lack witnesses.

Those who call themselves 'messianic Jews' are not Jewish because they lack understanding of the Jewish law, never mind tradition (not the same), and they still believe in Jesus as 'son of god', which is a distinctly Christian trait because Torah Jews do no believe in God, hence 'messianic Jews' can not be Jewish by definition.

Why do you believe their claims and their method of learning and their traditions in preference of those of your heritage?

> 'Messianic Jews' learn?! Learn what? Let us consider for example one widespread tradition, the depiction of Jesus with long hair. Why is it that Christians, or 'messianic Jews' for that matter have not adopted long hair as the traditional way to wear hair? The truth is that Jesus didn't have long hair. If he had long hair, it would have made him a nazir in Jewish law and he could not have sat at the 'last supper' to make kidush on wine. In fact Jesus followed a much older tradition of wearing side locks called peiot the origin and reason for which his supposed 'apostles' didn't know which also debunks the hypothesis that any one of them studied with Rabbi Gamliel.

why do you assume that the Jewish "first Christians" believed anything at all like the teachings promulgated by these Romans?

> Romans did not espouse Christian teachings for several hundred years after the supposed events of Jesus' life and death. In fact even after Constantine proclaimed Christianity in the Roman Empire it took well into the 10th century with the aid of the military to 'promote' this religion among the many different ethnicities of the Empire, and even ethnic Latins continued to follow old pagan religions in secret for hundreds of years.

To claim to be Jews it is not enough to say, my mother is Jewish as some seem to think. The reason one is Jewish because one's mother is Jewish is because until the age of seven the Jewish child is educated by his/her mother, and is given the primer, or base on which all the rest of their future learning will be constructed with understanding. If this primer is not applied at this early age, the subsequent 'coatings' of knowledge will not lead to understanding of the Torah, and will not produce a Jew in the mould of Moshe Rabbeinu and Tzipporah. Given that all of Jesus' 'deciples' had already turned to the Hellenic culture before they ever heard of him, and in fact had no working knowledge of either Hebrew or Aramaic, it is safe to say that their mothers did not provide them with the required primer of Jewish child education and they were not consequently Jewish...which is a cognitive and not a biological state of being.

How can you decide that what you do is compatible with the material that was produced by them?

And if you reject their position on Jewish practice -- by what principles do you accept their positions on the truth value of other stuff??

> Early 'Christians' were in fact a product of the Hellenic culture. Hellenic culture espoused the opinion that it was the greatest culture in the World, and so to accept the need for learning Jewish Torah practice was a challenge to being immersed in the Hellenic practise. But then we come to human nature. Here were these adult men, some perhaps in their 40s, living in an age when 60 was considered old and few made it to 80, who were busy going about 'spreading the gospel' who suddenly were told they don't actually know what they are talking about, and have to go back to Jewish school to learn. They not only would have had to learn two languages, but an entire corpus of material and methodologies for learning that other Jewish males start at seven years old and in exceptional circumstances manage to achieve mastery in by 40. And so there was the basic 'fight or flight' choice these 'disciples' were facing: 'fight', i.e. engage with the Torah Jews, go to school and find out what Jesus really practised and thought, or 'flight', i.e. declare all Jewish learning a heresy thereby disavowing their own heritage and making it supremely easy to become a 'christian'. Everyone has their comfort zone, and usually people will take the easy way out. In this case the easy way out was to disenfranchise the Jews, and later aculturate them, i.e. dispossess them of their culture by claiming that the new 'testament' (properly unwitnessed testimonies) has replaced the 'old', but properly witnessed testament. What followed were centuries upon centuries of persecution, destruction and extermination of anyone who attempted to challenge this actively or passively by clinging to their heritage. It persists today when 'academics' insist that Moses and Joshua were liars and did not write the entire seven books of the Torah. And after all, if they were liers, the entire thing can't be true, right....

***Why, as a Jew, do you buy the claims of a Roman book in preference to the tradition of your people?

1) It is an assumption that it is a simply a "Roman book" (which I strongly disagree with since it was written by JEWS who all new a Judaism much closer to the one Moses instituted than you or I know of today). – ‘buy the claims of a book’ is the exact same type of assumption that gets leveled at me on YA by atheists who seek to discredit the Tenach with "drum roll please..." THE SAME types of assertions (ie. your god lets donkeys talk?, your god killed millions in a flood?, yada, yada, yada.) There are logical reasons to believe Tenach, but atheists just do not get it.

**Why do you believe their claims and their method of learning and their traditions in preference of those of your heritage?

2) a) You falsely assume that I claim their methods and learning. I read the text. I read other MJ writers. I read the Tenach daily. (no exaggeration). In 27+ years there is not a doubt in my mind that Yeshua is Moshiach. b) About not giving preference to the "traditions of my heritage..." That is exactly the entire point of Tenach! People followed traditions blindly (which many Christians are the same!) and any cursory reading of tells us this is exactly why God was upset with us as a people to start with! Case in point....

The Lord says:

“These people come near to me with their mouth

and honor me with their lips,but their hearts are far from me.

Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

------- Isaiah 29 verse 13

Very very powerful words! Read the last sentence again. This is what I see in Jewish circles (and yes even Christian circles) all the time. It is called being religious - yet not right with God. Read Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel! They ALL were up against the religious leaders of their day and were shot down. (Isaiah was sawed in two). So in Tenach – majority is hardly ever right!

You ask me why I do not follow traditions (and as I mentioned yesterday - I have no problem with some traditions as long as they do not contradict Tenach), but to blindly follow traditions unquestionably is wrong! I remember sitting in Hebrew school as a young boy and asking a question (and honest one) about the Torah scroll itself - and the teacher acted as if I should not ask such a thing. (and before anyone does psycho-analyses on me - no I was not emotionally scarred by that event at all).

And c) if the "traditions in preference of those of your heritage" were correct - then God promised (in Deut 28.7) we would NOT be evicted from אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, but the fact that we WERE evicted (and evicted BIG TIME) means logically one of three things. 1) God was not all powerful and even He could not stop the Roman army in 70CE OR 2) God lied - we were obedient and we still got evicted from the land. OR 3) Perhaps WE did something so awful that it merited God to withdraw from us and as a result (without any shields – to use a Star Trek reference) the enemy came in like a flood.

Logic dictates it was choice #3. That begs the question. So what happened in the first century that we messed up so bad that God had to do this? (And I know what Talmud says, but I don’t buy it at all. It is not logical.)

We missed the Messiah my friend. I have loads of volumes on my shelf that prove the point. Even here there is waaaaay to small a space to write. We have not even begun to touch on the other reasons why rabbinical Judaism is wrong. Again – do not accuse me of being anti-Semitic. I can still love someone and still believe they are wrong. They are sincere, but sincereity does not equal truth. Truth is truth. And HaShem is a powerful God of truth. He does not play wishy-washy games. Read the prophets who spoke to Israel in Tenach. Not a pretty picture.

I do not put my faith in emotional arguments like yours. I want facts. Truth is not determined by what evil men did centuries ago. Truth is truth. Period.

Be well my friend.

***This is not about Theology at all.***

You agree with Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the UAHC, the association of Reform synagogues, when he said ***'On theological problems,'... 'either you accept halacha or you are outside halacha. We have chosen to be outside.'...*** http://www.whoisajew.com/part_two.htm

***Why, as a Jew, do you buy the claims of a Roman book in preference to the tradition of your people? ***

Dr. Kaufman Kohler convened the Pittsburgh conference of Reform leaders, said,*** “We consider their [the Holy scripture’s] composition, their arrangements and their entire contents as the work of men, betraying in their conceptions of the world shortcomings of their age;”*** Walter Jacob, ed., The Pittsburgh Platform in Retrospect: The Changing World of Reform Judaism, (Pittsburgh: Rodef Shalom Congregation Press, 1985), p.104.

kaganate, being a Messianic Jew, I can't leave my God out of my religion as Dr. Kohler, you and other non-Messianic Jews apparently can. This Jewish tradition of yours is totally foreign to me and the Jewish scriptures I treasure.

Given that the majority non-Messianic Jews traditionally don't believe in the Jewish scripture, I understand how you credit us with having *** a Roman book*** like non-Messianic Jewish tradition of having a Roman High Priest. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaic...

*** By the end of the Second Temple period the high priest was considered no more than a religious functionary of the Roman administration, and thus even the garments of the high priest were entrusted at times to the hands of the local Roman procurator and handed over to the priests just prior to the various festivals***,

And letting Rome build the Temple

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biogra...

Actually, what you call “a Roman book” was actually a letter. It wasn’t by the Romans, it was to the Believers in Rome. But given your understanding of Jewish tradition where there is no God and Rome controlled the high priest till they abolished the priesthood of Aaron and the Temple until they destroyed it and moved the Sanhedrin from Jerusalem to where Vespasian stayed when he visited, I can understand how you would make that mistake.

But please understand, kaganate, your questions lack any of the sting you intend because when you stand in His presence and feel His peace, God’s ability to trump your lack of belief and concerns. After all, I still believe in Moses and there is less historical evidence about his existence than Jesus’ existence.

Why? Because of the ability of my God to tell me what He made me to do and counsel me through my life each step of the way…which is why it is OK if you call me a “Fulfilled Jew” even though I don’t personally believe the term is accurate. These fact of mine trumps your concerns as my God is more powerful than your set of demons. ***a concerted campaign of demonizing your people, your family, and your nation *** and they are your demons...not mine.

***seeing as the early Christians who established the authority of the New Testament also considered Judaizing to be a grave sin,

and seeing that by 96 CE (AD for y'all) they petitioned the emperor and received aproval to affirmatively reject all connection to Jewry -- ***

Tell me about one Jewish hero in the Jewish scriptures that faked his death to escape from real Jews in Jerusalem to run over to the side of the enemy like Zakkai in about 68 CE. Did he not petitioned the emperor without one word from HaShem giving him any authority what so ever?

kaganate, is it because you don't know Jewish history so you believe what is Jewish tradition is not what you imagine or is it that you really have no problems violating the Torah's commands to make sacrifices as HaShem commands?

With Zakkai setting your example in 70 CE of Jewish tradition, there is every reason why real Jews would not want to cave to Rome as Zakkai did and those who lost the high priest and Temple to Rome prior than that. What person follow the Jewish scriptures would follow the new Rabbinic Judaism with its demands not to believe God can and does answer prayers? After all, if non-Messianic Jews believed God can and does answer prayers like Messianic Jews, they would follow prophets and not Rabbis, right?

Fiction.