Have you ever questioned the authenticity of the Jesus you know? What if the roots of Christianity weren't neatly tied with a bow, but instead, a chaotic battleground of ideas? This podcast episode, "Dethroning the Mythical Jesus," ventures into these intriguing questions, challenging conventional narratives and providing an insightful glimpse into the genuine essence of Christian origins.
The speakers introduce the concept of Jesus as a "typological figurehead," proposing him as a symbolic character around whom diverse early Christian groups wove their narratives. Similarly, the role of Paul is portrayed as contested and evolving, suggesting that early Christians might not have been initially aware of Paul, and his significance grew later through political maneuvers and text redactions.
This podcast scrutinizes the Messianic perspective, offering critiques on key aspects such as presenting Jesus as a Jewish figure and attempts to find parallels between Jesus and rabbinic teachings.
The podcast then goes on to explore the "Paul within Judaism" movement, challenging traditional views and presenting Paul as a figure promoting a redefined Messianic expectation within Judaism.
The hosts then emphasize the importance of approaching discussions on Christian origins with an open mind, free from biases and preconceived notions. They delve into the influence of the Roman Empire, the Theodosian Code, and the challenges in reconstructing early Christian beliefs.
The podcast challenges the quest for the historical Jesus, advocating for a focus on the battle of ideas that shaped Christianity. It encourages listeners to question assumptions, delve into historical evidence, and consider alternative perspectives on Christian history.
In conclusion, this podcast transcript illuminates the intricate dynamics between Messianic Judaism, the Jewishness of Jesus, and the academic movement to reinterpret Paul within the Jewish tradition. Through critical examination, the speakers unravel the complex tapestry of discussions, offering a nuanced understanding of religious identity and historical interpretation. The exploration aims to reveal potential misinterpretations and deviations from historical realities, fostering a deeper comprehension of the Messianic evangelical movement's theological claims while highlighting areas of alignment or divergence from broader historical and religious contexts.
Keywords: Authenticity of Jesus, Christianity origins, Dethroning Mythical Jesus, Early Christian groups, Contested role of Paul, Political maneuvers, Text redactions, Messianic perspective, Critiques, Jewish figure portrayal, Pagan mystery godman, Rabbinic teachings, Hebraic roots, Passover and Sukkot, Theological coherence, Historical accuracy, Conversion agendas, Paul within Judaism, Mark Nanos, Paula Fredrickson, Magnus Zetterholm, Nasi of the Sanhedrin, Torah savant, Open-minded discussions, Influence of Roman Empire, Theodosian Code, Reconstructing beliefs, Scarcity of evidence, Debates on historicity, Scholarly interpretations, Roman censorship, Redaction and alterations, Messianic Judaism dynamics, Jewishness of Jesus, Historical interpretation, Deviations from realities, Messianic evangelical movement, Historical and religious contexts,
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome to the Pulling the Threads podcast.
This is Part 2 of podcasts that I had recorded with author David
LeBlanc. It went really long so we had to
cut it into two pieces. First part, we really started
with the Christian origins. What is Christianity as we know
(00:31):
it and then how do we understandit before it became what it is?
Looking through the historical critical method, what are the
ancient roots of it? And so this is a Part 2 of that.
Again, if you like the podcast, please follow the Pulling the
Threads podcast on YouTube, jointhe Facebook group Pulling the
(00:52):
Threads podcast, and follow the blog at Jesus the Jew within
judaism.com. And I hope you enjoy this
podcast episode and please sharewith your friends and family who
you might think that find this interesting.
To the Pauls of the world, whoever Paul was, or if he even
(01:13):
existed, whoever wrote in Paul'sname, which is largely what we
have today. We have a bunch of documents
written in Paul's name that havehad cut and paste and scissor
Marks and stitch points all overthem.
We have very little core Paul, if there is any, and none of it,
none of it existed in the earliest church records, don't
(01:36):
have any Paul. We don't know of Paul except
until after Marcion supposedly discovers his letters, That's
what so. And we know that the Gnostics
considered Paul to be a founder of their movement.
Yes. And once even the early proto
orthodox considered Paul to be aheretic.
(01:56):
The early Ebeonites thought Paulwas a heretic.
And it wasn't until after Marcian found his letters and
then the proto Orthodox decided to massage and revitalize them
and then redact his letters further, that all of a sudden
Paul did the revival. And and so that was kind of a
point I was going to get to, is that our textual tradition
starts with Marcian's gospel, Marcian's finding of the
(02:18):
Epistles and in the proto Orthodox redaction start
appearing after this we don't have we don't have texts that
exist before Marcian when it comes to gospels and epistles,
and the little ones are redactions of him.
And therefore Marcian may have invented Paul based upon
Josephus, maybe the spouter of lies that Eisenmann is referring
(02:41):
to. But you know there's there's
parallels between Josephus and Paul and their their their
background, the three years in the wilderness, similar Platonic
ideas when it comes to you know to playing with the the myth and
you know do what becomes a seabed of Christianity.
(03:02):
So like we don't the textual tradition.
Now I characterize what I think the early followers of Jesus
were. Now when we come to the textual
tradition, Marcian is, you know,yes I would agree with the part
Marcian priority that his came first.
I mean you know chicken or egg we we have his letters and then
everything else that becomes Christianity is a reaction to
(03:23):
his. So you hold his letters, the
proto orthodox redaction and then you have the capitalization
where they go back in again. And that's why it seems like
three or four times, you know Paul's like what's going on.
He's changing his mind or he's arguing against himself.
And then I would consider a majority of the New Testament,
even James and Jude to be Catholic documents written by
(03:43):
Catholicists to and even Luke Max as Catholicists to Assange.
The image of Paul, who the Orthodox and the Evianites saw
as a heretic originally, but a convenient Co-op when they
wanted to rewrite the history because there's so much in his
text that was great towards the influencing and manipulation of
(04:05):
Let me just make. Yeah, I totally agree with
everything you just said. But it brings, it brings what
you just said, brings home the point that I was trying to make.
So let me make my final. Go ahead.
When we're talking about Christian origins, in my
opinion, we have to understand that This is why I get so
(04:28):
aggravated with the historicity,mythicist debate.
Because what we're dealing with in the development of the
Christian religion is the same thing we're dealing with in the
development of Judaism, The samething we're dealing with in any
of these ancient thought traditions, but specifically
Christianity. Let's talk about that.
(04:51):
People can debate until the cowscome home who Jesus was when he
lived, when the Gospels were written, who's Peter?
Who's Paul? You know any of this stuff?
All we have to understand is that what we have is an is an
ongoing power struggle of ideas.Yes.
(05:13):
That's what's going on in the development of the religion.
That's why we have so much debate about what came, what
came first, you know, and then whose ideas were prevalent and
and when did this arise and you know, when did Gnosticism arise.
And and everybody's got their angle on it because they're all
trying to politic for their particular brand that they
adhere to. So the idea of a historical
(05:37):
Jesus becomes an obstacle to true discovery because the idea
of a historical Jesus puts in play the notion, which is a
false notion, that in order for us to get to the original core
Christians, we have to find the original Jesus.
I disagree with that notion. If you want to find the origins
(06:01):
of Christianity, you're not looking for a person.
You're looking for a set of ideas.
How did the ideas that became orthodox Christianity become
ascendant? What was the process in which
the battle was won over the ideas?
How did the Trinity went out? How did the idea of, you know,
(06:22):
how was it that Valentinianism and modalism was defeated in the
Trinitarian Model 1? How was it that we ended up with
Paul, who was so closely associated with Marcia after
Marcion is rejected as a heretic?
How is it that Paul becomes so central to Christian doctrine
(06:42):
when he was introduced by Marcion?
How do we have this idea that that there's four Gospels when
we know that there was a lot more?
How do we have this idea of you mentioned it?
We have these these Catholic epistles like First and Second
Timothy. We have Titus and all these
(07:03):
epistles. I mean any anybody without a
without half a brain can see that first and second Timothy is
talking about issues that shouldn't even come up until the
3rd century. We're talking about bishops and
deacons and all this stuff. There's no there's no need for
any of that in the in in the 50swhen Paul is writing like like
(07:27):
you mean to tell me that Paul isis worried about this wild huge
network of believers that have to have authority over them and
listen to your elders like what are you talking about There was
no Christianity in Rome from Nero to persecute.
So all this narrative that is accepted as mainstream, most of
(07:47):
it is propaganda and so we have to understand that what we're
dealing with. And you you mentioned this at
the very beginning of our conversation that there was a
time period that we know of thatis well documented where
Christianity became the ideas. Let me just rephrase that the
the set of ideas and values thatbecome the Christian doctrinal
(08:13):
position on life doesn't really have ascendancy until the 4th,
5th century. Yeah.
Before that, it's just a non-stop, often violent debate.
Yeah. Of of who's going to win out and
who's going to win out is the elites that are in charge.
That's the answer to that question.
(08:34):
So if we want to understand the origins of the religion, we have
to understand who was in charge of the culture, who were the
major players, who were the major moves and shakers?
What was their incentive? What was their motivation?
What would they have to gain? What would a Philo or a Josephus
or a Flavian Emperor have to do with Christianity?
(09:00):
What would be their incentive? What would be their ideas that
they were trying to promote? So we know for instance as an
example and this this alludes tosome of the work of of Valiant
and Fahey. But the reality is that we have,
we have to understand that therewas an incentive behind Josephus
(09:20):
writing his Antiquity of the Jews.
Why was that commissioned? Because I believe personally
this is just my view and this I'm not asking anyone to share
this view. This is just what I'm convinced
of that I think the only writings that we have that
survived that period of the 1st century is the writings of
Josephus. I think all the writings of the
(09:41):
New Testament came after 100 AD.And I I personally think that
most all of them came from well after 130 AD And I think, you
know, we don't have any, any proof otherwise.
And I know that Josephus wrote, he had to have written before he
died. So Josephus wrote after the war
because he was commissioned by the Emperor who had the money to
(10:04):
publish the works. Yeah, so.
So he switched sides, you know, and he became, you know, the
voice for, you know, the Roman Empire.
So he served on one side, then after the temple.
Now he's a propagandist for the Roman government, right?
And Josephus, it should be pointed out Josephus declared
(10:27):
the emperor to be the Messiah. Yeah.
And so did Ben Zakai, the Jewishrabbi.
He declared him to be a fulfillment of prophecy.
That's right in the Talbot. So the idea that that
Christianity has its origins in some person is so infantile.
(10:53):
It's a man. It's it's intellectually
infantile. It's it's knuckle dragger
reasoning. And the only reason people that
adhere to this, I did this type of reasoning is because they
have a religious bias and a desire to believe it.
Yes. Right.
So once you just once you divorce yourself from your own
personal biases of belief and you look at the religion itself,
(11:16):
you realize Jesus is a typological figurehead.
That is the focused attention point that the that the
inventors of the religion want you to have.
They want you focusing on this Jesus character when really
behind the scenes it's like the Wizard of Oz, you know, he's
pulling all the levers behind the curtain.
You've got all these machinations and political
(11:40):
designs on the text and the textis designed to conform people's
thinking. And so this is what we want you
to be. When I was talking to Robert
Price and he talked about this in his book, he details us in
his book extensively that First Corinthians, according to the
church fathers, was considered abasically a member's handbook,
(12:04):
if you will. For the early believers, this is
how they regulated behaviors. First Corinthians was
distributed everywhere. Well, when you start breaking
down First Corinthians, you start realizing you've got
decades and even centuries of debated issues in that text, in
that epistle things that you've got the anchritites who were
(12:24):
the, you know, the with the aesthetics who do, who believed
that they were married but but they shouldn't have sex with
their spouse. You've got that represented in
the Pauline epistles. You've got, you've got
Gnosticism represented in the Pauline epistles.
You've got church politics representative.
So Paul is like, he becomes the Jesus of the emerging church.
(12:48):
So you've got the figurehead Jesus, and then you've got this
Paul character who everybody uses for their own advantage and
they keep changing his writings in order to to to massage the
message, to be consistent with the culling politics of the day.
And this goes on for hundreds ofyears, hundreds of years.
I mean, all you got to do is listen to, you got to listen to,
(13:12):
what's his name? I just went blank.
The famous scholar Ehrman, Art Ehrman, who's a linguistic
expert. I don't agree with him on
everything, but you know, he'll come out and say that there's
over 20,000 scribal redactions in the New Testament that
they've found through linguisticanalysis, which means.
(13:33):
He has 200,000. Oh, is it that much?
Maybe. Maybe.
I had the number run up, which is even a more astounding.
500,000 textual variants in the New Testament, whereas
comparatively there's about 20,000 textual variants in the
Tanakh. You know.
Let me let. Me get to that because you
talked about that and I didn't get a chance to address that.
(13:53):
You talked about the the you would you spent quite a bit of
time talking about the differences when we start to
compare the the the diversity ofthought within early Judaism
versus diversity of thought within early Christianity.
Yes, there are certainly some diverse groups in early ancient
Judaism. However, as you correctly
(14:15):
pointed out, there's there's also a consensus of origins
there. Yeah.
Now I'm not talking about modernscholarship talking about when
Deuteronomy was written or anything.
I'm talking about they all have a Torah.
Yeah, but when in Christianity, because Christianity and the
history of Christianity. So I was about to mention before
(14:36):
we had our technical difficulties.
There's a scholar named Elaine Pagels.
My son-in-law had a chance to meet her in person at the
Society of Biblical Literature. Very fascinating woman.
She's very quirky, but essentially she she has a theory
which I think is brilliant. I don't know if she's right, but
she has a theory that basically the Gospels were intentionally
(15:00):
backdated to a period that couldn't be verified.
Yeah. So by putting the Gospels into
the period of Pontius Pilate, Yeah, you, you have a historical
figure, and then you can create a fiction around that historical
figure. Because once Jerusalem is
destroyed, there's no way to verify the actors in the story.
Yeah. So it's a genius thing.
(15:21):
Fiction writers do this all the time.
How many fiction books are written around you?
Look at Tom Clancy novels, or all these different modern
writers who take real events, real people, and they've craft a
story around it that is highly believable because, well, this
is a real person and this is a real event.
And I mean, you can't verify it,so you can't.
(15:45):
Exactly. So I I bring that up only to say
that that it's very clear that and and and by the way, this is
also true of all the major religious figures in ancient, in
the ancient world. This is true of Buddha, this is
true of Krishna. This is true of all these
different people. None of them have even Romulus,
who, you know, we believe there was a Romulus, right?
(16:08):
But the stories surrounding Romulus and the founding of Rome
are fantastic. They're not real.
So we we have all these. This is what people do.
The last thing I'll say, I'm sorry I went a little longer
than I meant to, but so I I had a chance.
I was. I was talking to Rabbi Tobias
Singer, and he ended up talking about this on one of his shows
(16:29):
with Tanak Talk with Michael Hall.
William Hall, excuse me, WilliamHall, who runs Tanak Talk.
So Rabbi Singer was at one time a rabbi, the head rabbi in
India, believe it or not. So he took a job in India as the
head rabbi for the Jewish community in that part of the
(16:50):
world. He was only there for a few
years, I think. But while he was there, there
was this, There was this Hindu guru guy, very, very famous guy,
who had millions of followers. He would have rallies and
there'd be millions of people that would show up and there'd
be miracle healings and all the same stuff you'd see in the
(17:11):
evangelical, evangelical world. Yeah.
So I know, I know. The laughing revival within
Pentecostal movement actually has its roots in this hindering
the laughing revival and healings and stuff.
Like, I don't even want to delveinto that, no.
No, I'm not. I'm not trying to.
(17:31):
I'm just the point I'm trying tomake is that this guy ends up
having a massive heart attack and he dies while Singer is
there has massive heart attack. Now there was all these
prophecies about this guy, abouthow he was going to rise from
the dead and how he was going tohe was going to revive the whole
world. I saw.
(17:52):
I finally realized that that sound is coming from my headset.
It's not from you. So hopefully you can still hear
me OK. But this guy dies, and Singer
says that within a week there were women coming on public
television claiming that they saw him as a risen person and
(18:15):
saw him rise from the dead. And he spoke words to them and
they had things to share within a week of this guy dying.
So all to point out, like, like people who say that you can't
come up with a mythical Jesus because the timeline's too soon.
(18:35):
It can happen in days. It can happen in days.
So this is where I, you know, I'm willing to concede like I
don't. I don't.
I try not to be dogmatic about my dating of the Gospels,
because it's certainly possible that these Gospels could be,
could have been written a short time after a historical person
(18:56):
and they could have just elaborated and embellished like
crazy. And now you have the legend.
But either way, the point is, isthat the the religion develops
over a period of time for the debate over ideas.
Not it's not like, it's not likelet's say that you and I are
very close friends and you have a huge following, right?
(19:18):
And all of a sudden I'm out on ahike with you someday and you
die on the trail. And then all of a sudden I see
all these stories coming out about, you know, what was really
going on with you and what really happened.
And I would say, well, no, I cancategorically say that all of
what you're saying is not true because I was physically there
with him in person. I have photos of him.
(19:39):
Look, here's my photographs here.
Here's my transcripts of my conversations with him on Zoom.
Like, this is what he was. This is what he believed.
Everything you're saying is false.
And everybody was like, OK, right.
He's an eyewitness testimony. We don't have any eyewitness
testimony that's verifiable at all.
Everything is a story and a legend, and the proof of that is
(20:02):
that none of the gospels agree with each other.
Yes, centuries and decking. There's no consistency to the
the diversity of early gospels and epistles.
There's no I mean, that's why scholars only agree that he was
probably baptized and died, and the rest we can't agree on.
That's one thing like So I interviewed at one time.
I interviewed Jack Buck who is aPhD candidate.
(20:26):
I think he's got his PhD now. It could be wrong, but he was a
PhD candidate studying under Marcus Vincent.
So Marcus Vincent is a preeminent Marcian, priority
scholar in the world. And Jack Buck is is one of his
chief students. And Jack Buck's specialty is I
radius. If I say that name right radius,
(20:48):
I said it was the wrong emphasis.
So one of the things he said that struck me.
And by the way, Jack Buck is a Christian, he believes in Jesus,
the whole thing. He's a Catholic.
But Jack Buck says that one of the things that's really
interesting and he's an expert on Irenaeus's letters, which I
won't get into here, But he saidthe earliest writings in the
(21:09):
Christian world have no knowledge of Paul at all.
What they talk about and they talk about the crucifixion.
They talk about Jesus died and rose again, that's consistent.
But they don't have anything to say about Paul, which is really
fantastic. When you consider the fact that
(21:31):
you you've got epistles that allude to like Peter alludes to
the controversial writings of Paul.
And you've you've got all this doctrine and church theology
built on this guy who the earliest Christians don't know
anything about. And we have to go into the
writings such as the Homilies and the Clementine recognitions
(21:52):
and all these other things to find out anything about Paul.
And as you pointed out earlier, we have, it seems like in the
New Testament we have kind of a of a, a negotiated truce,
especially in the Book of Acts between all these competing
elements like you alluded to. We've got all these different
(22:13):
groups that have all these different particular beliefs.
And then later, much much later,there's an attempt to try to
gloss over the discrepancies andtry to create a mirage of a
unified front, such as the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15.
Alleged. Alleged Jerusalem comes, which
(22:34):
as a Jew, I find incredibly unlikely.
Yes, yes I yeah I I that's a mythological accounts.
I don't agree. I think and you look in the the
homilies. I don't think Peter and James
would have ever conceded to that.
I don't think that would have nothe the this new Paul way that's
(22:58):
kind of like Noahides or something.
I don't think they would have ever agreed to that.
I still believe that. I'm convinced they would believe
in discipleship, circumcision, mikvah as the way I bet you
know, and there's textual tradition to support that now.
But I do kind of want to do a transition here though, you
(23:22):
know, maybe 30-40 minutes Max left.
But I want to transition. We've done some good foundation
work. I'm probably going to break this
into three episodes now just because of content, and I think
we got that. I do want to transition.
We've laid a good foundation of what Christianity how it came to
be. I want to move into the modern
(23:44):
age post Catholicization of the Roman Empire and the Roman
Empire and the ideas of Christianity, winning Western
Europe and America, the Reformation and then, you know,
the Protestant Reformation and in the evangelical uprising in
America. And then now we come to our
modern term and we're going to leave out a lot of that period
(24:06):
just because I want to move to the juxt of my point while we
lay the foundation. The way I did is that now I want
to talk about the messianic evangelical movement and how
they get some things wrong. There's four key points that I'd
like to kind of get into. One the Jewishness of Jesus and
(24:27):
how their Rabbi Jesus validates their twist on Christianity and
how I would completely disagree with that summation that this
Jewish Rabbi Jesus that gives a Jewish flavor to Christianity
somehow makes things OK. Point 1.2 is the new view of
Paul as you know, Paul within Judaism and Gabriel Boccaccini's
(24:52):
Paul within Enochian Judaism. You know like a branch of
Hellenistic essing Judaism and then how this Jesus and the
festivals which I just have the hugest problem with.
You know Jesus is a Passover lamb is so troubling.
That would be the third one and the last one the messianism that
(25:15):
co-ops the citizm the the veneration of rebbe Menachem
Sneersen. And so I don't like to talk
about the problems of the Messianic Jewish Jesus and how
this doesn't validate Christianity and it doesn't
validate Messianic Judaism. Because one part and parcel
Messianic Judaism by all branches of Judaism is not
(25:37):
Judaism. Their veneration of a single
rabbi, salvation in Jesus. Even even if they demote Jesus
to to a lesser, not a God, they still believe in Paul's
soteriology. The salvation in Jesus, which is
not a historical Jewish. There's not the belief of a
(25:57):
person to save your soul. It was national redemption, you
know, and we don't have to really get into that as much.
But how do they get the Jewish Jesus wrong?
How does them propagating JewishJesus to promote them fail?
When we look at what I just described and how we
characterized early Jewish Christianity for no better term,
(26:19):
just so that people know what we're talking about, I'd call it
Judaism. That never went the way of
Christianity would be my definition.
But that which became Christianity is separate from
what I would have couched that as the religion that was
invented formed over time. So how did they get the Jewish
Jesus wrong? Start with that one.
Then how did they get the new view of Paul wrong?
(26:42):
And at some point I want to touch on this Jesus and the
festivals, how he could never bethe Passover lamb or he doesn't
fulfill Sukkot, Oh, you know, misunderstanding of God with us.
And then we can move into the messianism.
So I'd like to kind of hit as much of this as we can in the
next 30 minutes or so. And then I will have to cut off
(27:03):
at 5:45. That's.
Fine, I'll have to go too. So do you want me to just go
ahead and try to tackle those oryou?
Want to the four points? And so let's let's start with
you know, how do they get the Jewishness of Jesus wrong?
And how does them promulgating the Jewishness of Jesus to
promote their branch of Christianity fail to understand
one the historical Jesus, the myth making of Christianity, and
(27:27):
the Messianic movement? Right, So the Jewishness of
Jesus first. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a
trap. Obviously, if you're selling the
world that Jesus was born a Jew,he's Jewish.
(27:48):
I mean, it's the most obvious thing.
Well, Jesus is Jewish after all,you know, So that's the obvious
inroad to try to get people interested in the Messianic
perspective. Well, after all, Jesus was a
Jew. So again, the the presumption is
false is based on the same falsepresumption that creates the
(28:14):
misunderstanding of Christian origins.
So anyone who studies church history or Christian origins at
any level, even if they're a believer and most people begin
that way when they study this stuff, they have to admit that,
as you correctly said, the Christianity that developed had
(28:36):
a adolescent period where there was a lot of different
perspectives before there was anOrthodoxy.
The same is true in Judaism. There was a lot of development
over a long period of time before there was a consensus of
Jewish Orthodoxy. So to try to put Jesus, and I've
(28:59):
seen that I did this at one point.
I I When I was, I used to study the Talmud, constantly looking
for stories and teachings that would be reminiscent of the
teachings of Jesus. And I would find many and I
would write about them. I had a blog I I used to teach
at a Messianic synagogue. I would be a guest teacher on
(29:22):
frequent occasions, and they would always love it.
When I would give them rabbinic Talmudic parallels to Jesus,
they would love that. They would eat it up.
Looking back on it, I regret that stuff.
I I still have my notes from some of those studies.
I could send them to you. The truth of the matter is that
(29:46):
there's a lot of explanations asto why they would be parallels
to Jesus's teachings and stuff in the Talbot.
None of them can be attributed to the fact that he was a Jewish
rabbi. Yeah, all of them have their
roots of the same things that ifyou've studied the Talmud, if
(30:06):
anyone listening here has studied the Talmud at length, or
been taught the Talmud through Talmud study with a rabbi or
rabbis would know that the Talmud, that they called the sea
of the Talmud. You don't read the Talmud or
study the Talmud the same way you would read the book of
Romans. It's it's a dialectic.
(30:29):
It's a conversation. So even things that the rabbis
today do not just do not agree with or condone are laid out in
full view in the Talmud as part of the dialectic.
For instance, there's a passage in Sanhedrin that describes the
Holocaust parameters for how youare to sacrifice your children
(30:52):
to Molech. Believe it or not, it's
shocking, but it's true. That doesn't mean that you're
ever going to find a rabbi or rabbinic organization of any
denomination that is going to tell you that.
Oh yeah, well, absolutely. You can go ahead and sacrifice
your children to Molech. No, that's not part of Judaism.
No, but it's in the Talbot. Why is it in the Talbot?
(31:14):
Because at one point in history that was an issue that was
discussed among the scholars, and it's recorded.
So we know that there is things in the Talbot that are taught by
Hallel in the debates between Hallel and Shamai.
And and Shamai says this and Hallel says this and and he you
(31:38):
know, and there's always the thestereotypical which are not
always true. But the stereotypical idea that
Hallel was always on the side ofleniency and Shamai was always
on the side of strictness, whichis not always true.
Many times the sages sided with Shamai, they didn't always side
with Hallel. But the reality is that Jesus is
(31:58):
portrayed by the Messianics as being a Rabbi after the school
of Hallel. Yeah.
It it's it's a shell game. It's a shell game if you really
study the character of Jesus. Jesus is another example of a
Pagan mystery God, man. That's what Jesus is.
(32:23):
He's not a rabbi. And you can try to make all
these arguments, but the Messianics, do they make these
arguments? Oh, no, no, Jesus.
You know, if you strip away the virgin birth and you strip away
all these doctrines that are highly problematic to the Jewish
world, and, and we should be clear, and you haven't said
this, but for the audience, if they don't know, 90% of the
messianic world believes in coreChristian evangelical doctrine.
(32:47):
Yes, they do. Right.
It's a very small percentage of the Messianic world that
actually adheres to Jewish teaching.
Or. Follows authentic Jewish
practices. They're a very, very small
group. It's really just like there's a
huge and when you think about itI'll just make this comment as a
as a as a wrap up to my statement on this.
(33:08):
For for people who have become disillusioned with their church
or the shallowness of their religious life, the idea of
exploring the depths of the Jewish Jesus is incredibly
appealing to a lot of people. It's the idea that I'm going to
know in fact the famous organization First versus Zion.
(33:32):
They have what they call a tour club where they sign people up
and you get involved in these small groups and you have a
facilitator and they go through these modules where they go
through the partial cycle with the eyes of you know, let what
do we see Jesus in this, you know in the partial cycle and.
I. All of it.
All of it. Their their motto is get to know
(33:53):
Jesus better. So with the with the mantra of
you're going to get to know Jesus better if you can
understand him from a Hebraic perspective.
That's the idea. But what they're doing is
they're not getting to know Jesus better at all.
All they're doing is they're reinventing the Jesus of their
(34:14):
imagination to fit their new fantasy.
Yeah. That's all they're doing.
They're taking a hodgepodge of their evangelical background and
they're mixing it with what little knowledge they have that
these people are famous. They'll go to the Habad website
and they'll they'll try to navigate the Habad website
because Habad is very messianic.And they'll, they'll talk, They
(34:36):
get all these teachings about Messiah, and we're getting ahead
of ourselves a little bit. But a lot of these people, they
love this stuff. They love it because it it gives
them a sense of validation that they've gone.
And most of them are very triumphalistic in their
attitude, like we're we're a deeper Christian than the
average Christian average. Evangelical Christianity is very
shallow, but we're going deep because we're getting to the
(34:59):
roots of what Jesus was really like, according to the people
that he's associated with. And there's all this excitement
about, you know, we're going to support Israel and we're going
to, we're going to, we're going to, you know, support the
rabbis, we're going to fight anti-Semitism.
We're going to do all these really wonderful, well worthy
things. And yet they're, they have
(35:20):
nothing to do with Jesus. And people should know that most
messianic organizations, the vast majority of messianic
organizations that are out there, are expressly dedicated
to trying to convert Jews into becoming Christians.
That's their goal. And yeah, once you know that,
you realize that this is a sham,This is a farce.
(35:40):
It's not real. Yeah.
It's an evangelical ploy. Jellicleism, you know, the term
that comes to mind for me is wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
You know, it's what Rabbi Kara Sarah Shapiro in her book on
Messianic Judaism. She was a reformed Jew, refers
to as Cross dressing Gentiles. You know my experience with
(36:01):
Doctor Raymond Gandin, Jewish Voice and King Seminary.
You know the Gentiles encourage dressing up as more Orthodox to
convert. You know Jews but you know and
and so let's touch on 1st Hebraic roots and then the
alleged Orthodox from you know, so the Hebrew roots, you know
(36:23):
the Tabernacle Jesus fills the Tabernacle Jesus fulfills the
festivals somehow he's the Passover lamb and he's also
Sukkot. There's a problem with this
because well how does a man become a lamb?
How to you know each man was given once to live and then the
judgement. No man you know a father can't
die for his son. You know son can't die for his
(36:45):
father like. Ezekiel 18.
Failure to understand Judaism. Jesus can't fulfill the
festivals and he can't be a Passover lamb, which doesn't
take away the sins of the world.Despite, you know, in Judaism,
you know Christianity is going to say one thing, but you know
Judaism, Passover lamb didn't take away the sins of the world.
So if he becomes like you know, he doesn't fulfill the festivals
(37:08):
in the process. Let me go further if I can
interrupt you for one second. Let's let's let's now transition
to the Passover lamb thing, right.
Not only does the Passover lamb not take away the sins of the
world, it doesn't take away the sins of anyone.
It doesn't deal with sin. So the idea, so this is one of
the biggest fallacies that exists, is the idea that Jesus
(37:33):
represents the blood put in the lentil of the doorpost by the
Hebrews in Egypt. On a fundamental level, it's
it's a misunderstanding of the story.
It's it's a it's a false Christian teaching.
First of all that Jesus is the typology of this, of the of the
blood of the lentils. The truth of the matter is that
(37:57):
the curse according to the Torahwas against the first born.
And people who were Jewish were to put the blood of the lentil
of their of their doorposts to identify them as Jewish that
their first born wouldn't die. So any conceptually any Jewish
family in Egypt that didn't obeyMoses's edict, their first born
(38:21):
child would die. So people don't understand that
in the Jewish world, according to Jewish teaching, there were
Egyptians that also put blood ontheir Lymphos so that their
oldest children wouldn't die. And those Egyptians went out
with the Jews in the Exodus, the.
Great multitude, yeah. It wasn't simply just the
(38:43):
Hebrews. So of course Christians will
say, well, that just proves the universal salvage.
No, there's no salvation messagein the Passover event.
The Passover event was a solemn event.
That was it was like people are dying around us and we're just
being spared. This is but the idea was, and of
(39:04):
course I don't believe it was a historical event, but that's
neither here nor there. But the the reality is that
Christian doctrine tries to appropriate the blood in the
Passover story as representativeof the shed blood of Jesus
Christ for the sins of the world.
There are no Jewish people who were saved quote, UN quote by
obeying this injunction. They were simply spared the
(39:27):
death of the first born. Yeah.
So it's it's a completely false analogy to begin with.
The other thing that they do is they conflate the Passover story
with Yom Kippur with the with the the sacrifice of Yom Kippur.
Yes, yes. One of the things this is even
more egregious in my opinion is that how a Messianic Christian
(39:52):
and participate in the Yom Kippur ceremony and the Rosh
Hashanah ceremony which happens,you know, 7 to 10 days previous,
right? So in Judaism we all know that
there is blood all over the worship system.
The cult worship system has blood everywhere, but most
(40:12):
people do not know that there isnot a single offering in the
Levitical system with deals which deals with intentional
sin. There's not one, there's not one
sacrifice that deals with willful sin.
The only remedy for sin in Judaism is repentance and change
(40:32):
and a heartfelt return to God. That's the teaching of Judaism,
is that you return to God and heblesses you and restores you.
That's the whole point. It's not about sacrifice.
The sacrifice is about cleansingthe Temple.
Yep. So that that.
That's why if there's people, people never think to ask the
question like how can Judaism still exist today if there's no
(40:55):
temple? Don't they realize that Jesus
fulfilled it? No, Jesus didn't fulfill
anything. If if the Temple was so critical
to the existence of Jewish belief, then it wouldn't have
survived the death, the destruction of the temple.
That's not the case. Judaism does not rely upon
animal sacrifice for atonement to God, Period.
(41:16):
Not only that, if if the Passover go back to Passover for
a second. If the Passover lamb was so
critical for the health of the Jewish soul, why is that
practice and Exodus not duplicated today, All around the
world you don't see any Jews putting blood on their doorposts
(41:38):
anywhere in the world, not in Jerusalem or anywhere else.
Why? Because it has nothing to do
with the health of the Jewish soul.
It was a plague. It was a it was an act of
obedience during a plague in a foreign land.
It has its time and place. It's commemorated in Jewish
culture and history and religion.
It has nothing to do with the salvation of assault.
(41:59):
All right, so, but back to the Yom Kippur thing.
So I remember standing in a messianic synagogue, we went
through the whole Rosh Hashanah thing right now.
It's very fascinating because asyou know, when Rosh Hashanah,
Rosh Hashanah is, people always think that Yom Kippur is the
judgement. Yes, but really it happens at
(42:21):
Rosh Hashanah. So Rosh Hashanah, the blowing of
the Shofar, is supposed to silence the objections of the
enemy of the Haseitan so that the people can have an
uninterrupted audience with their king in order to have
their soul restored. And it's during the period of
Rosh Hashanah where the judgement is rendered.
(42:44):
And then at Yom Kippur, your fate is sealed for the following
year. That's Jewish tradition.
Most people don't know that. There's very few Christians that
have ever experienced or even know about the Rosh Hashanah
ceremony. Even though it's in the Bible,
Christians don't talk about it. They don't teach about it.
If you believe that there is relevance to the to the Rosh
(43:07):
Hashanah, Yom Kippur, to the, what we call the High Holiday
holidays. So the High Holidays of the
Jewish year culminate in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I have been, as you have been inliberal synagogues where you
have Jews who don't even attend synagogue all year long.
And on Rosh Hashanah, they will pack the joint out because they
(43:28):
know the family is being called together.
They go there because it's the time for the family to be called
to account, not because of any of their faith or anything.
They even do have faith. Many of them don't have faith,
but they're still there. They're there because they're
part of the tribe, this part of the family.
It's the ritual. So if if you believe that Jesus
(43:51):
is your atonement, if you believe that you are rectified
to God by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
There is no world in which you should be participating in Yom
Kippur, whether you're Jewish ornot.
Because if you're Jewish, you realize that the salvation of my
soul is not up to an individual.I'm part of a tribe.
(44:14):
And in Judaism, every Jew's soulgoes back to Sinai, and we're
all part of the same soul. We're all sparks of the same
root. And so every Jew that has ever
lived for all of time, accordingto Jewish theology, I don't care
if you're part of the Reform movement, the Conservative
movement, the Orthodox movement,the Hasidic movement, your soul
(44:35):
was considered to have been present at Sinai.
Yes. You don't get saved.
You are part of a tribe. It's not a salvation religion.
So this mixture of messianic evangelical ideas with Jewish
practice is the true definition of an abomination.
(44:57):
It shouldn't be. It shouldn't exist.
You have to choose one if you'reeither following Christianity or
you're following Judaism. Judaism has no need for Jesus,
and Christianity has no need forJewish ritual, period.
And if you're trying to mix the two because you think you're
connecting with the Hebraic original Jesus, This is why I
(45:19):
have such an issue with people fighting over historicity,
because you're missing the wholepoint of the religion.
Jesus is a figurehead representing a set of ideas.
It has nothing to do with Judaism, nothing to do with
Sukkot. You mentioned Sukkot, nothing.
Sukkot is a ritual of of the Exodus.
(45:40):
It is a festival. Now the argument is made, even
by the Noahide teachers, the rabbis, that Sukkot is the only
festival of all the Jewish rituals that does have the world
in mind. It has the Goyim in mind also,
as well as the Jews, but not in the context of salvation and
certainly not in the context of Jesus.
(46:03):
Has nothing to do with Jesus at all.
Nothing, unless you buy the hogwash that Jesus was a
misunderstood Hasidic Habad rabbi that would have worn a
black suit with white shirts andseat seat in the 1st century,
which is, you know, that they have.
Most people don't understand howanachronistic the Messianic
(46:25):
Hasidic Jesus is because the Hasidic movement doesn't exist
until the 18th century. Well, it starts in the 14th
century, but really, I mean whenyou talk about Habad and the
Breslow movement, all that stuff, that's all post Isaac
Lauria, that's all you know, we can get into that if you want.
I don't know if I'm jumping ahead of you.
OK, not today, not today, but but yes, yeah, so I mean.
(46:50):
We get fired up about this, so Iapologize to your audience.
I get a little fired up. We got 15 minutes Max.
I I want to agree with somethingyou were saying.
You know tehelim, you know, the Psalm says if you do what's
right, you'll be forgiven. Therefore you know if I, if I do
what's right you know even if you know Rosh Hashanah where you
(47:11):
know we apologize to our brothers and sisters for you
know things we've previous year.You know the the repentance
doing right you know the sacrifice is unnecessary.
So failure to understand and in trying to put Jesus in these
festivals isn't it fails to understand Judaism and therefore
has it totally has a faulty foundation, which we've kind of
(47:33):
talked about some of that the Hebraic roots.
You know, I I want to try to do the last two points if possible
because we've kind of touched onthe Hebraic roots.
According to, you know, Judaism,Jesus is an irrelevant marginal
Jew. And there's, you know,
historically he has no place really in Judaism.
(47:53):
Now Christianity that has beliefin Judaism is something that
Jews would wrestle with. But that's another issue moving
past the Hebrew roots to the, you know, I didn't answer that
question. You want me to deal with that?
I never. Dealt with that.
You want me to quickly address that?
Yeah, and then you. Don't have much time.
(48:14):
Yeah, all. All I wanted to say, so I forgot
to mention that because I I that's something I glossed over.
It's important for your audienceto understand, if you haven't
already educated about this, that Hebrew Roots has to be
carefully distinguished from theMessianic Jewish movement.
They are separate movements. Hebrew Roots is a cult.
(48:36):
Hebrew Roots is is a misappropriation of certain
Jewish practices from the perspective of Christian
rebellion. So Hebrew Roots is mostly
made-up of people who have rejected the mainstream church
and they read the Bible and theytry to just take on whatever is
written in the text of the Bible.
(48:56):
They're going to start doing that if it tells us, you know, I
have to. So you'll see Hebrews people,
they'll be tying strings to their belt loops and then
they'll be, you know, blowing shofar every 5 minutes.
And whereas Messianic Judaism asan organized movement has
governing bodies to it. There are different bodies.
(49:16):
So basically Messianic Judaism is largely split up between
people that came out of the charismatic movement versus
people that came out of the Baptist or more conservative
parts of Christianity. And and their fellowships and
the the the, the, the tenor of their fellowship is reflective
of their background. So in in Messianic synagogues
(49:37):
and in Hebrew root congregationswhere they come from charismatic
backgrounds, you're going to seea lot of the charismatic
elements that you would normallyfind like in an Assemblies of
God or what have you. People speaking in tongues
dancing around, we are waving flags around and you're going to
see all the same stuff because that's what they know, that's
what they're comfortable with and they just appropriate it to
(49:57):
the Jewish thing. Whereas people that come from a
more conservative bent tend to be a little bit more scholarly.
They tend to be more interested in the study of the text and
they're they're less interested in the in the experiential
elements and they're more interested in really immersing
themselves into the philosophical tradition.
And it's from that side of Messianic Judaism that you find
(50:19):
most of the people who leave it then convert to Judaism because
when they get involved. And you and I, I think probably
are in that camp where we, we got involved in the study and as
we studied, we studied ourselvesout of the Christian thing and
we found ourselves more attracted to Judaism.
So that's that's a very small percentage, though, of the
messianic Jewish world and within that world.
(50:40):
So in Hebrew roots, you've got people.
And I forget his name now, but there's this famous TV
personality. Maybe he's dead now, but he used
to dress up like a prophet and he had all these crazy gaudy
clothes and he would be very flamboyant and he was a former
pastor and he would, he had a very popular following to forget
his name. And then like from the messianic
Jewish world, one of the more prominent organizations is First
(51:03):
Fruits of Zion, which they've had a very business like and
strategic way that they've entered the market.
Their base is mostly Baptist, Southern Baptist and but they
are, they are all missionary. And that's the thing I wanted to
point out is that whether it's Hebrew Roots or whether it's
Messianic Jewish movements, all of them, whether more subtly
(51:25):
than others, they all seek to proselytize Jews because they
believe that they are part of the original Jesus movement that
is trying to recapture original Christianity.
And that's why this conversationis relevant.
And that's I just wanted to makethat point.
Oh no, that's a great point and kind of touches where I was
(51:47):
going next. But before we fully delve in,
you know, we kind of talked about what was wrong with the
Jewishness of Jesus and how theyget the Jewishness wrong.
And if he existed, that whole festival Passover thing just
fails, all right. So the next place that
Messianics go that this new, thenew view of Paul trying to put
(52:10):
Paul within the the rabbinic Jewish tradition and it's Halaka
and it's pesharam and it's midrash and and Paul is Jewish
and therefore Christianity is a midrash that became, you know,
out of Paul's writing, which Oh my God, I that's the worst thing
ever. So basically you embrace, you
(52:31):
embrace Platonianism, Mithraism,deification, salvation.
Because we you touched on salvation for Jews as communal.
It's the entire nation, not an individual.
Salvation according to Christianity is very personal
and follows the practices of Roman conversion to paganism.
Not any ever recorded history ofconversion to Judaism before
(52:55):
Christianity. The salvation process of
Christianity follows Roman tradition, but the making of
Paul is Jewish now and then Pesher rim in a midrash and Oh
my God, that's yeah. No, I'd like you to speak on
that. So let me let me just quickly
say because this will cut right to the chase.
(53:16):
So several years ago, my son-in-law Brian, who was a
published scholar, he attended the Society of Biblical
Literature conference, which happens every year, SBL, and he
attended as the roommate of MarkNanos.
(53:37):
So Mark Nanos is the spearhead scholar which heads up the Paul
Within Judaism movement. There's other scholars as well
that have gotten on board since him, but he used the primary
scholar that started it all. And his Seminole work, which was
an edited collection of essays by various people, including
himself, was called Paul Within Judaism This this was a fringe
(54:03):
form of Pauline's scholarship that began to take take off a
bit. Other scholars of notes such as
Paula Fredrickson, Magnus Zetterholm, and others, all of
which by the way, are atheists, started championing this, as
well as as an exciting new branch of Pauline's scholarship.
And they're all looking for something new anyway, So this is
(54:24):
like exciting for them to delve into.
I happen to know for a fact. So Mark Nanos, who is the most
prominent scholar in the Paul with the Judaism field and and
the FFOZ crowd, they just, like,basically worship this guy.
I know him personally. My son-in-law knows him much
better than I do. As I said, he roomed with him.
Mark Nanos is a liberal Jew who was a former businessman who
(54:48):
took upon Pauline's studies and his original work.
The irony of Galatians which washis initial and he wrote another
one on Romans which is very convoluted but at any rate his
whole point was to try to mitigate anti Christian
(55:09):
anti-Semitism. So Mark Daniels's idea was, if
you could re contextualize Paul as a as a Hellenized Jew who was
advocating to his brethren a reconception of Messianic
expectations and and couch Paul in the milieu of an of a Jew
(55:35):
arguing with other Jews. Essentially, that if Christians
could embrace this idea rather than the traditional narrative
that Paul was denouncing the law, denouncing Jewish
exceptionalism, denouncing Jewish practice, the strict
(55:57):
observance of kosher for Gentilethat Paul was advocating from
within Judaism, not against Judaism.
Essentially, that his idea was that if that idea could
propagate and he could make an argument for it, that it would
help to reverse many centuries of Christian persecution of the
(56:19):
Jewish people. That was his entire motivation,
a noble goal. He doesn't believe any of it.
I mean, it's like secular Hebrewrudism, though.
It's a Hebrew rudism for the secular mind.
You have to understand so like if you're an atheist, or if
you're a secular Jew and you andyour goal is the health of your
(56:42):
community. Mark Nanos doesn't care about
the arguments within Christianity, about doctrine.
He doesn't care about any of that stuff.
He's not a Christian. He has no intention of becoming
one. There are actually Messianic
Christians out there. My son-in-law went to a
(57:03):
conference by Messianics. He was invited to it.
Or Mark Nanos was invited to speak.
And they were just, like, gushing over him.
Like, people in the audience were like, you've changed my
life by helping me embrace Judaism and Christianity
together. You've made all the dots
connect. And Mark walks off the stage,
and he talks to my son-in-law. And he's just shaking his head
(57:24):
like, oi, like, what the heck isgoing on here?
Like, I'm not advocating Messianic Judaism.
I'm not advocating Jesus. Like, that's not his position.
Another one. Paula Frederickson.
She's as far as I know, she's a professor at Vanderbilt.
Maybe she's moved on. She used to be at Boston
University. Brilliant, Scott.
(57:47):
She doesn't believe any of this stuff.
It's. Just a profession for her.
Magda Zetterholm. Magda Zetterholm was another
famous scholar that he's piece he's he wrote, I think one or
two essays in the Paul with the Judaism book.
The reason I'm saying all this is because these are the people
that these messianic Jewish people are championing and
(58:09):
saying we have it on authority that Paul was a observant Jewish
man and that Jesus was an observant Jewish man, and that
they are promoting rabbinic Jewish principles here.
And the people who are writing the scholarship that they are
quoting don't believe it. Yeah.
It's a it's just it's people don't understand the world of
(58:33):
academia. To give a stream analogy that
that I make a point, but it's like the black guy that shows up
at the KKK meeting and starts saying all the things that they
like and they're like, look, it must be true.
Right, exactly. It's a crude analogy, but yeah,
it works. And so so the problem is, so let
me let me deal with the core claims quickly.
(58:55):
I won't take a lot of time on this, but I now that I've
debunked the source of the information, not that I've
debunked it, I I don't want to say it that way.
I'm not debunking their scholarship.
Their scholarship is great, but when I say their scholarship is
great, it doesn't mean that I agree with it.
It means that they've done a great job researching and trying
to come up with an argument. There's some very eloquent
arguments that are made for it. I'm not going to deny that I've
(59:18):
read the books, but ultimately it doesn't hold water because
the reality is that. So first of all, all is from
Tarsus. Try to find a Jewish sources,
any connection to the ancient Jewish world and the city of
Tarsus, which was by the way a place where the only thing that
(59:42):
was of significance in Tarsus was that that's where a Roman
legion was stationed. There was no Jewish community
there. So for these people to claim
that Paul was, you know, a potential, I've heard it claim
that Paul was was was the heir apparent to the Nazi of the
(01:00:04):
Sanhedrin. Enough people don't know what
the Nazi was. A Nazi is a Jewish term for the
head of the Sanhedrin people's claim that Paul people in the
messianic world claimed that Paul was was an inheritor.
He was an heir apparent to be. He was a savant.
He was a Talmud, Not a Talmud, but a Taurus savant of the oral
tradition. He was in line to be the Nazi if
(01:00:27):
that were true, and we would have records of him in the
Jewish tradition like we do for all other great sages of the
Jewish tradition. Paul is unknown in the Jewish
tradition. And to the early Christians too.
Right. So the whole notion of Paul
within Judaism. OK, So what do you do with
(01:00:51):
Galatians? So Mark Danos wrote The Irony of
Galatians and then he he talked.He wrote another book about
Romans. So Paul Mark Nanos has a fame,
and I'll just talk about him because he he's the one I'm most
familiar with. I've also read Fredrickson and
the other ones, but I'm most familiar with Nanos.
I've had personal correspondencewith him.
(01:01:13):
So in Romans in fact, he personally sent me his original
paper that he published on that ended up becoming incorporated
into his book. He sent it to me and I have it.
I have it down in my office. I don't have an office, but down
in my bookcase. He said it to me.
I have it in a three ring binder.
So the whole argument is based on word play in the Greek
(01:01:37):
talking about dealing with course with Romans 11 through 13
or is it 9 through 11? I forget the the part of Romans
where it talks about, you know, Israel has been, has been cut
off for a season and will be grafted back in.
And who are you to boast? Who has been grafted into the
original branch? You know, don't you boast
against it? Oh, you have to wrap up.
OK, so anyway, let me wrap up. Let me cut to the chase.
(01:02:00):
You guys can research that on your own, but the whole the the
very controversial passage in Romans that deals with Israel
being partially hardened. So that that is a is a passage
that Mark Daniels took particular umbrage with because
he viewed Matthew 27 which whichis the whole or is it Matthew 25
(01:02:24):
where it talks about let his blood curse be upon us and all
of our children. In Matthew he viewed that verse
and he also viewed the passage of Romans where it talks about
Israel being partially hardened but in the end they will all be
saved. That those are the core texts
that the Church has used throughout the centuries to
persecute and justify the pogroms and the persecutions of
(01:02:46):
Jews, that they're in rebellion,they need to repent.
And until they repent, anything we do to them is justified
because they're in rebellion against God.
That's been the traditional position of the church.
So that was his whole thing. So the whole Paul Within Judaism
movement is designed to try to mitigate that.
(01:03:07):
Let me make one last point. There's another guy by the name
of Rabbi Kinzer. Rabbi Kinzer is a Jewish
Christian who is a very good man, good man, very humble man.
He has great relationships with the Cardinals of the Vatican.
(01:03:28):
Mark Kinzer was instrumental in the formation of the recent,
relatively recent document whichwas an update of the Catholic
position of the Jews. And it's very controversial.
The evangelicals all hated it. The position that the Jews have
a relationship with God outside of Jesus.
(01:03:51):
No strata. Yes, and Mark Kinser wrote a
book called Post Missionary Messianic Judaism justifying an
argument to justify Messianic Judaism apart from evangelical
proselytizing efforts. The problem with this theory is
Judaism already has a solution to that problem.
(01:04:15):
It's called the Seven Noahide Laws.
Yeah, you don't need to go through any kind of a crazy
extrapolation to try to justify Jews not accepting Jesus.
Judaism never requires anybody to believe and become Jewish.
Judaism simply says be a righteous person and everyone
can have a place with God. That's what Judaism teaches.
(01:04:39):
Yeah. And on that note, I do have to
bring it to an end and we can get a little more into this a
little further. We covered a lot.
This is, this is a good, a good talk.
I got to do the call of my kids now.
So I can't really continue this right now, but we covered some
good points and we're at a good spot.
Anything you want to say last last words real quick?
(01:05:03):
I just, I I just want to say express my appreciation for you,
Jeremiah, because of the work you're trying to do.
I think it's coming from a good heart and a good place, a place
of inquiry, genuine desire to try to connect dots and help
people understand. I don't think you have an axe to
grind. I don't have a sense that you're
trying to to get at a certain group of people or try to try to
(01:05:25):
get revenge And anybody you you truly have a good heart in this
and that's why I'm willing to participate in this with you.
And I think, I hope that I hope that you're your work continues
to find success and and and keepbeing a great dad to your kids.
I love, I love your posts. All right, great.
Well, I appreciate you and it was good, insightful.
And yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap on that and we'll, we'll
(01:05:48):
come back on some of this. We're getting into some good
stuff, but this went wrong and you know, we'll bring it up.
If you have to, yeah. So anyways, I appreciate you and
you know, for everybody following, make sure you like
and subscribe. You know TuneIn and Jesus the
Jew within judaism.com, the Facebook group and YouTube.
(01:06:09):
And stay in touch for further episodes.
Welcome to the Pulling the Threads podcast.
This is Part 2 of podcasts that I had recorded with author David
LeBlanc. It went really long so we had to
cut it into two pieces. First part, we really started
with the Christian origins. What is Christianity as we know
(00:31):
it and then how do we understandit before it became what it is?
Looking through the historical critical method, what are the
ancient roots of it? And so this is a Part 2 of that.
Again, if you like the podcast, please follow the Pulling the
Threads podcast on YouTube, jointhe Facebook group Pulling the
(00:52):
Threads podcast, and follow the blog at Jesus the Jew within
judaism.com. And I hope you enjoy this
podcast episode and please sharewith your friends and family who
you might think that find this interesting.
To the Pauls of the world, whoever Paul was, or if he even
(01:13):
existed, whoever wrote in Paul'sname, which is largely what we
have today. We have a bunch of documents
written in Paul's name that havehad cut and paste and scissor
Marks and stitch points all overthem.
We have very little core Paul, if there is any, and none of it,
none of it existed in the earliest church records, don't
(01:36):
have any Paul. We don't know of Paul except
until after Marcion supposedly discovers his letters, That's
what so. And we know that the Gnostics
considered Paul to be a founder of their movement.
Yes. And once even the early proto
orthodox considered Paul to be aheretic.
(01:56):
The early Ebeonites thought Paulwas a heretic.
And it wasn't until after Marcian found his letters and
then the proto Orthodox decided to massage and revitalize them
and then redact his letters further, that all of a sudden
Paul did the revival. And and so that was kind of a
point I was going to get to, is that our textual tradition
starts with Marcian's gospel, Marcian's finding of the
(02:18):
Epistles and in the proto Orthodox redaction start
appearing after this we don't have we don't have texts that
exist before Marcian when it comes to gospels and epistles,
and the little ones are redactions of him.
And therefore Marcian may have invented Paul based upon
Josephus, maybe the spouter of lies that Eisenmann is referring
(02:41):
to. But you know there's there's
parallels between Josephus and Paul and their their their
background, the three years in the wilderness, similar Platonic
ideas when it comes to you know to playing with the the myth and
you know do what becomes a seabed of Christianity.
(03:02):
So like we don't the textual tradition.
Now I characterize what I think the early followers of Jesus
were. Now when we come to the textual
tradition, Marcian is, you know,yes I would agree with the part
Marcian priority that his came first.
I mean you know chicken or egg we we have his letters and then
everything else that becomes Christianity is a reaction to
(03:23):
his. So you hold his letters, the
proto orthodox redaction and then you have the capitalization
where they go back in again. And that's why it seems like
three or four times, you know Paul's like what's going on.
He's changing his mind or he's arguing against himself.
And then I would consider a majority of the New Testament,
even James and Jude to be Catholic documents written by
(03:43):
Catholicists to and even Luke Max as Catholicists to Assange.
The image of Paul, who the Orthodox and the Evianites saw
as a heretic originally, but a convenient Co-op when they
wanted to rewrite the history because there's so much in his
text that was great towards the influencing and manipulation of
(04:05):
Let me just make. Yeah, I totally agree with
everything you just said. But it brings, it brings what
you just said, brings home the point that I was trying to make.
So let me make my final. Go ahead.
When we're talking about Christian origins, in my
opinion, we have to understand that This is why I get so
(04:28):
aggravated with the historicity,mythicist debate.
Because what we're dealing with in the development of the
Christian religion is the same thing we're dealing with in the
development of Judaism, The samething we're dealing with in any
of these ancient thought traditions, but specifically
Christianity. Let's talk about that.
(04:51):
People can debate until the cowscome home who Jesus was when he
lived, when the Gospels were written, who's Peter?
Who's Paul? You know any of this stuff?
All we have to understand is that what we have is an is an
ongoing power struggle of ideas.Yes.
(05:13):
That's what's going on in the development of the religion.
That's why we have so much debate about what came, what
came first, you know, and then whose ideas were prevalent and
and when did this arise and you know, when did Gnosticism arise.
And and everybody's got their angle on it because they're all
trying to politic for their particular brand that they
adhere to. So the idea of a historical
(05:37):
Jesus becomes an obstacle to true discovery because the idea
of a historical Jesus puts in play the notion, which is a
false notion, that in order for us to get to the original core
Christians, we have to find the original Jesus.
I disagree with that notion. If you want to find the origins
(06:01):
of Christianity, you're not looking for a person.
You're looking for a set of ideas.
How did the ideas that became orthodox Christianity become
ascendant? What was the process in which
the battle was won over the ideas?
How did the Trinity went out? How did the idea of, you know,
(06:22):
how was it that Valentinianism and modalism was defeated in the
Trinitarian Model 1? How was it that we ended up with
Paul, who was so closely associated with Marcia after
Marcion is rejected as a heretic?
How is it that Paul becomes so central to Christian doctrine
(06:42):
when he was introduced by Marcion?
How do we have this idea that that there's four Gospels when
we know that there was a lot more?
How do we have this idea of you mentioned it?
We have these these Catholic epistles like First and Second
Timothy. We have Titus and all these
(07:03):
epistles. I mean any anybody without a
without half a brain can see that first and second Timothy is
talking about issues that shouldn't even come up until the
3rd century. We're talking about bishops and
deacons and all this stuff. There's no there's no need for
any of that in the in in the 50swhen Paul is writing like like
(07:27):
you mean to tell me that Paul isis worried about this wild huge
network of believers that have to have authority over them and
listen to your elders like what are you talking about There was
no Christianity in Rome from Nero to persecute.
So all this narrative that is accepted as mainstream, most of
(07:47):
it is propaganda and so we have to understand that what we're
dealing with. And you you mentioned this at
the very beginning of our conversation that there was a
time period that we know of thatis well documented where
Christianity became the ideas. Let me just rephrase that the
the set of ideas and values thatbecome the Christian doctrinal
(08:13):
position on life doesn't really have ascendancy until the 4th,
5th century. Yeah.
Before that, it's just a non-stop, often violent debate.
Yeah. Of of who's going to win out and
who's going to win out is the elites that are in charge.
That's the answer to that question.
(08:34):
So if we want to understand the origins of the religion, we have
to understand who was in charge of the culture, who were the
major players, who were the major moves and shakers?
What was their incentive? What was their motivation?
What would they have to gain? What would a Philo or a Josephus
or a Flavian Emperor have to do with Christianity?
(09:00):
What would be their incentive? What would be their ideas that
they were trying to promote? So we know for instance as an
example and this this alludes tosome of the work of of Valiant
and Fahey. But the reality is that we have,
we have to understand that therewas an incentive behind Josephus
(09:20):
writing his Antiquity of the Jews.
Why was that commissioned? Because I believe personally
this is just my view and this I'm not asking anyone to share
this view. This is just what I'm convinced
of that I think the only writings that we have that
survived that period of the 1st century is the writings of
Josephus. I think all the writings of the
(09:41):
New Testament came after 100 AD.And I I personally think that
most all of them came from well after 130 AD And I think, you
know, we don't have any, any proof otherwise.
And I know that Josephus wrote, he had to have written before he
died. So Josephus wrote after the war
because he was commissioned by the Emperor who had the money to
(10:04):
publish the works. Yeah, so.
So he switched sides, you know, and he became, you know, the
voice for, you know, the Roman Empire.
So he served on one side, then after the temple.
Now he's a propagandist for the Roman government, right?
And Josephus, it should be pointed out Josephus declared
(10:27):
the emperor to be the Messiah. Yeah.
And so did Ben Zakai, the Jewishrabbi.
He declared him to be a fulfillment of prophecy.
That's right in the Talbot. So the idea that that
Christianity has its origins in some person is so infantile.
(10:53):
It's a man. It's it's intellectually
infantile. It's it's knuckle dragger
reasoning. And the only reason people that
adhere to this, I did this type of reasoning is because they
have a religious bias and a desire to believe it.
Yes. Right.
So once you just once you divorce yourself from your own
personal biases of belief and you look at the religion itself,
(11:16):
you realize Jesus is a typological figurehead.
That is the focused attention point that the that the
inventors of the religion want you to have.
They want you focusing on this Jesus character when really
behind the scenes it's like the Wizard of Oz, you know, he's
pulling all the levers behind the curtain.
You've got all these machinations and political
(11:40):
designs on the text and the textis designed to conform people's
thinking. And so this is what we want you
to be. When I was talking to Robert
Price and he talked about this in his book, he details us in
his book extensively that First Corinthians, according to the
church fathers, was considered abasically a member's handbook,
(12:04):
if you will. For the early believers, this is
how they regulated behaviors. First Corinthians was
distributed everywhere. Well, when you start breaking
down First Corinthians, you start realizing you've got
decades and even centuries of debated issues in that text, in
that epistle things that you've got the anchritites who were
(12:24):
the, you know, the with the aesthetics who do, who believed
that they were married but but they shouldn't have sex with
their spouse. You've got that represented in
the Pauline epistles. You've got, you've got
Gnosticism represented in the Pauline epistles.
You've got church politics representative.
So Paul is like, he becomes the Jesus of the emerging church.
(12:48):
So you've got the figurehead Jesus, and then you've got this
Paul character who everybody uses for their own advantage and
they keep changing his writings in order to to to massage the
message, to be consistent with the culling politics of the day.
And this goes on for hundreds ofyears, hundreds of years.
I mean, all you got to do is listen to, you got to listen to,
(13:12):
what's his name? I just went blank.
The famous scholar Ehrman, Art Ehrman, who's a linguistic
expert. I don't agree with him on
everything, but you know, he'll come out and say that there's
over 20,000 scribal redactions in the New Testament that
they've found through linguisticanalysis, which means.
(13:33):
He has 200,000. Oh, is it that much?
Maybe. Maybe.
I had the number run up, which is even a more astounding.
500,000 textual variants in the New Testament, whereas
comparatively there's about 20,000 textual variants in the
Tanakh. You know.
Let me let. Me get to that because you
talked about that and I didn't get a chance to address that.
(13:53):
You talked about the the you would you spent quite a bit of
time talking about the differences when we start to
compare the the the diversity ofthought within early Judaism
versus diversity of thought within early Christianity.
Yes, there are certainly some diverse groups in early ancient
Judaism. However, as you correctly
(14:15):
pointed out, there's there's also a consensus of origins
there. Yeah.
Now I'm not talking about modernscholarship talking about when
Deuteronomy was written or anything.
I'm talking about they all have a Torah.
Yeah, but when in Christianity, because Christianity and the
history of Christianity. So I was about to mention before
(14:36):
we had our technical difficulties.
There's a scholar named Elaine Pagels.
My son-in-law had a chance to meet her in person at the
Society of Biblical Literature. Very fascinating woman.
She's very quirky, but essentially she she has a theory
which I think is brilliant. I don't know if she's right, but
she has a theory that basically the Gospels were intentionally
(15:00):
backdated to a period that couldn't be verified.
Yeah. So by putting the Gospels into
the period of Pontius Pilate, Yeah, you, you have a historical
figure, and then you can create a fiction around that historical
figure. Because once Jerusalem is
destroyed, there's no way to verify the actors in the story.
Yeah. So it's a genius thing.
(15:21):
Fiction writers do this all the time.
How many fiction books are written around you?
Look at Tom Clancy novels, or all these different modern
writers who take real events, real people, and they've craft a
story around it that is highly believable because, well, this
is a real person and this is a real event.
And I mean, you can't verify it,so you can't.
(15:45):
Exactly. So I I bring that up only to say
that that it's very clear that and and and by the way, this is
also true of all the major religious figures in ancient, in
the ancient world. This is true of Buddha, this is
true of Krishna. This is true of all these
different people. None of them have even Romulus,
who, you know, we believe there was a Romulus, right?
(16:08):
But the stories surrounding Romulus and the founding of Rome
are fantastic. They're not real.
So we we have all these. This is what people do.
The last thing I'll say, I'm sorry I went a little longer
than I meant to, but so I I had a chance.
I was. I was talking to Rabbi Tobias
Singer, and he ended up talking about this on one of his shows
(16:29):
with Tanak Talk with Michael Hall.
William Hall, excuse me, WilliamHall, who runs Tanak Talk.
So Rabbi Singer was at one time a rabbi, the head rabbi in
India, believe it or not. So he took a job in India as the
head rabbi for the Jewish community in that part of the
(16:50):
world. He was only there for a few
years, I think. But while he was there, there
was this, There was this Hindu guru guy, very, very famous guy,
who had millions of followers. He would have rallies and
there'd be millions of people that would show up and there'd
be miracle healings and all the same stuff you'd see in the
(17:11):
evangelical, evangelical world. Yeah.
So I know, I know. The laughing revival within
Pentecostal movement actually has its roots in this hindering
the laughing revival and healings and stuff.
Like, I don't even want to delveinto that, no.
No, I'm not. I'm not trying to.
(17:31):
I'm just the point I'm trying tomake is that this guy ends up
having a massive heart attack and he dies while Singer is
there has massive heart attack. Now there was all these
prophecies about this guy, abouthow he was going to rise from
the dead and how he was going tohe was going to revive the whole
world. I saw.
(17:52):
I finally realized that that sound is coming from my headset.
It's not from you. So hopefully you can still hear
me OK. But this guy dies, and Singer
says that within a week there were women coming on public
television claiming that they saw him as a risen person and
(18:15):
saw him rise from the dead. And he spoke words to them and
they had things to share within a week of this guy dying.
So all to point out, like, like people who say that you can't
come up with a mythical Jesus because the timeline's too soon.
(18:35):
It can happen in days. It can happen in days.
So this is where I, you know, I'm willing to concede like I
don't. I don't.
I try not to be dogmatic about my dating of the Gospels,
because it's certainly possible that these Gospels could be,
could have been written a short time after a historical person
(18:56):
and they could have just elaborated and embellished like
crazy. And now you have the legend.
But either way, the point is, isthat the the religion develops
over a period of time for the debate over ideas.
Not it's not like, it's not likelet's say that you and I are
very close friends and you have a huge following, right?
(19:18):
And all of a sudden I'm out on ahike with you someday and you
die on the trail. And then all of a sudden I see
all these stories coming out about, you know, what was really
going on with you and what really happened.
And I would say, well, no, I cancategorically say that all of
what you're saying is not true because I was physically there
with him in person. I have photos of him.
(19:39):
Look, here's my photographs here.
Here's my transcripts of my conversations with him on Zoom.
Like, this is what he was. This is what he believed.
Everything you're saying is false.
And everybody was like, OK, right.
He's an eyewitness testimony. We don't have any eyewitness
testimony that's verifiable at all.
Everything is a story and a legend, and the proof of that is
(20:02):
that none of the gospels agree with each other.
Yes, centuries and decking. There's no consistency to the
the diversity of early gospels and epistles.
There's no I mean, that's why scholars only agree that he was
probably baptized and died, and the rest we can't agree on.
That's one thing like So I interviewed at one time.
I interviewed Jack Buck who is aPhD candidate.
(20:26):
I think he's got his PhD now. It could be wrong, but he was a
PhD candidate studying under Marcus Vincent.
So Marcus Vincent is a preeminent Marcian, priority
scholar in the world. And Jack Buck is is one of his
chief students. And Jack Buck's specialty is I
radius. If I say that name right radius,
(20:48):
I said it was the wrong emphasis.
So one of the things he said that struck me.
And by the way, Jack Buck is a Christian, he believes in Jesus,
the whole thing. He's a Catholic.
But Jack Buck says that one of the things that's really
interesting and he's an expert on Irenaeus's letters, which I
won't get into here, But he saidthe earliest writings in the
(21:09):
Christian world have no knowledge of Paul at all.
What they talk about and they talk about the crucifixion.
They talk about Jesus died and rose again, that's consistent.
But they don't have anything to say about Paul, which is really
fantastic. When you consider the fact that
(21:31):
you you've got epistles that allude to like Peter alludes to
the controversial writings of Paul.
And you've you've got all this doctrine and church theology
built on this guy who the earliest Christians don't know
anything about. And we have to go into the
writings such as the Homilies and the Clementine recognitions
(21:52):
and all these other things to find out anything about Paul.
And as you pointed out earlier, we have, it seems like in the
New Testament we have kind of a of a, a negotiated truce,
especially in the Book of Acts between all these competing
elements like you alluded to. We've got all these different
(22:13):
groups that have all these different particular beliefs.
And then later, much much later,there's an attempt to try to
gloss over the discrepancies andtry to create a mirage of a
unified front, such as the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15.
Alleged. Alleged Jerusalem comes, which
(22:34):
as a Jew, I find incredibly unlikely.
Yes, yes I yeah I I that's a mythological accounts.
I don't agree. I think and you look in the the
homilies. I don't think Peter and James
would have ever conceded to that.
I don't think that would have nothe the this new Paul way that's
(22:58):
kind of like Noahides or something.
I don't think they would have ever agreed to that.
I still believe that. I'm convinced they would believe
in discipleship, circumcision, mikvah as the way I bet you
know, and there's textual tradition to support that now.
But I do kind of want to do a transition here though, you
(23:22):
know, maybe 30-40 minutes Max left.
But I want to transition. We've done some good foundation
work. I'm probably going to break this
into three episodes now just because of content, and I think
we got that. I do want to transition.
We've laid a good foundation of what Christianity how it came to
be. I want to move into the modern
(23:44):
age post Catholicization of the Roman Empire and the Roman
Empire and the ideas of Christianity, winning Western
Europe and America, the Reformation and then, you know,
the Protestant Reformation and in the evangelical uprising in
America. And then now we come to our
modern term and we're going to leave out a lot of that period
(24:06):
just because I want to move to the juxt of my point while we
lay the foundation. The way I did is that now I want
to talk about the messianic evangelical movement and how
they get some things wrong. There's four key points that I'd
like to kind of get into. One the Jewishness of Jesus and
(24:27):
how their Rabbi Jesus validates their twist on Christianity and
how I would completely disagree with that summation that this
Jewish Rabbi Jesus that gives a Jewish flavor to Christianity
somehow makes things OK. Point 1.2 is the new view of
Paul as you know, Paul within Judaism and Gabriel Boccaccini's
(24:52):
Paul within Enochian Judaism. You know like a branch of
Hellenistic essing Judaism and then how this Jesus and the
festivals which I just have the hugest problem with.
You know Jesus is a Passover lamb is so troubling.
That would be the third one and the last one the messianism that
(25:15):
co-ops the citizm the the veneration of rebbe Menachem
Sneersen. And so I don't like to talk
about the problems of the Messianic Jewish Jesus and how
this doesn't validate Christianity and it doesn't
validate Messianic Judaism. Because one part and parcel
Messianic Judaism by all branches of Judaism is not
(25:37):
Judaism. Their veneration of a single
rabbi, salvation in Jesus. Even even if they demote Jesus
to to a lesser, not a God, they still believe in Paul's
soteriology. The salvation in Jesus, which is
not a historical Jewish. There's not the belief of a
(25:57):
person to save your soul. It was national redemption, you
know, and we don't have to really get into that as much.
But how do they get the Jewish Jesus wrong?
How does them propagating JewishJesus to promote them fail?
When we look at what I just described and how we
characterized early Jewish Christianity for no better term,
(26:19):
just so that people know what we're talking about, I'd call it
Judaism. That never went the way of
Christianity would be my definition.
But that which became Christianity is separate from
what I would have couched that as the religion that was
invented formed over time. So how did they get the Jewish
Jesus wrong? Start with that one.
Then how did they get the new view of Paul wrong?
(26:42):
And at some point I want to touch on this Jesus and the
festivals, how he could never bethe Passover lamb or he doesn't
fulfill Sukkot, Oh, you know, misunderstanding of God with us.
And then we can move into the messianism.
So I'd like to kind of hit as much of this as we can in the
next 30 minutes or so. And then I will have to cut off
(27:03):
at 5:45. That's.
Fine, I'll have to go too. So do you want me to just go
ahead and try to tackle those oryou?
Want to the four points? And so let's let's start with
you know, how do they get the Jewishness of Jesus wrong?
And how does them promulgating the Jewishness of Jesus to
promote their branch of Christianity fail to understand
one the historical Jesus, the myth making of Christianity, and
(27:27):
the Messianic movement? Right, So the Jewishness of
Jesus first. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a
trap. Obviously, if you're selling the
world that Jesus was born a Jew,he's Jewish.
(27:48):
I mean, it's the most obvious thing.
Well, Jesus is Jewish after all,you know, So that's the obvious
inroad to try to get people interested in the Messianic
perspective. Well, after all, Jesus was a
Jew. So again, the the presumption is
false is based on the same falsepresumption that creates the
(28:14):
misunderstanding of Christian origins.
So anyone who studies church history or Christian origins at
any level, even if they're a believer and most people begin
that way when they study this stuff, they have to admit that,
as you correctly said, the Christianity that developed had
(28:36):
a adolescent period where there was a lot of different
perspectives before there was anOrthodoxy.
The same is true in Judaism. There was a lot of development
over a long period of time before there was a consensus of
Jewish Orthodoxy. So to try to put Jesus, and I've
(28:59):
seen that I did this at one point.
I I When I was, I used to study the Talmud, constantly looking
for stories and teachings that would be reminiscent of the
teachings of Jesus. And I would find many and I
would write about them. I had a blog I I used to teach
at a Messianic synagogue. I would be a guest teacher on
(29:22):
frequent occasions, and they would always love it.
When I would give them rabbinic Talmudic parallels to Jesus,
they would love that. They would eat it up.
Looking back on it, I regret that stuff.
I I still have my notes from some of those studies.
I could send them to you. The truth of the matter is that
(29:46):
there's a lot of explanations asto why they would be parallels
to Jesus's teachings and stuff in the Talbot.
None of them can be attributed to the fact that he was a Jewish
rabbi. Yeah, all of them have their
roots of the same things that ifyou've studied the Talmud, if
(30:06):
anyone listening here has studied the Talmud at length, or
been taught the Talmud through Talmud study with a rabbi or
rabbis would know that the Talmud, that they called the sea
of the Talmud. You don't read the Talmud or
study the Talmud the same way you would read the book of
Romans. It's it's a dialectic.
(30:29):
It's a conversation. So even things that the rabbis
today do not just do not agree with or condone are laid out in
full view in the Talmud as part of the dialectic.
For instance, there's a passage in Sanhedrin that describes the
Holocaust parameters for how youare to sacrifice your children
(30:52):
to Molech. Believe it or not, it's
shocking, but it's true. That doesn't mean that you're
ever going to find a rabbi or rabbinic organization of any
denomination that is going to tell you that.
Oh yeah, well, absolutely. You can go ahead and sacrifice
your children to Molech. No, that's not part of Judaism.
No, but it's in the Talbot. Why is it in the Talbot?
(31:14):
Because at one point in history that was an issue that was
discussed among the scholars, and it's recorded.
So we know that there is things in the Talbot that are taught by
Hallel in the debates between Hallel and Shamai.
And and Shamai says this and Hallel says this and and he you
(31:38):
know, and there's always the thestereotypical which are not
always true. But the stereotypical idea that
Hallel was always on the side ofleniency and Shamai was always
on the side of strictness, whichis not always true.
Many times the sages sided with Shamai, they didn't always side
with Hallel. But the reality is that Jesus is
(31:58):
portrayed by the Messianics as being a Rabbi after the school
of Hallel. Yeah.
It it's it's a shell game. It's a shell game if you really
study the character of Jesus. Jesus is another example of a
Pagan mystery God, man. That's what Jesus is.
(32:23):
He's not a rabbi. And you can try to make all
these arguments, but the Messianics, do they make these
arguments? Oh, no, no, Jesus.
You know, if you strip away the virgin birth and you strip away
all these doctrines that are highly problematic to the Jewish
world, and, and we should be clear, and you haven't said
this, but for the audience, if they don't know, 90% of the
messianic world believes in coreChristian evangelical doctrine.
(32:47):
Yes, they do. Right.
It's a very small percentage of the Messianic world that
actually adheres to Jewish teaching.
Or. Follows authentic Jewish
practices. They're a very, very small
group. It's really just like there's a
huge and when you think about itI'll just make this comment as a
as a as a wrap up to my statement on this.
(33:08):
For for people who have become disillusioned with their church
or the shallowness of their religious life, the idea of
exploring the depths of the Jewish Jesus is incredibly
appealing to a lot of people. It's the idea that I'm going to
know in fact the famous organization First versus Zion.
(33:32):
They have what they call a tour club where they sign people up
and you get involved in these small groups and you have a
facilitator and they go through these modules where they go
through the partial cycle with the eyes of you know, let what
do we see Jesus in this, you know in the partial cycle and.
I. All of it.
All of it. Their their motto is get to know
(33:53):
Jesus better. So with the with the mantra of
you're going to get to know Jesus better if you can
understand him from a Hebraic perspective.
That's the idea. But what they're doing is
they're not getting to know Jesus better at all.
All they're doing is they're reinventing the Jesus of their
(34:14):
imagination to fit their new fantasy.
Yeah. That's all they're doing.
They're taking a hodgepodge of their evangelical background and
they're mixing it with what little knowledge they have that
these people are famous. They'll go to the Habad website
and they'll they'll try to navigate the Habad website
because Habad is very messianic.And they'll, they'll talk, They
(34:36):
get all these teachings about Messiah, and we're getting ahead
of ourselves a little bit. But a lot of these people, they
love this stuff. They love it because it it gives
them a sense of validation that they've gone.
And most of them are very triumphalistic in their
attitude, like we're we're a deeper Christian than the
average Christian average. Evangelical Christianity is very
shallow, but we're going deep because we're getting to the
(34:59):
roots of what Jesus was really like, according to the people
that he's associated with. And there's all this excitement
about, you know, we're going to support Israel and we're going
to, we're going to, we're going to, you know, support the
rabbis, we're going to fight anti-Semitism.
We're going to do all these really wonderful, well worthy
things. And yet they're, they have
(35:20):
nothing to do with Jesus. And people should know that most
messianic organizations, the vast majority of messianic
organizations that are out there, are expressly dedicated
to trying to convert Jews into becoming Christians.
That's their goal. And yeah, once you know that,
you realize that this is a sham,This is a farce.
(35:40):
It's not real. Yeah.
It's an evangelical ploy. Jellicleism, you know, the term
that comes to mind for me is wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
You know, it's what Rabbi Kara Sarah Shapiro in her book on
Messianic Judaism. She was a reformed Jew, refers
to as Cross dressing Gentiles. You know my experience with
(36:01):
Doctor Raymond Gandin, Jewish Voice and King Seminary.
You know the Gentiles encourage dressing up as more Orthodox to
convert. You know Jews but you know and
and so let's touch on 1st Hebraic roots and then the
alleged Orthodox from you know, so the Hebrew roots, you know
(36:23):
the Tabernacle Jesus fills the Tabernacle Jesus fulfills the
festivals somehow he's the Passover lamb and he's also
Sukkot. There's a problem with this
because well how does a man become a lamb?
How to you know each man was given once to live and then the
judgement. No man you know a father can't
die for his son. You know son can't die for his
(36:45):
father like. Ezekiel 18.
Failure to understand Judaism. Jesus can't fulfill the
festivals and he can't be a Passover lamb, which doesn't
take away the sins of the world.Despite, you know, in Judaism,
you know Christianity is going to say one thing, but you know
Judaism, Passover lamb didn't take away the sins of the world.
So if he becomes like you know, he doesn't fulfill the festivals
(37:08):
in the process. Let me go further if I can
interrupt you for one second. Let's let's let's now transition
to the Passover lamb thing, right.
Not only does the Passover lamb not take away the sins of the
world, it doesn't take away the sins of anyone.
It doesn't deal with sin. So the idea, so this is one of
the biggest fallacies that exists, is the idea that Jesus
(37:33):
represents the blood put in the lentil of the doorpost by the
Hebrews in Egypt. On a fundamental level, it's
it's a misunderstanding of the story.
It's it's a it's a false Christian teaching.
First of all that Jesus is the typology of this, of the of the
blood of the lentils. The truth of the matter is that
(37:57):
the curse according to the Torahwas against the first born.
And people who were Jewish were to put the blood of the lentil
of their of their doorposts to identify them as Jewish that
their first born wouldn't die. So any conceptually any Jewish
family in Egypt that didn't obeyMoses's edict, their first born
(38:21):
child would die. So people don't understand that
in the Jewish world, according to Jewish teaching, there were
Egyptians that also put blood ontheir Lymphos so that their
oldest children wouldn't die. And those Egyptians went out
with the Jews in the Exodus, the.
Great multitude, yeah. It wasn't simply just the
(38:43):
Hebrews. So of course Christians will
say, well, that just proves the universal salvage.
No, there's no salvation messagein the Passover event.
The Passover event was a solemn event.
That was it was like people are dying around us and we're just
being spared. This is but the idea was, and of
(39:04):
course I don't believe it was a historical event, but that's
neither here nor there. But the the reality is that
Christian doctrine tries to appropriate the blood in the
Passover story as representativeof the shed blood of Jesus
Christ for the sins of the world.
There are no Jewish people who were saved quote, UN quote by
obeying this injunction. They were simply spared the
(39:27):
death of the first born. Yeah.
So it's it's a completely false analogy to begin with.
The other thing that they do is they conflate the Passover story
with Yom Kippur with the with the the sacrifice of Yom Kippur.
Yes, yes. One of the things this is even
more egregious in my opinion is that how a Messianic Christian
(39:52):
and participate in the Yom Kippur ceremony and the Rosh
Hashanah ceremony which happens,you know, 7 to 10 days previous,
right? So in Judaism we all know that
there is blood all over the worship system.
The cult worship system has blood everywhere, but most
(40:12):
people do not know that there isnot a single offering in the
Levitical system with deals which deals with intentional
sin. There's not one, there's not one
sacrifice that deals with willful sin.
The only remedy for sin in Judaism is repentance and change
(40:32):
and a heartfelt return to God. That's the teaching of Judaism,
is that you return to God and heblesses you and restores you.
That's the whole point. It's not about sacrifice.
The sacrifice is about cleansingthe Temple.
Yep. So that that.
That's why if there's people, people never think to ask the
question like how can Judaism still exist today if there's no
(40:55):
temple? Don't they realize that Jesus
fulfilled it? No, Jesus didn't fulfill
anything. If if the Temple was so critical
to the existence of Jewish belief, then it wouldn't have
survived the death, the destruction of the temple.
That's not the case. Judaism does not rely upon
animal sacrifice for atonement to God, Period.
(41:16):
Not only that, if if the Passover go back to Passover for
a second. If the Passover lamb was so
critical for the health of the Jewish soul, why is that
practice and Exodus not duplicated today, All around the
world you don't see any Jews putting blood on their doorposts
(41:38):
anywhere in the world, not in Jerusalem or anywhere else.
Why? Because it has nothing to do
with the health of the Jewish soul.
It was a plague. It was a it was an act of
obedience during a plague in a foreign land.
It has its time and place. It's commemorated in Jewish
culture and history and religion.
It has nothing to do with the salvation of assault.
(41:59):
All right, so, but back to the Yom Kippur thing.
So I remember standing in a messianic synagogue, we went
through the whole Rosh Hashanah thing right now.
It's very fascinating because asyou know, when Rosh Hashanah,
Rosh Hashanah is, people always think that Yom Kippur is the
judgement. Yes, but really it happens at
(42:21):
Rosh Hashanah. So Rosh Hashanah, the blowing of
the Shofar, is supposed to silence the objections of the
enemy of the Haseitan so that the people can have an
uninterrupted audience with their king in order to have
their soul restored. And it's during the period of
Rosh Hashanah where the judgement is rendered.
(42:44):
And then at Yom Kippur, your fate is sealed for the following
year. That's Jewish tradition.
Most people don't know that. There's very few Christians that
have ever experienced or even know about the Rosh Hashanah
ceremony. Even though it's in the Bible,
Christians don't talk about it. They don't teach about it.
If you believe that there is relevance to the to the Rosh
(43:07):
Hashanah, Yom Kippur, to the, what we call the High Holiday
holidays. So the High Holidays of the
Jewish year culminate in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I have been, as you have been inliberal synagogues where you
have Jews who don't even attend synagogue all year long.
And on Rosh Hashanah, they will pack the joint out because they
(43:28):
know the family is being called together.
They go there because it's the time for the family to be called
to account, not because of any of their faith or anything.
They even do have faith. Many of them don't have faith,
but they're still there. They're there because they're
part of the tribe, this part of the family.
It's the ritual. So if if you believe that Jesus
(43:51):
is your atonement, if you believe that you are rectified
to God by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
There is no world in which you should be participating in Yom
Kippur, whether you're Jewish ornot.
Because if you're Jewish, you realize that the salvation of my
soul is not up to an individual.I'm part of a tribe.
(44:14):
And in Judaism, every Jew's soulgoes back to Sinai, and we're
all part of the same soul. We're all sparks of the same
root. And so every Jew that has ever
lived for all of time, accordingto Jewish theology, I don't care
if you're part of the Reform movement, the Conservative
movement, the Orthodox movement,the Hasidic movement, your soul
(44:35):
was considered to have been present at Sinai.
Yes. You don't get saved.
You are part of a tribe. It's not a salvation religion.
So this mixture of messianic evangelical ideas with Jewish
practice is the true definition of an abomination.
(44:57):
It shouldn't be. It shouldn't exist.
You have to choose one if you'reeither following Christianity or
you're following Judaism. Judaism has no need for Jesus,
and Christianity has no need forJewish ritual, period.
And if you're trying to mix the two because you think you're
connecting with the Hebraic original Jesus, This is why I
(45:19):
have such an issue with people fighting over historicity,
because you're missing the wholepoint of the religion.
Jesus is a figurehead representing a set of ideas.
It has nothing to do with Judaism, nothing to do with
Sukkot. You mentioned Sukkot, nothing.
Sukkot is a ritual of of the Exodus.
(45:40):
It is a festival. Now the argument is made, even
by the Noahide teachers, the rabbis, that Sukkot is the only
festival of all the Jewish rituals that does have the world
in mind. It has the Goyim in mind also,
as well as the Jews, but not in the context of salvation and
certainly not in the context of Jesus.
(46:03):
Has nothing to do with Jesus at all.
Nothing, unless you buy the hogwash that Jesus was a
misunderstood Hasidic Habad rabbi that would have worn a
black suit with white shirts andseat seat in the 1st century,
which is, you know, that they have.
Most people don't understand howanachronistic the Messianic
(46:25):
Hasidic Jesus is because the Hasidic movement doesn't exist
until the 18th century. Well, it starts in the 14th
century, but really, I mean whenyou talk about Habad and the
Breslow movement, all that stuff, that's all post Isaac
Lauria, that's all you know, we can get into that if you want.
I don't know if I'm jumping ahead of you.
OK, not today, not today, but but yes, yeah, so I mean.
(46:50):
We get fired up about this, so Iapologize to your audience.
I get a little fired up. We got 15 minutes Max.
I I want to agree with somethingyou were saying.
You know tehelim, you know, the Psalm says if you do what's
right, you'll be forgiven. Therefore you know if I, if I do
what's right you know even if you know Rosh Hashanah where you
(47:11):
know we apologize to our brothers and sisters for you
know things we've previous year.You know the the repentance
doing right you know the sacrifice is unnecessary.
So failure to understand and in trying to put Jesus in these
festivals isn't it fails to understand Judaism and therefore
has it totally has a faulty foundation, which we've kind of
(47:33):
talked about some of that the Hebraic roots.
You know, I I want to try to do the last two points if possible
because we've kind of touched onthe Hebraic roots.
According to, you know, Judaism,Jesus is an irrelevant marginal
Jew. And there's, you know,
historically he has no place really in Judaism.
(47:53):
Now Christianity that has beliefin Judaism is something that
Jews would wrestle with. But that's another issue moving
past the Hebrew roots to the, you know, I didn't answer that
question. You want me to deal with that?
I never. Dealt with that.
You want me to quickly address that?
Yeah, and then you. Don't have much time.
(48:14):
Yeah, all. All I wanted to say, so I forgot
to mention that because I I that's something I glossed over.
It's important for your audienceto understand, if you haven't
already educated about this, that Hebrew Roots has to be
carefully distinguished from theMessianic Jewish movement.
They are separate movements. Hebrew Roots is a cult.
(48:36):
Hebrew Roots is is a misappropriation of certain
Jewish practices from the perspective of Christian
rebellion. So Hebrew Roots is mostly
made-up of people who have rejected the mainstream church
and they read the Bible and theytry to just take on whatever is
written in the text of the Bible.
(48:56):
They're going to start doing that if it tells us, you know, I
have to. So you'll see Hebrews people,
they'll be tying strings to their belt loops and then
they'll be, you know, blowing shofar every 5 minutes.
And whereas Messianic Judaism asan organized movement has
governing bodies to it. There are different bodies.
(49:16):
So basically Messianic Judaism is largely split up between
people that came out of the charismatic movement versus
people that came out of the Baptist or more conservative
parts of Christianity. And and their fellowships and
the the the, the, the tenor of their fellowship is reflective
of their background. So in in Messianic synagogues
(49:37):
and in Hebrew root congregationswhere they come from charismatic
backgrounds, you're going to seea lot of the charismatic
elements that you would normallyfind like in an Assemblies of
God or what have you. People speaking in tongues
dancing around, we are waving flags around and you're going to
see all the same stuff because that's what they know, that's
what they're comfortable with and they just appropriate it to
(49:57):
the Jewish thing. Whereas people that come from a
more conservative bent tend to be a little bit more scholarly.
They tend to be more interested in the study of the text and
they're they're less interested in the in the experiential
elements and they're more interested in really immersing
themselves into the philosophical tradition.
And it's from that side of Messianic Judaism that you find
(50:19):
most of the people who leave it then convert to Judaism because
when they get involved. And you and I, I think probably
are in that camp where we, we got involved in the study and as
we studied, we studied ourselvesout of the Christian thing and
we found ourselves more attracted to Judaism.
So that's that's a very small percentage, though, of the
messianic Jewish world and within that world.
(50:40):
So in Hebrew roots, you've got people.
And I forget his name now, but there's this famous TV
personality. Maybe he's dead now, but he used
to dress up like a prophet and he had all these crazy gaudy
clothes and he would be very flamboyant and he was a former
pastor and he would, he had a very popular following to forget
his name. And then like from the messianic
Jewish world, one of the more prominent organizations is First
(51:03):
Fruits of Zion, which they've had a very business like and
strategic way that they've entered the market.
Their base is mostly Baptist, Southern Baptist and but they
are, they are all missionary. And that's the thing I wanted to
point out is that whether it's Hebrew Roots or whether it's
Messianic Jewish movements, all of them, whether more subtly
(51:25):
than others, they all seek to proselytize Jews because they
believe that they are part of the original Jesus movement that
is trying to recapture original Christianity.
And that's why this conversationis relevant.
And that's I just wanted to makethat point.
Oh no, that's a great point and kind of touches where I was
(51:47):
going next. But before we fully delve in,
you know, we kind of talked about what was wrong with the
Jewishness of Jesus and how theyget the Jewishness wrong.
And if he existed, that whole festival Passover thing just
fails, all right. So the next place that
Messianics go that this new, thenew view of Paul trying to put
(52:10):
Paul within the the rabbinic Jewish tradition and it's Halaka
and it's pesharam and it's midrash and and Paul is Jewish
and therefore Christianity is a midrash that became, you know,
out of Paul's writing, which Oh my God, I that's the worst thing
ever. So basically you embrace, you
(52:31):
embrace Platonianism, Mithraism,deification, salvation.
Because we you touched on salvation for Jews as communal.
It's the entire nation, not an individual.
Salvation according to Christianity is very personal
and follows the practices of Roman conversion to paganism.
Not any ever recorded history ofconversion to Judaism before
(52:55):
Christianity. The salvation process of
Christianity follows Roman tradition, but the making of
Paul is Jewish now and then Pesher rim in a midrash and Oh
my God, that's yeah. No, I'd like you to speak on
that. So let me let me just quickly
say because this will cut right to the chase.
(53:16):
So several years ago, my son-in-law Brian, who was a
published scholar, he attended the Society of Biblical
Literature conference, which happens every year, SBL, and he
attended as the roommate of MarkNanos.
(53:37):
So Mark Nanos is the spearhead scholar which heads up the Paul
Within Judaism movement. There's other scholars as well
that have gotten on board since him, but he used the primary
scholar that started it all. And his Seminole work, which was
an edited collection of essays by various people, including
himself, was called Paul Within Judaism This this was a fringe
(54:03):
form of Pauline's scholarship that began to take take off a
bit. Other scholars of notes such as
Paula Fredrickson, Magnus Zetterholm, and others, all of
which by the way, are atheists, started championing this, as
well as as an exciting new branch of Pauline's scholarship.
And they're all looking for something new anyway, So this is
(54:24):
like exciting for them to delve into.
I happen to know for a fact. So Mark Nanos, who is the most
prominent scholar in the Paul with the Judaism field and and
the FFOZ crowd, they just, like,basically worship this guy.
I know him personally. My son-in-law knows him much
better than I do. As I said, he roomed with him.
Mark Nanos is a liberal Jew who was a former businessman who
(54:48):
took upon Pauline's studies and his original work.
The irony of Galatians which washis initial and he wrote another
one on Romans which is very convoluted but at any rate his
whole point was to try to mitigate anti Christian
(55:09):
anti-Semitism. So Mark Daniels's idea was, if
you could re contextualize Paul as a as a Hellenized Jew who was
advocating to his brethren a reconception of Messianic
expectations and and couch Paul in the milieu of an of a Jew
(55:35):
arguing with other Jews. Essentially, that if Christians
could embrace this idea rather than the traditional narrative
that Paul was denouncing the law, denouncing Jewish
exceptionalism, denouncing Jewish practice, the strict
(55:57):
observance of kosher for Gentilethat Paul was advocating from
within Judaism, not against Judaism.
Essentially, that his idea was that if that idea could
propagate and he could make an argument for it, that it would
help to reverse many centuries of Christian persecution of the
(56:19):
Jewish people. That was his entire motivation,
a noble goal. He doesn't believe any of it.
I mean, it's like secular Hebrewrudism, though.
It's a Hebrew rudism for the secular mind.
You have to understand so like if you're an atheist, or if
you're a secular Jew and you andyour goal is the health of your
(56:42):
community. Mark Nanos doesn't care about
the arguments within Christianity, about doctrine.
He doesn't care about any of that stuff.
He's not a Christian. He has no intention of becoming
one. There are actually Messianic
Christians out there. My son-in-law went to a
(57:03):
conference by Messianics. He was invited to it.
Or Mark Nanos was invited to speak.
And they were just, like, gushing over him.
Like, people in the audience were like, you've changed my
life by helping me embrace Judaism and Christianity
together. You've made all the dots
connect. And Mark walks off the stage,
and he talks to my son-in-law. And he's just shaking his head
(57:24):
like, oi, like, what the heck isgoing on here?
Like, I'm not advocating Messianic Judaism.
I'm not advocating Jesus. Like, that's not his position.
Another one. Paula Frederickson.
She's as far as I know, she's a professor at Vanderbilt.
Maybe she's moved on. She used to be at Boston
University. Brilliant, Scott.
(57:47):
She doesn't believe any of this stuff.
It's. Just a profession for her.
Magda Zetterholm. Magda Zetterholm was another
famous scholar that he's piece he's he wrote, I think one or
two essays in the Paul with the Judaism book.
The reason I'm saying all this is because these are the people
that these messianic Jewish people are championing and
(58:09):
saying we have it on authority that Paul was a observant Jewish
man and that Jesus was an observant Jewish man, and that
they are promoting rabbinic Jewish principles here.
And the people who are writing the scholarship that they are
quoting don't believe it. Yeah.
It's a it's just it's people don't understand the world of
(58:33):
academia. To give a stream analogy that
that I make a point, but it's like the black guy that shows up
at the KKK meeting and starts saying all the things that they
like and they're like, look, it must be true.
Right, exactly. It's a crude analogy, but yeah,
it works. And so so the problem is, so let
me let me deal with the core claims quickly.
(58:55):
I won't take a lot of time on this, but I now that I've
debunked the source of the information, not that I've
debunked it, I I don't want to say it that way.
I'm not debunking their scholarship.
Their scholarship is great, but when I say their scholarship is
great, it doesn't mean that I agree with it.
It means that they've done a great job researching and trying
to come up with an argument. There's some very eloquent
arguments that are made for it. I'm not going to deny that I've
(59:18):
read the books, but ultimately it doesn't hold water because
the reality is that. So first of all, all is from
Tarsus. Try to find a Jewish sources,
any connection to the ancient Jewish world and the city of
Tarsus, which was by the way a place where the only thing that
(59:42):
was of significance in Tarsus was that that's where a Roman
legion was stationed. There was no Jewish community
there. So for these people to claim
that Paul was, you know, a potential, I've heard it claim
that Paul was was was the heir apparent to the Nazi of the
(01:00:04):
Sanhedrin. Enough people don't know what
the Nazi was. A Nazi is a Jewish term for the
head of the Sanhedrin people's claim that Paul people in the
messianic world claimed that Paul was was an inheritor.
He was an heir apparent to be. He was a savant.
He was a Talmud, Not a Talmud, but a Taurus savant of the oral
tradition. He was in line to be the Nazi if
(01:00:27):
that were true, and we would have records of him in the
Jewish tradition like we do for all other great sages of the
Jewish tradition. Paul is unknown in the Jewish
tradition. And to the early Christians too.
Right. So the whole notion of Paul
within Judaism. OK, So what do you do with
(01:00:51):
Galatians? So Mark Danos wrote The Irony of
Galatians and then he he talked.He wrote another book about
Romans. So Paul Mark Nanos has a fame,
and I'll just talk about him because he he's the one I'm most
familiar with. I've also read Fredrickson and
the other ones, but I'm most familiar with Nanos.
I've had personal correspondencewith him.
(01:01:13):
So in Romans in fact, he personally sent me his original
paper that he published on that ended up becoming incorporated
into his book. He sent it to me and I have it.
I have it down in my office. I don't have an office, but down
in my bookcase. He said it to me.
I have it in a three ring binder.
So the whole argument is based on word play in the Greek
(01:01:37):
talking about dealing with course with Romans 11 through 13
or is it 9 through 11? I forget the the part of Romans
where it talks about, you know, Israel has been, has been cut
off for a season and will be grafted back in.
And who are you to boast? Who has been grafted into the
original branch? You know, don't you boast
against it? Oh, you have to wrap up.
OK, so anyway, let me wrap up. Let me cut to the chase.
(01:02:00):
You guys can research that on your own, but the whole the the
very controversial passage in Romans that deals with Israel
being partially hardened. So that that is a is a passage
that Mark Daniels took particular umbrage with because
he viewed Matthew 27 which whichis the whole or is it Matthew 25
(01:02:24):
where it talks about let his blood curse be upon us and all
of our children. In Matthew he viewed that verse
and he also viewed the passage of Romans where it talks about
Israel being partially hardened but in the end they will all be
saved. That those are the core texts
that the Church has used throughout the centuries to
persecute and justify the pogroms and the persecutions of
(01:02:46):
Jews, that they're in rebellion,they need to repent.
And until they repent, anything we do to them is justified
because they're in rebellion against God.
That's been the traditional position of the church.
So that was his whole thing. So the whole Paul Within Judaism
movement is designed to try to mitigate that.
(01:03:07):
Let me make one last point. There's another guy by the name
of Rabbi Kinzer. Rabbi Kinzer is a Jewish
Christian who is a very good man, good man, very humble man.
He has great relationships with the Cardinals of the Vatican.
(01:03:28):
Mark Kinzer was instrumental in the formation of the recent,
relatively recent document whichwas an update of the Catholic
position of the Jews. And it's very controversial.
The evangelicals all hated it. The position that the Jews have
a relationship with God outside of Jesus.
(01:03:51):
No strata. Yes, and Mark Kinser wrote a
book called Post Missionary Messianic Judaism justifying an
argument to justify Messianic Judaism apart from evangelical
proselytizing efforts. The problem with this theory is
Judaism already has a solution to that problem.
(01:04:15):
It's called the Seven Noahide Laws.
Yeah, you don't need to go through any kind of a crazy
extrapolation to try to justify Jews not accepting Jesus.
Judaism never requires anybody to believe and become Jewish.
Judaism simply says be a righteous person and everyone
can have a place with God. That's what Judaism teaches.
(01:04:39):
Yeah. And on that note, I do have to
bring it to an end and we can get a little more into this a
little further. We covered a lot.
This is, this is a good, a good talk.
I got to do the call of my kids now.
So I can't really continue this right now, but we covered some
good points and we're at a good spot.
Anything you want to say last last words real quick?
(01:05:03):
I just, I I just want to say express my appreciation for you,
Jeremiah, because of the work you're trying to do.
I think it's coming from a good heart and a good place, a place
of inquiry, genuine desire to try to connect dots and help
people understand. I don't think you have an axe to
grind. I don't have a sense that you're
trying to to get at a certain group of people or try to try to
(01:05:25):
get revenge And anybody you you truly have a good heart in this
and that's why I'm willing to participate in this with you.
And I think, I hope that I hope that you're your work continues
to find success and and and keepbeing a great dad to your kids.
I love, I love your posts. All right, great.
Well, I appreciate you and it was good, insightful.
And yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap on that and we'll, we'll
(01:05:48):
come back on some of this. We're getting into some good
stuff, but this went wrong and you know, we'll bring it up.
If you have to, yeah. So anyways, I appreciate you and
you know, for everybody following, make sure you like
and subscribe. You know TuneIn and Jesus the
Jew within judaism.com, the Facebook group and YouTube.
(01:06:09):
And stay in touch for further episodes.
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