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GUEST AUTHOR


GUEST AUTHOR


Yeshua and His Jewish Religion


BY DR. RAYMOND GANNON


he prime mission and intention of God in His work with creation has been to perfectly manifest His glory, to demonstrate His absolutely holy charac- ter, and to fully reveal His loving nature. The Hebrew Scriptures made clear that


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God’s zeal for Self-Revelation to mankind would ultimately include His own coming to be born of a virgin so as to be Immanuel “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14). The Son given would be the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). And in the fullness of time, Yeshua was born in Bethlehem as prophesied (Micah 5:2). God had revealed so much of Himself,


His character, His divine principles, values, and laws first in nature itself and second in the Hebrew Bible. But the day would come when God would very graphically manifest and perfectly reveal His own Person by speaking to mankind in the most compre- hensive way, e.g., in the Person of His Son, whom we recognize to be our own Yeshua (Jesus) (Hebrews 1:1-3).


Yeshua’s Jewish Theater for Divine Revelation Our Messiah, Master, and Mentor, Yesh- ua did come over two thousand years ago. Although we realize Yeshua came to display the glory of God, all that we see and know of the life of Yeshua is thoroughly Jewish. All that He conveys to us is through the prism of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish religion and culture. From His circumcision (brit-milah) at eight days old, to his “redemption of the first- born” (pidyon ha-ben) experience in the Tem- ple, to His customarily attending synagogue services, to His eating the Passover the night he was betrayed, everything depicts a thor- oughly religiously committed Jewish Yeshua.


12 | Jewish Voice Today JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 Joseph, the righteous, His presumed


father, would only take his new family to reside in Nazareth if they enjoyed the ser- vices of the Beth HaMidrash (“House of Study” or “Bible school”). All communities that did not maintain a Beth HaMidrash were to be under rabbinical ban. As a Jewish child, Yeshua would learn the Hebrew Bible as well as Jewish history and culture during His student days in Hebrew school. His knowledge of Torah was so complete and intelligently grasped that He stunned the doctors of the Law in the Temple courts on Passover while only in his twelfth year. We find Yeshua celebrating not only


Passover, but also all of the major feasts and festivals of Israel including Chanukah (“Feast of Dedication”) in John 10:22. The Scrip- tures portray Yeshua as participating regu- larly in Shabbat services in local synagogues, particularly in Nazareth and Capernaum. He often read from the Hebrew scrolls and offered Shabbat homilies. The Jewish masses followed Him every- where and highly valued His innovative teaching offered in classic rabbinical style. The New Testament points out that the Jewish community “heard Him gladly” as he offered them the prophetic testimony and word from heaven. His adoring Jewish audiences declared that never had a man spoken as He spoke. His teachings were Torah-consistent, enhanced genuine, spiritual worship of the One and Only God, and were healthy for the perpetuation of Jewish communal life. Later on, following Yeshua’s own impec- cable Jewish religious commitments, the Messianic community born on Shavuot (the “Day of Pentecost”) from among the myri- ads of Jewish masses collected in Jerusalem for that pilgrim festival, was likewise authen- tically Jewish to the core. The Yeshua follow-


ers were recognized as Torah lovers, Temple worshipers, Shabbat-keepers, participants in Jewish social life, and fully committed as Jews to the glory of God. There were no social questions regarding the legitimacy of their Jewish religious experience or the per- petuation of their Jewish identities to new generations.


All that they had seen and


observed first in Yeshua and secondarily in the apostles was unquestionably Jewish and fully “kosher,” or sanctified.


Yeshua in His Religious Historical Context


The Jewish Messiah Yeshua was born


into a world of (1) growing cultural confu- sion, (2) political intrigue, and (3) religious competition:


Growing Political Confusion The imposing intellectual and cultural forces of Hellenism were profoundly fasci- nating and managed to captivate tens of thousands of Jewish People, even in Eretz Israel, then home to half of the world’s four million Jews. Greek language, philosophy, and worldview were penetrating Jewish thought through literature, cultural osmosis, international language, intellectual exchange, and deliberate cultural borrowing. The world that Alexander the Great had


conquered in the fourth century B.C.E. had been divided upon his death into four major regions by his generals. Two of those regional powers, the Syrian Seleucids and the Egyptian Ptolemies, claimed rights to govern the territo- ries of Eretz Israel. This often led to military skir- mishes, such as we find in the Seleucid debacle of the early second century B.C.E. that ultimate- ly produced the Maccabean revolt of 167 B.C.E. and the nationalistic Jewish holiday of the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22), or Chanukah.


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