Origins of Our Faith the Hebrew Roots of Christianity: Third Edition

Origins

of Our Faith

The Hebrew Roots of Christianity

Second Edition

Rick Richardson

© Copyright 2003 Rick Richardson. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Richardson, Rick, 1955-

Origins of our faith : the Hebrew roots of Christianity / Rick Richardson.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-4120-0824-7

ISBN 978-1-4122-1487-2 (eBook)

I. Title.

BR129.R52 2004            270.1            C2003-903900-5

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Susan Richardson for her love and support in everything I do; to Shomeir ben Magen for his help and contributions to this book; to Sue Abramson for proofreading; to Rabbi Daniel Lapin for being my friend and mentor; and to Rabbi Avraham Feld and many in the Jerusalem Orthodox community for their patience, gentleness and kindness.

Cover photo by Gary Richardson

For more information visit:

http://www.originsofourfaith.com

Contents

Chapter 1

The Phenomenon

Chapter 2

What Would Jesus Do?

Chapter 3

What is Law?

Chapter 4

Who is a Jew?

Chapter 5

Who is a Gentile?

Chapter 6

From Synagogue to Church

Chapter 7

Why Keep the Holy Days

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

What is the Point of Salvation?

Chapter 10

Why Christianity?

Bibliography

Chapter 1

The Phenomenon

Something is happening. It is happening within every denomination of Christianity. It is not the work of any organization or charismatic leader. On a very grass roots level people are meeting in home fellowships and church Bible studies to study the Hebraic origins of their faith. Many others are reading their Bibles on their own, believing that they are all alone in their discoveries.

Although this development in Christianity seems to be quite expansive, it is also a quiet movement, much of the time going undetected. Yet, within the Orthodox Jewish community, many have noticed the movement and call it simply the phenomenon.

David Klinghoffer in the Toward Tradition pamphlet, Enemies or Allies? writes:

As the Evangelical magazine Christianity Today has noted, The real story in the last 20 years is the founding of scores of small, grassroots, pro-Israel organizations that rarely get into the headlines. They exist to educate and mobilize their local Evangelical community to support Israel."

Many groups go beyond supporting Israel, and actively want to learn from Judaism the meaning of their own faith. Organizations have been multiplying that seek to inspire Christians to return to their Judaic roots; these groups include the Restoration Foundation in Atlanta, advocating the restoration of all believers to their rightful heritage in the Judaism of the 1st-century church; Hebrew Ministries in Houston, which proposes that Christians observe the Sabbath on Saturday as Jews do; and First Fruits of

Zion Ministries in Jerusalem, but with an American following, which likewise advocates Saturday Sabbath-observance as well as observance of the laws of kosher food preparation.

Here in Western Washington State, Christians gather each year at Ocean Shores, a resort city on the Pacific Coast, to observe the festival of Sukkot, complete with dwelling in temporary booths or sukkot and waving palm branches and citrus fruits as per Jewish tradition. Jews who hear of such goings-on may at first suspect an attempt to lure religiously uneducated Jews to embrace a version of Christianity concealed behind Jewish decorations-a shamefully dishonest tactic pioneered by Jews for Jesus. But the folks at Ocean Shores don’t mean to convert any Jews; there are no Jews in Ocean Shores. (As Toward Tradition’s Rabbi Daniel Lapin has quipped, I’m less concerned about Christians who perform mitzvot [commandments] like wearing a prayer shawl and praying to God than I am about Jews who don’t.)

We are aware of no comprehensive study of this phenomenon, but the anecdotal evidence is striking.

What is this phenomenon all about, and where is it heading?

Upon arriving home from my first visit to Israel in March of

2001, I posted the following on my website:

The Phenomenon

Something is happening. In every denomination within the Christian Church there is a drawing-a tug back to the origins of our faith. We who are being drawn are seeking something, but we are not always sure what that something is. We are part of a phenomenon, trying

to the best of our abilities to follow that tug that we believe is God Himself drawing us back to our beginnings.

From my perspective, it is not necessarily essential to know why the phenomenon is happening, only to see that it is. It is somewhat like the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Many people feel like the character played by Richard Dreyfus. They are pulled toward Jerusalem. They are compelled to reevaluate, and begin to observe in a more complete way, the Sabbath and the Biblical Holy Days. Prayer and gratitude and an eagerness to learn are becoming more prominent in their lives. They find a kinship with complete strangers who are also being pulled the same direction, to the same end.

There is no organization that will control or contain it. It is not our doing-it is God’s. That, however, does not mean that there will not be organizational attempts to take control and even take credit for the movement now a-foot. This, in itself, is the biggest obstacle that we are facing: to allow ADONAI to do His work, and for those of us who are leaders to be gentle guides; to not evaluate our own significance as of any importance; to not read ourselves into prophecy; to not focus upon our own accomplishments, as if they were the important factor.

When you get right down to it, none of us have the market on being able to even fully comprehend what He is doing. Every time I believe I understand the breadth of what He is doing, I soon realize I was only seeing the edges of a small corner.

What then are we to do? Should we sit back and ignore it, avoiding taking any active role? No, but neither

should we force it into our individual areas of comfort and familiarity. We should be aware of, and watchful for, those people eager for followings: for the person who believes that God has given His truth to them alone.

As phenomenees and observers of this phenomenon unfolding, let us not be focused in narrow areas and subjects that will divide us. Rather let us focus on what unites us: the topics, issues, and values that we can clearly see we are all moving toward; asking each other for patience and understanding; being able to teach and be taught; not forcing or convincing, but gently guiding, directing, and educating in the service of one another.

Messianic Jews?

In order to understand where this phenomenon is heading, we need to look into the origins of our faith. Christianity began as a messianic sect of Judaism. This is not to say that other religious Jews are not messianic, because clearly they are. One of the 13 articles of Jewish faith drafted by the thirteenth century Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, states:

I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and, though he tarry, I will wait daily for his coming.

However, there are a couple of factors that make Christianity different from other messianic sects of Judaism that have risen throughout the years. First of all, the size of Christianity is much more than that of other sects. Secondly, it grew and changed into something quite different from what it started out as, and did so very early in its development. It became a different religion. This causes us to ask the critical questions: Why and how did this happen?

This new religion believes in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and yet has adopted many pagan beliefs and customs. Its new writings used the Tanakh (Old Testament) as its authoritative text by which it proved its positions. Then its leaders said that the authoritative text was not authoritative after all and they, in fact, were doing away with many of the principles found in the Tanakh: a contradiction that many Christians have no problem accepting. How did a group of just over one hundred followers grow into the most influential religion in all of history? Obviously, Christianity is part of God’s plan, but how exactly does it fit in?

The Paradigm Shift

Sometimes the key to understanding requires no more than viewing our beliefs from a vantage point we may never have considered.

The reason for this is that our doctrinal outlook is derived through a particular perspective that is based upon certain assumptions. These assumptions are held as undeniable truths, locking us into a paradigm that is very difficult to alter. And, in fact, we will discover proofs that seem to support our paradigm, because we do not accept as valid any other perspective. The condition then that we find ourselves in is known as cognitive dissonance. Regardless of what may be true, we believe those things that are comfortable for us to accept, and do not believe those things that are uncomfortable.

This book is an attempt to explain the phenomenon that is now happening in Christianity through undergoing a paradigm shift and discovering the origins of our faith. Those origins take us back to a young Orthodox Jewish rabbi who taught for just over three years and died at the age of thirty-three.

To find out more about this young rabbi, Rabbi Yeshua Ben-Yoseph, we must look at his life and teachings in context of the culture, time, and belief system in which they took place. This discovery begins by asking a common phrase heard in modern Christianity, What would Jesus do?

Chapter 2

What Would Jesus Do?

The Name Jesus

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, many people have come to view the New Testament writings in a different way. Some scholars, like the late Dr. Robert Lindsey, believe that (other than Paul’s writings) most all of the books of the New Testament were originally written in Hebrew.

But wasn’t Greek the language used by Jesus and his followers? Can we know for sure what language Jesus spoke? Let’s look at Acts 26 when Paul was on the road to Damascus.

Acts 26:14

¹⁴   And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking to me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the pricks.

¹⁵   And I said, Who are you, lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you persecute.

Notice whose voice this was and what language it was being spoken in. Most of the evidence we have today indicates that Jesus was a Hebrew speaking, Torah observant Jew, who conducted his life in a very Jewish way. Over the years, both his words and deeds have been presented in a very Greek way. Even the name Jesus is part of an inaccurate presentation. The Hebrew name Yeshua (meaning salvation), transliterated into Greek is Iesous, transliterated then into English is Jesus.

During his lifetime he would have gone by the name Yeshua.

The Christian Perspective

One of the problems that we run into, when studying the customs of Yeshua (Jesus), is that we don’t always end up with the picture we would expect to find. In the Forward to Dr. Brad Young’s book Jesus, the Jewish Theologian, Marvin Wilson writes:

Among many Christians, Jesus as a historic figure remains largely removed from Judaism and the first-century Jewish culture.

This point was ever so starkly brought to my attention several years ago through a piece of Sunday school literature, which came across my desk. It was written for grade school children and produced by a leading denominational publishing house. The part which caught my eye was a full-page drawing of Jesus. He was depicted as a boy and shown going up steps leading into a building. Underneath the drawing was this caption: Jesus was a good Christian boy who went to church every Sunday.

There is a major problem in trying to educate children about being a good Christian. The historical facts do not support our world-view of what Christianity is all about. Therefore, in order to continue supporting a perspective that has gone a little astray, it becomes necessary to alter history by changing a few items and just plain not telling the truth about others.

After all … if you were to have printed the caption Jesus was a good Jewish boy who went to Synagogue every Saturday, it certainly would not really fit in our 21st century view of Christianity.

What Would Jesus Do?

Have you