The Way

Rick Richardson

Description

An Orthodox Jew Examines the Jesus Movement of the First Century
This book focuses on the events of the first century, and how the “Jesus movement” impacted the course of history. It is an untold story of heroism, tragedy, deceit, compassion and prejudice, and an attempt to erase history, creating the greatest cover-up the world has ever known. Whether you are a Jew or a Christian, most everything you believe about Jesus and his movement is incorrect. He was NOT who you think he was.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Jesús de Nazaret
• Hebrew Roots
• Jesus
• 1st century
• History
• Jésus de Nazareth

Informations

• Publié par: Trafford Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781698700342
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE WAY
The Small Movement that Shook the World
RICK RICHARDSON

 
© Copyright 2020 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.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6987-0033-5 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-6987-0035-9 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-6987-0034-2 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905290
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
Cover Art: Painting by 19th century artist Nikola Ge (1831-1894) “ The Judgement of the Sanhedrin: He is Guilty ” on display at Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia (in the public domain)
Author Photo by Jessica Strand
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Trafford rev. 10/07/2021
www.trafford.com North America & international toll-free: 844-688-6899 (USA & Canada) fax: [phone]
THE WAY
The Small Movement that Shook the World
Chapter One Two Different Worlds
Chapter Two History and Politics
Chapter Three Waiting for Messiah
Chapter Four The Way
Chapter Five An Innocent Man
Chapter Six Life After Death
Chapter Seven The Mystery of the Birkat haMinim
Chapter Eight Gentiles on Their Own
Chapter Nine The Divide
Chapter Ten The Way Back
Appendix

Dedicated to Susan Richardson, Crystal Stivers and Shomier ben Magen for our journey together.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to my wife Susan, Rick Eskenazi, Patrick Quain, Lori Madsen, Larry Azose, Rabbi Avraham Maimon, and especially Albert S. Maimon for their review and suggestions.
ONE
TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS
Building a Bridge
This book focuses on the events of the first century, and how the “Jesus movement” impacted the course of history. The events of this time have had a tremendous effect on the world, and yet they are viewed from a very different (and sometimes opposite) perspective by those who were impacted by them. How can that be, and why does it appear there is no way to bridge the gap between Judaism and Christianity? In this book I hope to build that bridge between our irreconcilable differences, or at least come to a better understanding as to what and why those differences are.
Two Distinctly Different Texts
There are certainly a number of challenges to work through. To begin with, even though the Talmud and the New Testament may focus on the same period of time, they appear to come from two different universes. From a surface reading, they seem to have very little information in common. Much of the difference stems from the fact that they are culturally different texts.
The New Testament is primarily a Greek text. It is straight forward with its accounting of events and timelines, and it follows a storyline that focuses on the story and meaning of the text, and not the text itself. Order and time sequence are important in a Greek perspective. That is why, even though Christians have the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach ( Old Testament ), as part of their own Bible, they have rearranged the order of the books. The books are all exactly the same; although the arrangement is different so a chronological order can be established.
There is not a sacred text in Christianity; instead there are sacred doctrines and sacred beliefs. The letters and the words of the text itself, however, can be changed if it “clarifies” the meaning. In a typical church, there are no study groups reading the text in its original Greek, discussing why this letter or that word, is used, or why this subject is followed in the text by that subject, or how the root of this Greek word has the same (or completely different) meaning from a similar root of a word in the same verse. Because the text (the words and letters) have changed over the course of time to “clarify” the meaning, the New Testament contains a considerable amount of added text.
The Tanach is a Hebrew text, and the text itself is important, more so than even the meaning. In nearly every synagogue each week, there are a number of study groups reading their texts in the original Hebrew. They discuss why this word is used, rather than that word, or why a phrase seems to be out of sequence, or what message is found hidden within the text.
So, a Greek (Christian) text is culturally very different from a Hebrew (Jewish) text, and the way someone studies the New Testament is, at many times, the opposite from the way that someone studies the Tanach. Similarly, the Talmud is culturally quite different in its presentation from the New Testament. Putting these two texts together to discover a more complete history is a challenge, to say the least.
Let us start with a quick summary of the Greek text, The New Testament. The New Testament starts with the Four Gospels, the story of Jesus’ life (primarily the last 3 years – from about 27CE to 30CE). Next is the Acts of the Apostles; an accounting of events over the next 36 years – till about 66CE. After that there is a collection of letters (mostly from Paul). The New Testament ends with the book of Revelation; an apocalyptic book filled with symbolism and end-time predictions.
So, what about the text itself? To begin with, we don’t exactly know what the original text was. Again, because preserving letters and words in the original language is not of primary concern, there are countless places where the text has been changed or added to. Out of the few thousand early manuscripts extant, there are no two that are identical. This is not to say, however, that they should be disregarded. On the contrary, they are extremely important and necessary in establishing a basic timeline. However, while exploring and evaluating the culture of the first century, some of the information (preserved by predominantly Gentiles) is often not totally understood in the proper context.
What about the Talmud? The Talmud is very different, in form and function, from the New Testament. The Talmud is designed to study. The first-time reader will often be left confused and disoriented, because the Talmud does NOT follow a timeline, so establishing the exact time that an event took place is not a simple thing to do.
Although the text may often seem like there is a group of rabbis, sitting around a table discussing a particular subject (while frequently going down totally unrelated rabbit trails that head off into obscure tangents); in reality, the Talmud is a masterfully written collection of comments from rabbis that are, at times, thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart. All the seemingly unrelated information is deliberately included to tell us something of importance.
Again, the Talmud is not meant to be an historic accounting of events. There are midrashic stories that relay messages rather than reality or facts. The Talmud consists of 63 tractates (with headings like tents , hands , corners and mixtures ) and is over 6,200 pages long. And although it was written a few hundred years after the first century, it contains vital information from that time and before.
Let me state again, the Talmud is NOT a story of events; rather it is a document of discovery, meant to study and uncover information. This is an extremely important point to understand. Even if it SEEMS that there are random (or even useless) pieces of information contained in the Talmud, that is not the case. There is a specific reason for that information to be placed there. Usually this information has a juxtaposition to the pertinent topic, however, sometimes it gives a general piece of information that can be used to understand other passages.
An example of this would be certain places where we read in the Talmud that a sage said the Shema or did other practices according to the view of the School of Shammai (whom we will introduce in our next chapter). We are then able to determine what OTHER beliefs the School of Shammai may have, based on practices of that sage in other passages.
BOTH texts will be very important in discovering a true and accurate history of the first century. We will still, however, need to take into account that reality is often greatly colored by those who tell the original stories, and as we will see, there are times very early in the development of the Christian faith where misunderstandings happened. The perspective of the authors and compilers of the early texts will drastically shape the opinions and attitudes of future generations, and it is often to a view of reality that is not entirely accurate. Why would that be?
Sometimes this perspective came out of ignorance (there was no intent to mislead); the compiler simply did not know something. Sometimes, however, there was a deliberate attempt to deceive or cover-up an unwanted reality.
Censorship
In addition, the Talmud has been censored at various times to remove any references about Jesus.
Whole paragraphs have been deleted; words have been expunged or substituted;