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My whole life I heard in Church that "Yeshua was rejected by Israel". Possibly you have heard the same thing yourself. If you are like me I am sure this is not news to you by any stretch of the imagination. As I grew in my studies and developed the ability to think for myself it always struck me strange that Yeshua was "rejected" by the very ones who desired the Messiah come. And be not mistaken the majority of Israel at that time pinned their hopes upon Yeshua that he would be the long-awaited Messiah. When I would read about his triumphant entry into Jerusalem at Passover on a donkey I was always amazed that literally pilgrims, numbering in the millions at Festival times, would cry out to him "save us", which was a demonstration of their faith in him and their expectations in him that he would lead them to freedom from the Roman yoke and oppression. What always struck me was that a mere 4 days later the New Testament paints a picture of his total rejection by the people of Israel and I am expected to believe that the whole nation turned on him and rejected him. That is beyond belief if you think about it for a moment.
Answer for yourself: Why would such a thing happen?
It would seen to any thinking believer that their expectations would be even higher as the Passover approached and not the opposite. Elijah was to appear before the Passover and announce the imminent appearance of the Kingdom of God as well as her king. Everything was ready and the people were in a Messianic fever the likes of such have not been seen since.
It is to this subject that I wish to deal with in this series of articles. Let me say the teachings in this article are profound, even if I say so myself. I strongly encourage all "thinking believers" to read the following with both their minds and their hearts. Upon completion of these articles you should be better equipped to deal with the subject at hand and come to a more accurate conclusion about the matter than at present.
Let me reassure that there is a big difference between the Yeshua of first century Judaism and the Yeshua you have heard about today in the Christian Church. My answer to the above question might sound confusing to some but bear with me. Without a doubt, Israel did not reject the Yeshua of the first century, but also, without a doubt the Israel of today rejects the Yeshua they have been presented by the contemporary Gentile Christian Church. So at one time Israel in whole did not reject Yeshua but came to reject Yeshua afterwards; especially after he was refashioned by the Gentile Christian Church of the earliest centuries into a Gentile Messiah.
Said another way, Israel rejected and yet rejects:
Answer for yourself: How could it have been otherwise?
Israel was the "light to the world". Israel is still the "light to the world". God had entrusted to them, and not the Gentiles, with the revelation of salvation and Messianic deliverance.
Eph 2:12
12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
This will be hard for a Christian to swallow, but as a Messianic movement Christianity failed, as have all such movements in Jewish history and in the history of other peoples. The new order of things, the Kingdom of God, which was expected hourly, did not materialize with Yeshua or after Yeshua. It has not materialized in the two thousand years which have elapsed since that time. The appearance of Yeshua did not mark the end of history, and the mission and teachings of the Christian Church today are not greatly influenced by considerations of his Second Coming. If it were, then we would not have had an inquisition or the mass extermination of 18 million believers by the Catholic Church during the Dark Ages. We would not have had to witness in this century the extermination of 6 million Jews by a Christian nation. So I stand by my statement. The postponed Parousia (coming of Messiah) has long since lost its theological importance for considerable sections of Christendom, even as the coming of the Messiah has for considerable sections of Jewry.
The Jews did not reject the "God" concepts of Yeshua. Yeshua's ideas and beliefs about God was Jewish in essence and Yeshua derived it from the Torah. Yeshua was a strict monotheist and never would have accepted let alone teach ideas espoused by Christian believers today; such ideas as the Trinity for example. "The New Testament adds nothing to the content of the idea of God which is not already present in the literature and faith of Israel. It is often argued that Yeshua held a unique conception of God, by which is usually meant the fatherhood of God. However, if you are familiar with the Jewish Scriptures, the divine characteristics which the term 'fatherhood' denotes are fully evident in the Old Testament."
The Jews did not reject the "ethical teachings" of Yeshua. The ethics of Yeshua, too, were standard Jewish ethics except as regards nonresistance, nonconcern with the material needs of life, and the love of one's enemies—extreme doctrines not part of normative Jewish thought. These ideas were undoubtedly entertained by some apocalyptic groups in Jewry, but were certainly not of a nature to take one out of Judaism. In other words a person could possess such ideas and yet still be considered a good Jew. Yeshua's moral code, with the exceptions noted, was the code of Pharisaic Judaism in his day. It is time to face the facts. Yeshua held a mixture of Pharisee-Essene beliefs and was in good standing with the School of Phariseeism called The House Of Hillel. The morality which the Church taught the heathen world—again with the exceptions noted—and which appealed so strongly to it, was Jewish morality, the healthy minded, clean, and regenerative morality of Israel.
Answer for yourself: Did Yeshua's teachings ever differ from that of his contemporaries? Sometimes…let us see.
"In what way did the teaching of Yeshua differ from that of his contemporaries?" query the editors of The Beginnings of Christianity, and they reply:
Not by teaching anything about God essentially new to Jewish ears The God of Yeshua is the God of the Jews, about whom he says nothing that cannot be paralleled in Jewish literature. Nor was it in his doctrine as to the Kingdom of Heaven that Yeshua differed markedly from the Jewish teachers.... The differences which are important concern three subjects of vital and controversial interest,
On the first point Yeshua conflicted with the tendency to rebellion which ultimately crystallized into the patriotic parties of the Jewish war in BE. 66; with the second and third he conflicted with the Scribes.
The pacifism of Yeshua was not directed specifically to the Zealots, the Sicarii, those who sought to rebel against Rome. It was a thoroughgoing doctrine of nonresistance applicable to all of life's situations and directed to all men. On this score Yeshua did differ from the prevalent prophetic-Pharisaic teachings of Judaism, although his views were surely not unknown in certain mystically-minded groups in Israel: "And if anyone seeketh to do evil unto you, do well unto him, and pray for him and ye shall be redeemed of the Lord from all evil." It was not a doctrine which was calculated to arouse any widespread active hostility in his day. It was not until the war with Rome began a generation later that the advocacy of pacifism became contentious and dangerous.
As regards the fate of the "People of the Land"—the "Ame Ha-arez" the authors of The Beginnings of Christianity maintain that Yeshua offered the opportunity of entering the Kingdom of God to publicans and sinners through a repentance which "could be obtained by attention to principles rather than by . . . an extreme and meticulous attention to the details of the Law, such as rendered repentance impossible to ordinary badly educated men." In other words lack of understanding and knowledge of the Law did not preclude one's entrance into the Kingdom of God.
There appears to be some confusion here between the repentance of publicans and sinners and the relation of the 'Ame Ha-arez' to matters of ritual purity and the tithes. The publicans and sinners were not necessarily the "People of the Land."
The publican was considered a moral outcast not because he did not observe meticulously all the details of the Law. He was, as a rule, an unscrupulous and pitiless taxgatherer, serving a hated and usurping government, who shamefully fleeced the people of their last extractable moneys. His repentance would be indicated only by a radical change in the conduct of his calling. This is the advice which John gave to the publicans who came to him to be baptized: "They said to him, Master, what shall we do? And he said to them: Extract no more than that which is appointed you" (Luke 3:1-13). This is the advice which any Rabbi of that day would have given them. It had nothing to do with scrupulosity in the matter of the observance of the laws of the Torah. If a man sinned he could readily repent and be forgiven. Restitution, wherever possible, and sincere contrition were all that was required. A man did not have to be a scholar, a saint, or a pietist to have his repentance accepted.
Yeshua befriended publicans and sinners, and dined with them in the hope of leading them on to repentance. This is the act of a loving moral guide and teacher. He taught men, as he did in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:1-14), the superiority of sincere repentance over self-righteousness. This too, is profoundly spiritual. It could hardly be maintained, however, that such attitudes and instructions were unknown and unshared by others, Rabbis and teachers, in his day. They could not have been subjects of controversy in the days of Hillel, a contemporary of Yeshua and a leader of the Pharisees, who taught: "Be a disciple of Aaron, loving peace, and pursuing peace, loving all thy fellow-creatures, and drawing them nearer to the Torah."
There is no mention in the New Testament of the technical term "People of the Land." The term "publicans and sinners" is not a synonym for it. There was no animosity between the "People of the Land" and the Pharisaic teachers in the days of Yeshua.
The 'Ame Ha-arez' is very often placed in the Mishnah and the Tosefta in juxtaposition to the Haber ("Associate" or "Fellow"). Both are technical terms. The .Haberim were the more exacting Jews, who formed themselves into associations or Haburot for the sole purpose of being in a position to observe more strictly and with greater security the laws of ritual cleanness and of tithing. All those who did not join the Haburot, whether priest or layman, were to that extent known as 'Ame Ha-arez'. In the eyes of the Haber every Jew who did not obey the laws of Levitical purity and proper tithing in their highly developed form was an 'Am Ha-arez'. Such a man need not at all be a sinner or an ignorant man, or of a disposition inimical to the Sage or the Scribe. An 'Ame Ha-arez' could be a teacher of the Law to the children of a Haber. The marriage of the son of a Haber to the daughter of-an 'Am Ha-arez', or vice versa, is considered a matter of common occurrence. The Tosefta relates that Rabban Gamaliel the Elder married his daughter to Simon b. Nathaniel—a priest and an 'Ame Ha-arez. A Haber and an 'Am Ha-arez' may belong to the same family. An 'Am Ha-arez' may at any time join a Haburah, and the doors were always open to welcome him..
The highly particularized laws of ritual cleanliness which entered so considerably into the daily life of the Haber interfered with close neighborly contacts with the 'Ame Ha-arez', but we have no reason to think that this led to animosity and bitterness—any more than we have reason to think, or any evidence to show, that the masses of the people resented the Pharisees, whose rigorous religious discipline they admired, even though they could not always follow their example. Josephus frequently emphasizes the fact that the Pharisees had great influence with the multitude, that they were able greatly to persuade the body of the people, and that the multitude sided with them against the Sadducees.
The 'Ame Ha-arez' included all the elements of the population who were not in Haburot. Just as the Carrot counted among their membership men from every walk of life, so did the 'Ame Ha-arez' include men from all classes of society, the scholar and the priest, the merchant and the farmer, the rich and the poor. If Yeshua defended the 'Ame Ha-arez', for which there is no evidence, he was certainly not defending the "common people" against any aristocracy either of wealth or of learning.
The bitter criticisms of the 'Ame Ha-arez' which one finds occasionally in Rabbinic sources all date from the second century onward. The authorship of the statement, attributed to Hillel: "An 'Ame Ha-arez' cannot be a .Hasid," is doubtful. In Abot De Rabbi Nathan 13 it is attributed to Akiba, and we think with greater likelihood. A demoralization spread in the religious life of the people consequent upon the wars with Rome, the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the priesthood, the Hadrianic persecutions and the closing of the schools and synagogues. Laxity in the observance of all laws set in. The Christian Church under Pauline inspiration was energetically pressing its attack on the Law generally. Pharisaic "legalism" became a controversial issue. The Rabbis therefore reached out for a stricter discipline and a greater stability in doctrine. Periods of great social decomposition create a desire among the faithful for a more rigorous discipline.
In the second century the center of the people's life was shifting from Judea to Galilee. The religious laxity of the Galileans and their general ignorance of the Law were proverbial. Their religious standards and their educational facilities were inferior to those set by the Rabbis. The term 'Am Ha-arez' now came to include not only those who did not live up to the strict observance of Levitical purity and tithes as the Haber understood it, but all those who disregarded moral and religious standards, who neither studied the Law nor taught it to their children, who would not cooperate in the heroic efforts of the Rabbis to save Judaism from total destruction.
All these conditions were non-existent in the days of Yeshua. It is doubtful, therefore, whether the fate of the "People of the Land" could have been a subject of vital and controversial interest to him or to his contemporaries.
On the matter of the right observance of the Law—the Sabbath law, for example, or the law of divorce—the attempts to draw a critical distinction between the teaching of Yeshua on these subjects and that of the Rabbis have not proved convincing. On the subject of divorce, the Rabbis themselves differed as to the correct meaning of the Biblical law which grants a man the right to divorce his wife if "he found some unseemly thing in her" (Dt. 24:1). Yeshua took the position also taken by Bet Shammai, that no man may divorce his wife, save on account of adultery. If Mark (10:1-12) represents the true position of Yeshua, he seems to have been opposed to divorce altogether. This is doubtful. Matthew 19:9 appears to reflect his true position. Certainly the clear meaning of the law in the Torah was to make possible the annulment of an unsatisfactory marriage, not to prohibit divorce altogether.
As regards Sabbath observance—"that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27)—this did not represent any break with the basic attitude of Pharisaic Judaism. In the second century of the Common Era, when Sabbath laws had been elaborated much further by the Rabbis and culminated in the thirty-nine chief categories of prohibited work, R. Jonathan b. Joseph (2 C.) employed the almost identical words of the Gospel: "The Sabbath is committed to your hands, not you to its hands." Both the Gospel and the Rabbis were probably quoting a popular folk saying long in vogue among the people.
It was an established principle that in the case of danger to human life, in war, in sickness or accident, all the laws of the Sabbath may be suspended. Even when the danger was not clear, the Sabbath law was to be suspended. Quick action in its suspension is praised, delay condemned. Yeshua's controversy with the Pharisees over the charge that his disciples plucked ears of corn unlawfully on the Sabbath day and ate them because they were hungry (Mark 2:23-28) could have involved no real difference of opinion as regards the law. Such action could quite properly be justified under the law on the ground that it was necessary to preserve life. This is true also of the other Gospel references to the Sabbath. They are rather the reflections of the antinomist (anti-Law) controversy, developed in later times by other men, which sought to establish that "the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day" (Matt. 12:8), that he could abolish the Biblical law of the Sabbath altogether, as well as all other laws, and that "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law" (Gal. 3:13). So be advised when you read from Christian commentators that Yeshua broke the Law, or changed the Law, such ideas reflect their anti-Law biases and is not trustworthy to the Judaism practiced by Yeshua.
Answer for yourself: How would I know such things?
Well, simply said, you would never know such if you have not spent time learning of Judaism, for after all, Yeshua is a Jew and practiced Judaism his whole life. In order for you to understand your Christianity correctly it requires a basic understanding of Biblical Judaism. Without such you are often misled when reading Christian commentators because their anti-Laws biases are read into accounts in the life of Yeshua which both deceive you and rob you of truth.
Some Jewish rigorists sought to make the Sabbath a day of total inactivity, even to the point of refusing to engage in self-defense on it. But long before the days of Yeshua, during the Maccabean revolt, this strict view of Sabbath observance, which was probably held by the Hasidim, had been relaxed. It was relaxed in other regards by the Sages and Rabbis of later generations in order to make it a joyous day as well as a holy day. Numerous legal fictions and simple expediencies like the 'Erub' (enlarging the private domain within which certain activities on the Sabbath, otherwise prohibited, could be carried on) were evolved to liberalize the inflexible Biblical injunctions not to go out of one's place on the Sabbath (Ex. 16: 29), not to kindle any fire in one's dwelling place (Ex. 35:3), and not to do any manner of work (Ex. 20:10). Here the motive was not "to bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders" (Matt. 23:4), but to lift what in the course of time had turned out to be heavy burdens.
This, too, was the case with the dissolution of vows. Scripture makes no provision for it. Vows, often made thoughtlessly or under great stress, turned out at times to be chains too heavy for men to bear. The Rabbis accordingly declared that under certain conditions a Sage or three private persons could declare a vow invalid and absolve the taker of the vow from its consequences. The teachers of the Mishnah knew that "the rules about release from vows hover in the air and have naught [in Scripture] to support them"; nevertheless they prescribed these rules to make it easier for men. Similarly the Rabbis declared: "There never has been a 'stubborn and rebellious son,' and there never will be and there never was a condemned city and never will be." So they surrounded these inoperative Biblical laws which prescribed the death penalty for the rebellious son (Dt. 2l:18-21) and for the city beguiled into idolatry (Dt. 13:13-18) with so many restrictions that to all intents and purposes they abrogated them. Other Biblical laws such as the ordeal by means of the Bitter Waters for the woman suspected of adultery (Num. 5:11) and the rite of the breaking of the heifer's neck in the case of the slain found in the field (Dt. 2l:1ff) were likewise abrogated.
Let us return to the Sabbath. The Jewish people throughout the ages loved the Sabbath and welcomed it as a queen and bride. It was not a day of gloom and austerity. "The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: I have a precious gift in my treasure-house, called the Sabbath, and I desire to give it to Israel." "They who keep the Sabbath and hail it with delight will rejoice in Thy Kingdom. The people who sanctify the seventh day will be filled and delighted with Thy goodness. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day and didst sanctify it. Thou didst call it the most delectable of days, a remembrance of creation itself."
It is of interest to note that the Sabbath had a strong attraction for many non-Jews in the pagan world, and it retained its hold for centuries upon Judeo-Christians. The Church had to fight against the translation of the Jewish Sabbath into the Christian Sunday for nearly the whole of the first millennium of its existence.
The above considerations lead one to the conclusion that there were no such decisive differences on the subject of law between Yeshua and his contemporaries as to make inevitable a complete break between Yeshua and his faith; Biblical Judaism. The break was due to other causes and was made inevitable by other hands.
Certainly the Jews did not reject Yeshua because of his alleged total abandonment of the Torah, for Yeshua never abandoned the Law in whole or in part. On the contrary, he made it abundantly clear that he came not to abolish the Law and the prophets but to fulfill them. "Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5: 17-19). Yeshua did not oppose even those laws which the Scribes and Pharisees developed out of the Torah and which the Sadducees, for example, opposed (the Oral Law). He denounced these teachers because he believed that they were not practicing what they preached—and what true prophet and teacher in Israel ever failed to denounce pretense and hypocrisy? "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice" (Matt. 23:2-3). He denounced them for giving tithes of mint and dill and cinnamon but ignoring "the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others" (Matt. 23:23). Centuries before, Amos and Isaiah had uttered the selfsame diatribe. Yeshua's attack was certainly no new note to Jews who in their synagogues on Sabbaths and holidays listened to the readings from the prophets. They knew that Isaiah had said: "Bring no more vain offerings I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly" (Is.1:13), and that Hosea had proclaimed, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6).
Yeshua taught the Law "as one who had authority" (Mark 1:22), that is, not as the Rabbis taught it; not, for example, as Hillel taught it, in accordance with a generally accepted technique of Halakhah employed in the Schools, but as a prophet would have taught it, on direct authority received from God. All the apocalyptists spoke in the name of revelation. Yeshua saw his role as that of a prophet announcing the approach of the Millennium. He accordingly did not feel himself restricted to the Pharisaic technique of interpreting the Torah. It was generally accepted that with the coming of Messianic times prophecy would return to Israel. In fact, the return of prophecy would be one of the signs heralding the coming of the Messiah. A prophet was assured privileges under the Law which were not possessed by any other religious teacher. No prophet, of course, could advocate the abrogation of any fundamental Biblical law, such as the prohibition of idolatry, without branding himself a false prophet, deserving of death. But a prophet had considerable leeway in other matters. A prophet whose credibility was well established could, for example, order the temporary suspension of any law of the Torah (short of idolatry) in order to meet an emergency, and the people were obligated to obey him.
Yeshua evidently sought to exercise this prophetic privilege, but only in his exposition of the Law, for he announced no new laws nor did he attempt to abrogate any existing law, and he never questioned the authority of the Torah as such. When he told his disciples, "Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him?" (Mark 7:18), he was directing himself specifically to the criticism made by the Pharisees against some of his disciples who ate with hands unwashed, thus violating "a tradition of the elders" (Mark 7:2-3). The law of the washing of the hands was not a Biblical law and was not in common practice among the people at this time. The inference drawn in Mark that "thus he declared all foods clean" (7:19) is clearly unwarranted and is not mentioned in Matthew 15 where the episode is also recorded. It is out of keeping with Yeshua's consistent and positive attitude toward the Law. Mark here reflects the later Pauline influence. This seems to be the case also with the claim, attributed to Yeshua, to forgive sins (Mark 2:5-12; Matt. 9:2-8). This has no basis in Jewish law. The core of Pauline Christianity was Yeshua's role in the forgiveness of sin—by his death and during his life. This authority came with the possession of the Holy Spirit. According to John, Yeshua bestowed the authority to forgive sins also upon the apostles, after he had breathed the Holy Spirit on them (John 20:23). Yeshua's assumption of the role of prophet certainly did not please the Rabbis, but it was not on that score that the Jewish people rejected him.
The Jews would certainly not reject Yeshua on the strength of his conception of the role of Israel in history. "Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22), he told the woman of Samaria. The charge which he gave to his disciples was specifically limited to Jews: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And preach as you go, saying: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"' (Matt. I0:5-7). His mission was exclusively to the Jews. This was a deviation from the prophetic tradition. The prophets of Israel never restricted their prophecies to the Jewish people. "I appoint you a prophet to the nations," was the word of the Lord to Jeremiah. "See, I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms" (Jer. 1:10). The text of Matt. 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," is clearly of a later time and was added because of the Trinitarian influence later seen in the Gentile Church.
Yeshua would not heal the daughter of the Canaanite woman who pleaded with him. He would not answer her. He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs"—a sentiment which cannot be paralleled for severity in the whole literature of Judaism. It was only after the distraught mother pleaded, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table," that Yeshua recanted: "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire" (Matt. 15: 21-28).
Answer for yourself: Why is Yeshua rejected by the Jewish people today?
Answer for yourself: What is it about "the Yeshua" that the Christian Church teaches about and preaches about that is so offensive to the Jewish people that they will not accept him today?
It is to these issues we turn in the second part of this article. Shalom.
