Interesting Article in "Time" Magazine

[HadassahSukkot]

The article is entitled "Ten Ideas that are changing the World", which can be read here (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,1720049,00.html).


Notice #10: Re-Judaizing Jesus (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721663,00.html)

Thoughts? :)

[Kris10leigh]

Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus. Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.
This is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian "Hebraics" consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God's new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that "if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong."
The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus' passionate dedication "to Jewish ideas of his day" on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.
What does this mean, practically? At times the resulting adjustment seems simple. For example, Bell thinks he knows the mysterious words Jesus wrote in the dust while defending the adulteress ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," etc.). By Bell's calculation, that showdown occurred at the same time as religious Jews' yearly reading of the prophet Jeremiah's warning that "those who turn from [God] will be written in the dust because they have forsaken [him]." Thus Jesus wrote the crowd's names to warn that their lack of compassion alienated their (and his) God.
A trickier revision for readers involves Paul's Letter to the Romans, forever a key Christian text on sin and Christ's salvific grace. Yet this reading necessitates skipping over what seems like extraneous material in Chapters 9 through 11, which are about the Jews. Increasingly, says Jason Byassee, an editor at the Christian Century,, scholars now read Romans through those chapters, as a musing by a lifelong Jew on how God can fulfill his biblical covenant with Israel even if it does not accept His son. Byassee the theologian agrees. But as a Methodist pastor, he frets that Romans "is no longer really about Gentile Christians. How do you preach it?"
That's not a frivolous query. Ideally, the reassessment should increase both Jewish-Christian amity and gospel clarity, things that won't happen if regular Christians feel that in rediscovering Jesus the Jew, they have lost Christ. Yet Bell finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, "you're in deep. You're hooked. 'Cause you can't ever read it the same way again."
:thumbsup: I don't understand the line I put in bold. To me, rediscovering Jesus the Jew brings lets us know who He IS, not what we want Him to be.

[Lulav]

I think what they are trying to say is some have built up such an image of who he is, they, when realizing that is far from what he is, may have lost him altogether, at least what they accepted and wanted him to be.

Remember that G-d made man in his own image, this is kinda the reverse, that man has made G-d, Jesus in his own understanding, or his own image of who they want him to be, not who he really is.

[Kris10leigh]

Lulav, I think you are right and it's no wonder. It is hard core out there in the Christian world.

I'm just thankful so many people are starting to understand that Yeshua was a Jew. :doh: It was one of those "duh" moments for me.

[Lulav]

I think his sheep are hearing his voice......

For he is our G-d and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today if ye will hear his voice....................Psl 95:7


But he that entereth in by the door is he shepherd of the sheep. to him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out...................... and when he putteth forth is own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice......... And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.........................John 10:2-5

16- And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and ONE SHEPHERD.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand...........10:28

Psalm 23 the favorite Psalm is good to read, I have recently bought a book on this to explain from a shepherds pov, of what the meaning behind it is. After Passover I will read it and share it, if you like.

:)

[visionary]

I think it is wonderful and about time. I also think it will be a wild and bumpy ride for the believer's faith, but as I have found it, worth it, in riches and in beauty, and peace in the soul. It puts the Word of God into a clearer focus than ever before and brings light to things brushed over in scripture.