However, at that point my knowledge of God's word was somewhat less than intimate. I had heard sermons all my life and had memorized some verses for Sunday school, but that was basically it. Now I'm only about a month away from finishing my first full reading of the New Testament. (And then I can't wait to get started on the Old Testament!) I like topical messages in church as much as the next person, but it just doesn't replace actually reading the Bible all the way through in order. For me, reading it through makes it less about what I want to get out of a particular passage and more about what the author is really saying. When you're looking at it from this perspective, it becomes obvious that the more you know about the history and culture that the Bible deals with, the deeper your understanding of God's word will be.
In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey says,
"Alone of all people in history, [Jesus] had the privilege of choosing where and when to be born, and he chose a pious Jewish family living in a backwater protectorate of a pagan empire. I can no more understand Jesus apart from his Jewishness than I can understand Gandhi apart from his Indianness. I need to go back, way back, and picture Jesus as a first-century Jew with a phylactery on his wrist and Palestinian dust on his sandals."
In addition to the fact that understanding the Jewishness of Jesus will lead me to a better understanding of Jesus himself, my interest in this subject is also inspired by what the Bible says about Gentiles being "grafted in" with the people of Israel to receive God's promise to Abraham and his children.
Romans 11:17 (NLT)
"some of these branches from Abraham’s tree—-some of the people of Israel—-have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree."
I like how this site puts it:
"The words ‘Grafted In’ memorialize the affirmation of our true identity as a people, Jew and Gentile, securely rooted in the finished work of Yeshua HaMashiach. If you believe in Yeshua, you are Grafted In!"
I even got a new necklace because I'm looking forward to learning more about these things.
1 comment:
Regarding "grafted in":
I want to comment on that.
A logical analysis (found in www.netzarim.co.il (Netzarim.co.il is the website of the only legitimate Netzarim-group)) (including the logical implications of the research by Ben-Gurion Univ. Prof. of Linguistics Elisha Qimron of Dead Sea Scroll 4Q MMT) of all extant source documents of “the gospel of Matthew” and archeology proves that the historical Ribi Yehosuha ha-Mashiakh (the Messiah) from Nazareth and his talmidim (apprentice-students), called the Netzarim, taught and lived Torah all of their lives; and that Netzarim and Christianity were always antithetical.
The origins of the “Noakhide laws” are the Netzarim Jews. It was the beit din ha-Netzarim that decided about these. But those mitzwot wereonly a starting point not the end. The end point was non-selectively Torah-observance. Read more in the “Benei Noakh”-section in the “History Museum” in the above Netzarim-website.
Thos whom believed that Ribi Yehoshua was the Mashiakh, and whom wanted to be grafted in to Israel was in the first century required to first practise some of the basic mitzwot (outlined in the above section I referred to), then come before the beit din ha-Netzarim and obligate themselves to do their utmost to learn and to keep all of the mitzwot for geirim (see “Glossaries” in the website I referred to) non-selectively; and the beit din ha-Netzarim would grant the title geir toshav. This was and still is the Halakhah established by the beit-din ha-Netzarim.
Regards,
Anders Branderud
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