COULD YESHUA BELIEVE AND ENDORSE WHAT IS TAUGHT IN CHRISTIANITY TODAY?

Let us begin with a little background as we set the stage for the current teaching. The adherents of the teaching propagated by the apostles and disciples of Yeshua began to be known by the early AD forties as "Christians" (Acts 11:26), not only within their own communities (I Peter 4:16), but also among outsiders (Acts 26:28). Part of Josephus' Testimonium makes an allusion to the 'tribe of the Christians' which at the time of writing the Jewish Antiquities in the nineties of the first century had 'still not disappeared' (Ant. xviii. 63). This attestation of Josephus represents the earliest reference to the title outside the New Testament. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, called the religion to which he belonged, and for which he gave his life in c. AD 107, Christianismos. From the second century onwards, the new faith spread and flourished further and further beyond the confines of Judaism, mostly, though not exclusively, among the slaves and the down-trodden of the Mediterranean world in the first instance. Persecuted repeatedly for over two centuries by the Roman state, it eventually became from the fourth century onwards, first the dominant, and later the official religion of the empire. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, the various churches of Yeshua continue to command the real or nominal allegiance of a substantial portion of mankind (2.5 billion at last estimate).

After nearly two millennia of development, today's Christianity has been formulated in authoritative creeds, and since the churches of the East and the West continue to recite in their liturgies one of these almost timeless confessions, I give below the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, composed in the fourth, and re-worked in the fifth century, as a short-hand expression of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. It is important for the reader to understand that the following Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed expresses the foundational beliefs upon which Christianity is built. Again of importance for this article is the investigation if Yeshua believed any of which is supposed to be the foundation of the religion he began. Let us see for ourselves.

THE BACKBONE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH---ITS CREED

The English text is borrowed from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England.

• I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible:
• And in one Lord Yeshua Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
• Begotten of his Father before all worlds,
• God of God, Light of Light,
• Very God of very God,
• Begotten, not made,
• Being of one substance with the Father,
• By whom all things were made:
• Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven,
• And was incarnate from the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
• And was made man,
• And was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
• He suffered and was buried,
• And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures,
• And ascended into heaven,
• And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
• And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead:
• Whose kingdom shall have no end.
• And I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord and giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets.
• And I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come. Amen.

WHAT WOULD YESHUA HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS STATEMENT OF FAITH?

The historical Yeshua, Yeshua the Jew, would have found the first three and the final two lines of the Christian creed familiar, and though not theologically minded, would have had no difficulty in assenting to them, but Yeshua would no doubt have been mystified and aghast by the remaining twenty-four lines. These other 24 lines of theological beliefs as expressed in the Creed have little to do with the religion preached and practiced by him.

Answer for yourself: Does that not bother you?

Yet the doctrines this Christian Creed proclaims such as Christ's eternal divine status and bodily incarnation, the redemption of all mankind achieved through his crucifixion, his subsequent exaltation and, above all, the Trinity of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, form the basis of the faith of which Yeshua is supposed to be the architect. Anyone who is remotely familiar with Second Temple Judaism knows the difference and that these Christian doctrines cannot be found in Moses, the Law, the Prophets, or the Writings. The reason 2.5 billion Gentile Christians in the world today don't this is due to their lack of knowledge about the true faith of Yeshua. To believe such a thing, as expressed by this Creed, only attests to the fact that this is the biggest lie of all time, and that you have fallen for it! Yeshua would have nothing to do with such rubbish.

WHERE ARE WE TO LOOK FOR TRUTH?

Today as in past centuries, the believing Christian's main New Testament source of faith lies, not so much in Mark, Matthew and Luke (where it should be) and their presentation of an earthly Yeshua, but sadly in centuries of speculation by the church on two things:

• The theological Gospel of John with its eternal Word become flesh, and
• Perhaps even more on the letters of Paul with their drama of death, atonement, and resurrection.

The Christ of Paul and John, on the way towards deification, overshadows and obscures the man of Galilee.

HOW DID WE LOOSE THE TRUE YESHUA OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND GRAVITATE TO THE COSMIC YESHUA OF JOHN AND PAUL?

The first thing I need to state will be hard for most readers to deal with. Whether you know it or not, or whether your Pastor has told you or not, it is widely understood today by critical scholarship that much of the New Testament was written and re-worked by the Gentile Church long after its original writing. In other words the New Testament, especially in its Christology, was edited continually in parallel with the successive Catholic Councils as they formulated their beliefs and theology concerning Yeshua during the early centuries of the Church. Comparison of manuscript fragments testify to these alterations. This to me is astonishing because such an institution, completely devoid of a Jewish background or a background in Biblical Judaism, displayed no fear of God in altering and adapting such writings to agree with their evolving theology. Statements were often created and put into the mount of Yeshua by the early Gentile Church and subsequently were written into the documents which were later called the "New Testament". Understand these statement were added after the fact by the early Gentile Church which, by the way, Yeshua never said or believed. We also have the alteration of many of Paul's letters which result in the preaching of "another Gospel" totally foreign to the one both believed and taught by the real historical Yeshua.

You can argue all day long against such statements, but if you will do your homework in these areas the evidence is overwhelming. Over and over I did not want to believe what I was discovering upon my research, but finally had to bow my knee at truth as God is the author of all truth and is watching over my search for Him. Even though much of what I discovered contradicted what I had been told and believed which I had accepted on "faith only" and without question, I was finally forced through shame and the quest for truth and acceptance by God to admit my religious deception and return to the faith once given to the saints….the religion of Yeshua…..the faith of the early Jewish Church which originally went into all the world….Biblical Judaism of the Second Temple Period…..and reject the lies of Gentile Christianity as seen today which claims to be the truth but which can be shown to be anything but that if one will honestly enquire.

Answer for yourself: What were the dynamics for such alterations and changes as found in the Gospels, along with the Gospel of John and many of Paul's letters? Let us investigate.

The disappearance of Yeshua, the believed Messiah of Israel, called for a radical rethinking and re-orientation during the years and decades following Golgotha, when Yeshua's disciples had to explain to themselves, and then to their listeners, the significance of the cross and the 'resurrection'. Being Jews, and at first addressing only Jews, they fell back on the standard explanation of Jewish religious innovators: these events had all been foreordained by God and were the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Their task was not easy because of the absence in the Bible, as well as in Biblical Judaism, of contemporary evidence of an expectation of a suffering and dying Messiah, or of one executed but resurrected before the final Judgment. Peter's laborious effort to discover the forecast of Yeshua's rising from the dead in Psalm 16:8-11 must have carried little weight, so Paul cleverly abstained from specifics and assured the Gentile Christians of Corinth, who would not have known the difference in any case, that Christ died for man's sins, was buried and raised on the third day 'according to the scriptures' (I Cor. 15:3 ), without giving book, chapter and verse.

Answer for yourself: Why did Paul say "Messiah died, was buried, and raised for sins according to not Scriptures" and NOT give a reference for Christ dying, being buried, and being raised for man's sins "according to the Scriptures"? Well, that is easy. There are none to be found in the whole of the Jewish Bible!

Answer for yourself: Have you, like me, read that passage over and over and never sought the Jewish Scriptures to which he refers? You bet!

If you are like most Christians, you read the New Testament without questioning anything and believing everything. Such I found out is not wise and not pleasing to God.

However, influenced by the difficult days of tribulations as suffered by the Jewish people by the foreign oppressors (Rome), and needing deliverance and salvation from such difficult times, the early believers were unable to see Yeshua in any context other than that of the awaited Messiah. Let us not forget in bad times people hope for deliverance. It is the Jewish answer to the Christians' pre-tribulation rapture. What the Jews understood from their Prophets is that when Messiah comes, he would first of all judge the Gentile nations. Rome's goose was cooked, or so they hoped. This was Israel's salvation and the answer they sought when up against such a formidable foe such as the Roman Empire. It is hard to read the New Testament and not notice the often recurrent theme of the expectation of the return of Yeshua as Messiah in the life-time of his followers to extract vengeance upon the persecutors of Israel. They died without his coming and, two thousand years later, we await such a coming of Messiah today.

THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF A JEWISH MESSIAH BY THE GENTILE CHURCH

Now let us look at the Gentiles who would later both come to faith in God through Yeshua, but in sheer numbers come to dominate the faith. Later, the first-generation Gentile Christians reinterpreted the notion of Israel's redeemer, the Anointed of God, in light of the life of Yeshua, a crucified and risen Christ who, after a short and esoteric post-'resurrection' existence on earth ascended to his heavenly throne. The claim that a Dead Sea Scrolls fragment alludes to a slain Messiah is ill-founded. It is now advanced with greater caution by R. Eisenman and M. Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (1992), 24-29. The notion of a risen Messiah seems to be unknown in extant ancient Jewish literature. Hence there can be no question of the fulfillment of a traditional expectation and if it were true that Yeshua repeatedly foretold his death and subsequent rising, the profound bewilderment of his closest companions before and after the crucifixion would need some explanation. Moreover, the claim of Yeshua's bodily resurrection added to the belief in his spiritual survival can be seen only by those who have faith in him and appears under such a strange guise that no Jews can recognize him. Added to that is was to these Jews that the Messiah was promised and to them he would be revealed. They yet wait the Biblical Messiah. By contrast, the less emphasized doctrine of Yeshua's ascension to heaven, prefigured in the Bible by Enoch and Elijah and in post-biblical literature by Moses and Isaiah, evoked familiar resonances in first-century Jewish ears. Jews in Judaea and Galilee found this new kind of Messiah alien, untraditional and . . . unappealing, and it can cause no surprise that apart from the melting pot of Jerusalem with its substantial immigrant population from the Diaspora, the New Testament is silent on any progress of the new movement in the Palestinian homeland.

Another important element of the religion of Yeshua, his teaching concerning the eschaton, the day of the Lord, the coming of his Kingdom, required significant recasting. This is hard to admit, especially in light of being raised in the Christian Church, but the great event which Yeshua was convinced would happen, the coming of the Kingdom of God to this world, in his life-time failed to materialize, but since first-generation Christianity was still imbued with eschatological enthusiasm, the end had to be rescheduled to coincide with the impending Parousia, the triumphant return of the exalted Christ from heaven, surrounded by the host of angels. Although the fresh scenario was no more successful than the first, in fact it opened the door to unending postponements and the practical extinction of the real eschatological hope, nonetheless, Christ's 'coming again in glory' to inaugurate his Kingdom is still on the lips of every Christian worshipper.

Such a revised edition of Yeshua's message entails also a total shift in religious thought. Yeshua's eyes were fixed on God and his Kingdom. This focus for Yeshua was "earthly". The Kingdom was literal and intended for that generation. The world and the physical laws of nature were to be changed and the people of God were to inherit God's Presence in the world as well as the hearts of all mankind. It did not occur.

But this view was negated by Paul who had a different focus. Those of Yeshua's followers, in particular Paul and his Gentile converts, focussed on the risen, cosmic, and glorified Lord. The purely theocentric religion of Yeshua became a christocentric faith in which the heavenly Father plays practically no role. For Yeshua, teshuvah (repentance) and emunah (faith) rendered everything possible; no mediator was needed. In Gentile Christianity, however, nothing is possible, not even teshuvah or emunah, without the atoning death of Christ bringing salvation to the world. This is a totally opposite message from the lips of these two men. Yeshua's immediacy in practicing and commending imitatio Dei (the imitation of God) is also diluted, and whilst it still appears as a spiritual counsel in, 'Be imitators of God as beloved children' (Eph. 5:1), the man from Tarsus presents himself as an imitator, strangely not of God as Yeshua taught, but of Christ, and as such offers himself for imitation to the members of his churches (I Cor. 11:1). The irony of this whole thing is that the "Jesus" Paul imitates never existed in history; the "cosmic" figure of Paul's theology and vision is a long, long way from the historical Rabbi who taught repentance as atonement for one's sins.

What most Christians fail to realize, in part because of a lack of knowledge in this area, is that Paul's powerful, brilliant and poetic imagination as seen in his writings echo the pagan mystery cults of his age, in which through baptism into the death and resurrection of Yeshua-Christ the new initiate enters into communion with the great act of salvation by means of which the New Adam removes from human nature that universal sinfulness which resulted from the fall of the first man in the garden of Eden. If any Christian has read anything about Gnosticism this is the cornerstone of it's "gnosis"....mystical unification with cosmic deity as the salvation experience. Literally ascends a stairway to Heaven by mystical incantations and unifies with this other worldly god. This is the heart of Pauline theology. The only difference is that Paul attached a vicarious atonement to the death of this god which was foreign to all other types of Gnosticism of his day. That explains why Marcion the Gnostic, the first "heretic" of the church which produced the "first New Testament," considered Paul the only follower of Jesus who understood him correctly...and this is the link that begins to open our eyes to the "Gnosticism of Paul" that passes for Biblical Faith in the New Testament to unsuspecting non-Jews.

The migration of Christianity from the Jewish to the Graeco-Roman world, another consequence of Paul's masterly apostolate, necessitated a further drastic interference with Yeshua's religion. Since the obligatory imposition of the Torah on Gentiles, including circumcision, would have stopped many from joining the church, the Jewish Law, the innermost source of Yeshua's piety, was not only made optional, but had to go, be abolished in the name of Christ. In 'Paulinism', which is largely identical with Western Christianity, the Torah is perversely metamorphosed from a well-spring of life into an instrument of death: "While we were living in the flesh our sinful passions, aroused by the Law, were at work in our members to bear fruit of death. But now we are discharged from the Law . . ." (Rom. 7:5f). "Christ is the end of the Law" (Rom. 10:4).

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that light-years separate Paul's Christian Gospel from the religion of Yeshua the Jew.

The place of Israel whose lost sheep Yeshua was sent to save had to be reappraised in this new world-view. The unbelieving Jews, supposedly blinded by their Torah as taught in the New Testament, were judged and found guilty of obstinacy and deprived of their privileges as the chosen people in favor of the new 'Israel of God' (Gal. 6.I6)…ie., the Gentile Church. To be fair, it has to be said that Paul, despite many harsh polemical comments against Judaism, shies off in the end from damning his people for ever. His inventive poetic mind imagines that the rejection of Christ is a dreadful but only temporary lapse. The apostle of the Gentiles by attempting to graft the whole converted non-Jewish world on to the Jewish stock, thus making them the heirs of all the divine promises granted to Abraham and his posterity, secretly hoped that elevation of the Gentiles would excite the jealousy of the Jews, and bring them to teshuvah and submission to Christ so that 'all Israel' might be saved (Rom. 11:26). This whole idea of Paul about the "blinding" of Israel to Paul's unique understanding of "his gospel," as well as later Paulinist writers, is tragic when one considers that Romans chapters 9-11 were not written and added to the New Testament until long after 180 A.D.; most likely by Irenaeus. And today Christianity relies heavily on these chapters in their evaluation of Israel as no longer a "light to the nations" when God commanded such. Such is the fruit of Gentile hatred of the Jews and just another manifestation of anti-Semitism as found rampant in the New Testament.

The author of the Fourth Gospel had no such kindness or love for the Jewish people; and yet we are told to believe that he was a Jew; no less an apostle. That is a first; an anti-Semitic Jew! The term, Ioudaioi, originally applying perhaps just to Judaeans, but by the time of the redaction of the work at the end of the first century incorporating all the evangelist's 'unconverted' fellow countrymen, i.e. the near totality of the Jewish people, acquired ominous overtones in John's Gospel. In John's account of the life of Yeshua, the Jews are a blood-thirsty gang who seek to kill Yeshua from the outset and do not desist until they have succeeded in their deadly plan. John's Christ, who had nothing in common with the real Yeshua, declares to his compatriots:

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning... John 8.44).

Here is the origin of the Christian tendency to demonize the Jews, the source of all mediaeval and much modern religious anti-Judaism, which directly or indirectly led to the Holocaust. Tragically, it took six million lives to persuade the largest of the Christian churches to annul the charge of deicide levelled for so long against the people of Yeshua.

The de-Judaization of the pristine gospel in the Graeco-Roman world was no doubt unintentionally helped by the underlying universalism of Yeshua's doctrine of imitatio Dei (the imitation of God), a God whose providence includes all, and his primary concern for the individual, thus permitting an easier dispensation from the mostly communal and social aspects of the Law of Moses. This went also hand in hand with the decline of Judaeo-Christianity of the original Church, consisting of Torah-observing Jews who followed the teaching of Yeshua without such 'Christian' creations as the doctrine of the virgin birth or the deification of Christ. These people were unpopular both in the Jewish camp, and among the members of the Gentile church; though they probably remained closest to Yeshua, the Jews considered them as Christians and the Christians as heretics. 'While they wish to be both Jews and Christians', wrote Jerome to Augustine, 'they are neither Jews, nor Christians'. The so-called Ebionites or Nazarenes cannot be compared with the present-day "Messianic Jews" or "Jews for Yeshua", who under the disguise of the ordinary observances of Judaism seem to be plain, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians who yet hold dear religious doctrines and beliefs that would infuriate Yeshua that such is taught in his name. Such blasphemy is condemned in the courts of Heaven and sadly most have to die to find that out since they lack the study to see these truths this side of the grave.

The Torah observant Jews who originally followed Yeshua vanished from the scene, the few surviving pockets having no doubt reverted to the Jewish fold. With it, the last, and by then no doubt distorted, vestiges of the religion practiced by Yeshua and preached to Jews disappeared, allowing a free run for the triumphal progress of Hellenized Christianity in the non-Jewish world of Late Antiquity.

Despite all this, in fairness, it must be emphasized that notwithstanding all its alien dogmatic and ecclesiastical features, Christianity still possesses fundamental elements of the piety of Yeshua, such as his emphasis on purity of intention and generosity of heart, exemplified in a Francis of Assisi who relinquished wealth to serve the poor, and even in our century, an Albert Schweitzer, who abandoned fame to heal the sick in Godforsaken Lambarene, and a Mother Teresa who, age-old, cared for the dying in the filthy streets of Calcutta.

To consider Yeshua as the Founder of Christianity is a misnomer. Though admittedly not totally unconnected, the religion of Yeshua and Christianity are so basically different in form, purpose and orientation that it would be historically unsafe to derive the latter directly from the former and attribute the changes to a straightforward doctrinal evolution. It was more of a mutation. No doubt, on a meta-physical level, Christian faith and theology attribute these changes to the work of the "Holy Spirit": "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13). That's a laugh to those who know the truth about Gentile Christianity. But such simplistic rationalization is done completely devoid of the facts in the case. Study to show yourselves approved so that one day you won't have to stand before God ashamed.

It would seem no less unjustifiable to continue to represent Yeshua as the establisher of the Christian church or churches. For let it be re-stated for a last time, if Yeshua meant and believed what he preached - and I for one am convinced that he did- namely that the eternal Kingdom of God was truly at hand, he simply could not have entertained the idea of founding and setting in motion an organized society intended to endure for ages to come. A great challenge, perhaps the greatest of them all, which traditional Christianity of the Pauline-Johannine variety has therefore still to confront does not come from atheism, or agnosticism, or sheer materialism, but from within, from the three ancient witnesses, Mark, Matthew and Luke, through whom speaks the chief challenger of Christianity as it exists today, Yeshua the Jew.

Whether this challenge is accepted will be seen in the decades, even centuries, to come, though faint signs indicate that the most perceptive Christian New Testament scholars are already conscious of the task awaiting them. But it would seem also that muted sounds are audible in Jewish scholarly circles suggesting that the antique taboo on Yeshua, mistakenly held responsible for Christian anti-Semitism, is beginning to fade and that hesitant steps are being made to re-instate him among the ancient Hasidim in initial fulfillment of Martin Buber's 'prophecy': 'A great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith.'

Nor is this all. For the magnetic appeal of the teaching and example of Yeshua holds out hope and guidance to those outside the fold of organized religion, the stray sheep of mankind, who yearn for a world of mercy, justice and peace lived in as children of God.

In closing I believe we have answered our primary question. The faith that carries Yeshua's name today is a far cry from the historical Yeshua and what he both believed and practiced, and if you desire to be a follower of Yeshua then you cannot practice Gentile Christianity as it exists today yet hold to a majority of its creedal beliefs. To do so invalidates any claim to be a "follower of Jesus" as he would have nothing to do with such apostasy. Shalom.