The State of Israel needs to reconsider its interpretation of Judaism from the rabbinical tradition of Rabbi Akiva and acknowledge that there may be another earlier Judaism that authoritatively interprets their history from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and Isaiah. The current orthodox Rabbinical views are certain to result in a deadly confrontation with the Palestinians and the world.  Such a course set by Rabbi Akiva in 135 CE potentially will lead to the destruction of the State of Israel itself.

Read Part 1, “Why Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem?”
Read Part 2, “The Conflicting Narrative of Jerusalem”
Read Part 3, “Pain: God’s Megaphone”
Read Part 4, “Does God Have a Plan for Israel?”
Read Part 5, Underlying Causes of the Conflict Between Israel and the Arabs

Almost universally among Christians, the view is that Judaism historically precedes Christianity.   Is this view accurate?  Is there a direct link between Rabbinical Judaism and the Old Testament revelation to the Jewish people?  More recently, both Jewish and Christian scholars recognize that the birth of Judaism and Christianity grew out of the controversies among the Jewish people in the first century C.E.[1]  Some view both religions as twins because they are different responses to the questions of the 2^nd Temple era.

The Talmud itself states that seventy sects competed for the identity of the true Israel.  Early faith in Jesus of Nazareth is one of those groups asserting that they are the true Israel.[2]  Even many Jews have historically identified Christianity as Esau, while Judaism is Jacob.[3]  This would make for a twin birth of Christianity and Judaism with Christianity being the older brother preceding Judaism.[4]

The Roman occupation of Judea and Galilee in the 1^st century resulted in controversies by the different “Judaisms” that wrestled with the same issues.  The issues included

1. How was the Temple in Jerusalem to be purified?
2. The Sadducees believed compromise with the Romans allowed for the Temple sacrifices to continue worshipping Israel’s God
3. The Pharisees believed that Jewish men must purify their lives and families in accord with the Torah’s teaching for priestly purity. When the condition for national purity was met then the kingdom of God would come.
4. The Essenes rejected the Temple in Jerusalem because the priesthood was corrupted by their compromise with their Roman occupiers. They moved the temple to the community near the Dead Sea.  There they lived and worshipped in purity with the hopes of their moving to Jerusalem.  This pure worship after the “sons of darkness” are defeated by the “sons of light.”
5. The promise of Jesus is that a new Temple would arise made up of those renewed by faith in Jesus as the Messiah. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD only the Pharisees and the Nazarenes (the first name for those who believed in Jesus) were left as holding competing visions for the new temple.
6. The nature of the Kingdom of God: Is the Kingdom a temporal state or a spiritual reality where God reigns?
7. Which documents were canonical and authoritative?
8. What is the identity, and nature of the Messiah?

These were open questions that were highly debated but not universally resolved by the Jewish people.  The Nazarenes and the Christians answered the question of the kingdom by viewing Jesus of Nazareth as authoritatively interpreting the Torah in Matthew 5-7.  Yeshua (Jesus) is the king; submission to Jesus is submission to Yahweh.

The third question regarding the authority of the written documents, identification and Jesus’ affirmation of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (the Psalms) indicated that the Tanakh (Old Testament) was already an established authoritative document.  Jesus asserted that the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms alone were the recognized canon (Luke 24:27, 44).

The Dead Sea scrolls had texts or commentaries on all of the Old Testament books except Esther.  On the other hand, they did not have texts or commentaries on the Deutero- canonical books (the Apocrypha) indicating their lack of authority among 1^st century Jews.  Nor did the Qumran community recognize the oral law.

The New Testament writers quoted all of the Old Testament books recognizing their authority for Jewish believers.

On the other hand, Pharisaic Judaism still continued to question the authoritative books.  Further, the Rabbis did not allow for verbal inspiration.  The rabbinic systems of Midrash did not accept a single interpretation of the Torah but believed there were multiple interpretations of the text of Torah.  The rabbis taught that no one textual interpretation is ever definitive even the interpretation of the divine Author Himself.  The rabbis accepted as authoritative both the Torah and the oral law which Moses passed down.

But it is not then claimed that Moses wrote the entire Torah in those very words we now possess in Scripture.  Rather, Moses received Torah and handed it on to Joshua and so on in a chain of tradition.  That the chain of tradition transcends Scripture’s record is clear when we reach ‘the men of the great assembly,’ who surely are not part of the biblical record.  And it is self-evident when we examine what the men of the great assembly and their successor, Simeon the Righteous, had to say.  What they say is not a passage of Scripture.  But, in accord with the opening lines, it still is part of the Torah of Sinai.  The ‘three things’ fall into the category of ‘Torah,’ that is, divine teaching, but not into the framework of Scripture.

  We may, then, infer that a doctrine of revelation encompassing another mode besides writing for the formulation and transmission of God’s message is in play here.  The verbs, receive (in Hebrew qibbel) and hand on (masar) as nouns yield qabbalah and masoret, both of them bearing the sense of tradition.  Putting this together, we may say that the generative myth of Rabbinic Judaism tells the story how Moses received Torah in two media, in writing and in memory, the memorized part of the Torah being received and handed on in a process of oral formulation and oral transmission.[5]

The process of how the oral law was passed on is described in the Talmud.[6]

By contrast, the New Testament believed God verbally inspired both the Old Testament and the New Testament writings. God so controlled the writers that He motivated them to write His precise words. Therefore, these documents were authoritative the moment they were written.  The core of the Christian faith was established authoritatively by the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.[7]  The New Testament Scriptures are God’s Word not because they claim to be infallible but because God is the author of Scripture.  He is the basis of all truth.

On the other hand with the destruction of the Temple the Judaistic sects of the Sadducees and the Essenes disappeared leaving the Rabbis as the only authoritative voice in Judaism other than the Nazarenes and the mixed fellowship of Jews and Gentiles called Christians (Acts 11:26).

In the 1^st century, there was no normative or Orthodox Judaism.  There were several competing varieties.[8]  But other than Christian documents, all other Judaistic sects lost both their authority and their literature.  The Pharisaic party emerged as authoritative and by 120 CE Rabbi Akiva emerged as the principal rabbinical interpreter.  Rabbi Akiva is so pivotal to Judaism that “the Talmud regards the death of Akiva as a loss almost beyond measure.  When Rabbi Akiva died, the glory of the Torah ceased . . .  Why is Rabbi Akiva so highly praised?  Louis Ginsburg      explained in The Jewish Encyclopedia: The greatest tannaim (scholars and teachers) of the middle of the 2^nd century CE came from Akiva’s school, notably Meir, Judah ben Ilai, Simeon ben Yohai, Josa ben Halatta, Eleazar ben Shammai, and Nehemiah.   Akiva’s true genius, however, is shown in his work in the systematization of its traditional material, and in its further development.

“Our Mishnah comes directly from Rabbi Meir, the Tosefta from Rabbi Nehemiah, the Sifra from Rabbi Judah, and Rabbi Simeon, but they all took Akiva for a model in their works, and followed him.  We are told that “all are taught according to the views of Rabbi Akiva.[9]

Akiva ben Joseph was born in 40 CE and grew up in the midst of the Jewish controversies regarding the Temple, the kingdom, the Messiah and the authoritative canon.  “In those days, scholarly disputes were heated and sometimes violent affairs” according to Josephus.

“These struggles were not merely verbal or academic.  Religious practice and decisions were not simply a private or personal affair, devoid of public interest or consequence. “At that time Israel was seen as a theocracy where God rewarded or punished men and nations according to their deeds.[10]  Rabbinic Judaism, claiming to define the norms set by God to Moses at Sinai . . . cannot be asked to describe the practice of all faithful Israelites . . . If we cannot describe competing Judaic religious systems, we can take for granted that diversity characterized Jews religious practices and beliefs . . . First the pages of the Talmud attest to conflict between ‘the rabbis’. . .[11]

Akiva lived through the Judean uprising against Rome and the horrific destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.  He entered the academy at Yavneh led by Rabbi Johana be Zakkai after the war with Rome.  He spent 24 years studying with the Rabbis gaining a knowledge of all their different portions.

“He systematically picked and chose from what was available . . . He had a single driving motivation in life:  to create a Judaism in accordance with his vision of what it should be.  To do that he joined alliances, made disciples who were instilled with his vision and fought against any and all who held to competing definitions of Judaism.  In doing so, Akiva earned the title ‘the father of rabbinic Judaism.’  He more than anyone else, created rabbinic Judaism.  Before him there were many Judaisms, but after him there was only one.  Before him there was precedent, and after him there was further development, but he is the one who put the new system together.”[12]

Nowhere in the Tanakh (the Jewish Old Testament) are the leaders referred to as

Rabbis.  There were priests and prophets but not Rabbis.”  The rabbinical authority emerged in the 2^nd century CE.  They had no sanctioned standing before the development of the Talmud.  In the church they are viewed as judges, prophets, priests, redeemers, and lawgivers.  They exercise ultimate authority, an authority which even extends to the world to come.[13]  Not even God can contradict them.  Thus the rabbinical scholar has the highest position in Israel.  Rabbis are exempt from the poll tax. “The masters of the Talmud were as essential to Israel as bread itself.”[14]  “Under Akiva’s leadership, the Rabbis became an elite revolutionary party which transformed itself from a group of unauthorized outsiders into the holders and/or guardians of all authority in heaven and earth.”[15]

By contrast the Scriptures teach that the revelation God gave in the Torah was written by the “finger of God.”  God spoke through Moses “mouth to mouth” (Numbers 12:6-8). The covenant with Moses was written down establishing not merely “the law” but a personal relationship with the God who acted on behalf of His people to create them and to constitute the tribe of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Israel a covenant nation in Exodus 19:3-6.

The Ten Commandments were intended as a means of establishing Israel in a covenant relationship to God.  The document of the Torah expressed Israel’s submission to their God as the sovereign king.  The second giving of the Law in Deuteronomy added the sanctions of covenant, both blessing and curses, and also how the covenant was to be continued.  This is the Torah, the five books of Moses.  These books were kept in the Holy of Holies next to the ark in the Tabernacle (Deuteronomy 31:24-26).

The books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings were written by prophets who testified to the continued history of the covenant.  The Jewish canon considers these books the “former prophets.”  These books were also archived in the tabernacle and later the temple by the Ark of the Covenant.  Everyone knew which books had canonical authority.  They were the books in the Holy of Holies.  They belonged to the nation as public constituting documents.

The kings were guided by prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah.  The prophets Joel, Amos, Micah, and Habakkuk addressed kings even while preparing Israel and Judah for future judgment and restoration.  These documents were part of the continuing history of Israel.

After the exile, the priests provided leadership particularly the priests Zadok, Ezekiel Haggai, and Zechariah.  These priests formed what some scholars refer to as “early Judaism” from 526 BCE to 200 BCE.  The writings of 1 and 2 Chronicles reconstituted the nation of Israel and connected the Jews returning from the exile to the earlier nation.

The period from 200 BCE to the second Temple period ending in 70 CE is the time of considerable turmoil and debate among the Jews.  The Qumran literature transformed modern scholarly understanding of this period of “middle Judaism.”  The Qumran commentaries and worldview reflect the issues of this formative period.  The Apostle Paul’s teachings are very closely related to the Jewish ideas of the Qumran community.  The highly respected Jewish professor of Early Christianity and Judaism of the Second Temple Period at the Hebrews University of Jerusalem, Dr. David Flusser was adamant in his insistence that Jesus was a Jew from birth to death and taught nothing that was a revolt against the principles of the Judaism of his time.  There were divergent Judaisms of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes but each acknowledged the authority of the written Torah as the fundamental authority of the Jews.

Yet from the time of 100 AD to the completion of the Talmud in the 5^th century AD, the establishment of Rabbinical Judaism (later Judaism), contradicted the written Torah and the prophets at critical points.  This was done on the basis of the “oral law.”  Certainly there was a tradition of the oral law in the 1^st century CE during second Temple Judaism.  But there is no reference to the oral law in the Tanakh or in the Qumran documents.[16]  Rabbi Akiva originated what became the authoritative Rabbinic interpretation of the oral law.  Neither Akiva nor this disciples recognized Moses as the highest authority.  In fact, Moses is considered inferior to Akiva.  Akiva used the oral law to negate Torah authority.

Rabbinic law permits what the Torah forbids.  Every Sabbath year debts were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1-18).  But in the fifth tractate of Seder Zraim (Order of Seeds) of the Mishnah, Rabbis Akiva’s interpretation taught that loans were not to be cancelled in the 7^th year.  This Talmudic ruling is not related to the Torah either written or oral but directly contradicts God’s written Word.

The Torah is not antagonistic to the Judaism of the early post-exilic community under Nehemiah, Ezra, and Ezekiel (early Judaism).  Nor is the Torah in conflict with the Judaism of the second Temple period.  In fact during the revival under Nehemiah’s leadership, only the Torah was read and the priests explained the meaning (Neh 8:8).  The written Torah is the focus of the debates of the 1^st century.  Some elaborated the Scripture by the oral law such as the Pharisees. Yet none attempted to subvert and reject the Torah as Rabbi Akiva taught.

The Rabbis under Akiva’s leadership directly challenged and contradicted the Torah, the written word of God given to Moses.  For example, Akiva’s method of interpretation rejected the logic and grammar of the text.  There were few rules of interpretation and they changed according to Akiva’s purposes.[17]  “Rabbi Akiva kept the written Torah central, but made it irrelevant.  He alleged obedience to the Torah, but transformed it into a privileged figurehead.  Torah said whatever he (Akiva) wanted it to say.” [18]

On this hermeneutical basis the Rabbis revised the text of the Torah.  They changed the way the text is perceived.  “It is like placing an optical lens between the reader and the text . . . once the lens is implanted, everything must pass through it. The one who looks through the lens thinks that everything he sees is in the text.”[19]

In fact, the controversies between Christian interpreters and Jewish ones from Akiva to the final development of the Talmud can be seen in the critical apparatus of the Hebrew Bible (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia).  In the textual discussion by the Rabbis, there is much discussion regarding the textual variants.  The Messiah is seen in the textual critical discussions between the Masoretic and the translators of the Septuagint.  The Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament which was begun in the 3^rd century BC and completed by 132 BC.  This translation was done before the appearance of Jesus and the use of Christianity.  The Septuagint favored Messianic variant readings.

For example, in 2 Samuel 23:1, there are varying views on the word el.  In the Rabbinic Masoretic Text, the word el means “on high.”  David is writing about David the man God raised up on high (to a prominent position).  Thus David is writing about himself as “the sweetest psalmist in Israel.”  But if the word el is translated in the LXX (the Septuagint), as ὃν ἀνέστησεν  then it is to be translated “raised up” referring to the Messiah being exalted to the right hand of God.  As Hebrews 2:12 quotes Psalm 22:22, Jesus sings the Psalms in the midst of the Assembly of those who worshipped the living God.

For example, 2 Samuel 23:2 says, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue” which the Masoretic Text focuses on David as opposed to the Septuagint translation that sees David referring to a Messiah (an anointed one) future to him.  In Isaiah 9:6, the Masoretic Text accents two sets of titles, “Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, calls His name Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”  The first two titles are referring to God and the last two to the child that was born.  This interpretation avoids seeing the passages as a prophetic promise regarding the Messiah.[20]

I know these are very tightly reasoned, but we see how the Masorites either knowingly or from years of Jewish tradition interpreted these texts only as they focused on immediate events.  For example, Isaiah 7:44 is only about the prophecy of a near term baby to be born.  Yet it is clear that the Rabbis chose the Masoretic Text as the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible and considered the Septuagint (the LXX) as the “Christian Bible.”  True, the New Testament writers primarily quoted the Septuagint, but remember, it was translated by Jews 200 years before Jesus and Christianity.  What the Septuagint demonstrates to us is that the Old Testament interprets other parts of the Tanakh with an understanding that each text is ultimately Messianic.  The Masorites did their textual work primarily between the 7^th and 10^th centuries AD.

The Masoretic Text clearly departs at key places from the Hebrew text of the Tanakh used at Qumran.  The Qumran community anticipated the Messiah.  The Masoretic Text in coordination with the Rabbis downplayed Messianic interpretation.  Is this coincidental or intentional?  Who can discern motives?  Menachem Cohen demonstrated that the Dead Sea Scrolls decided these issues by showing that there was indeed a Hebrew text type on which the Septuagint translation was based and which differed substantially from the received Masoretic Text[21]

One key purpose of Akiva was that the Nazarenes (observant Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah) needed to be purged from the Jewish community.  Akiva utilized the Romans attempt to build a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple (other historians believed the Emperor Hadrian was going to rebuild the Temple for the Jews).  The result was a revolt in 132 CE against Rome which took the Romans by surprise.

The revolt ushered in a period of Jewish self-rule where Simon bar Kosiba was given the name of Bar Kochba meaning “son of the star” in Aramaic taken from Numbers 24:17, “I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; A Star shall come out of Jacob; A Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult.”  This verse was considered Messianic.  When Rabbi Akiva declared Bar Kochba the Messiah,  Nazarene Messianic believers left the Jewish community.  The Nazarene believers’ exodus from the Jewish community resulted in the establishment of the Rabbinic authority.  The Nazarenes who acknowledge the New Testament writings as of divine inspiration as well as the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) withdrew from this new Judaism.  Akiva had proclaimed that the war with Rome was not about God but only establishing the identity of the Jewish people.  God had nothing to do with this war according to Akiva.   The war was all about preserving Judaism.

Further, Akiva through Bar Kochba so antagonized the Romans that the Roman armies under Severus crushed the Jewish people.  Over a half million died according to the historian Cassius Dio.  As a result, Hadrian, the Roman Emperor, attempted to root out Judaism from the land.  But he was only playing into the hand of Akiva.  Akiva was accomplishing his purpose of redefining Judaism.

Akiva’s objective was to establish the nation of Israel, the Jewish people as the Messiah.  The term Messiah is actually a title.  It is found in rabbinic writings in the Talmudic tractate Berekoth and in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.[22]

According to Akiva, the Messiah is the nation not a person.  The nation had to suffer in order to make atonement both for Israel and for the world.  Persecution and suffering is the calling of the Jewish people.  Rather than to resist suffering, Jews should welcome it.

Yet in declaring the Jewish people as the Messiah, Akiva separated this world from the world to come.  The sufferings of Israel did not prepare them for a future life.  Rather the nation was deified.  In atoning for the nations, Israel as a nation was exalted above all other nations.  Israel became God.  Israel made atonement for the nations not to satisfy divine justice for sins.  For the purpose of atoning for the world, the nation of Israel had to suffer at the hands of the Gentiles.

Rome played along with this drama as they brutally defeated the Jewish people.  Akiva’s provocations resulted in the sacrificing a half million of his own people unnecessarily.  But if the Jews were the Messiah they needed to suffer as atonement.  Akiva himself was brutally flayed while he exulted in the privilege of suffering by reciting the Shema at his execution.

As the Talmud continued to evolve, the concept of the Jews as repairing the world (tikkun olam) developed.  For example, Rabbi Yochanar quoting Rabbi Shirnon bar Yochai said that Jewish people will be redeemed when every Jew observes Shabbat twice in all its details.

What has all this to do with the current crises in Jerusalem and the Middle East?  The redefinition of Judaism by Akiva and the Talmudic rabbis is a faith entirely antithetical to the Tanakh and the Torah. Yet it is this distorted understanding of Judaism that is the State religion of Israel.  There is a superficial connection to the Torah but at the root, Rabbinic Judaism is as hostile to the Torah as Islam is.  Both are rebellious attempts to overthrow the Creator and to create religions that are agnostic at best about the nature and character of the God who rules the universe.  And in the place of the written Word is the Talmudic vision of Judaism as savior of the world based on the interpretation of the oral law by Rabbi Akiva.

This Rabbinical view of Judaism departs from the faith revealed to Abraham, Moses, David and Isaiah by:

1. Viewing the Jewish people as the Messiah
2. The Talmud is the primary authority of Judaism and corrects the Tanakh
3. Believing that the struggle for Jewish identity has nothing to do with God or a future life
4. Disconnecting Jewish life from the world to come. Judaism has nothing to do with God but is all about Jewish identity.  “As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2011, “we cannot depend on anyone to protect us but ourselves.”
5. Belief in Jesus as the Messiah denies Jewish believers claims to be Jewish regardless of their ethnic identity.
6. The suffering of the Jewish people is for the salvation of the world. The holocaust is Israel’s Messianic sacrifice.  No other ethnic cleansing can be allowed to be called a holocaust.  The Jewish holocaust is unique.
7. The kingdom comes through doing thousands of acts of kindness and goodness such as Orthodox Judaistic sects such as Chabad still teach this view about the coming of the kingdom and the establishment of the 3^rd Bais Hakkadash (the third temple). A list posted at a Chabad center exhorts Jews to:
   • Give your children a Torah education
   • Study Torah
   • Give Tzedekah
   • Attach a kosher mezuzah to your door posts
   • Buy a letter in a sefer Torah
   • Observe family purity laws
   • Keep kosher
   • Love your fellow man as yourself
   • Light Shabbat and holiday candles
   • Jewish books in the home
   • Learn about Mashiach

This is one list presented by Chabad, a sect of the Hasidim, for the establishment of the 3^rd Bais Hakkadash (the third temple) and the kingdom of God.  Certainly there are competing visions but at root the faith is that the kingdom and the temple are established by the good deeds of the Jewish people.  The underlying question is whether a person’s character can be so simply changed by outward rules published by the Rabbis?

The Dilemma of Modern Israel

David Ben Gurion as the first prime minister at the beginning of the nation answered the question of what defines Judaism by signing over the control of Rabbinate to the orthodox Jews.  At the time, this meant the orthodox Jewish Rabbis controlled laws acknowledging Shabbat, the authority over marriage licenses, subsidies for Rabbinical scholars and Yeshiva students as long as they study Talmud.  When Ben Gurion agreed to these arrangements, there were 400 students.  Today there are 50,000 exempt students.  Only 25% of Haredi      (orthodox) men between 30 and 34 are employed.[23]

The Orthodox (the Haredim) make up 10% of the population of Israel yet 56% live under the poverty level.  They have twice as many children as the overall Israeli population and by 2028 will make up one third of the Jewish population.

The Orthodox have gained in such influence politically that they are an essential part of every coalition government and a very strong voice in the Knesset.  The ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) has control over the Department of the Interior which grants visas, and recognizes residential status and grants citizenship in the State of Israel.  This office is used to control any influence deemed as competition to Orthodox Judaism.  As a result, the State of Israel budgets money for Yad L’chim which follows the activity of any other religious groups especially those of Christians who attempt to influence Jewish people.

The orthodox rabbinical community (the Haredi) is the most ethnocentric community in Israel and the most antagonistic to Arab Israelis and Palestinians living in the State of Israel.  Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Yisreal Beitenu party (Israel our home) has proposed the involuntary transfer of Israel’s Arab citizens to a future Palestinian state in exchange for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.  This party of orthodox Jews has attempted to silence any attempt to acknowledge the human rights and civil liberties of non-Jews.  Israel’s historic commitment to protect the God-given rights of freedom of speech and property is crumbling largely under the weight of orthodox rabbinical Judaism.

The State of Israel needs to reconsider its interpretation of Judaism from the rabbinical tradition of Rabbi Akiva and acknowledge that there may be another earlier Judaism that authoritatively interprets their history from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and Isaiah.

The current orthodox Rabbinical views are certain to result in a deadly confrontation with the Palestinians and the world.  Such a course set by Rabbi Akiva in 135 CE potentially will lead to the destruction of the State of Israel itself.

What to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• Pray that the Jewish people will reject Orthodox Judaism with its idolatrous view of the Jewish people as the Messiah.
• Pray that the Jews will see their identity is from God’s interpretation of Israel and not Rabbi Akiva’s distortion.
• Pray for the influence of Orthodox Judaism to be broken among the people and in the Knesset.
• Pray that the Jewish people will connect with their own history in Abraham, Moses, and David as revealed in the Old Testament and not the distortion of Rabbinic Judaism.

Dr. Douglas W. Kittredge is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is senior pastor of New Life in Christ PCA in Fredericksburg, Va.

[1] Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God:  Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, Stanford University Press, Nov 1999.

[2] Jacob Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began: A Survey of Belief and Practice, Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, p. 6.  The recognition of the diversity of Judaisms, on the ground, prepares us for the social realities embodied in conflicting holy books.  We quickly recognize that, in real life as against theory, there are today, and there have been through time, diverse groups, each with its worldview and way of life, all regarding themselves as “Israel.”  These groups compete with one another, each telling its own story about itself in the context of the encompassing story that all, in one way or another, tell with variations. So while we may identify certain global doctrines likely to characterize diverse groups of “Israel,” once we encounter the real world, we find “Israels.”

[3] Alan Segel, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World

[4] Boyarin

[5] Jacob Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began: A Survey of Belief and Practice, Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, p. 7.

[6] Babylonian Talmud tractate Erubin 54b

1. Our rabbis have taught on Tannaite authority:
2. What is the order of Mishnah teaching? Moses learned it from the mouth of the All-Powerful. Aaron came in, and Moses repeated his chapter to him and Aaron went forth and sat at the left hand of Moses.  His sons came in and Moses repeated their chapter to them, and his sons went forth.  Eleazar sat at the right of Moses, and Itamar at the left of Aaron.
3. R. Judah says, “At all times Aaron was at the right hand of Moses.”
4. Then the elders entered, and Moses repeated for them their Mishnah chapter. The elders went out.  Then the whole people came in, and Moses repeated for them their Mishnah chapter.  So it came about that Aaron repeated the lesson four times, his sons three times, the elders two times, and all the people once.
5. Then Moses went out, and Aaron repeated his chapter to them. Aaron went out.  His sons repeated their chapter.  His sons went out.  The elders repeated their chapter.  So it turned out that everybody repeated the same chapter four times.
6. On this basis said R. Elizer, “A person is liable to repeat the lesson for his disciple four times. And it is an argument a fortiori:  If Aaron, who studied from Moses himself, and Moses from the Almighty – so in the case of a common person who is studying with a common person, all the more so!”
7. Aqiba says, “How on the basis of Scripture do we know that a person is obligated to repeat a lesson for his disciple until he learns it [however many times that takes]? As it is said, ‘And you teach it to the children of Israel’ (Deut. 31:19).  And how do we know that that is until it will be well ordered in their mouth? “Put it in their mouths’ (Deut. 31:19).  And how on the basis of Scripture do we know that he is liable to explain the various aspects of the matter? ‘Now these are the ordinances which you shall put before them’ (Exod. 31:1).”

[7] Alan Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World, p. 121.

[8] Daniel Gruber, Rabbi Akiva’s Messiah: The Origins of Rabbinic Authority, Elijah’s Publishing, 1999.

[9] Ibid, p. 26.

[10] Ibid, p. 26.

[11] Jacob Neusner, p. 9.

[12] Gruber, p. 27.

[13] Ibid, p. 30.

[14] Ibid, p. 31.

[15] Ibid, p. 32.

[16] Gruber, p. 59.

[17] Ibid, pp 62-63.

[18] Ibid, p. 65

[19] Gruber, p. 73

[20] Michael Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? B & H Academic, Nashville, TN., 2010, pp 39-46.

[21] Menachem Cohen, The Idea of the Sanctity of the Biblical Text and the Science of Textual Criticism in HaMikrah V’anachnu, ed. Uriel Simon, HaMachon L’Yahadut U’Machshava Bat-Z’mananu and Dvir, Tel-Aviv, 1979

[22] Ibid, p. 141

[23] Foreign Affairs, Volume 90, Nov/Dec 2011, p. 16.