Book Review of "Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed"

Maimonidies' philosophic reputation rests on his masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, published in Arabic in 1190 and quickly translated into Hebrew. Unfortunately, it is difficult for the average person living in the twentieth century to read The Guide with any degree of comprehension. First, there is the difficulty of its length: three volumes and a total of 178 chapters. The second difficulty is the learning the author presupposes. Maimonides did not intend the book to be read by a general audience. He assumes his readers are familiar with the sacred literature of Judaism, the classics of Greek philosophy, and the later medieval commentaries. The last difficulty is that the book was written during the twelfth century, and since then our view of the world has undergone numerous changes.

from the Introduction to Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed
by Kenneth Seeskin

Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the midst of the land whither ye go in to possess it. Observe therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statues, shall say: "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." -Deuteronomy 4:5-6

The quotes from Seeskin and Deuteronomy provide excellent reasons to read Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed, for both Jews who want to gain a greater understanding of the Rambam's (Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides) classic insights into the Torah, and Christians who are trying to grasp the significance of Judaism and a deeper meaning of "the Law" beyond a plain reading of the text. Seeskin's book can also be thought of as "an introduction to Maimonides", since we learn a great deal about how this exalted Jewish sage conceived of the Torah, what it told him about God and what it told him about being a Jew.

To say that Rambam was primarily a philosopher and a thinker is almost an understatement. He seems to be an archetypal intellectualist and rationalist of the Jewish world and his perspectives and teachings are as relevant in Judaism today as they were 800 years ago. His intellectual viewpoint, in and of itself, makes him difficult to comprehend, at least for most people, since his unique perspective is grasped only by others operating at his level. For the "average" person, his insights and the degree of detail which he uses to pursue the holy writings could easily seem like "over-analyzing".

In a scant 141 pages, Seeskin manages to tell his audience how Rambam conceived of God, God's unique "radical Oneness", Rambam's views on polytheism and idolatry, the cognitive qualifications necessary for a Prophet, and much more.

I must admit, after reading Seeskin's book, I find myself a little less enamored with Maimonides than I have been previously. The Rambam was obviously a highly intelligent and educated man and his conception of the world around him, his God, and his Jewishness were defined by those qualities. Everything he wrote was filtered through the values of philosophy and an almost extreme rationalism, to the exclusion of all else. Even love of God was considered a rational process in Rambam's view.

This isn't necessarily bad and it provides a good counterbalance to the emotionalism we find in many Christian churches where all you are expected to do is "feel" the Holy Spirit in order to experience God. For Maimonides, to truly grasp a Jew's purpose and meaning in life, you absolutely had to take on the role of scholar and devote significant resources to the deep study of the Torah and the classic Jewish and Greek philosophical literature.

The Rambam, in considering the commandments, believed that it was possible to understand the purpose behind all of them, not only the ones that seemed to make "obvious" sense, but those that seemed obscure, such as the reason one does not consume pork. He didn't accept the simple answer of "because God said so" and made great efforts to comprehend what most of us would consider incomprehensible. Yet he also believed we needed to love God especially when His commandments and requirements went "beyond reason". He was careful though, to say that what seems like it is beyond our reason does not mean God is unreasonable or irrational, and we may be able to understand Him in terms of His effects, given additional time and study.

God is needed only when we go beyond reason, when we are asked to perform or refrain from acts which we would not think of on our own. Only then can we truly claim that our actions are holy.

It is Rambam's highly rational point of view that puts him at odds with Jewish mysticism. Mystics believe it's possible to extend a human being beyond the rational and physical world and to know God in a way that isn't possible within the limits of our normal experience. Maimonides believed that we can only know God through His effects on the world and that there is no way to access Him as He truly is. I suppose a mystic would liken the difference to God as Ayn Sof vs. God as the Shekhinah or Divine Presence, but Rambam would view even the apparent visible and tangible Shekhinah only in terms of how it impacted the physical world, much like a person believing you can only "experience" fire by examining burnt wood and ash rather than the flame itself.

While Maimonidies did not believe that the majority of Torah commandments applied to the peoples of the world, he didn't believe that the wisdom of the Torah was exclusively a Jewish possession. Much to the dismay of his critics (and he had many) he believed that knowledge and philosophy had universal applications, including knowledge of the Torah.

In our day, Maimonides' position is often ignored. We put so much stress on the concept of peoplehood that it is hard not to conclude that ethnic considerations come before philosophic ones. The dangers of making ethnicity paramount are: (1) People will become so enamored of he ceremonies, rituals, and folklore that they will neglect the intellectual growth which is supposed to follow and forget about the idea of monotheism; and (2) In the cases where intellectual growth does follow, it will over look the universality of Judaism and focus on its cultural and religious peculiarities.

Rambam did believe in preserving the Jewish identity and uniqueness and acknowledged that the Torah was the means by which this was and is achieved. However, for him, Jewish identity is understood as participation in a spiritual community. He considered the customs, ritual, and ceremonies..worth preserving because they allow the community to propagate a defensible doctrine. He also believed another set of "rituals, ceremonies, and customs" could be applied to other people groups (i.e. non-Jews), allowing them to "propagate the same doctrine", acknowledge the unique and radical Oneness of God, enact compassion on strangers, widows, and orphans, promote social harmony, and generally espouse the values that have been the hallmark of the Jewish ideal for thousands of years.

This has profound implications for Christianity and other monotheistic religious groups and provides additional motivation for Christians to entertain a study of Maimonides and his works. Through his understanding of the Torah, which he did not consider the exclusive property of the Jewish people, we can understand our God, our purpose, and ourselves. We can also understand what Judaism has to teach us as God's creations since the Torah has been the keeper of God's wisdom, knowledge, and desires for humanity since the days of Moses.

Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Isaiah 2:3

Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. -Isaiah 51:4

Published well over a decade ago, Kenneth Seeskin's Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed continues to show us a truly relevant and educational view of not only Maimonides and his Guide, but the significance of the Torah and Judaism, not only to the Jewish people, but to the rest of us.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: The Way of Kabbalah

Everyone is searching for something. Some pursue security, others pleasure or power. Yet others look for dreams, or they know not what. There are, however, those who know what they seek, but cannot find it in the natural world. For these searchers many clues have been laid by those who have gone before. The traces are everywhere, although only those with eyes to see or ears to hear perceive them. When the significance of these signs is seriously acted upon, Providence opens a door out of the natural into the supernatural to reveal a ladder from the transient to the Eternal. He who dares the ascent enters the Way of Kabbalah.

from the Way of Kabbalah
by z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi

You could call this book "timeless" in the sense that it was first published in 1976 and yet, presents in a manner totally accessible to the reader 35 years later. Halevi offers his audience a guided tour and an introductory lesson into the world of Kabbalah.

Structurally, the book is quite linear. It starts off with a basic introduction and definition of what Kabbalah is and what it means at it's core. It then proceeds to lead the reader through a series of chapters on personality and social theory. This part of the book reads like many of the texts I studied when I was in graduate school and pursuing my Masters degree in Counseling Psychology. There are a number of different theories or models of how a human personality is structured and Halevi offers yet one more as conceptualized by Kabbalah. This is important to understand because Kabbalah is the journey of taking a person as they enter into the discipline and, through the guidance of a maggid in a structured group, assists the person in achieving higher spiritual and mystic levels of functioning and awareness.

From understanding the individual personality, the book proceeds to describing the dynamics of a study group in Kabbalah. Beyond that, different but equally valid approaches to accessing the higher levels of existence and accessing God are described. The last chapter being simply "Ascension"; the ultimate goal of the mystic.

Most people seem to believe that Kabbalah is the Jewish Mystic tradition, but as I said in my review of Gershom Scholem's Major Trends of Jewish Mysticism, Kabbalah is only one of those traditions, albeit, the most well-known.

Kabbalah uses a diagram model called the Sefirotic Tree of Life. This isn't really a static diagram because a number of different concepts can be illustrated using the basic tree structure including the seven levels of heaven, the seven levels of teaching, and interestingly enough, the seven deadly sins (and as you can see, Kabbalah isn't afraid of borrowing from other traditions and religious conceptualizations).

When I was asked to read this book, I was expecting a fully Jewish treatment of the topic, since Kabbalah is a Jewish mystical discipline, but the author makes good use of Christian symbols, including that of Jesus, in expressing different ideas. Halevi refers to Jesus as "Joshua ben Miriam" the "Maggid of Nazeret" as a great Kabbalist in his own right and offers up a number of his teachings from the Gospels as Kabbalistic in nature, this despite the fact that Kabbalah is thought to have originated in 13th century Spain. I don't criticize the author for this, since most Jewish mystic forms can trace at least some of their history back to earlier eras and practices and Halevi isn't the only one to state that the Gospels read like Jewish mystic writings.

The caveat to my last paragraph is that the author also compares Jesus and Buddha as equals and at once recognizes Jesus as a renowned maggid or religious teacher while denying he is the Messiah. Given that Halevi is rather liberal in quoting from the Christian Bible and attributing the quotes to a "maggid", I wonder if, as a Jew, he is really that generous with his praise toward the "Christian Messiah" or if he is casting his net, so to speak, to catch the largest number of "fish" (readers and potential neophyte Kabbalists, in this case)? There's no way for me to tell if inclusion of "Joshua ben Miriam" in Kabbalistic teachings is common or unique to this author, at least not without reading other Kabbalah related books or sources, so don't draw too much from the appearance of Jesus here.

If I had to pick a textbook for a course called "Introduction to Kabbalah", I might consider Halevi's book. The chapters are short, the book is short (only 216 pages), and the content, which could easily be extremely complex, is fairly easy to take in. I'm not enthralled with the book, although by reading other reviews, I can see others are, but it did give me a concise introduction into "the way of Kabbalah." If you're looking for a similar introduction, Halevi's book is can give you that.

Remember though, this is only an introduction. Actual techniques and practices, while mentioned, are not described in detail. The book recommends group study of Kabbalah under a qualified maggid. This is not a guidebook for a "do-it-yourself" mystic journey to discover the higher realms.

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne)
The Matrix (1999)

Review: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

Reading Scholem again from our precarious vantage point in the age of the information revolution, at the moment of the much-trumpeted breaking of a canon, we may detect in his grand evocation of this strange and in many ways quite alien mystical corpus an exemplary pattern of how viable historical change takes place, how the antithetic tensions of life in culture lay against each other without destroying the continuity of the cultural system.

In this regard, Scholem's searching investigation of the twisting paths of Jewish mysticism makes profoundly instructive reading as we approach the millennium. But he also sees sharply that the mystics, impelled by discernible historical circumstances, very often sought to escape the ordeal of history by withdrawing into a realm of ecstasy and, at worst, delusion.

Scholem's magisterial study is hardly intended to promote a nostalgia for mysticism or any illusion that we can embrace it as it was, but he makes us see the essential role it has played in the Jewish story, and indeed in the human story, and he leads us to ponder what other symbolic languages there might be to express our stubborn sense of connection with eternal things.

From the Foreward to Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
written by Robert Alter
Berkeley, 1995

Gershom Scholem was not a mystic. He was a thorough and compelled educator and researcher who threw himself into an investigation of Jewish mysticism which resulted in Major Trends, a book that is considered to be a major contribution and central tome on the history and nature of the Jewish mystical movements.

Scholem's book is based on the nine Stroock Lectures he presented at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1938 (Major Trends was published just a few years later) and each chapter stands, more or less, on its own, with just a few strings weaving forward and backward to the other material. The book functions as a whirlwind tour of the history of the various flavors of Jewish mysticism and how they developed, from first century Roman Judea and Merkabah mysticism, through 18th and 19th century and Polish/Ukrainian Chasidism. Suffice it to say, the book covers a vast territory. Unless you are already well versed in the different expressions of Jewish mysticism, don't hope to come away with an easily digested summary of what makes up the different mystic traditions. You can read the book cover to cover, but once you've done so, you'll need to do so again, and then you'll use this book as a reference when exploring one or more of the mystic movements in detail.

My own modest introduction to the Jewish mystic tradition was in reading and reviewing Paul Philip Levertoff's Love and the Messianic Age. Levertoff was a Chasidic Jew who lived in the late 19th and into the mid-20th century and who saw the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, as a reflection of his own mystic background as a Chasidim. When I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I began to see frail glimpses of who the Jewish Messiah is through that unusual and elusive lens and I wanted to see and understand more.

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is more; a lot more.

As a non-Jewish Christian and disciple of the Jewish Messiah, I started reading Scholem with an eye on discovering more hidden truths about the Jesus (Yeshua) within his pages and I must say I found those truths...and I didn't.

I have to be careful here. It is easy to find what you're looking for, much like a person panning for gold nuggets, eager to "strike it rich". But does a person searching the river with an eye filled with preconceptions find true gold, or only what looks like gold? That's the dilemma I faced reading Scholem.

I found many dualisms and parallels that seemed to point to Jesus, especially in the earlier mystic traditions, but is he really there? I don't know that I can say "yes" or "no" based on Scholem's rapid and intense coverage of such a broad spectrum of Jewish mysticisms. Right now, I prefer to withhold judgment and to be content learning what there is to learn on Scholem's terms rather than my own. The rest will come, God be willing.

The details of the book are too numerous to document here. I wrote copious notes as I turned each page, but to replicate those notes here would create a novel, not a blog post. The chief benefit of reading Major Trends at this stage of my education is to lay a wide foundation for what comes afterward. I've already started reading my next book, The Way of Kabbalah by Ben Shimon Halevi, and from the very first page, what I had learned from Scholem enabled me to grasp Halevi's description of Kabbalah in a way I couldn't have achieved otherwise (Scholem dedicated two full lectures just to the Zohar).

Scholem seems to leave out no detail or observation as he takes us through history, examining each mystic movement in Judaism. He relates not only the prize, but the peril of pursuing the mystic, and not only the virtues, but the flaws and fallacies of each mystic writer and explorer. As Alter stated in the Foreward, Major Trends is both a Jewish story and a story of human beings striving, sometimes vainly, to pursue God in His "native realm" which lies beyond the boundaries of human perception and existence. Scholem's final lecture ends this way:

The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me. Under what aspects this invisible stream of Jewish mysticism will again come to the surface we cannot tell. But I have come here to speak to you of the main tendencies of Jewish mysticism as we know them. To speak of the mystical course which, in the great cataclysm now stirring the Jewish people more deeply than in the entire history of Exile, destiny may still have in store for us - and I for one believe that there is such a course - is the task of prophets, not of professors.

There's another way to view the course Scholem describes:

If we were Jews because our minds and hearts told us so, then our Judaism would take us only as far as our minds and hearts can know. But we are not. And so, our journey is on eagle’s wings and our destiny beyond the stars.
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
from his short article, "Not by choice"
Chabad.org

Jewish mysticism is not just a Jewish story but a human story. It's a journey to find God using means that go beyond prayer and study. It's a path that leads us outside of our perceptions and even outside our imaginations, and into a set of worlds fantastic and dangerous. Ezekiel saw such worlds. So did John as he describes in the Book of Revelations. Scholem doesn't tell us how to find the road that takes us to these worlds, but he tells us many stories about the men who did. If you want to learn about the mystics who discovered the trail head into the unknown, reading Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is a good place to start.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

I hope that the preceding studies will have communicated to readers something of the intriguing questions and hotly contested issues that justify and comprise the historical investigation of early devotion to Jesus. It may be somewhat unsettling for some Christians, at least initially, to explore the origins of Christian faith as a subject of historical inquiry. I trust, however, that Christians will see that a historical appreciation of the emergence of devotion to Jesus need not pose a challenge to continuing to revere Jesus as rightful recipient of devotion with God. Indeed, I hope that Christians will welcome any light that can be cast on the faith of their religious forebears from the earliest period of the Christian movement.

Larry W. Hurtado
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

The thing that struck me the most as I finished Hurtado's book, was that he never once said point blank, "Jesus is God". In fact, he didn't come to a definite conclusion one way or the other on the matter (barring the above-quoted statement). He simply presented his evidence, discussed why he disagreed with opposing views, and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions. I rather like that.

Hurtado is a scholarly writer but he did "tone down" the chapters of this book, allowing them to be a bit more accessible to the "average reader". The first four chapters were originally presentations he gave as part of the inaugural lectures in the Deichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel (2004). The last four chapters were taken from some of Hurtado's earlier published works. I wouldn't recommend this book for a little light reading before bedtime, but I do recommend it for someone who wants to investigate the history of early devotion to Jesus by his Jewish and Gentile disciples, particularly within the context of 1st century Jewish monotheism.

I very much appreciated Hurtado's attention to the environment, sociology, history, and theology of the Jewish people of 1st century "Roman Judea" and how it became possible for Jews to revere Jesus while not (apparently) violating the Shema (God is One). I also never concluded that Hurtado's evidence resulted in Jesus being co-equal to God in deity...exactly.

The book repeatedly makes use of the term "dinitarianism" (as opposed to "binitarianism", which would be two Gods; God the Father and God the Son) which generally means that God shared or more accurately, that God "delegated" some of His authority and divine nature to the Jewish Messiah, allowing high honors to be afforded Jesus, but only for the glory of God. Hurtado paints a picture of Jesus as a unique being with a position in the spiritual hierarchy unlike any other being. He is worthy of honor and glory, but only as it glorifies the Father. In other words, Jesus doesn't stand alone as an object of devotion and is only acknowledged in reverence as it relates to worshiping the One God.

The biggest problem for this book to solve was not how Gentile converts to the Messianic (early Christian) faith could worship Jesus as God and God (the Father) as God, but how Jews could bend, twist, or mutate ethical monotheism to allow Jesus to be granted "divine honors". The answer is that Jesus was seen as divine, but not actually "God" by the Jewish disciples. He was (and is) a unique entity who was granted a special status by God as Messiah. However, even Hurtado's mountain of evidence in an early occurrence (within the first 30 years of the ascension) of reverent honors being given to Jesus, does not result in the more modern understanding in God is God and Jesus is God too. Although Hurtado didn't say it outright, how we understand the divine nature of Jesus has indeed "mutated" from the original Jewish perspective that existed within Paul's lifetime. The viewpoint of the status of Jesus has changed from what the Jewish apostles saw and taught, to how subsequent generations of Gentile Christians chose to believe in and respond to Jesus. It is more than likely that the Greek pagan "understanding" that a man could be honored as a "god" became a large part of the development of what we now see as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It didn't originate, as such, from the first Jewish disciples.

Hurtado spent a great deal of time and effort factoring in Jewish perspectives of Jesus including a point Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary made about how the death of a great tzadik (righteous sage) could atone for the sins of many, including the nation of Israel (Hurtado, pg 21). However, Hurtado (pg 28) did miss that Jews can and do pray in the merit of (in the name of) a great Rebbe all the time, so that isn't an an iron-clad indication of "godhood" as such.

Hurtado did repeat, on a number of occasions (starting on pg 30), that although Jesus was the first sage or Prophet to be afforded a sort of devotion usually associated with God alone, he was not treated as co-equal to God or as another "person" of God or the "Godhead". In fact, the book states (pg 53) that Jesus continually subordinated himself to God the Father (which I consider that aspect of God referred to as Ayn Sof in Kabbalistic thought) and the words of the Master reflect this most clearly:

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19

"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." -John 5:30

If Jesus made a point to subordinate himself to God and if that's how his early Jewish disciples came to understand him, then it would not violate Jewish monotheism to give honors to Jesus, just as God delegated honors to the Son, and not have it be the worship that is given to God alone. Humanity must exalt God and God only. God exalts the Messiah and gives him a special and unique divine status among all beings in existence. That seems to be the general message I get from reading Hurtado. It isn't the same message I get from Evangelical Christianity that God is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God (and as in other books I've reviewed that have addressed the Christ as deity issue, Hurtado barely mentions God's Spirit and never suggests that it is also God).

It's as if God "shared" something with Jesus that no other being possessed (pg 95). The closest analog we have is Moses, and when we understand that God elevated the name of the Messiah above every name, we see that the merit of Yeshua (Jesus) is the highest form of merit, not unlike (but superior to) praying to and approaching God in the merit of Moses or Abraham, or the patriarchs or the prophets.

Hurtado spends an entire chapter analyzing Philippians 2:6-11 as an ancient, honorific hymn acknowledging Jesus, which I wrote about last week. At that time, I drew a comparison between the Kabbalistic concept of Ayn Sof as "the Father" and the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as somehow being manifest as "the Son". If Judaism can see the Ayn Sof, the unobservable, unknowable, ultimate creative force that is God and the Shechinah as the physical, visible, touchable, "experience-able" manifestation of God in our world and not see those two concepts as "two God", then it may be possible to apply the same illustration to God and the Messiah and still have One God.

I'm not saying that Hurtado went this far in his presentation of early Jewish and Gentile devotion to Jesus, but for me, it's the logical extension of what Hurtado has written. Glory and honor is given only to God through the Messiah (pg 137), not for the sake of Jesus alone. That may well satisfy the Jewish requirement of monotheism and still give the ancient (and modern) Jewish disciples the ability to give honor to the Messiah's divine and unique status. The subsequent Gentile believers, not having a Jewish educational and experiential background, very likely "took it too far" (I'm extrapolating from Hurtado's writing now) as evidenced (one example) by the Johannine community being evicted from the synagogue for "blending" God the Father and God the Son (the Jewish Messiah). This probably (my opinion) is because the newly-minted Gentile Christians couldn't "get" how Jews saw God and the Messiah as closely related, but still different and separate. When a Jew says "God is One", then He's One". Subsequent Gentile Christian doctrine made it possible for the One to be two in the eyes of the Jewish Messianics, crossing the line, so to speak, between worshiping God and honoring the Messiah, and worshiping God and Jesus as "co-Gods".

Hurtado goes so far as to refer to Jesus as plenipotentiary, which paints a picture of Jesus as a "person" who has been delegated full authority and power by the source, as God's representative and "ambassador" but not creating Jesus literally as a God. It's like the President granting our nation's ambassador to a foreign country full powers and rights to negotiate a treaty. It doesn't make the ambassador the President, but it does give him/her complete authority to make a treaty as if the ambassador were the President. They are two separate people, each with their own status and position, but certain powers and rights are granted from one to the other.

This probably isn't what some of you wanted to hear, but it's what I get out of Hurtado's book as filtered through my beliefs and my personality. That's what a book review is.

Whatever you may think of my conclusions, I highly recommend Larry Hurtado's How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? if you want an honest, well considered (especially in his treatment of 1st century Judaism), and thoughtful perspective on how Jesus came to be granted divine honors and worship by his Jewish and Gentile disciples...and how that carries forward to those of us today who call ourselves disciples of the Master.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: Yeshua in Context

The stories of Yeshua demand a response. The normal order of meaning, the rules of the game called life, are changed in his stories. We are each confronted with the problem of meaning, the possible ways his story intersects our story.

In a number of his sayings, Yeshua says something about himself or about a way of life that calls for action. He implies that when we have encountered him (in our case, through story and not in person), we will understand something about the realm above, about a deeper life, about a breakthrough from the present world to the world to come.

Derek Leman in the final chapter of his book
Yeshua in Context: The Life and Times of Yeshua the Messiah

Yeshua in Context is a book about stories. You might say that, from Leman's perspective, the writers of the Gospels are storytellers rather than reporters. Leman, a theologian who earned his Master's degree in Hebrew Bible studies from Emory University, and who is a Rabbi at Tikvat David Messianic Synagogue, addresses what many New Testament scholars view as inconsistencies in the Gospels, by presenting them as differences of intent in what the writers were trying to communicate about the Jewish Messiah.

Leman is also a storyteller. By writing this book, he's sharing with his audience his own perspective; his own story, about who the Jewish Messiah is to him and what Yeshua means in Leman's life. Leman tells us a story that is largely scholarly and somewhat personal, with just a hint of the mystic.

Yeshua in Context is also about giving the reader access to the story. At only 154 pages long and presenting no lengthy set of footnotes, no extensive bibliography, and not even a single appendix, Leman constructs a text that takes the complexity of the life of Yeshua (Jesus), his teachings, his 1st century Jewish context, and his Messianic identity, and opens them up to the rest of us with deceptive ease.

I say "deceptive" because there's a great deal of density contained just beneath the surface of each page in the book. For instance, Leman takes the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and tells the reader something about Yeshua's role as a prophet as it relates to the prophetic tales of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He takes the much discussed and interpreted Beatitudes and presents his own story about the coming Kingdom of God. He engages the parable of the wicked tenants (Mark 12:1-12) and discusses the mystery of why a father would send a beloved son on an assuredly fatal mission.

He even says something about a topic near and dear to me; the divine nature of the Messiah as related to the Shechinah and seen through a Kabbalistic lens:

The Aramaic paraphrases of Yeshua's day, the Targums, said about this story that the Israelites looked for healing to the Memra of God, the Word of God, the manifestation of God on earth...This is exactly who Yeshua is claiming to be: the one with all the nature of God manifested on earth, the radiation of God's being, his Word or Presence. In kabbalistic terminology (from later Judaism), Yeshua is the sum of all sefirot (emanations) and the Father is the Ein Sof (the One without End, the unseeable One...).

I said before that there were no lengthy collection of footnotes in this book, but a brief Bibliography is offered right before Chapter 1, and in the body of each chapter, any of the works cited are referenced by the author's last name and page number. As teacher and student, the writer adequately points back to his research, albeit in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of his narrative.

When I write reviews for technical books, I usually include a mention of any book-associated websites and the value added to the book by on line material. In this case, Leman has created a website (thanks to the power of WordPress) dedicated to continuing for the reader, the education found in his book. In a sense, it's a very large extension to what, on the surface, seems like a relatively short discussion.

One of the reasons I asked to review this book was because of my personal attempt to reconcile the internal discrepancies of the Gospels with the authority of the Bible. How can the holy writings of Christianity be authoritative if they don't perfectly and completely "line up", so to speak? Is the source material of Christianity flawed and, if so, how can we depend upon it as an accurate rendition of the author of our faith?

I'm not sure I found the whole answer in Leman's book, but I think I found some of the answer as related to other books and, more to the point, other perspectives. I'm coming to an understanding of the discrepancies recorded in the Gospels, in terms of what traditional Jewish scholars would view when reading the differences between Talmudic and Midrashic versions of the same story. From a modern, western point of view, we struggle with inconsistent reports from two or more witnesses of the same event, and attempt to harmonize the various iterations. From the Jewish student's vantage point however, no problem exists. Each "story" is accepted on its own merit without the need to have it completely make sense with other stories. The reader gleans the important elements from the story without trying to make it match up with what others have written about the same anecdote.

This is where, in my opinion anyway, the authority of the Bible can be discovered. Not in viewing it as a comprehensive report on testimony delivered in a court case, but as a collection of holy writings by righteous men (tzaddikim) who want us to experience the most righteous one of God through a series of mystic tales.

You might not find that all of your questions about the Jewish Messiah are answered in Derek Leman's book, but it's a good place to start.

Yeshua in Context is available for purchase at Mount Olive Press.

Review: Love and the Messianic Age

Kabbalistic literature is, generally speaking, comparable to a large, sprawling city with many treacherous back-alleys, dangerous neighborhoods, and sudden, unexpected dead-ends. Even with a good map and a good sense for direction, the visitor is likely to find himself lost and confused and may easily stray into a bad part of town. Rather than trying to find your way through this maze-like metropolis on your own, we recommend you follow a reliable guide. Paul Philip Levertoff is just such a guide.

Boaz Michael from the Foreward to the
Love and the Messianic Age Commentary

I love this description of navigating the mystic Jewish writings. I feel as if, opening the pages to Paul Philip Levertoff's Love and the Messianic Age, that I'm an American tourist on his first visit to Constantinople. The year is 1923, and I've been suddenly diverted from my innocent vacation plans into adventure and intrigue, thrown in with Kasper Gutman and a collection of rogues, searching the back alleys of this ancient city for some clue as to the whereabouts of the Maltese Falcon.

While Dashell Hammett's famous detective novel wasn't published until 1930, Levertoff's short but impressive work originally became available in 1923 and now, thanks to First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) and Vine of David, Levertoff's writing, insights, and expression of Jesus the Jewish Messiah, are accessible to us again.

Before continuing with this review, you might want to become briefly acquainted with Levertoff and how a young Chasidic Jew at the end of the 19th Century came to faith in Jesus, by reading my blog post, A Short Lesson from Feivel the Chasid. Levertoff's journey from an Orthodox Jewish student in Orsha, Belarus to an Anglican priest in Wales is fascinating and even amazing. Understanding his journey is the way to understand what he has to say to us.

As Boaz Michael writes in the Foreward to the book's commentary, mysticism isn't for everybody. I didn't think it was for me either, but I was getting "stuck" reading more Christian-oriented inspirational and scholarly works, as a way to find the Jewish Messiah. The vast collection of Gentile Christian commentary has made discovering the "original" Jesus difficult by largely dismissing a Hebraic understanding of the Jewish Messiah, his Jewish disciples, and his teachings as a Jewish Rabbi and Prophet. After briefly being introduced to Levertoff's book and the concept of Jewish mystic writings on Derek Leman's blog, Boaz Michael suggested that I read (and review) Levertoff's book and the accompanying commentary.

I did...and I was hooked.

If you follow my blog, you could probably guess this, as, over the past two weeks, I've posted about 9 or 10 separate "mini-reviews" of different concepts and lessons I've learned while reading Levertoff.

Since last summer, I've been challenging my faith and questioning my basic assumptions about who Jesus is and who I am in him. This investigation intensified at the beginning February when I ran headlong into my ambiguity about the deity of Jesus (is he or is he not literally God?). In reading various Christian texts including Bowman's and Komoszewski's Putting Jesus in His Place, I failed to discover sufficient evidence and information to convince me that the Orthodox Christian viewpoint on Christ's deity and the Trinity held water. Reading Levertoff, I think I've found out why.

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
"Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader"
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

I think Levertoff is right. I don't believe it's really possible to understand what the Jewish Messiah is teaching by taking him out of his context. I think what impressed Levertoff about the Gospels should absolutely amaze us.

In 1887 a nine-year-old Chasidic Jew named Feivel Levertoff was trudging home from cheder (a Jewish day school) when a discarded scrap of paper caught his eye. It was printed with Hebrew text. Supposing it was a leaf from a prayer book or other sacred volume, Feivel picked it out of the snow.

He quickly read the piece of paper. It was a page from a book he had never read before. It told the story of a boy like himself - not much older either - whose parents found him in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, expounding the Scriptures and learning with the great sages of antiquity.

Jorge Quinonez continues this tale of young Feivel by telling us that he had found a Hebrew translation of Luke 2:45-47 and supposed it was part of the Jewish holy writings. Feivel was shocked when he later showed the paper to his father, and his father expressed anger, forbade Feivel from ever again reading "such things", and then watched his father crumple the paper and toss it into the stove.

This was just the beginning of Levertoff's fascination with the Gospels as Feivel (later he chose the name Paul Philip after his formal conversion to Christianity) secretly found opportunities to continue reading the teachings of "Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth". What continued to draw Levertoff along this path (and what should draw us as well), is how the Gospels so seamlessly and thoroughly blended into the Chasidic Jewish mystic writings, teachings, and world view. Seen through the eyes of a teenager who had the benefit of a classical Jewish education and exposure to the esoteric works of the Chasidim, Feivel was puzzled at how Gentile Christianity could ever make heads or tails of Yeshua. By the time Levertoff was 17, he was a devoted Chasid (a "Chasid" is a disciple of a distinguished Rabbi or spiritual leader in a religious community) of the great Rebbe Yeshua.

What Levertoff created in writing Love and the Messianic Age some decades later, and what FFOZ/Vine of David has provided by creating their commentary on Levertoff, is a roadmap that allows us to see the territory of the teachings of Christ through the lens of the Zohar, the Tanya, and the realm of Chasidic Judaism.

Although the world sees Levertoff as a Jewish convert to Christianity, it is more accurate to describe him as a Chasidic disciple of the Jewish Messiah. Levertoff's Jewish understanding of Jesus as the greatest and most unique Prophet, Rabbi, and ultimately, as the Messiah and Son of God, never wavered throughout his lifetime, and by writing Love and the Messianic Age, he granted a larger audience the ability to see through his eyes. By republishing Levertoff's book and writing their own detailed commentary on Levertoff, FFOZ and Vine of David have allowed even generally non-mystic, non-Jewish people like me, the ability to navigate the strange roads Boaz Michael describes, and to finally understand the Lord and Savior of the world as I believe he truly is.

If you're reading my review from a traditional Christian context, you may be having problems understanding what resonates within me when I read Levertoff, but I have found in this book, the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the picture of Jesus. Each writer, each scholar, each believer, has a different way of seeing Jesus. Sometimes the differences are slight, but I've found some of those differences to be profound. I can't say as an absolute fact, that Levertoff's presentation of who Jesus is, and his understanding of what Jesus taught, is the only way or the best way to look at the identity, nature, and character of the Jewish Messiah, but it is the only perspective that has answered questions for me, that no other investigator has truly addressed. How does Christ's deity connect to the Shechinah? How does the Gospel of John line up with the writings in the Zohar? What is the match between the Christian concept of koinonia and achdut or "unity", the highest ideal in Chasidism?

It seems more than astounding that the world of Jewish mysticism and the world of the Gospels so completely map to one another. It's like wandering through a city where the streets have no names, and then finding a guide who tells you how it all makes sense.

You may be thinking that trying to grasp the meaning behind Jesus by using a Chasidic model is too far for you to go. However, there's actually nothing particularly difficult about reading Levertoff or the commentary. The sources being cited may be beyond your experiences (they were for me), but the interface provided by book and by the commentary, make what's being said and the attendant meaning very accessible. For me, beyond accessibility and meaning, I also found illumination.

This isn't the only way to look at and understand Jesus, and it may not be the one you would choose at first, but I highly recommend that you give it a try, especially if how you see the Jewish Messiah right now in your faith, seems a little bit stale or perhaps, is just a picture that hasn't challenged you for a very long time.

Who is Jesus really? What did he teach? Is it possible that what you have been taught; what you think you understand isn't the whole picture? If those are questions you have, I urge you to get a copy of Levertoff's book as well as the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary. Read them slowly. Carefully unfold the map. Discover how the ancient streets and byways of the Holy City begin to open up for you. Faith isn't a vacation; it's an adventure. Let Paul Philip Levertoff be your guide to discovery and treasure.

Who Gets to Define Christianity?

God is retelling each of our stories in Jesus. All of the bad parts and the ugly parts and the parts we want to pretend never happened are redeemed. They seemed pointless and they were painful at the time, but God retells our story and they become the moments when God's grace is most on display. We find ourselves asking, am I really forgiven of that? The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true. Our choice becomes this: We can trust his retelling of the story, or we can trust our telling of our story. It is a choice we make every day about the reality we are going to live in.

And this reality extends beyond this life.

Heaven is full of forgiven people.

Hell is full of forgiven people.

Heaven is full of people God loves whom Jesus died for.

Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for.

Rob Bell
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

Pastor Bell's description of the inhabitants of heaven and hell are probably a little different than what you've heard of before...unless you've read or heard about his latest book, Love Wins. Love Wins has generated a huge amount of controversy in Christian circles, including the Christian blogosphere, since Bell's presentation of hell is radically different than what we've been taught from the pulpit. But how radical is it?

I can't answer the question directly, since I've not read the book yet, but given Bell's familiarity with some aspects of Judaism and how Jewish thought can be applied to the Christian worship of the Jewish Messiah, maybe I can make a guess or two.

What do Jews believe about sin and hell?

First off, for those readers who may not know, in Judaism, there is a belief in the "afterlife", which is traditionally referred to as "life in the world to come". This isn't "heaven" so much as it is the "Messianic Age", when the Messiah comes and "fixes" the world so that there is universal peace, Israel, the nation and the people, are secure, and everyone worships the God of Jacob.

According to Orthodox Rabbi Shraga Simmons, here is what Jews believe about "hell":

When a person dies and goes to heaven, the judgment is not arbitrary and externally imposed. Rather, the soul is shown two videotapes. The first video is called "This is Your Life!" Every decision and every thought, all the good deeds, and the embarrassing things a person did in private is all replayed without any embellishments. It's fully bared for all to see. That's why the next world is called Olam HaEmet - "the World of Truth," because there we clearly recognize our personal strengths and shortcomings, and the true purpose of life. In short, Hell is not the Devil with a pitchfork stoking the fires.

The second video depicts how a person's life "could have been..." if the right choices had been made, if the opportunities were seized, if the potential was actualized. This video - the pain of squandered potential - is much more difficult to bear. But at the same time it purifies the soul as well. The pain creates regret which removes the barriers and enables the soul to completely connect to God.

Not all souls merit Gehenom. It is for people who have done good but need to be purified. A handful of people are too evil for Gehenom, and they are punished eternally. Pharaoh is one example.

I suppose the reference to "videotapes" is figurative, but look at what Rabbi Simmons is saying. His description of the Jewish view of "hell" or rather Gehenom, isn't that different from Bell's. For most people deserving "hell", what they get instead, is exposure to situations that cause them pain (such as looking at their video of how they screwed up their lives) with the goal not being punishment, but rather, purification. Only very, very few truly evil human beings are consigned to eternal punishment. Pharaoh is given as an example by Simmons, but it's a safe bet that Hitler is in the same fire pit.

What Rabbi Simmons describes, shows us that Bell didn't simply make up his understanding or belief regarding hell, but that he's relying heavily on Orthodox Jewish thought to form his opinion. The quote from his book Velvet Elvis, published in 2005, shows us that Bell's beliefs about hell aren't brand new and that he was thinking in this direction at least five or six years ago (and probably longer).

I think the worst you can say about Bell's opinions regarding hell (and again, I haven't read the book) is that they more line up with Orthodox Judaism than Orthodox Christianity. Going public with this belief would be a rather bold step for most Pastors, but Bell seems to have a track record of marching to a different drummer.

Collective Christianity and particularly the Evangelical world, has generated a major power surge of outrage in response to Bell's book. About a week ago, I read an amazingly lengthy (21 pages) review written by Pastor Kevin DeYoung of the University Reformed Church in East Lansing Michigan. I won't attempt to recount the review here (unlike DeYoung, I neither have the time nor the inclination to write 21 pages in blog form), and you can certainly read what he has to say at your leisure, but I did want to point out a few things DeYoung wrote:

At the very heart of this controversy, and one of the reasons the blogosphere exploded over this book, is that we really do have two different Gods. The stakes are that high. If Bell is right, then historic orthodoxy is toxic and terrible. But if the traditional view of heaven and hell are right, Bell is blaspheming. I do not use the word lightly, just like Bell probably chose “toxic” quite deliberately. Both sides cannot be right. As much as some voices in evangelicalism will suggest that we should all get along and learn from each other and listen for the Spirit speaking in our midst, the fact is we have two irreconcilable views of God.

No doubt, Rob Bell writes as a pastor who wants to care for people struggling with the doctrine of hell. I too write as a pastor. And as a pastor I know that Love Wins means God’s people lose. In the world of Love Wins, my congregation should not sing “In Christ Alone” because they cannot not believe, “There on the cross where Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” They would not belt out “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.” No place for “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” with its confession, “the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that Justice gave.” The jubilation of “No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in him, is mine!” is muted in Love Wins. The bad news of our wrath-deserving wretchedness is so absent that the good news of God’s wrath-bearing Substitute cannot sing in our hearts. When God is shrunk down to fit our cultural constraints, the cross is diminished. And whenever the cross is diminished we pain the hearts of God’s people and rob them of their joy.

I tried to pick out some of the sections in DeYoung's review that, for me, encapsulated why he had enough of an issue with Bell's book, that he found it necessary, as a busy Senior Pastor (at this point, I have to admit, that I prefer my "senior" Pastors to have at least a few gray hairs on their head, and both Bell and DeYoung seem a little young for an older, "gray hair" like me) of a rather large church, to write a detailed analysis of Love Wins. What is most dismaying about what DeYoung writes isn't that he disagrees with Bell, which is just fine and dandy, but that he disagrees with Bell because Bell does not present the view of hell that is espoused by Evangelical Christianity. Further, DeYoung offers Evangelical Christianity (of all of the "Christianities" available in the early 21st century) as the normative Christian expression on the planet (in other words, none of the other Christian denominations are "true" Christians). From DeYoung's perspective, only Evangelical Christianity has the corner market on defining and presenting God, Jesus, Heaven, and Hell.

Yeah, that last sentence seems kind of heavy handed, even to me, but that's certainly the flavor I came away with after reading DeYoung's review.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post called Seeing Jesus Through Different Windows in which I tried to summarize my investigation up to this point, on what I've learned about Jesus the Jewish Messiah and how to understand his mission, message, and identity. As you can see from that blog post and previous book reviews I've written, there is more than one way to understand Jesus and more than one way to interpret his message. Pastor DeYoung and Evangelical Christianity may be a voice in the world of "Christiandom" but they are not, as DeYoung seems to believe, the only voice.

When I reviewed Bowman's and Komoszewski's book Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, Robert Bowman wrote a comment on the blog post of my review stating that "We do assume that the New Testament is the proper source of Christian doctrine." and "Your review amounts to saying that your real problem with our book is that you lack confidence in the reliability of the NT writings."

I have to disagree with Bowman in that modern Christian doctrine is or should be the only lens by which we can view the Jewish Messiah and in fact, I think that artificially imposing a modern Evangelical understanding on the Jewish Messiah as he lived among men in the 1st Century C.E. in ancient Israel, automatically introduces many barriers to our getting at what the Messiah was teaching. Further, isolating Jesus the Jewish Messiah from the Old Testament (Tanakh) and every act of God that came before Matthew 1:1, makes it almost impossible to truly grasp what the author of the Christian faith was and is really trying to tell us. While Bowman told me that the "book does not presuppose the inerrancy of Scripture", in fact, if the book doesn't depend upon the inerrancy of the NT scriptures, how can it say that the NT writings unequivocally support the book's conclusions?

I know it seems like I'm picking on Evangelicals, but in some sense, both Bowman's and DeYoung's comments amount to a throwing down of the gauntlet. It's one thing for an Evangelical Pastor to preach what he believes and base his opinion on Christian doctrine, but it's another thing entirely to say that his viewpoint is the only way to see the Bible and Jesus in an absolute manner.

At whatever point I get around to reading Bell's latest book, I may conclude that I don't agree with him either, but that doesn't automatically make me right and Bell wrong. The best I can say is that we have a difference of opinion and to state my rationale for why I disagree with him. The readers can make up their own minds.

OK, I can accept that people like Bowman and DeYoung aren't injecting their perspectives into the world just because they need the exercise, and I am willing to believe they are sincerely concerned about the faithful being lead down a path to heresy and apostasy. If they really believe that Bell's book and my review (and I'm sure I'm small potatoes to guys like these...Bell, on the other hand, has a more far-reaching "voice") are dangerous to Christians, then they have a duty to speak out. I get that.

My big issue is with them acting like their perspective is the only perspective, is that they behave as if God had given only Evangelical Christians the secret password to the cryptic knowledge of the Bible and that we, the uninformed of the world, must believe them, rather than studying, looking at different understandings of our faith, praying, and coming to a more Berean-like conclusion.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: Putting Jesus in His Place

The case for the deity of Christ does not rest on a few proof-texts. The popular notion that some fourth-century Christians decided to impose on the church a belief in Jesus as God and wrenched isolated Bible verses from their contexts to support their agenda is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The framers of the orthodox doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity did have an agenda, but it was not to replace a merely human Jesus with a divine Christ. Their agenda was to safeguard the New Testament's clear teaching of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that did equal justice to three other clear teachings of the Bible: there is only one God; Jesus is the Son and not the Father; Jesus is also a human being. In this book, we have touched at various places on the biblical evidence for these three teachings, while our focus throughout has remained on establishing the truth of the deity of Christ.

from the conclusion of Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ
Authors: Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski
Format: Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: Kregel Publications (August 31, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0825429838
ISBN-13: 978-0825429835

Before you begin reading this book review, I want to tell you that it's somewhat controversial. Questioning the deity of Jesus can be a very difficult thing for people to read about or talk about. I don't pull any punches in this review. That's one of the reasons I created this blog; to question assumptions and ask hard questions. I just thought you should know this before proceeding.

Bowman's and Komoszewski's book has exactly one purpose: to prove, from the New Testament text, that Jesus is God the Son, one part of the Trinity, and that his followers and disciples were aware of this during his earthly existence and especially very shortly afterward, as Peter, Paul, and the other disciples were spreading the Good News throughout the Greek-speaking nations.

Do they prove their case? In fact they do, but there are a couple of caveats:

The authors prove their case if you are already convinced of the deity of Christ without reservation, and are looking for an in-depth analysis of the proof-texts in the New Testament (the book is written so it could be used in a Bible class on this topic, as well as a reference).

The authors prove their case if you believe in the total inerrancy of the entire Bible as we have it today, and believe that the New Testament we can purchase in any bookstore and online, was indeed written by the individuals who are commonly attributed to be the authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter...).

If you have no doubts and particularly no serious doubts regarding the deity of Christ, and you believe the Bible and specifically the New Testament, contains no ambiguities, contradictions, inconsistencies, believe that all content in the NT is the original content, was not erroneously copied by later scribes and translators, and no content was added, removed, or changed in the decades or centuries subsequent to their original authorship, then I think Bowman and Komoszewski have a strong case.

But that's saying a lot.

The book was written with the assumptions I listed above. The authors are already convinced of their point and, as instructors at Fuller Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary respectively, support the basic tenets of those institutions relative to the inerrancy of the Bible. This is the first book addressing the New Testament and the deity of Jesus I've read that so strongly assumes these positions. My previous readings (though limited to only three other books so far) all provide supporting evidence that many of the NT texts were written later than their assumed dates, and not by the authors attributed to them. Further, the authors I've read, as well as a larger body of NT scholars, believe that the Gospel of John, may have been specifically written and/or edited by a group of Gentile Christians, popularly known as the Johannine Community, who may have developed the documents attributed to the Apostle John with a strong pro-deity bias that likely wasn't found among Christ's original Jewish disciples. This could have resulted in Gentiles supporting Christ's deity being removed from the Jewish/Christian synagogue, as well as being one of the issues that contributed to the larger Gentile/Jewish schism in the early church. There are also questions about the authenticity of some of Paul's letters as well as Peter's missives which further erodes documented support of the deity of Jesus.

Note: The books I've previously read on this topic are When Jesus Became God by Richard E. Rubenstein, Jesus, Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman, and From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God by Maurice Casey.

I can't comment much further along this line, at least in a truly scholarly fashion, because I am merely a lay person without the educational background in theology and New Testament studies to be able to give a more educated opinion on the matter. But I have to consider some things.

According to Bowman and Komoszewski, John's Gospel is the only one that mentions that Jesus is God more than once and, if you factor out the Gospels and Epistles that NT scholars consider to be questionable, then a lot of this book's source material supporting Christ's deity goes away.

The trick is, it doesn't all go away, at least for that particular reason. However, all of the efforts the authors make at jiggling the translation of Greek to English in the Gospel of John for example, becomes perhaps more effort than it's worth.

Another area that I found difficult, was the book's proposal that either Jesus must be God or he had to be an ordinary human being. One of the book's assumptions was that, in order to be the Messiah, Jesus had to be God. This is really peculiar, since Judaism doesn't have that assumption and, as far as I know, it never did have that belief. While the authors extensively quote from the Old Testament as part of supporting their arguments, they don't make much of an attempt to see their position from the point of view of Christ's primary audience: 1st Century Jews, nor do they look at the Old Testament sources from a Hebraic perspective. The overall lens by which they view the Bible and by which they expect their readers to examine their book, is an Evangelical Christian lens. This isn't to say that they were completely unmindful of the affect of Jewish monotheism relative to declaring Jesus as God, but the authors state that the New Testament writers had to take care in how they documented Christ's deity in order not to offend Jewish monotheists!

Critics of the doctrine of deity of Jesus often ask why, if Jesus is God, the New Testament does not refer to him more often as God. The answer is twofold. First, the New Testament writers were generally very careful to avoid making statements that would have implied that Jesus was the Father. While affirming Jesus' divine status in many ways, they maintained a clear distinction between the persons of the Father and the Son. Since they commonly applied the name "God" to the Father, they tended not to use that name for Jesus except in ways that did not confuse the two persons.

I'll say more on this in a bit, but here's the critical part I want to present:

The second reason is that the theological and religious roots of the New Testament were deeply monotheistic, and its authors sought to affirm Jesus' deity in ways that people would not perceive as undermining their Jewish monotheistic heritage.

Bowman and Komoszewski refer to R.T. France's The Worship of Jesus: A Neglected Factor in Christological Debate in forming this opinion. France calls any mention of the deity of Jesus from a 1st century Jew's perspective "shocking language" and further states that the "wonder is not that the NT so seldom describes Jesus as God, but that in such a milieu it does so at all."

This is an extremely disturbing statement to me, but not for the reasons the authors might think. It seems like, if the deity of the Jewish Messiah is a natural and logical part of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, first, there would be a much greater indication of this in Old Testament sources (as well as the Talmud, which the authors ignore), and that it would be more natural and likely for monotheistic Jews to understand and accept that the Messiah, in order to be the Messiah, must also be God. Additionally, from their first point, if the authors thought it would be confusing to try and distinguish between God the Father and God the Son (not much is mentioned about God the Holy Spirit in this book) for 1st and 2nd century Christians who were so much closer to the original people and events that surrounded Jesus, what about those of us living in the 21st century?

I mentioned before that the authors assume that Christ could only be either an ordinary man or that he had to be God, but they do not consider the possibility that the Messiah could be a unique and divine being, with many supernatural attributes, but still not literally be God. The authors cite (and dismiss) arguments based on how Wisdom is personified in the Tanakh (Old Testament), but they ignore the Jewish concept of a pre-existent and personified "Torah" that is the source of Creation (the "Word became flesh", if you'll forgive the Johannine quote), and yet Jews don't consider the Torah to be God, even though it was with Him and is thought of as the mechanism by which the universe was created.

Again, I lack the scholarly credentials to fully analyze and critique this book in more detail and further, space doesn't allow me to do a point-by-point review of each area where the authors cite support for Christ's Godhood, but I think the book's evidence is far from a "slam dunk" as far as unequivocally establishing Jesus as God.

I'm not saying that it's impossible and, as I previously stated, there are points in the book that I cannot speak to that are used to support Christ's deity. The very best and fairest statement I can make, based on my reading of Bowman and Komoszewski, as well as my previous ventures into NT material, is to say "the jury is still out".

I know this means that I must fly in the face of virtually all of Christianity as well as most of the Messianic world, and certainly the vast majority of reviewers on Amazon (as well as individual Christian reviewers) will disagree with me (though not 100% of them), but given the extreme biases presented by the authors, both in terms of their personal belief structure, their backgrounds, and their view of Biblical inerrancy, the credibility of their overall case is somewhat doubtful.

That said, every author who writes on this (or any) subject has a bias, a personal belief structure, and a background, so perhaps Bowman's and Komoszewski's book is also no less credible than some of the others I've read. In that case, how can I ever be convinced one way or the other on the deity issue? For that matter, how can anyone?

My only answer right now, is that I'll continue to read, to search, and to learn.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Review: From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God

As we analyse the Jesus movement and the major stages of christological development, we can relate views of Jesus to Jewish/Gentile identity, and consider the relationship between christological development and identity change. We must begin by uncovering the origins of christology...I shall argue that the ministry of Jesus himself made further development inevitable. Before we can see him clearly, however, we must go back through our primary sources to recover him from the combination of authentic material and later developments which they offer us.

-from the Conclusions section of Chapter 2: Modes of Analysis

From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God
by Maurice Casey
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Ingram Publisher Services; First Edition (January 1, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0227679202
ISBN-13: 978-0227679203

Casey's book is based on a series of lectures he delivered at the University of Birmingham, England in 1985-86 and it seeks to trace the development of the christology of Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, who Casey believes was originally a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, through various stages, arriving at being regarded as equal with God. To do this, Casey analyzes the available Biblical texts based on several key factors including:

• Identity
• Ethnicity
• Religion and Social Function
• Orthodoxy

Like many New Testament (NT) scholars, Casey's conclusion about the NT texts is that they were written sometime between the middle and end of the 1st Century C.E (and some perhaps much later) and that the Gospels and a number of the Epistles were likely not written by their named sources. He reviews the texts using the factors listed above in order to establish the likely identity of the writers (Jewish vs. Gentile), in order to substantiate his assumptions.

Casey sees the development of christology as having proceeded through three stages.

The first stage occurred during the lifetime of Jesus and within 15 or 20 years afterward before significant Gentile involvement in "the Jesus movement". This is the stage where devotion to Jesus as a prophet and most likely as Messiah (though Casey argues that the concept of "Messiahship" was seen differently in the 1st Century than we regard it today) was an entirely Jewish expression, and was identified by wholly Jewish identity markers (keeping Torah, dietary laws, Shabbat, and so on). Jesus was regarded in this stage, as an extremely holy person due high honors above others, due to his righteousness and Messiahship. However, he was not regarded as being equal to God, though certainly as Messiah, was elevated above all other human beings.

The second stage occurred as Paul and others were actively seeking to convert Gentile pagans to faith in Jesus and was marked by Paul, who kept the Law of Moses, specifically teaching that the Law was not required for salvation but rather faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this stage, Gentiles had a significant representation in synagogues worshiping with Jews and may have marginally kept some portions of the Law (Shabbat rest, dietary laws) in order to have table fellowship with "Christian Jews". Casey sees Paul, though continuing to keep the Law, as "assimilating" into a more Gentile interpretation of Jesus and he may not have seen even Jews keeping the Law as an absolute requirement for faith. At this stage, there were likely different interpretations of Christianity due to the influence of Paul's letters and other documents being available (many not canonized in our modern Bibles), and the distances involved in transmitting consistent information regarding revelations of Jesus to the different churches in the near east and Europe.

The third stage occurred when Gentiles became the largest group in the Christian movement, establishing their own churches and producing their own documents and theologies. This would have happened in the latter part of the 1st century and beyond. While stage two would not have allowed (according to Casey) any widespread worship of Jesus as God, due to a specific Jewish monotheistic understanding, in stage three, and based partially on the Greek precedent that men (in mythology) can also be gods, Jesus was worshiped as equal with God. Casey doesn't require that the Gentile Christian belief among Gentile churches, be established in the 4th Century by way of the Nicaean Council, but the Council would have been the final arbiter of a united faith in the deity of Jesus across the larger Christian church. Prior to the council, there would have been inconsistency in the belief that Jesus was (or was not) God among different church groups.

Casey's analysis between Chapters 3 and 9 is quite involved regarding which documents can be considered reliably written by Jewish authors in the Aramaic speaking church, and which were created later by Gentile Christians (under the names of Jewish apostles), so I can only give this material brief coverage in my review. Casey believes that only the Gospel of John and some minority of the Epistles specifically make any claim to Jesus as God and that the Gentile Johannine community's adherence to this belief resulted in their removal from the "Jewish/Christian" synagogue and the acceleration of the development in Gentile-only churches in the late 1st Century and later. In other words, he believes that the deity issue was established largely (though not exclusively) by Gentile believers, probably after the lifetime of Paul, and that Jesus would not have been worshiped as God by his Jewish disciples and later Jewish followers.

While Casey's overall writing style is very scholarly and rather dry, he "opens up" in Chapter 10: History, Culture and Truth, to describe a deliberate set of acts by non-Jewish Christians to marginalize Jewish believers, discount obedience to the Law of Moses, and to establish and maintain worship of Jesus as God, directly in violation of a strict Jewish monotheism. Casey almost seems angry in Chapter 10 as he relates Gentile Christian activity aimed at removing Jews from worship of the Jewish Prophet and Messiah. Casey is definite that Jesus was a very religious Jewish prophet who was preaching a soon-to-come apocalyptic message (within the lifetime of many of his disciples) and who may have believed in his own Messiahship.

In spite of the rather scholarly approach of Casey in this book, it is still very readable and uses a large body of source material available via footnote pages. This book isn't quite a "page turner", but I found it compelling in it's acknowledgment of the significance of Old Testament authority, respect to Judaism of the 1st Century (and beyond) in particular, and willingness to challenge the classic Christian understanding that Jesus must be God. If Casey were your only source of information regarding christological development in the 1st Century, you would likely feel convinced that Jesus did not believe himself to be God, or at least have your personal assumptions of his deity questioned.

If you are a strict Trinitarian and your faith is based on the deity of Jesus, you will likely find this book dismaying and (hopefully) illuminating. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in NT scholarship as well as people such as me, who want to dig deeper into understanding the Bible that we have today.