Shalom everyone,
Midweek, whenever I can, I’m going to try and say a little bit about each of the 173 passages of the Sefer Yeshua. The Sefer Yeshua is drawn from all the Jewish, Yahwist passages of the 3 synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew & Luke), plus the Gospel of Thomas. All the passages were chosen based on the work of the Jesus Seminar – a group of about 50 scholars who met in the 1980s-90s, to determine which of all Yeshua’s sayings in the NT gospels were most likely to have been spoken by the historical Jewish Jesus.
1. 1In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, Herod Antipas being the tetrarch of the Galilee; 2and in the eleventh year of the High Priest Yosef Qayafas, Pontius Pilatus being the new prefect of Judea, 3the Message of the Most High came to Yeshua`, son of Yosef the craftsman of Nazareth. 4He obeyed the Message of God, and spoke to the people of the Galilee and Judea about the good news of the kingdom of God, 5and he exhorted them to walk in the righteousness of God’s paths, and away from the paths of destruction.
The very first passage is based on Lk 3:1-2. Luke’s dating of the beginning of Yeshua’s prophethood and ministry, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, dates it to about 28 CE. In the biblical books of the Hebrew prophets, it was quite common to contextualise the time-frame of a prophet’s ministry (cf Isaiah 1:1, Jeremiah 1:1-3, Ezekiel 1:1-3, and Hosea 1:1-2, to name but a few examples). In ancient times, it was most common to date events by the regnal year of a monarch or a ruler of some kind, whereas in modern times we date things from the contiguous chronological year, depending on the calendar of our cultures.
The opening verses of the Sefer Yeshua are written in the opening style of biblical prophetic books. The most important sentence in this regard is verse 1:3, “the Message [‘word’] of the Most High came to Yeshua, son of Yosef the craftsman of Nazareth.”
The pattern of wording in this sentence, is one which is used in Hebrew literature to mean, “God called this man to be a prophet of God.” It implies that the Voice and Presence of God so filled this man, that he was moved irresistibly to go to his people and speak to them what God had told him to say. When God’s powerful Presence fills the heart of a man or woman, that individual is overwhelmed, and cannot help but speak what God has moved them to say – that is what is like to be called by God to be a prophet.
I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating once again: In Israelite tradition, being a prophet is not primarily about predicting the future; it’s about delivering God’s Message, which is usually a set of warnings that if people continue down their current path, as a direct consequence bad things are going to happen. The secondary purpose is to exhort people to repent, and do good things instead.
Modern preachers, when examining the books of the biblical prophets, concentrate on completely the wrong thing, and as a result, they miss the entire point of what the prophets – and therefore God – are trying to say. The general message of modern preachers is, ‘Look at all these predictions of wars and catastrophes, and they are happening right now; this means the end of the world is coming, so you need to support my ministry if you want to be saved.’
This is not the message of biblical prophets. Their message was, ‘People have abandoned the ethical, religious and social values of YHVH, and if we don’t repent and return to God’s ways, then bad things will happen as a direct result of what have done or failed to do, and we will be exiled from the Land’.
Modern fundamentalist preachers ignore the fact that prophets exhort people to return to God’s ethical values; sad to say, but very few of these fiery preachers even know what God’s values are. They focus on condemning all the wrong things – mostly focussing on people they hate or disagree with – and so end up hiding the greater sins and injustices of society that are what are really threatening to push society away from God, and destroy society.
Jewish society is supposed to stand tall as a visible banner to the world, with regards to how God’s ideal society is meant to work. The implied understanding behind this is that, if that society does not work, then Jewish society no longer represents God, and instead will dishonour God. Moreover, if God’s ideal society becomes corrupt, unfair, and oppressive at its very core, then it can no longer represent the holiness of our God. Torah laws are meant to maintain Jewish society as an honourable banner for YHVH to the world, a light that cannot be hidden. It is not by accident that Israel is the only free, democratic country in the Middle East, and why it is hated by so many totalitarian and authoritarian societies around the world.
For many religious fundamentalists, religion only covers your personal behaviour and how we relate to one another. Everything else in life is fair game where ethics are concerned, and nothing to do with religion or God.
However, in the Yahwist way of looking at society, every aspect of life is covered by the ethics of YHVH, from one’s personal conduct and relationships, to how you conduct business, to how a ruler behaves, to how just and fair the courts of justice should be, to how you treat animals and the environment, how you conduct international relations, and so on. I suspect that this is one of the reasons why some people don’t like Torah, because they feel it interferes in areas of human life which, in their personal worldview, is not God’s remit to interfere in, or set rules for.
A stable, functioning, peaceful and safe society is one where the poor and the disadvantaged are not oppressed, abused or exploited, and where the rich are not allowed to abuse the economic system so that its benefits only flow one way (opulence and excessive displays of wealth are generally frowned upon in Jewish society). Both rich and poor are supposed to play their part in society; you cannot expect to take out of society, and put nothing back (that goes for the rich who avoid paying their taxes, as well as those people who claim more than they are entitled to). If a Yahwist society does not follow God’s values and ethical principles, then it will fail, and in so failing, it reflects badly on the God whose laws built that society and underpin it. There are consequences to making God’s Way look ineffective and useless.
In Yeshua’s day, there were many of God’s values which were being ignored or abused, such as in the matter of forgiveness of the debts of the poor, ignoring social justice, committing violence in God’s Name, the rich abrogating their responsibilities in society, false piety and religious hypocrisy displayed by supposedly religious people, religious leaders becoming corrupt, dishonesty in business, and so on. Yeshua wasn’t called to die for the sins of the world; Yeshua was called by God to point out where society was going dangerously wrong, and to show people how it could come right again by returning to God’s good ways. Because if people didn’t return to God’s righteous values, then the Jewish people stood little chance of surviving the tribulation that was about to befall them.
The first passage of the Sefer Yeshua ends with the two sides of Yeshua’s teaching: to uplift God’s people and to call them to return to the true heart of God’s good ways; and the second, with a slightly darker edge – to warn them of the destruction to come, under the hands of the Romans.
Peace and blessings
Shmuliq