Shalom everyone,
Most people are aware that the very earliest Jewish community of the followers of Yeshua called their faith, ‘The Way’. A lot of Christians think that this means, ‘the Way of Jesus’, because Acts 18:25 mentions, ‘the Way of the Lord’, and they think that ‘the Lord’ must mean ‘Jesus’. However, if you dive a little deeper into Aramaic and Hebrew, and into Jewish historical and cultural clues, you will come to a different conclusion. In historical research, one’s conclusion should not be what you’d like it to be, but rather what the evidence says that it is.
Some Christians argue from the point of John 14:6 and claim, ”Well, in John, Jesus says that he is the way, the truth and the life, so that proves it‘s the Way of Jesus!” My response would be: I don’t believe that Yeshua ever said such a thing. The Gospel of John has no connection to native Jewish culture in any way (it‘s more Hellenist); I don’t believe it to have been written by a first-hand, Jewish witness. When trying to understand and interpret what an ancient Jew would have understood by ‘The Way‘, the gospel of John would not be helpful to use as any kind of evidence (it takes Hellenistic Jewish thought and moves it on to a completely new level). It imposes an alien meaning that would not have been there originally in authentic, native Judaic Judaism. The ‘Jesus‘ in the gospel of John speaks like a Greek philosopher, its ideas are very Hellenistic, not natively Jewish, so I would not trust anything in John to be authentic (even the prominent Johannine scholar, Hugo Méndez, admits that the beliefs in John‘s theology are probably not ideas that the historical Jesus would ever have articulated in his life). In our community, the Gospel of John plays no part, and is never used as any kind of evidence for anything, because of its origin.
In Aramaic, ‘the Way’ is orchā, and in Hebrew, it is ha-dérekh (the ch and kh are pronounced like the guttural scrape at the end of the Scottish pronunciation of loch, and at the end of the German word Buch). It was used to designate any religion or ‘-ism’. So ‘the Greek religion’ would literally be, ‘the Way of the Greeks’, and Pharisaism would be, ‘the Way of the Pharisees’. Therefore, you would normally have to specify which ‘way’ or -ism you are talking about. However, there is one circumstance when you would not have to do this; by simply saying ‘The Way’, every Jew at that time would have known exactly which ‘way’ you were referring to, even Jews who were not members of your community.
In Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic, if you consider one particular ‘something’ to be more important than all other similar ‘somethings’, then you can drop any specifiers. So for example, in Jewish culture, the term ‘the Land’ is used as shorthand for ‘the Land of Israel’; ‘the Day’ is shorthand for ‘the Day of Expiations’ (Yom Kippur), and ‘the Festival’ is shorthand for ‘the festival of Sukkot/Booths’.
If the first Jewish followers of Yeshua had intended ‘the Way’ to mean, ‘the Way of Yeshua’, it would imply that Jews who were not Followers would have automatically recognised it as this too, but there’s no evidence that they did. If ‘Lord’ had meant ‘Yeshua’, non-Followers amongst the Jewish people would instead have needed to ask, ‘which lord?’ But they didn’t, as far as we know. In simply saying, ‘the Way’, no fellow Jew needed to ask, ‘the Way of what?’ This would imply that merely saying, ‘the Way’ already meant something to their fellow Jews. And if we know a little about ancient Jewish culture, we would realise that, actually yes, it did.
If a term was abbreviated in Jewish culture, the next question we need to ask is, ‘To all the Jews of that time, what Way was more important than any other way, to enable them to shorten the term like that?’ Can you guess? Does it say anywhere in the New Testament which ‘lord’ it is the Way of?
People might want it to mean, ‘the Way of Yeshua’, but it doesn’t. Look at Acts 18:25 and Mk 12:14, and we can find our definitive answer: ‘The Way of GOD’. Elsewhere, in the phrase, ‘the Way of the Lord’, ‘lord’ therefore refers to God (YHVH), not Yeshua. So in ancient times, to their fellow Jews, calling their faith, ‘the Way’ would have had enormous weight and significance. Using the term was sending a very loaded message to their fellow Jews. In the Hebrew Bible, ‘the Way of YHVH’ refers to the original Israelite religion, Yahwism (eg Judges 2:22, Jer 5:4, Prov 10:29). So in calling their faith simply, ‘the Way’, what message do you think that was sending to their fellow Jews?
In Yeshua’s ministry, Yeshua tried to call his followers back to the original values and ethics of the Israelite faith. Yeshua was not a prophet of his own message, or his own way (i.e. Yeshua’s way); he was a prophet of YHVH’s Way, and of the Israelite faith. His teaching was calling people back to the original faith of their ancestors given at Sinai; he was restoring Torah, not abolishing it.
Which term do you think would have had a powerful, emotional and immediate impact on their fellow Jews who had never heard the prophet speak? ‘The Way of Yeshua’ (Yeshuinism), or ‘the Way of YHVH’ (Yahwism)?
If the abbreviated term of ‘the Way’ was short for ‘the Way of Yeshua’, then knowing about how that one word ‘way’ was an Aramaic and Hebrew method of designating any religion or philosophy, non-Followers would then have had to ask, ‘The Way of what or who?’ But if the shorthand term of ‘The Way’ already meant something significant to their fellow Jews – Yahwism, the Way of YHVH, the original Israelite faith given at Sinai – you will finally understand that the appellation used to describe our faith really meant something special to the Jews of Yeshua’s time.
By using the term, ‘The Way’, Yeshua’s community of Followers were trying to say, “We are not inventing anything new, because the old wine is good enough; we are not taking the Jewish people away from the faith of their ancestors; God wants our people to return to the way of their ancestors”. We can see this allusion in Judges 2:22, “see whether they will keep the Way of YHVH, and walk in it as their ancestors did.”
The Way does not mean, ‘the Way of Yeshua’ – nowhere in the New Testament is it ever alluded to or even hinted that it might be called this (the writer of John doesn‘t seem to be aware of the Jewish use of the word ‘way’ to designate a religion; he uses it to mean ‘pathway’). ‘The Way’ means, ‘the Way of YHVH’, and Acts 18:26 proves it, by explaining it as, ‘the Way of God’.
Blessings
Shmuliq