The Prophet Yeshua` (Jesus Of Nazareth)

Introduction

Followers of the Way see Yeshua` as a prophet of God, a man born of normal human parentage. He was a Galilean Jew, born in Nazareth; he was a wandering sage and preacher who taught a prophetic message about the kingdom of God. On a darker note, he also warned people where violence and a lack of repentance would lead – the destruction of Jerusalem, and even exile from the Land.

For those coming out of Christianity to enter Talmidaism, it is initially difficult for such people to view Yeshua` as anything less than a demi-god, or a superman, or a super-enlightened being. This stance is perfectly understandable; one is naturally dazzled by the message, and for someone coming from a non-Jewish background, one can only conclude that a fantastic message could only have been created by a fantastic messenger. Extraordinary backgrounds are created for him to explain how he came up with that message – that in his ‘missing years’, he was an Essene, or had travelled to Persia, India, Tibet and China to learn Buddhism and Hinduism (but one has to wonder: speaking what language)? Or that he had studied under many different Jewish and pagan mystics.

Perhaps part of this stems from the feeling that, only a person with some standing can deliver an important spiritual message. However, as long as a message in and of itself is true, and does not contradict the principles of Yahwism, the Message validates and justifies itself. If God had asked a crippled refuse collector to deliver the exact same message as Yeshua`, the fact that he wasn’t a super-fit man of royal lineage should not make any difference to the authenticity of the message (the prophet Amos, for example, was a farmer who tended orchards).

In a Gentile cultural environment – such as the one in which Paul preached – the message preached was always a direct reflection of the background of the messenger preaching the message. To pagan Gentiles of that time, brought up with stories of demi-gods and miracles, signs and wonders were automatic proof of divinity.

However, from a biblically Yahwist standpoint, a prophet is merely a mouthpiece of God; there is no need to create a complicated biography for a prophet in order to explain the origin of his message; to the earliest Jewish followers of Yeshua, there was no need to delve into his ‘missing years’, or create a back-story to explain his ministry. To a Yahwist, the prophet’s message comes direct from God – simple as that. A prophet doesn’t even have to agree with the message (eg Jonah), or be an educated man or woman (eg Amos). Amos admitted he wasn’t even the prophetic type (Amos 7:14). To the first Jewish Followers of the Way, who or what the Prophet Yeshua did in the years before his prophetic calling were completely irrelevant. Since a prophet needs no training – because the Message he or she speaks is directly from God – we need no stories to explain who Yeshua was, or what he did prior to his ministry.

One has to be aware that while one remains bedazzled by the messenger, one can be sidelined and forget to look at the message. In Paullist Christianity, it is the person of ‘Jesus Christ’ which is paramount; Paul had no interest in what Yeshua taught, and never quoted anything he said. In Talmidaism, it is the message that is important, and ultimately who that message encourages us to look towards – YHVH, not Yeshua`. In order for the majesty, reputation and glory of YHVH to increase, logically the person of Yeshua` has to diminish. If we still need to use the word ‘Christ’ as part of our theological discourse and belief-system, then Yeshua is still too central, and YHVH is still to distant.

From a Yahwist perspective, it really does not matter who or what Yeshua` was; what ultimately matters is that YHVH is supreme, that YHVH is the initiator of the message, and that YHVH is the absolute goal of that message. As long as Yeshua` remains no more than a human being, it really doesn’t matter what his background was, or who he was – not even a messiah.

He was a wise and intelligent man. He obviously knew Scripture well, and so was able to quote and use Scripture. He was a good orator, and was what today we would call a ‘people-person’. He probably also knew how to use Pharisaic debating style, even though he wasn’t a Pharisee himself. He knew of the Essenes and their values, even though he wasn’t an Essene either. However, nothing in his background would have prepared him for the full impact of God’s message. His religious learning may have come from other human beings, but his wisdom and his Message came directly from God.

Yeshua’s Environment – Signs of the Times

During the period of the prophet Yeshua`’s ministry, the Jewish people were suffering terribly under the cruel oppression of the Romans. It is vitally important for us to understand the problems going on during this time, because much of what Yeshua` said was against the backdrop of these contemporary troubles. Most modern Christians are not aware of the terrible burdens endured by Yeshua`’s fellow Jews, and think that generally the Romans were ‘jolly nice people’ – generally benevolent to the Jewish people – when in reality, their behaviour was no better than that of the Nazis of the 20^th century.

Most of that generation were decent people; the wrongdoings of the few had caused problems for the innocent majority. For example, Pontius Pilate seemed to enjoy offending Jewish religious sensibilities, and the Jewish historian Josephus reports that later Roman Governors (such as Albinus and Florus) were so cruel in their administration of Jewish affairs, that matters were inevitably bound to come to a violent head. There was, in addition, inter-communal strife between Samaritans and Jews – they generally hated each other, even though both were Yahwist Israelites; crime and banditry were on the increase; the authorities burdened the people with heavy taxes that many could not afford to pay; and the poor groaned under the increasing mountains of debt that they had no hope of escaping from.

There were also some major religious problems. Now, most people have heard of the Essenes. Most people know that they took themselves off into the Judean desert to live apart from mainstream Jewish society. What most people don’t know is why they did this. Their reasoning is important to know and understand, because it will inform our understanding of subsequent events – especially the world in which Yeshua` lived.

The main reason they retreated into a desert community, was because they felt the chief priests who were in charge of the Jerusalem Temple had become corrupt – that they were not behaving in a holy manner expected of them as priests. The Essenes believed that the corruption of the priesthood (especially of the aristocratic Sadducean priests) had desecrated the holiness of the Temple, and they felt in all conscience that they therefore could not worship there, or offer sacrifices there. For them, the Shekhinah of God was no longer present in the Sanctuary of the Temple. That is why they would have nothing to do with the Temple (and, incidentally why Yeshua could not have been an Essene, because he did attend the Temple services, because he still considered it the House of God).

      In the Israelite way of thinking, desecration of the Temple was the same as the desecration of the reputation of God’s holiness – one day, there would come a terrible reckoning for this desecration, and those who were guilty would be brought to account.

      You see, the Jewish priests were supposed to be visible representatives for God on earth. They, more than anyone else, had a huge responsibility to behave in a righteous and holy manner. If a man of God acted in a cruel, unjust or immoral fashion, he would be defaming the holy reputation of God. According to the Israelite way of thinking, this was a sin that could never be forgiven in this life.

      For example, the sons of the High Priest Eli, who were themselves priests by descent, were corrupt and treated people unfairly. Their actions defamed the holy reputation of God, so according to the writer of the Book of Samuel (1Sam ch 2) they suffered the ultimate punishment – death.

      This view – of the consequences of defaming God’s reputation – fixed in ordinary people’s minds the belief that one day, the Sadducean priests would be punished severely by God for their corruption, their acts of injustice and their immoral behaviour. According to the Talmidi interpretation of certain parables of Yeshua`, he prophesied the demise of the Sadducean party in a day of judgment, when God would come to deal out God’s divine justice in order to protect and save their victims. 

Personal History

Historically, Followers of the Way believed that Yeshua` had been born in Nazareth, and not Bethlehem – that was a Christian invention to make it look as though he was fulfilling prophecy and was a rightful descendant of David. The gospels of Mark & John are actually unaware of the belief that ‘Jesus’ was born in Bethlehem; John’s gospel even implies that he was instead a born-native of the Galilee – see Jn 7:40-43; cf Jn 1:46.

Yeshua`’s natural mother was Miryam, and his natural father was Yosef who, according to one tradition, was of the Galilean house of Pandera, not the royal house of David. Yeshua` was an ordinary human man, born of rural Galilean lineage.

His father was a craftsman (in Aramaic: naggara). This word means more than just ‘carpenter’. It meant that he could put his hand to anything – he could be called upon to do plastering, lay mud bricks, put up scaffolding, lay a roof, as well as do joinery and carve wood. From clues in Yeshua`’s parables, Yosef was probably most likely involved in building houses (Matt 7:24-27), perhaps even in the newly rebuilt city of Sepphoris (Tsippori), the capital of the Galilee. Sepphoris was not far from Nazareth at all (about 6 kms / 3.7 miles).

By tradition, the son would follow the same trade as his father, but it is possible that Yosef died while Yeshua` was still quite young – too young to begin passing his trade onto him.

After Yosef’s early death, Miryam and Yeshua` might have been provided for by Yosef’s brother, Qlofas, who had four sons: Ya`aqov (‘James the Just’), Shim`on, Yose and Yudah (Mt 13:55-56).

As a child, he would have been taught Torah by an elder in the local beyt ha-sefer (school). Since Nazareth was such a tiny village, the ‘school’ was probably nothing more than children sitting outside under a canopy of palm branches propped up by four poles. This outdoor class would have been outside whatever house or small building served as a synagogue or Shabbat gathering place – they had to have had something, since no religious Jew walked further than 2000 cubits on a Sabbath (1.2 kms, 3/4 mile). From his knowledge of scripture, he seems to have been an eager student. Since Pharisaic expansions and explanations of the Torah were the most widespread system for sorting out uncertainties in the Torah, he would have been taught these traditions too.

If he was able to read from Hebrew Scrolls when called to do so (Lk 4:16), then he is unlikely to have been illiterate, as some people like to claim (such as Bart Ehrman; would an illiterate man even be invited to teach in a synagogue on the Sabbath [eg Mt 4:23]?). 

When Yeshua` was old enough, he would have been duty-bound to provide for his widowed mother himself. Again, from semi-biographical clues in his parables, and from what the typical life of a young man would have been like in the Galilee, he probably did a lot of temporary work, and hired himself out as a labourer in the fields at sowing and harvest times, and as a temporary house-servant at other times. A good story-teller speaks of what he or she knows, and I believe the reason why his parables of working life in the Galilee are so authentic, is because he experienced such jobs himself. For these reasons, I don’t believe there is any evidence that he would have gone off thousands of miles across Asia, thus abandoning his widowed mother.

With so many difficulties encountered by ordinary Galileans – poverty, high taxation, debt, corrupt officials, and not to mention a cruel, occupying Roman army – many people looked around for spiritual release and answers. Yeshua` would have been no different. It is entirely possible that, growing up, he might have wandered from sect to sect, teacher to teacher, absorbing a little from each, and being influenced by each in turn. For this reason, I do not think he formally belonged to any specific sect.

A possible involvement with the Essenes has been over-emphasised by New Agers. The Essenes were a closed society, who completely rejected the Temple. If Yeshua` had been an Essene, then he would never have been able to set foot in the Temple. He would have made speeches cursing the very institution of it. However they did practice having goods in common. Yeshua` took what was meaningful and good from each sect, and moved on.

Nor could he have been a Pharisee. After all, they had declared that there were no more prophets; if he had been a Pharisee, he could not have accepted the existence of prophets. Those who firmly believe that he was a Pharisee would have to reject his prophethood, and instead accept him either as a messiah, or as just another rabbi.

What can be said with certainty, is that the teacher who influenced him the most was Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist). Yeshua` greatly admired Yochanan, whose message of repentance and social justice had an enormous influence on him. Throughout his own ministry, Yeshua` harboured an unwavering admiration for the man, even after Yochanan’s death (Mt 11:7-11a, Mt 11:12-14, Mt 17:10-12, Mt 21:31-32).

In the Christian gospels, John the Baptist is only a minor figure who foretold the coming of the “Christ”. In reality, Yochanan was a prophet and the leader of a major sect in his own right. He preached for quite a few years before his death. Yochanan’s sect practised regular ritual immersions (“baptisms”), not just once. The one-off baptism of Yeshua` in the Christian gospels is highly unlikely. While a member of the Immerser’s sect, he would have been immersed numerous times throughout the year, maybe even by Yochanan the Immerser himself.

Yeshua`’s Mission

Followers of the Way firmly believe that Yeshua` of Nazareth was a Jewish prophet, in the same tradition of Hebrew prophets as Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah. This means that Yeshua` had a calling from God to deliver a message to his people.

There was just one slight problem with prophets in Yeshua`’s day. It was taught and believed by the Pharisees that after the Prophet Malachi, there were no more prophets – this is a vitally important point about them you really need to remember. They taught that God had sealed up the gift of prophecy. One result of this was that Yeshua` could not openly speak like a prophet of the pre-Exile era, who would begin their words with, ‘This is what YHVH says….’ By omitting these words, it ended up sounding as if the words came from him, when in fact they came from YHVH. Several times, the gospels remark that the ordinary people thought he was a prophet (Mt 21:11, 21:46; cf Lk 24:19, Jn 7:40).

Another result was the following problem: what was a real, genuine prophet supposed to do when God called him to tell people where they were going wrong, and that if they continued that way, they were going to end up being destroyed or exiled by the Romans? He could not openly speak as a prophet.

Unfortunately, the only job still open was that of messiah. Yeshua`’s real, God-appointed job was as a prophet, but human beings had closed off that option to him. Yeshua` did not want to be a messiah, but that was how people were going to see him – someone who would get rid of the Romans, restore Jewish independence, and rule Israel under the guidance of the Torah. It is possible that, after Yeshua`’s death, some of Yeshua`’s followers, simply out of fear of what was to come – and in order to get people to listen to Yeshua`’s warnings – they gave in to the temptation to declare him a messiah.

Anyone with even a little bit of common sense could see the way things were going (Yeshua` often grew indignant when people failed to see the “signs of the times” [Mt 16:2-3]). If people didn’t change their thinking and behaviour, and return to God’s ways, the Romans would visit a terrible calamity upon them.

If Paul and Christianity had not come along, Yeshua` would have been classified as one of the great Jewish exile prophets. Just as Hoshea was a prophet before the Assyrian exile, and as Jeremiah was a prophet warning of a Babylonian exile, so Yeshua` would have been remembered for trying to warn the Jewish people of an impending Roman exile (which horrifically came to pass in 70 CE). God forewarned Yeshua` of a terrible destruction to come, and commanded him to go to his people and teach them how they could avoid or survive this fate: by repentance and by returning to the true heart and intent of the Torah, by paying heed to the messages God had given through previous prophets – to practise justice and mercy, abandon religious hypocrisy, levy fair taxes, not to exploit the poor, be honest in trade, and most importantly, by not returning violence with violence.

In the time of Hoshea and Jeremiah, the dangers turning people away from the worship of YHVH were the actual worship of false pagan gods. However, in Yeshua`’s day, this was not the case. It was more a case of parties, sects and messiahs tearing people this way and that, presenting differing solutions on how to escape from their personal and national predicaments. “Do this!” “No, do that!” “Fast on these days!” “No, fast on those days!” “Swear oaths on these things!” “No, swear oaths by those things!”

Instead, YHVH called Yeshua` to tell his people that God had already given them instructions on how to practise piety and justice, mercy and compassion; “The old wine is good enough” (Lk 5:39).

There were also those who told people it was enough to keep literally to the word of the Torah. They felt that an effective reform would be to return to merely doing what Torah tells you to do. However, all the prophets up to Yeshua` had said no, that this was worthless if justice and mercy were not part and parcel of religious reform.

Was Yeshua` a political revolutionary against the Romans?

There are quite a few academics who reject the mainstream idea of “Jesus the god-man” (e.g. Hyam Makkoby, Geza Vermes, James Tabor, to mention three). However, to many of these people, the only other alternative is that of political revolutionary, who went to Jerusalem to claim earthly kingship as a messiah, and kick out the Romans.

There is a problem with this – a major one. Now, if you cut out all the narrative on the gospels, you are left with just the reputed words of Yeshua`. You can neatly divide these sayings into two groups. About 20% support the Christian idea of a god-man and messiah. The other 80% support the idea of a wandering prophet and Jewish sage who preached mercy, forgiveness and the kingdom of God (as well as castigating a few religious hypocrites along the way). In this group are sayings such as “Love your enemies”, and “Do good to those who hate you”. This does not fit into the idea of a political revolutionary. The problem is that, if you wanted to support the idea of a revolutionary, then you would have to discard the vast majority of what he is actually supposed to have said.

The Zealots

There is an unjustified prejudice against the Pharisees in the Christian gospels. Many sayings are directed against them, but if all the supposed criticisms against Pharisees really happened, many Pharisees (especially the followers of Hillel) would have retorted, “What are you criticising us for? We agree with you!”

I believe we have to completely re-examine to whom many sayings were directed against. In particular, those sayings which pronounce against people who do not want to forgive “collaborators” (such as tax collectors and prostitutes), or allow them back into the life of the community. The only people who would have held this position would have been the religious terrorists of the day – the Zealots.

Another example was the issue of giving tribute to Roman Emperors. This would have been a really hot issue for the Zealots. Yeshua`’s comment, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” only makes sense if it were directed to Zealots, and not Pharisees.

Yeshua` was against the murderous methods of the Zealots – “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (Mt 26:52). There is a clue to his activities with this group, not from what he said, but from his results. There seems to have been an unusually large number of women who followed him (Lk 8:2-3). Now, it was not quite the done thing for a religious leader in those days to have a large number of women following him around, unless it was to their mutual advantage.

In any war or conflict, the emotions of wives and mothers are left in tatters. They would rather that their sons and husbands live, not die. Anyone who was able take their loved ones away from such a life would be an enormous blessing to them. Of course, such delicate activities could not be conducted out in the open, for fear of reprisals from both sides – both Zealots and Romans. That’s why we don’t have any narrative record of it. But the results would have been obvious, and they are recorded in the aforementioned passage in Luke.

Former Zealots were counted among Yeshua`’s emissaries and followers (e.g. Simon Zelotes, Lk 6:15), and a large number of grateful wives and mothers gave him and his followers every support and assistance.

The problem of Judas Iscariot

In Christianity, Judas was divinely ordained to betray “Jesus Christ”, to a death he was supposed to suffer anyway (doesn’t that logically mean Judas was doing him a favour??) At the other extreme, to those who believe Jesus was a political revolutionary, Judas was his accomplice, and was later unjustly recorded as being a traitor.

There is however a third alternative. Judas was himself a Zealot, and firmly held that Yeshua` was the messiah. However, Yeshua` himself opposed messianism, because of its inherent violence, and reliance on a human saviour rather than on YHVH. 

When Judas realised that Yeshua` rejected messianism, instead proposing peaceful resistance to Rome, Judas became angry, feeling that Yeshua` had betrayed Israel and the Jewish people; in his eyes, non-violence was tantamount to surrendering to the Romans, so he planned to give Yeshua` over to the Temple heirarchy to try him as a false prophet.

Yeshua` had always known that, by speaking against the Temple authorities, he would be arrested by them and tried as a false prophet; this is the reason why he fully expected to die. False prophecy was a Jewish crime, therefore if anyone arrested him, Yeshua might have thought it would be the Temple police and the Sadducees. 

Another possibility is that the Zealots realised the best way to get rid of Yeshua`, would be to declare him a messiah; that way the Romans would arrest him and execute him. They knew that to declare anyone a messiah was to pronounce a death sentence upon them. They would effectively be rid of a thorn in their side.

When Judas realised that the Romans were involved, and that he was actually handing a fellow Jew over to the very people he despised, he began to have second thoughts. And when he finally realised what Yeshua` had been trying to tell him all along, and that he had in fact handed over a man of God to the Romans, he committed suicide.

Yeshua`’s death

To Christians, when they see an image of “Jesus” on a cross, flesh torn, bleeding, dying, they get a warm glow inside, because it is a reminder to them that they have been “saved”. In their view, this was the whole point of his being here. To Paul of Tarsus, “Jesus” lived only to die. Paul wasn’t interested in his life – he never quotes Yeshua`’s words, and has no interest in what Yeshua` did while he was alive.

To Followers of the Way (who have a completely different view of salvation), the whole point of Yeshua`’s ministry were the words he spoke, and the hope he gave to people during his life. What we feel at his death is a sense of outrage at a gross injustice. An innocent man was tortured almost senseless, and executed by the Romans on a Roman cross, for a crime he didn’t commit, under a title (‘messiah’) he did not even want. Romans and messianists put him on the cross, not our sins.

To the Jews, a messiah was a national deliverer who would overthrow the Romans; to the Romans a messiah was a Jewish agitator and troublemaker, who led terrorist attacks on Roman citizens. On both of these counts, Yeshua` was completely innocent.

If you claim Yeshua was a messiah, then according to the Jewish definition of the term, he failed. He died, without doing what a messiah was supposed to do. So Gentile Christians had to invent a different kind of messiah. They scoured the Bible to re-invent the role of a messiah, and solved their problem by claiming that he died “to save us from our sins”. Well, in fact there’s no problem in the first place, because he wasn’t a messiah, but a prophet. God charged him to deliver a message, and this mission he fulfilled and completed admirably. If an innocent man dies, one should feel outrage at the tragedy, not happiness and joy.

It was people’s belief in messianism which handed an innocent man to the Romans, and a brutal occupying army executed him on a Roman cross.

This is why I believe that messianism is a bad idea. I prefer to centre my faith in the real, active, living presence of YHWH in the here and now, rather than in the dubious coming of a messiah at some time in the future. People seem to be waiting for someone to come in the future before events can have permission to happen. I strongly feel that, if we believe YHWH has the power and might to do real and wonderful things in the present, these things will happen in the present. I have a strong feeling that Yeshua` thought that way too.

A Summary of Yeshua’s Mission

I believe the key to understanding Yeshua`’s ministry is a verse from the Book of Zephaniah (2:3):

           ‘Seek Yahveh, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of Yahveh’s anger.’

Whereas Yochanan was sent to call the guilty to repentance, Yeshua`’s ministry was also to act as a call to the innocent to maintain their righteousness, to shelter them on the coming day of calamity; and to call the sinful to repentance, so that they could also join the ranks of those who would be protected on the ‘Day of Yahveh’ (cf Isaiah 13:6-9, Joel 1:15, 2:1-2, Amos 5:18)

Talmidaism places Yeshua` of Nazareth squarely and completely within the tradition of Jewish prophets. As a Talmidi, I believe he was called by God to warn our people of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, and of the Roman exile. I believe he was called to restore the original intent of Torah, along with the principles and the ideals of the original Israelite religion. I also believe he was called to proclaim the immediacy of the Kingdom of God, in opposition to the contemporary violence of the messianic kingdom longed for by the Zealots. Finally, I believe there was a strong emphasis on the social relevance of his message to the poor and socially disadvantaged.

In Talmidaism, Yeshua` is therefore presented as a prophet who:

• prophesied the destruction of the Temple, and the imminent demise of Jerusalem and Judea;
• warned the violent in the Galilee and Judea that they were reacting to the Roman occupation of their land in a way which was man’s, not God’s;
• implicitly condemned the violence of the Zealots, and warned that their murderous actions would result in a Roman-imposed exile;
• predicted the extinction of the Sadducees as a religious party (in the Parable of the Unjust Steward – cf Mt 24:45-51, Lk 12:41-46);
• reminded the rich of the God-given right of the poor to social justice;
• showed ordinary people how they could survive the coming calamity by returning to the true heart of Torah, which was justice, mercy, compassion and lovingkindness; 
• reminded other Jewish sects of the original ideals, attitudes and principles of the original Israelite faith – the Way – that they had forgotten or abandoned: ‘the old wine is good enough’;
• spoke out to restore the original, simple intent of the Written Torah, against the ‘burden’ of the Oral Law;
• promoted a simple, direct approach to Torah;
• emphasised that God was loving and merciful, and to the penitent, that God was ever-ready to forgive and forget the past;
• proclaimed the immediacy of the Kingdom of God, and exhorted people to feel – and enjoy – the living Presence of God;
• encouraged people towards an intense, personal relationship with their Heavenly Father; 
• and gave Jewish people a way of internalising Torah, of ‘writing it on their hearts’. 

The picture of Yeshua` portrayed in Talmidaism is quite different from that of the Christian gospels. In Paullist Christianity, ‘Jesus’ alone is the message, and his atoning death the sole object of his message. In Talmidaism, it is Yahveh God – our Heavenly Father – and the ways of God’s Kingdom which become central, and Yeshua` merely becomes the messenger. We therefore take note of what Yeshua` actually had to say on the good conduct of human life, because what God had to say on how we live our lives – doing our heavenly Father’s will – actually mattered to Yeshua`, whereas it did not to Paul, or to those for whom Paul’s theology is central.

For Yeshua`, the impending doom of the ‘Day of Yahveh’  – and the strong possibility that his life could be ended at any moment – gave his message incredible urgency. As a prophet of God, he would have been made intimately aware of this terrible and horrendous time in the near future, and it would have shaken him to his very core. He told people that there were signs in the events of the times that made the inevitability of the coming tribulation obvious – you didn’t need a prophet to see that. God tells us that prophecies come true in the lifetime of one’s audience, so the tribulation of which Yeshua` spoke would have been expected by his fellow Jews to occur soon (cf Mk 9:1, Mt 16:28, Lk 9:27 – “Believe me I tell you, there are some here who will not taste death before they witness the coming of God’s kingship with power!”). Outsiders who are unfamiliar with Jewish culture are still waiting for the tribulation nineteen centuries after it actually took place.

To enable people to survive the catastrophe, Yeshua` taught people to internalise Torah, so that God’s ways of justice and merciful compassion would live within them; remember, God’s Torah – God’s teaching or instruction – is not just the first five books of the Miqra, but rather the entirety of God’s principles and ethics contained throughout the Hebrew Bible. By internalising these values, their lives would become a living witness to who their Heavenly Father was, wherever they might be exiled to in the world. He taught them a way of transforming themselves to be more in tune with God’s way of thinking, and so become better servants of God’s kingdom. According to Zephaniah, living God’s ways with humility, justice and righteousness would help to save some people from the calamities of the Day of Yahveh. The Good News that Yeshua preached therefore, was that the Jewish people would survive, and that the present burdens that the Jewish people were experiencing (especially the burdens on the poor) would come to an end.