A Comparison of Talmidi and Christian Teaching and Belief

We can only forgive modern Christians for thinking that the earliest Jewish followers of Yeshua` of Nazareth held exactly the same beliefs as they do today. After all, that is what their priests and ministers need them to beleive in order to maintain the strength of their faith.

Unfortunately, this view is erroneous. There were fundamental differences between the beliefs of Followers of the Way and modern Christianity. Mainly out of ignorance of Jewish belief systems of the time (as well as modern Jewish teaching), modern Christians fail to notice the stark incongruity of Christian belief when compared to ancient Jewish theology.

Take for example the trinity. Christians say that there are various passages in the Jewish bible that prove beyond a doubt that their god is three persons in one godhead. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this viewpoint comes from an ignorance of the Hebrew language, my astonished response is always, “What – and during the 1,900 years from Abraham until Yeshua`, Hebrew speakers hadn’t noticed this, and continued to beleive in one, indivisible God for all those generations? You’d think that in all that time, if there really was a trinity to be gleaned from the Hebrew scriptures, then someone would have found it!!” (I’m told the crass response to this is “This knowledge was kept from them by the power of God, until it was fully revealed through ‘Jesus Christ'”)

The differences between Followers of the Way and other Jews were notable, but were well within the boundaries of acceptable differences for the Judaism of the period. Christian beliefs, on the other hand, are so pointedly distinctive and pronounced, that they could never have been part of Jewish theology.

The greatest number of differences between our beliefs, and those of Christians, surround the person of Yeshua` himself.