IF There Was God...

[Questor]

It would be interesting, we don't get alot of you guys here...and I don't think I've ever met a second gen one.  I wonder whether your experience as a messianic jew is analogous to second and third gen wiccans.

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

Christianity is a religion that sprang from a denomination of Judaism, and hybridized away from it rather a lot after the first century, falling into open idolatry. To me, and many other Jews that follow Yeshua, some, if not all, forms of that religion have adopted pagan Greek and Roman notions that are in direct contravention to Torah, which observant Jews attempt to follow. Yeshua was a Torah abiding Jew, and so were his Jewish followers until they had died out, or gone underground, avoiding the persecution by Christians in the second century onwards. 

Many non-Jewish believers do attempt to follow Torah, even as I do, and in truth none of us do it well, but once a Gentile believer in Yeshua resolves to do so, they have become god-fearers, proselytes to Judaism, who are leaving the gentile pagan world behind bit by bit.
 
Jewish believers in Yeshua are merely walking in the ways of their fathers, and remain Jews, who then, of their own desire, choose to follow Yeshua, and trust in him as their Messiah.

[Rev. Rye]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It would be interesting, we don't get alot of you guys here...and I don't think I've ever met a second gen one.  I wonder whether your experience as a messianic jew is analogous to second and third gen wiccans.

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

Christianity is a religion that sprang from a denomination of Judaism, and hybridized away from it rather a lot after the first century, falling into open idolatry. To me, and many other Jews that follow Yeshua, some, if not all, forms of that religion have adopted pagan Greek and Roman notions that are in direct contravention to Torah, which observant Jews attempt to follow. Yeshua was a Torah abiding Jew, and so were his Jewish followers until they had died out, or gone underground, avoiding the persecution by Christians in the second century onwards. 

Many non-Jewish believers do attempt to follow Torah, even as I do, and in truth none of us do it well, but once a Gentile believer in Yeshua resolves to do so, they have become god-fearers, proselytes to Judaism, who are leaving the gentile pagan world behind bit by bit.
 
Jewish believers in Yeshua are merely walking in the ways of their fathers, and remain Jews, who then, of their own desire, choose to follow Yeshua, and trust in him as their Messiah.

Specifically, to which ‘pagan Greek and Roman notions’ are you referring, how how do they contravene Torah?

If Jesus was a ‘Torah abiding Jew’, how do you explain his breaking of the Fourth Commandment as well as several of the misvot?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

It would be interesting, we don't get alot of you guys here...and I don't think I've ever met a second gen one.  I wonder whether your experience as a messianic jew is analogous to second and third gen wiccans.

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

...I mean, there pretty much have to be at least a few people who are the children of a religious movement that blossomed in the seventies?  Are you telling me here that you converted?  From what?

Christianity is a religion that sprang from a denomination of Judaism, and hybridized away from it rather a lot after the first century, falling into open idolatry. To me, and many other Jews that follow Yeshua, some, if not all, forms of that religion have adopted pagan Greek and Roman notions that are in direct contravention to Torah, which observant Jews attempt to follow. Yeshua was a Torah abiding Jew, and so were his Jewish followers until they had died out, or gone underground, avoiding the persecution by Christians in the second century onwards. 

Many non-Jewish believers do attempt to follow Torah, even as I do, and in truth none of us do it well, but once a Gentile believer in Yeshua resolves to do so, they have become god-fearers, proselytes to Judaism, who are leaving the gentile pagan world behind bit by bit.
 
Jewish believers in Yeshua are merely walking in the ways of their fathers, and remain Jews, who then, of their own desire, choose to follow Yeshua, and trust in him as their Messiah.

I'm familiar with the pitch, but I was more interested in your lived experience.

[Mister Agenda]

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

Pretty disengenuous to react as though you actually believe Nudger was talking about physical heritability. I don't believe you're that stupid, which means you're being that evasive.

[Questor]

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

Christianity is a religion that sprang from a denomination of Judaism, and hybridized away from it rather a lot after the first century, falling into open idolatry. To me, and many other Jews that follow Yeshua, some, if not all, forms of that religion have adopted pagan Greek and Roman notions that are in direct contravention to Torah, which observant Jews attempt to follow. Yeshua was a Torah abiding Jew, and so were his Jewish followers until they had died out, or gone underground, avoiding the persecution by Christians in the second century onwards. 

Many non-Jewish believers do attempt to follow Torah, even as I do, and in truth none of us do it well, but once a Gentile believer in Yeshua resolves to do so, they have become god-fearers, proselytes to Judaism, who are leaving the gentile pagan world behind bit by bit.
 
Jewish believers in Yeshua are merely walking in the ways of their fathers, and remain Jews, who then, of their own desire, choose to follow Yeshua, and trust in him as their Messiah.

Specifically, to which ‘pagan Greek and Roman notions’ are you referring, how how do they contravene Torah?

If Jesus was a ‘Torah abiding Jew’, how do you explain his breaking of the Fourth Commandment as well as several of the misvot?

Boru

A belief that there are more than one god and the customs of worship of those gods are the source of Greco-Roman pagan traditions that taint much of what are Christian traditions. They do not end in the Greek or Roman Empires, but as the ideas of what became Christianity moved from Asia into Europe, they picked up whatever local gods were worshiped in each area, and merged them with what they had been taught, both from political convenience and necessity, as well as a real desire to take local expressions and adherence to the worship of well-known gods, and see similarities in Christianity. Festivals to Greco-Roman gods were mandatory, and soon were merged with what had been Jewish Festivals. Passover became Easter, a modified worship of Astoreth, and Succot became Christmas, with the worship of Mithras and the celebrations of Saturnalia, in addition to taking the story of Yeshua’s birth, and making it more important than what Yeshua did on the stake. But then, Christianity ran from Judaism as soon as local laws came into conflict with it.

 
Idolatry was not merely a matter of bowing down before a carved image, but even the consumption of meats sacrificed to a foreign god was treif, and forbidden to Jews. To this day, an observant Jew does not drink wine that is not certified to have been made with dedicating it to a foreign god, or consume anthing else, as was anything used in the worship of a foreign god, such as any product or necessity sold in the marketplace had to be assumed to have been done so, and to Kosher abiding jews, still is.
And it was generally illegal to not recognize, and offer worship to the local gods, and of course, the Roman Emperor.
 
Even not working on Shabbat could be an excuse to persecute the local synagogue, while not keeping the other Moedim (God decreed appointments) such as the High Holy Days and the celebrations of the first day of each Biblical month as modified Shabbatot pretty much guaranteed that Judaism would be submerged beneath local traditions in the dispersion.
 
And of course, intermarriage with non-Jewish men or women occurred all too regularly, as it does today, breaking yet one more of the mitzvot of the Torah.

In regard to Yeshua’s having broken any commandment, you would need to specify which commandments you presume that he broke, and where the supposed transgressions occurred, with chapter and verse. I have a good grasp of the Apostolic Writings, but not an encyclopedic knowledge of them.

[Questor]

There are no second generation believers in Messiah, as it is not an inherited trait. And I have no knowledge of what wiccans physically pass down to their children.

...I mean, there pretty much have to be at least a few people who are the children of a religious movement that blossomed in the seventies?  Are you telling me here that you converted?  From what?

Christianity is a religion that sprang from a denomination of Judaism, and hybridized away from it rather a lot after the first century, falling into open idolatry. To me, and many other Jews that follow Yeshua, some, if not all, forms of that religion have adopted pagan Greek and Roman notions that are in direct contravention to Torah, which observant Jews attempt to follow. Yeshua was a Torah abiding Jew, and so were his Jewish followers until they had died out, or gone underground, avoiding the persecution by Christians in the second century onwards. 

Many non-Jewish believers do attempt to follow Torah, even as I do, and in truth none of us do it well, but once a Gentile believer in Yeshua resolves to do so, they have become god-fearers, proselytes to Judaism, who are leaving the gentile pagan world behind bit by bit.
 
Jewish believers in Yeshua are merely walking in the ways of their fathers, and remain Jews, who then, of their own desire, choose to follow Yeshua, and trust in him as their Messiah.

I'm familiar with the pitch, but I was more interested in your lived experience.

I come from a secular Jewish family that neither went to churches or synagogues, and due to their inherited fear of persecution, kept none of the Jewish Festivals, and attended Christian Churches in their childhoods only until they reached the age of responsibility, primarily as a means of finding social acceptance. They kept a surface adherence to Christmas and Easter, (presents and chocolates) and avoided all mention of G-d, but then, they were born in the 1920’s, and Judaism had not yet attained sympathy from most Christians in America. They wished to be seen to assimilate, yet, as had all their forebears, always quietly married other Jews. What I know of Judaism I was taught inadvertantly by my family, in things I was directly taught, and what was let drop, and then furtively hidden thereafter.
 
I had a few interactions with Christian communities that scared me to death, one in my childhood at the age of eight, as I had no real awareness of what they were talking about, and I was not encouraged by my family to gain such awareness. The second occurrence was in the seventies, when at the age of fifteen I was ‘invited’ into a local independent church when baptisms were handed out rather automatically to anyone requesting them, and which did not require any real knowledge of more than what Yeshua’s death meant to anyone, Jew or Gentile, in regard to what is commonly called ‘saving grace’, and is the justification of anyone who trusts in Yeshua to be remitted punishment of their sins in breaking Torah, as Yeshua had already died for the sins committed. 

This, in and of itself, is not a conversion to Christianity, as anyone with sincere belief in Yeshua can baptize someone who desires it.
 
I had read little of the Scriptures, and the Apostolic Writings, at that point, but I understood the gist of the matter. The events of my baptism were enough to keep me away from most any church from that point onwards, and when I did occasionally seek information at one, having read the entire Bible, any question I asked got me promptly kicked out, because I saw the oddities in the extremely imperfect translations from the original writings into Greek that most people call error, but are readily explained by an understanding of the original meanings of words that are very specific in their interpretation into Greek, but rather more attenuated in Hebrew and Aramaic. It does help to have some understanding of the Hebraic mindset that I seem to have picked up in part from my family, and in part from comparing Greek/English translations of the Scriptures to the Aramaic/English and Hebraic/English translations of them, but rigorous research is needed, seeking back into the writings of scholarly Jews who never met a Christian, and yet followed in Yeshua’s footsteps. They present a far different understanding of who Yeshua was understood to be than Christians do, who are sadly untaught in just how the Greek Church Fathers and the various decrees by Constantine changed what was a very Jewish sect of Judaism into the Greco-Roman based religion it is today.
 
What is most fascinating is the work of G-d through the Christian Churches, in that many of those that were ill taught later simply read their Bibles, and to the extent it is applied to Non-Jews, walk very uprightly in Torah. Unfortunately, most Christians are taught adherence to the outward forms of the Christian religion, and never get that far, leading to what is seen as blatant hypocrisy, but is a false assumption that Torah itself no longer matters to G-d, and thus need not be followed.

[Pat Mustard]

1) you're not a jew, christian. 2) These days the number of anti semitic incidentsis massively inflated by groups like the ADL conflating legitimate criticisms of Israel with anti semitic hate speech.  In fact they go so far as to unperson other jews who fail to toe the party line and uncritically support every atrocity Israel commits.

PS well done on "hiding" your christianity by linking to a far right christian agitation group whose goal is to impose a theocracy on the US.

1) My family tree says otherwise, but like many a Jew, you seem to want to kick me out of the family as they do for diasagreeing with them. And calling me a Christian is merely inaccurate, not offensive. Belief in Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel does not a Christian make. 

2) Both ADL and Liberty.org popped up instantly on a query to Google for information on anti-semitic or anti-christian incidents, as do many news articles and NGO's research, and state the details that I have given. I used them as informational resources as they were the first that showed up when queried that day. Pick other ones, and you get similar information.

Does Liberty.org wish to impose a theocracy on the U.S.? I have no contacts there to fill me on the details as you apparently have.

You know, you could just tell me you don't want to have a dissident voice here, making you feel uncomfortable. 

As it is, you sound like a well-indoctrinated pentacostalist hiding under the lable athiest that will not tolerate opposing viewpoints.

You're never going to not be a christian, christian. Unless you deconvert.

[Questor]

1) My family tree says otherwise, but like many a Jew, you seem to want to kick me out of the family as they do for diasagreeing with them. And calling me a Christian is merely inaccurate, not offensive. Belief in Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel does not a Christian make. 

2) Both ADL and Liberty.org popped up instantly on a query to Google for information on anti-semitic or anti-christian incidents, as do many news articles and NGO's research, and state the details that I have given. I used them as informational resources as they were the first that showed up when queried that day. Pick other ones, and you get similar information.

Does Liberty.org wish to impose a theocracy on the U.S.? I have no contacts there to fill me on the details as you apparently have.

You know, you could just tell me you don't want to have a dissident voice here, making you feel uncomfortable. 

As it is, you sound like a well-indoctrinated pentacostalist hiding under the lable athiest that will not tolerate opposing viewpoints.

You're never going to not be a christian, christian.  Unless you deconvert.

Strange that it matters so much to you, to call me something that literally does not compute in my poor brain. 

It must be the Catholic influence from your former pentacostalist days, for it is the Catholics who required 'conversion' to their way of thought, and on pain of death. You still think that way, and must be having a great deal of trouble undoing all the bad information your received in your childhood.

[Paleophyte]

I come from a secular Jewish family that neither went to churches or synagogues, and due to their inherited fear of persecution, kept none of the Jewish Festivals, and attended Christian Churches in their childhoods only until they reached the age of responsibility, primarily as a means of finding social acceptance. They kept a surface adherence to Christmas and Easter, (presents and chocolates) and avoided all mention of G-d, but then, they were born in the 1920’s, and Judaism had not yet attained sympathy from most Christians in America. They wished to be seen to assimilate, yet, as had all their forebears, always quietly married other Jews. What I know of Judaism I was taught inadvertantly by my family, in things I was directly taught, and what was let drop, and then furtively hidden thereafter.
 
I had a few interactions with Christian communities that scared me to death, one in my childhood at the age of eight, as I had no real awareness of what they were talking about, and I was not encouraged by my family to gain such awareness. The second occurrence was in the seventies, when at the age of fifteen I was ‘invited’ into a local independent church when baptisms were handed out rather automatically to anyone requesting them, and which did not require any real knowledge of more than what Yeshua’s death meant to anyone, Jew or Gentile, in regard to what is commonly called ‘saving grace’, and is the justification of anyone who trusts in Yeshua to be remitted punishment of their sins in breaking Torah, as Yeshua had already died for the sins committed. 

The whole notion of atonement by proxy is ridiculously ill-considered. You should give it a good hard look because it's every bit a Greco-Roman construct as the ones that you, quite rightly, criticize below. Yeshua was an apocalyptic street preacher and he got tacked up by the Romans for his troubles. That caused some serious issues for his church because you can't be the Messiah if you're dead, so Saul of Tarsus and the church fathers that followed him had to seriously rebrand and rework their saviour. Much of what you see in the divergence of the early Christian church from its Jewish roots isn't simply misinterpretation of language and culture, which there is a plentitude of, but also a necessary RetCon of Yesua into Jesus to give him an entirely new purpose.

The notion that somebody can die to atone for another person's sins, especially sins that haven't been committed yet, is just plain silly. Though in fairness, most of those sins are bloody idiotic in and of themselves, but two imbecilities do not make a truth.

This, in and of itself, is not a conversion to Christianity, as anyone with sincere belief in Yeshua can baptize someone who desires it.
 
I had read little of the Scriptures, and the Apostolic Writings, at that point, but I understood the gist of the matter. The events of my baptism were enough to keep me away from most any church from that point onwards, and when I did occasionally seek information at one, having read the entire Bible, any question I asked got me promptly kicked out, because I saw the oddities in the extremely imperfect translations from the original writings into Greek that most people call error, but are readily explained by an understanding of the original meanings of words that are very specific in their interpretation into Greek, but rather more attenuated in Hebrew and Aramaic. It does help to have some understanding of the Hebraic mindset that I seem to have picked up in part from my family, and in part from comparing Greek/English translations of the Scriptures to the Aramaic/English and Hebraic/English translations of them, but rigorous research is needed, seeking back into the writings of scholarly Jews who never met a Christian, and yet followed in Yeshua’s footsteps. They present a far different understanding of who Yeshua was understood to be than Christians do, who are sadly untaught in just how the Greek Church Fathers and the various decrees by Constantine changed what was a very Jewish sect of Judaism into the Greco-Roman based religion it is today.
 
What is most fascinating is the work of G-d through the Christian Churches, in that many of those that were ill taught later simply read their Bibles, and to the extent it is applied to Non-Jews, walk very uprightly in Torah. Unfortunately, most Christians are taught adherence to the outward forms of the Christian religion, and never get that far, leading to what is seen as blatant hypocrisy, but is a false assumption that Torah itself no longer matters to G-d, and thus need not be followed.

The only fault that I can find with your criticism of the Romanization of the early Christian church is that you're probably being too lenient. There are entire traditions in there that were simply invented from nothing. Now you simply need to apply that same rigour to your own beliefs.

We know that the notion of substitutionary atonement was developed by the Christian church to give their savior a job once he became unemployed on account of dying. It's yet another load of bollocks cooked up by people who had only the faintest notion of what Judaism was about and probably cared even less.

As for the god of Jewish scripture, we know that he is a syncretic mess created when El was fused with Yahweh. Ironically, Yahweh wasn't even a Canaanite god. You're worshipping a foreign import. El was an older, wiser deity and head of the Canaanite pantheon,  whereas Yahweh was a red-handed deity of storms and battle. The result is the schizophrenic deity of Juadaism and the OT, guiding his chosen people one moment and glorying in destruction the next. It's also the reason that Yahweh could never tolerate Ba'al, who was the native Canaanite deity of being a murderous bastard. Ba'al loses out in the end and is supplanted/absorbed by Yahweh and gets painted as a villain. The untidy bits about El's wife and children make for a hilarious read too.