Recovering the Jewish-Messianic Gospel Part One


Recovering the Jewish-Messianic Gospel Part One

 Over the past five years, I have been engaged in an intense study of Jewish 2nd temple literature and the New Testament.  I have come to some startling conclusions, which I will unpack in a series of posts.  My purpose in this study was to pursue truth, wherever it led me.  I believe that God is a God of truth, so that in uncovering truth I will draw closer to God.  This journey has taken me on some unexpected twists and turns, but I am convinced I am on the right track and I am closer to truth and to God than I was five years ago.  

When I began this study, I wanted to understand what the New Testament writers were trying to communicate in their writings. I also wanted to understand what their first century Jewish audience would have heard and understood when they read these writings.  I come from a Protestant, Evangelical background and I have served as a “full-time” associate pastor in several different churches over the years. Part of my learning process was "unlearning" what I already thought I knew!

I was committed to finding truth so I had to lay down my preconceived ideas about the Bible and my doctrinal assumptions.  I learned that in order to find truth I had to abandon the premise that the Bible was inerrant and infallible in its original languages. This was a huge step for me and it is for many of us who have been raised in an evangelical or fundamentalist environment. I needed to accept the fact that there was a human component to the authorship of the Bible as well as a Divine component.  The writings of Peter Enns have been very helpful to me in that regard (particularly his book "Inspiration and Incarnation" ). I discovered his writings while attending a Protestant evangelical seminary over the past few years.

Another step for me was to investigate the thought-world of first century Judaism to try and understand the context in which the New Testament writings were presented.  A third key for me was to study the historical development of New Testament theology. We can actually see the changing ideas as we track the development of theology from Paul's letters (our earliest NT documents) through the gospels, to some of the later letters (e.g. Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, 2 Peter).  I will unpack all of this more in my next post.

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