PENTECOST  

AND THE JEWISH ROOTS OF CHRISTIANITY

WHAT IS PENTECOST? 

Pentecost (Shavout in Hebrew) is a Jewish Biblical Pilgrimage Holiday.  One of  God's 3 mandated pilgrimage Feasts dedicated to Israel in Leviticus 23.  There are 50 days between Passover and Shavout. In Leviticus 23 God says,  

" The LORD said to Moses, ² "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the LORD, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies.......

The Festival of Weeks

 ¹⁵ "'From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering (Passover), count off seven full weeks. ¹⁶ Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD. ¹⁷ From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of firstfruits to the LORD. ¹⁸ Present with this bread seven male lambs, each a year old and without defect, one young bull and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the LORD, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings-a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the LORD. ¹⁹ Then sacrifice one male goat for a sin offering^[c] and two lambs, each a year old, for a fellowship offering. ²⁰ The priest is to wave the two lambs before the LORD as a wave offering, together with the bread of the firstfruits. They are a sacred offering to the LORD for the priest. ²¹ On that same day you are to proclaim a sacred assembly and do no regular work. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live.

Today there are some confusing date elements, but I like the Keraite Jewish explanation.

Click here for an explanation of the Shavout  calendar 

The most interesting part of  all this is that  in Acts 1 Jesus has died and has risen and for 40 days he is speaking to the Disciples and the gather followers.  He tells them to stay in Jersualem where they had gathered to celebrate Passover.  But now Jesus tells them to stay and wait

 ⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

 ⁷ He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

 ⁹ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight."

Pentecost (SHAVOUT hebrew.) is one of those 'holidays" which has been unrecognizably twisted to fit a man made "Christian  liturgical Calendar".  You will see from the Wikipedia article below that the  gentile measure of when Pentecost fits into the calendar is measured by when Easter fits.  BUT "Easter"  is a man made holiday.  It was established as the original element of  "replacement theology" in 325 CE by Constantine at the Council of Nicea.  The rationale behind  the redating  and renaming of the " 'new' Christian Holy Days"  was to completely divest 'the New Christianity" from Jewish roots and eliminate all of the original Jewish influences. A Jewish free Christianity was the building block of this official Roman religion by 325 CE.  Thus "Easter" becomes the hallmark of the "new Christianity" as defined by Constantine and the foundation stone of 'Replacement Theology' which has spawned virtually all of the 2,000 years of Anti-Semitism in the Christian church.     

However, for those who seek the scripture as the cornerstone of Christianity, Pentecost (Shavout)  has a significant role to play in the miraculous eternal theater of God.  If you read Leviticus 23 as your study guide, you will discover that ALL biblical holidays are mandated and described by God in the book of Leviticus.  In Leviticus, you will discover the only location in the entire scripture where God  commanded specific dates and methods of how He wanted to be worshipped.  When Jesus says in John that those who want to prove that they love him will obey His commands, he is in part referring to the commands that he himself obeyed from the Father ( 'I only do what I see the father doing'). God himself says  in thousands of places that being obedient is the way in which we show him that we love him with all our heart.  We don't set up and worship idols, we obey Shabbat, and we don't blaspheme his name (according the the 10 commandments) etc.

John 14:23

Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

John 14:24

Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

As Christians ( in a warped state of pride and confusion) often say, "we are not under law, we are under grace"  implying that grace means that God no longer discerns any merit nor has any interest in his prior teachings or commandments. "OK folks, you are now out of prison so you don't need to obey the laws anymore .... you are free".   The implication being that Jesus, his death and resurrection has negated (often mis- called fulfilled) his own commands and teachings.  This phrase  sadly has become a kind of theological idolatry on which many born again Christians hang their hats.  A false dichotomy, the phrase sets grace AGAINST the teachings of God and  used to excuse every kind of apostasy and heretical behavior in the grab bag of  twisted Christian theologies.

Recently, during one of my regular rants against  Paganized Christianity,  a Christian friend said to me, " well even if (Christmas) is a pagan holiday, won't God honor it (us) if we do it in his name?". A pastor once said to me that if the Church Fathers decreed any new regulations, we need to obey these as if they were the word  of God".  In Jewish terms this process of interpretation and pronouncement is called Halacha.  Jesus set up all kind of new ways to view and interpret the law and rabbis in the Talmud and Mishna and elsewhere do the same in an attempt to expound and interpret the gray areas of the WORD.  The Church Fathers did the same..Jesus did the same.   

But what if a new ruling or "halacha" goes against God's word (scriptures) or is totally in opposition to it. A good example of this is the Catholic tradition of seeing the Pope rather than Jesus as the ultimate arbiter and authority of law.  Or the Christian Fundamentalist legalism of forbidding dancing, music or wine in the church? There are thousands of these man-made traditions whch we have fallen  in love with as if they were mandated by God's Word.  While these may have served some social purpose, it is important to examine whether they actually assist to advance scripture or if they fly in the face of it. That was Jesus' fundamental argument with the Pharisees..the traditions of men had replaced the word of God and led people astray and into bondage.His accusation to the Pharisees that they 'strain and nat and swallow a camel' .  For Jesus, Halacha should support God's commands and advance his kingdom not bind us in 'legalism and traditions of men'    That is why it is so handy to have our own bibles ...AND TO READ THEM!     

Mark 7:8

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions."

Mark 7:9

And he continued, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions

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You can see how error creeps in. ....  

PENTECOST According to Wikipedia:

Pentecost (Ancient Greek: Πεντηκοστή [ἡμέρα], Pentēkostē [hēmera], "the Fiftieth [day]") is one of the prominent feasts in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection.^[1] The feast is also called Whitsunday especially in the United Kingdom. Pentecost is celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday, hence its name.^[2] Pentecost falls on the tenth day after Ascension Thursday. ( Editorial note: I don't know what 'Ascension Thursday or Whitsunday' are  but I know Easter is a pagan notion which has been  adopted into the official Christian lexicon.  Also Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday, All Saints Day and thousands of others which have no biblical mandate and are total inventions which are part of Replacement Theology.  All of these nice, colorful traditions would be harmless and even cute if they didn't position themselves as the cornerstone of Replacement Theology and Anti-Semitism in the Christian Church ) 

Pentecost is historically and symbolically related to the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, which commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus. Among Christians, Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus as described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31.^[3] For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described as the "Birthday of the Church".

The Pentecostal movement of Christianity derives its name from this biblical event.

FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY: 

EASTER AND THE JEWISH ROOTS OF CHRISTIANITY

This  reflection to Christians has come into being because in the past few days I have been confronted with some of the sobering realities about Christianity that probably need to be investigated more carefuly.  Every year these realities confront us  and the purposes of  Olive Tree Ministries which is to restore the Jewish roots of Christianity to the "Church", and every year we think that we have written the definitive work to explain everything.  And then the next year it crops up again.  So here goes.  

Yeshua, The Jewish Messiah 

The original Jewish people who followed Jesus (Yeshua) understood that the birth and death and resurrection of Yeshua (Jesus) was part of the central scriptural prophetic plan  to reveal the Jewish  Messiah.  To those 'apostles' Yeshua had proven himself to be the promised Messiah. (read the Gospels).  Jesus was born of Jewish Parents, he faithfully practiced  Torah, he taught only Jewish "brothers" and he sent his disciples out to preach to his Jewish 'brothers".   He died accused of being  "king of the Jews" and when he comes back to rule and reign as Messiah and King,  he will be a Jew.  He did not convert to another religion.  For those who think he was simply a good teacher and prophet, he would have to be a liar since he himself said he was the King of the Jews. The idea of a Messiah (Greek, Christ)  is totally Jewish in its origin and concept and would have no meaning to a first century gentile.  

Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah is not the beginning of a new religion.  

If you read the Gospels and Acts, you will see clearly the Jewishness of the  New Testament.  For the thousands of Jewish people who were followers of Yeshua, it was totally appropriate to continue the observances set out in Torah, specifically Leviticus 23.   Passover,  all of the Spring Feasts as well as the Fall Feasts were an intimate part of the Messianic experience  at least until 135 CE after the Bar Kochba rebellion and the plowing under of the entire city of Jerusalem. At this time, there was no written 'New Testament'.  All of Paul's teachings to both Jews and gentiles originated from Hebrew scriptures.  Paul was not a convert to 'Christianity'.  He explains this in Romans.  Paul was an observant Jew with a very prominent Jewish history. He was part of the Sanhedrin and a Pharisee, all explained  clearly in the book Romans.

Acts 15  is 'The Camel in the Tent'  

By the time of Acts 15 (The Council of Jerusalem circa 60 CE), there were many Roman pagan gentiles who were accepting Yeshua as their own Messiah and were entering into 'the kingdom of God' through  the sacrifice ( blood)  of Yeshua. They were NOT converting to a 'Gentile Christian Religion' because at that time there was no such entity.  The controversy over this is made clear in Acts 15.  The decision of the Council was to permit non-Jews (gentile Romans)  to enter the Kingdom without the necessity of circumcision.  In other words, the new believers  who were gentiles did not need to become observant Jews in order to become part of this Messianic Kingdom.   

Sadly and inadvertantly, this decision at the Council of Jerusalem,  opened the door. Enter Roman Paganism which finally became the definition  and official practice of the Christian Church  260 years later at the Council of Nicea (325 CE)  and which has governed the 'church' for over 1600 years.    At the Council of Nicea, Constantine declared that Easter (named after the Pagan God Eshtar) was to replace the Jewish holiday of Passover with a new way to determine the date through a new calendar which abandoned the lunar calendar (under which the Jewish people still measure days and times.)  With  this decision, the separation of Christians from their Jewish roots was initiated.  As the Messianic entity started to become gentilized it also became Paganized since Romans and Greeks were all from Paganism of one sort of another.  There emerged early arguments between the early anti-Semitic  theologies and heresies of people like Marcion, Irenaeus, Origin and Eusebius against followers of the Jewish way of Messiah like Polycarp (who was a friend and follower of John )  about the nature of the Messianic entity called 'ecclesia' or 'called out ones'.   Polycarp advocated pursuit of the Jewish apostolic practices. He lost his argument  and was martyred.      

The Spring Feasts of Leviticus 23 : The Fulfillment of Scriptural Prophecy. 

If one were truly pursuing the scriptures, it would become perfectly clear that Passover and the Feast of First Fruits exactly fulfills the prophetic death and resurrection of Messiah Jesus just as the coming of the Holy Spirit on  Shavout (Pentecost)  50 days later fulfills that Feast under a new covenant promised in Jeremiah 30.   

 Easter and Resurrection  Sunday and all the other mostly Roman, Catholic, Pagan practices such as Lent, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are all  man- made replacements of scriptural practice and are  Constintinian/ Roman Catholic at their root. They are add ons that became part of the later Anti-Jewish expressions of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Church and its later offshoots even into  the Protestant Reformation in the late 1400's and onward  until today.    

Replacement Theology Rooted in Roman Paganism Threads Throughout Contemporary Christianity  

Many Roman Catholic practices still remain in the lexicon of mainstream Protestant  observances. Catholic relics, buildings, tourist sites etc  originate with a post Jerusalem, Roman paganism and then later pagan "Constantinianism"   rather than with biblical reality of  first century  "Jewish" origins of Christianity.

However, sad to say,  that there is still very much of this "Roman Catholic religious tradition"  residual in  Protestant observances such as Easter (and with it all of the attendant Lentin and Holy Week practices).  These were the very first of the Roman, Constantinian holidays that followed the separation of Christianity from its Jewish root and then turned Israel and Jewish people into a 2,000 year old enemy.   The persecution of the Jewish people for 1600 plus years,  by first the Catholic Church and then it's Protestant progeny is all a  part of this Pagan idea that somehow 'the Church" replaced Israel  hence 'Replacement Theology' and its many theological variations.   

The original Jewish followers of Yeshua (Jesus) celebrated Passover and the other Feasts mentioned in Leviticus 23. They thought of themselves as Jews and they observed regular scriptural Jewish practices along with their understanding that Yeshua was the promised Jewish Messiah.  Early followers of Yeshua as The Messiah were not 'gentile Christians'  nor did they think of themselves as participating  in or starting a new religion.

It is that original  root of that first century revelation that Olive Tree Ministries is trying to restore to its rightful place in history and theology.  There are some pro Israel Christian organizations that say we should support Israel because of Genesis 12:3 (God will curse those who curse Abraham ( Israel)  and bless those who bless Israel).  But truth is, there is much more to it that just supporting Israel as a Christian. The birth of Christian Anti-Semitism needs to be addressed at its root, which is in erroneous theology.  It requires nothing less than a paradigm shift.

One New Man: Ephesians 2:11-16: Tearing Down the Dividing Wall

 ¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

 ¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Messiah Yeshua himself as the chief cornerstone.

A Tragic Joke: The Dividing Wall  

      Today the American landscape is dominated by Christianity and Secularism.  That means in the strange event that a Jewish person decides to entertain the thought of Yeshua being his own awaited Messiah, here is what probably happens:   

      He is automatically rejected by the Jewish community because they have been trained to believe that Yeshua could not possibly be their Messiah because after all look at how the 'Christians" have persecuted them for 1600 plus years in the name of Jesus.  "This Jesus is for gentile 'Christians' and definitely not for Jews".  Who could blame them?  All of the Christian apologetics in the world cannot overcome what really happened.   

      Conversely, if a Jewish person is thinking that maybe Yeshua is his Jewish Messiah and he or she walks into an average Christian church, they will make every attempt to reform him into a gentile 'Christian'.  Absorbing him into the pagan Christian gentile holidays, Sunday sabbath. Easter ham, and other  traditions and practices thus silently robbing from him his very Jewishness because of adherence to tradition of men established 1600 years ago.   

        Thereby the contemporary Church, unwittingly, reconstructs the very wall that Yeshua came to tear down.  The Jewish seeker,  is faced with enemies on every side.  No 'one new man' here...not in this Church.  'It is our way or the Highway'.  And often it is 'the highway'.   it reminds any sober Jewish person of the Middle Ages where Jews were forced to convert, to give up all things Jewish, renounce Jewish dietary laws, and never celebrate Shabbat or Passover again or be burned at the stake or thrown out of the country.  'How could this Jesus be the Messiah for the Jews?'  He is certainly not tearing  down any dividing walls of hostility.   On the contrary, the dividing wall of hostility has been carefully maintained by the very church that claims the Jewish fellow as their savior.  Duh! 

- Hadassah

Let us know what you think! Finish the article in your own words.

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In a weak moment I agreed to write a piece around the all to common Christian rejoinder, “we are not under law, but under grace.” Here is part one of.....well more than one part.

It should be understood that I have no intention of offering a complete thesis of systematic theology. My principle objection is... to the misuse to which this statement is put. This paraphrase of Paul’s statement in Romans 6: 14 has become a rubric most often used to deflect any serious consideration of the relationship between the God’s commandments as they are found in the Hebrew Scripture and the Gospels and Letters of the Newer Testament. It has the guise of unassailable truth; an accusation that brands its target as a hapless legalist or worse a “Judaizer”.

So let’s get this straight at the outset… I am not going to insist that all believers should, must , need to, ought to…… keep the entire catalogue of Maimonides’ 613 Mitzvot', keep Kosher, or any other version of a Christian’s notion of contemporary Jewish religious legalism. This was not Paul’s point nor is it mine.

The plain fact is that God’s people were always under grace. Certainly King David can be seen to make this point repeatedly in Psalms. If one makes a careful reading of the portions of Torah that establish “statutes” for the children of Israel, you will see that the principle point of the regulations are sacrifices, ceremonial cleanliness, unintentional sin, and property rights… Not salvation. There are no sacrificial remedies for intentional sin beyond God’s mercy (Grace). King David has Uriah killed and marries his widow but he makes no sacrifice to atone for this sin... There is none he can make. He appeals to God for mercy on behalf of the son of the union (II Sam 11&12).

Where then does this notion come from? Some of its roots are far older than Paul’s exposition in the letter to the Romans….. The translation of  the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.... Specifically, the decision by the translators of the "Septugint" to use the Greek word 'Nomos' in place of the Hebrew "Torah".

You may not have ever given much thought to translation. Most Americans are still fluent only in English, have little experience beyond, perhaps, high school Spanish or French with another tongue, and as a result have a small appreciation of the challenge of converting an idea expressed in one language into another one.

Unless you are fluent in Biblical Hebrew and Konien Greek you are dependent on a translation to be able to read the bible. Clearly biblical translation can have far reaching consequences touching as it does on the moral and spiritual center of our lives.

There are many people who believe that one translation of the Bible is inherently, better, more accurate, or inspired. They may even believe that it is possible to make an accurate word for word rendering….. this in the face of the everyday difficulty that we all have in making ourselves understood by our mothers, spouses and children (even though we all speak the same language). The fact that these difficulties are multiplied many times when faced with different languages seems not to occur to anyone. Moreover, in the case of the Bible, we are dealing with ancient forms of different languages arising from cultures that have been dead for thousands of years.

All language is fluid. Words and their referent meanings evolve over time. Often words used in one era to translate a concept or word no longer carry the same meaning. A current pop culture example is the transformation of the word gay…… from a description of mood to a label for homosexuality. What might one make of James 2:3 in the King James version, “And ye have respect to him that weareth the gaye clothing..” ?

Consider the word “Church” which usually appears where the Greek word ekklesia (ἐκκλησία) occurs in the New Testament text. The Greek is literally ‘called out’….it has the original sense of community or assembly. Today the word, church, is mostly understood to mean any or all of the following; an institution, an ideology or belief system, a denomination or perhaps a building. The first century sense of ekklesia as a local community of like-minded believers detached from any denomination, building or an elaborate theology is mostly lost to us when we read the word church in our Bibles. If we wanted to recapture the flavor of Paul’s letters we might be better served to scratch out a phrase like “Church at Corinth” and replace it with the “community of believers at Corinth” or perhaps the “congregation at Corinth”. 

While these two examples taken alone may seem trivial,  I mean to get an idea across without a discussion of the technicalities of grammar, the likes of the “Objective Genitive” case or Greek verb tenses. The point is that translation is a profound issue underlying our whole approach to understanding scripture and therefore our faith. Dr. David Stern has a decent overview of these translation issues in his prefaces to both his “Jewish New Testament” and “The Complete Jewish Bible” and I commend them to you.

It is sufficient for the reader to understand that translation is not a mechanical act. There are great ambiguities in the meaning of language. In live conversation speakers resolve ambiguities through dialogue, questions, facial expression, voice quality and gestures…. Nevertheless as speakers, we all know, it is still possible to be massively misunderstood.

In written forms, structure and context are of some help. As is the presumption that an author is being deliberate, careful and has an intention of clarity. An author assumes a shared value or world view with his contemporary readers. If you have ever read any legal prose you can get an idea of how difficult it is to write in an unambiguous fashion even among contemporaries.

Of course, the reader may have ..indeed does have, a point of view. This bias will be used to resolve ambiguity. The reader may even misconstrue the meaning or deliberately distort it as a because of his bias.  When the reader is the translator he must be alert for the influence of his own opinions. This is a devilish trap. Inevitably the translator is confronted with instances where words, even whole phrases, make no literal sense in their context or their meaning is, at least, obscure. Equally difficult are passages that could mean, perhaps, one of two contradictory or, at least, divergent things. Often the choices have the potential take the whole sense of the author’s discourse off on a tangent. The translator must decide which interpretation of a difficult passage is consistent with his understanding of the author’s intention.  Dr. Stern summarizes the translator’s dilemma very well…..

    “Which raises the question of whether the translator should “inject his opinions” into his translation. The Jewish New Testament cautiously answers in the affirmative, on the ground that it inevitably happens anyhow, so that the translator who supposes he “maintains neutrality”, merely channeling ideas from the source language to the receptor language without influencing the result, deludes both himself and his readers. For necessarily every decision as to how to render a Greek word or phrase into English expresses the translator’s opinion. A translator ideologically committed to not intruding his opinions does so in spite of himself, but without taking responsibility for it.

Translation, then, is not a process of merely substituting an English word for a Greek or Hebrew word. It requires a high degree of judgment and more than a little knowledge of the culture and world view of the people who produced the work under examination. Further, since judgment is called for, the world view and culture of the translator is likewise in play. In the case of scripture world view and culture are of immense importance, and it should be apparent that a translator’s own theology will influence his interpretation. The wider Christian community has long believed that it had replaced Israel in God's plan of world redemption. This is a foundational idea. Its impact has destorted scriptural translation, scholarship and theological expression for centuries.

David



FOOTNOTE: The history of the cannon of scripture and its translation is implicit in this discussion but well outside its scope. I can recommend “Wide As the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired” by Benson Bobrick as a place to start, also “The Bible Cannon” by Lee Martin McDonald will keep you busy.

Blessing to you all. After some soul searching (chiefly related to our ability to keep up with stuff), we have launched a blog page. At the outset we have not implemented the comments feature, but hope to in the future. In the mean time we welcome your feedback at our email address below.

 Since I have begun this on a Sunday afternoon with no notice to anyone least of all myself, neither Susan or I have prepared any comentary beyond this welcome. Check back soon.