THINKING LIKE HEBREWS

What did Yeshua look like? We don't really know, do we?  There's a reason for that.

We all make assumptions that what we say and what we believe are right and valid.  But where do these assumptions come from? They’re all from some premise, belief, or idea of reality.   The purpose of my next few posts is to make us aware of the difference between thinking biblically, that is to say, thinking like Hebrews rather than Greeks.  Our American culture is not just American, but as one historian put it, we are “swimming in a Greek soup” in many ways.  You may find as we go on that some of these thoughts can be quite challenging, even to us Bible believing folk. Our church culture and much of our American culture is a product of the bible with its Judean-Christian influences.  

Our concepts of morality, law, ethics, right, justice, and the distinction between good all go back to Moses and Mt. Sinai.  In reality, Moses got all his information - all that would distinguish Israel from every other nation - from God when God called him to come up on the blazing mountain and Moses was with Him for forty days. Actually eighty. Among the commandments, God gave Moses the story of what took place at the beginning. After all, who else would know what happened in the beginning?  Only God was there ! He also gave Moses His account of the Genesis stories - from God's perspective.

  

The Bible is Not Hebraic! 

So then, to say that the bible is Hebraic – both O.T. and N.T. -- is to say it had human authors who were Jewish through and through.[2]  It’s not really a Hebrew or a Greek book.  But its actual Author is God Himself.  In fact, all of Israel’s ancient culture was designed and birthed by God. What He gave to Moses for the nation addressed basically every aspect of their lives to be the one people through whom He would touch the rest of the world. God’s covenant promise to Abraham that he would bless the world through his (Abraham’s) desendents is a huge study in itself in the myriad ways in which that has been a reality even these thousands of years later. God keeps His promises, often despite our weakness and disinclinations.   So we begin our study with the premise that it is God Himself who is the Author of the Bible.  

So the Bible is not a product of a culture, nor of human inspiration, but of God.  That’s why we refer to it as God’s Word.  Though God did inspire the Scriptures He didn’t bypass doing it through people in human language that is understood by everyday people He wanted to communicate with.  The fact that God chose a particular group of people through which to reveal Himself and His ways does not lessen the truth of divine inspiration.  Nor does it lessen the fact that the message is intended for all people of every culture.   That said, we would still do well to read the Scriptures through the eyes and understanding, as much as we are able, of ancient Hebrew culture and customs.[3]  These ways, you will find, are often in contrast to us as much as they were to the Greeks and Romans around them.

How Hebrews Think

For ancient Greeks, and for us as Americans, our primary emphasis is on how things look, in the form of things. The visual impact is important to us; how we view them in the physical.  Appearance often determines how we assess someone – by their appearance.  Also how we categorize things, as good or not, valuable or not.   Not so the Hebrews. Their focus was on the essence of a thing, on the character of a person, or on the meaning of a thing. The value is placed on the intrinsic meaning, rather than the outward appearance.   That assessment would come first, the external later, if at all.  Consider that we know much about the character and values and what is meaningful to the Bible characters without knowing a thing about what they looked like. If you had written a bible story, would you have been inclined to introduce them  with what they looked like, including Yeshua Himself?  The only thing we know about what He looked like is one prophetic prediction of the Messiah, though He was evidently so real to Isaiah that he wrote it in present tense:  “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). No outward appearance to draw us to Him evidently.  It was who He was ‘inside,’ not outside that drew thousands of Jewish people to Him.    

What is of primary concern is the essence of things. The content came first, then the external form.[4]  Let’s look at an example of Noah and his ark.  Of course, we have no idea of what Noah looked like but we do know God considered him “a just man.”  So what does “just” mean?  It has the meaning in Hebrew of righteous but also of being fair, impartial, even handed, objective.  And get this – it can also mean non-partisan. Imagine that!  The definition I looked up really did say that. So what would that mean? Ponder worthy perhaps.  To go on….

 

What Kept The Ark Afloat?

What do we really know about the ark? We do know what type of wood Noah used, its dimensions, a window opening was around the top for air circulation, and it had a roof and three levels.  But we don’t know what it looked like. There have been many depictions of what men think it looked like, but usually it has a bow, a point on the front. But those points on the front of boats are to cut through water when the vessel is being propelled by oars or a motor. There were none of those on the ark. It wasn’t propelled by anyone but God.  The Hebrew portrays it basically as a wooden box.  But what about the essence? Is it possible that there is more prophetic meaning to the ark than we have been aware of? 

Well, it wasn’t the box itself that kept them from being destroyed in the flood, it was the fact that this box was waterproof. God told Noah to cover it inside and out with a material much like tar. In Hebrew the word for this covering is capar, or capara related to atonement. It is the same word used 69 times in Scripture for the blood of Yeshua that is a capara, a covering, that is the very thing that keeps us from being destroy, we could say, because of our sin.  The essence of the whole ark experience was a picture of the righteous being “saved” because of the capar, the covering.  I love how God hides Yeshua in the Old Testament Scriptures , and how He becomes visible once we are born again.  

What About The Visuals? 

God told Israel in the beginning of the Ten Commandments to have no graven – carved or painted – images of Him. No visuals.There is no way any human concept of Him would be the least bit    adequate. They would only limit their expectations and concepts of Him and make them physical, not spiritual. This extended to the early Hebrew/Jewish believers having no depictions of Yeshua either.  It is not until the 3^rd century that Roman believers began to carve images of biblical stories that they begin to appear. These would not include Jewish believers but rather this would be a part of what would cause the Jewish believers to separate away from the "Christians" who had no qualms about doing what God spoke to Israel about specifically. 

The fact is, we don’t know what Yeshua looked like. But we know a whole lot about His character, His beliefs, the way He thought, His values, His speech, His absolute obedience to Father-God and His love for and interactions with people. The essence of His inner being is the focus, not His externalities….. His inner content rather than His physical form.    

About Solomons’ descriptions

His poetry in the Song of Songs of the woman he loved is a word picture. (7:3).  What would you say he’s describing when he says to his beloved, “Your belly is a heap of wheat”? To us that sounds like she’s rather on the chubby side. But to him it would mean she is a woman of fruitfulness, capable of a bountiful harvest in what she does with her life. These are words of her essence and internal character.  It may also have expressed his anticipation of her fruitfulness in bearing children.  Or He also says, ”Your nose like a tower of Lebanon which looks toward Damascus” (7:4).  This is a woman who perceives  what is happening in the world, and whose dignity and bearing is that of a woman fit to be a queen.  She “towers” over others in comparison.  As a Hebrew, he sees her inner values and they are what is important to him before what may be her external beauty. 

The Greeks, on the other hand, were about structure and form.  Think of their emphasis and focus on sculpture of the human body in seeking to depict its perfection. Consider the gymnasiums in which those perfections were aspired to.  Or the buildings which we still often seek to emulate in Greek forms of columns and arcs, etc.  The art museum in my home city of Philadelphia is an exact replica of the Parthenon in Rome, which is a copy of the kinds of buildings found in Greece and Rome.[5]

  
How Much Do We Each Matter? 

Let’s consider the Greek concept of time. Greeks see history as a never ending cycle of aimless repetition. Yes, there was the development of philosophy which sought to find the meaning of life, but still, the  average Greek or Roman saw life as being born, you live your life in whatever way you did and you die, as did the next generation, and the next.  Houses deteriorated over time and had to be replaced, as with the new ones all over again.  Plants and animals went through the same cycles. But there was no destination to aim for, or to find greater meaning in. Even the great Roman Empire was filled with people who lived and died with no meaning to their own personal lives. The focus was on the State, or the Empire, not on the value of individuals,

Hebrews, on the other hand, viewed human history as going somewhere with each person of value in the process. Consider all those names of people listed in the geneologies or the lists of David or Solomon's staff or soldiers. Israel and all who comprised Israel had a definite beginning  - in God – and was headed toward a goal,  toward the Messianic reign of Israel’s Redeemer, and toward a time when all that is harmful will be no more. Everything had, and still has, meaning. History, and therefore, each life, is moving forward toward a great culmination.  Each person is created in God’s likeness, and therefore each person has intrinsic value.  The Hebrew’s value of their children, with regard to them becoming the adults to carry on the values of godliness to their own children, and so on, lovingly and  carefully raised them to be a part of God’s purposes and plan and values. This paradigm is certainly contrary to Greek practices of infanticide in which it was often decided within ten days whether or not a baby was worth keeping alive or not. If not, it was either thrown off a cliff in Sparta or put in a clay jar in the Athenian temple as an offering to the gods.   If not, the child was done away with, sometimes left exposed to the weather without food or liquid to die. If that shocks us, as it should, today we don’t even wait till a baby is born before it is decided the child isn’t worth keeping alive.  This has its roots in Greek thinking, certain, not Hebrew.

It's All In The Name

 Names also have specific value in the Hebrew culture.  To go back to Noah, for instance, most of us are aware his name first and foremost means "comfort."  His father named him for the comfort He expected this baby boy would somehow bring freedom from the curse that came upon the earth when Adam sinned.  Somehow he had some prophetic sense that this baby would bring a great change to the world they lived in.  Well, he got that part right.  Looking it up in Hebrew Noah’s name also can mean:  Resting place, to stay, to remain or to set down.  When all others were taken out of the earth as result of the flood, Noah and his family were the only ones remaining, who stayed on earth, as their ark set down on a resting place.  How awesome is that?   

The Law of First Mention” 

This "law" means when something is first mentioned in the bible, be on the lookout for where it will manifest as God’s way of things as the Bible unfolds.  In this case, it is Noah and his family who are the just and righteous who remained on the earth while the unrighteous were taken away, who no longer remained on the earth.  It seems from this that the righteous remain on the earth while the unrighteous are taken out.  This fits in with “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew  ), especially when we consider that the Hebrew understanding of “meek” (a poor translation actually) is indicative of “a faithful remnant.”  How, I wonder, does that inform our expectation of a pre-trib rapture?  Could this be one of those challenges to thinking like a Hebrew?  I wonder.

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[1]  Some of this introductory information and further articles in our study are taken from Assumptions That Affect Our Lives by Christian Overman, 1996.     

[2] There is much thought that all the writers were Jewish with the exception of Luke. I believe Luke may also have been Jewish as there was a high priest at that time whose name was Theophilus.  To read my article, “Was Acts Written to Israel’s High Priest?” go to:  https://sidroth.org/?s=theophilus&post_type=my_article .

[3] Many of this Biblical values, culture, customs and ways of thinking are still present in today’s Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere in the world. 

[4] How much would this emphasis on character rather than outward appearance change what we value today, or the way we evaluate people?  Think of what’s on the media. What are our kids’ aspirations based on from what they see valued?  Oh, my!

[5] Rome had no real culture of their own in this sense. They were largely about warfare and armies; But capturing Greece,  in 146 B.C., they adopted much of their culture and values, not to mention their gods.    

[6] It is noteworthy that often it was Christians who would often find the abandoned babies that were left exposed to die and raise them as if they were their own children. 

The Gospel of Mark Through Jewish Eyes - Part 2

Shalom, Folks. I hope you had a good week. Thanks for joining me and the others who are a part of this online class.   Some of this lesson might seem a bit on the heavy side as I lay a foundation for where I believe God is taking us as we study the Gospel of Mark through Jewish eyes. We are taking a look outside of Mark's gospel today to how the people he knew might be somewhat bewildered by our "church" today. But take heart, Yeshua has overcome the world, and we are living in a day when God is overcoming some  erroneous doctrines and restoring the truth of His Word where it is needed. And in contrast to some past periods of church history, a renewed sweet sense of His presence is available to us as has not always been there. 

When Yeshua walked the earth and taught God's people, He was largely bringing correction to misunderstandings of God that had come about through what some well-intentioned men had added to the Scriptures. Some of those intentions in time became sufficiently entrenched as religious doctrines so that   when Yeshua came to bring clarity to God's word, His teachings challenged their religious rules which also served to challenge their positions of power. This news isn't news to us, of course, but it's still significant to consider because it serves to make us aware that we too must be careful not to hold onto cherished ways of "doing church" that God may be seeking to better align with His word and His ways.

What John the Immerser said he was bringing was a message to prepare for the coming Messiah, and then Yeshua Himself, through His teachings and acts brought to Israel truth and revelation that also prepared God's people, those with ears to hear, for what Yeshua's atoning death and resurrection accomplished. Could it be that what God is doing today, bringing truth where it has been corrupted, and restoring correct understanding to misinterpreted Scripture is also preparation for the fulfillment of His final redemptive plan for mankind? New-found insights into places in God's Word  that were unclear or confusing before and now being understood that may have been misinterpreted or identified as something that wasn't what was happening at all. But now we have information to inform us of what was really being said. We will be talking about a number of these as we go on in our study. These are helping to readjust some of our concepts of the Father and His Son in "Spirit and in truth" by revealing truth where text has been added or misinterpreted. Happily, we are living in a time when our God is restoring  the power of the truth of His word and it is being manifested in our lives once again with healing, signs and wonders and changed lives. How exiting is all that?!

My mind just went to what Moses must have felt as 'The God of All There Is' Himself gave him unprecedented insights from creation forward that would impact not only Israel but the whole world! No wonder he was so exasperated and angry when he saw the people worshiping an insignificant golden calf after being with the Almighty Creator of the world! This gives me the expectation that for those of us who will spend time with God and let Him impart to us Who He truly is, the foolish things we once saw as "gold" and of value will fall away so that we can see that only He is worthy of worship and being adored.  But back to Mark.   

Remember, this is the first writing of the story of Yeshua and Mark had to decide what to say. The challenge was not what to include but what to leave out as there was so much to say. Each thing he chose to put in the story he obviously felt was more meaningful than some other things he didn't include, in order to build a true picture of Messiah Yeshua.  Try to give some thought to Mark's motivation for wanting his readers to know this or that about Yeshua as we go on for some added insight into the story. Mark as the shortest of the four gospels seems clipped in speech and brief, as if Yeshua's always in a hurry. Not so. Mark uses the term ‘Immediately’ often which means more like “and then this happened.”

There is controversy as to whether this Mark is the John Mark of Acts or not. If so, then the believers would have been meeting in his home under his mother's hospitality, and so as a young man he would have seen or been a part of much of what the virgin church was experiencing, including when Peter came to the door after being put in jail and Rhoda thought it was Peter's ghost and not Peter himself at the door (Acts 12:12-16).  If he is that Mark, he would also have been the cousin of Barnabas who, being a Levite might mean that Mark also was a Levite and possibly came from a family of temple-serving priests (Acts 4:36). (There's so much in between the lines I wish we knew.)  Barnabas brought John Mark, now called just Mark, along on a mission trip with Paul (Colossians 4:10), only to have a falling out with Paul about Mark's behavior in some way, though later Paul asked for him to come to him saying that Mark "is useful to me in ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11). Evidently forgiveness for whatever happened put it behind them both. And we know that Mark traveled with Peter as well and heard all his stories which information, it is thought by scholars, is what Mark likely based a good bit of his gospel upon.

The sentence structure in Mark occasionally uses some Latin phraseology, “gospel” being one of them meaning good news, but the writing is more Hebrew in phrases and sentence structure, making Mark’s gospel undeniably Hebrew.  Even though Mark may have been addressing some Gentiles, he tells the story the way he heard it from Peter, and Peter certainly spoke as a Jew, telling the story of the Jewish Messiah to other Jews.  Keep in mind that Mark and the first century Jewish followers of Yeshua had every reason to believe that all who would come to the Lord – Jew or non-Jew – would see that Yeshua was the perfect embodiment of the Word of God given to Moses and the prophets, as there was nothing in Yeshua contrary to those teachings.  He fulfilled every Biblical prophecy pertaining to His life and lived His life as the quintessential Jew in every way.  The believers would have unquestionably thought, of course Yeshua would always be regarded as the fulfillment of the teachings God gave to Moses!  How could it be otherwise? 

These very teachings, known as the Torah defined for Israel how to live the highest quality of life on earth, free from selfishness and all that comes about as a result of it; free from the guilt of sin, and a way to live under the protection and provision of God. It also told of how this One God created the world - a good thing to know - so there is to be no worship of any other (false) gods. No other nation had anything close to this way of life.  So of course those early believers in Yeshua would expect nothing different of anyone who would come to trust in Israel’s Messiah.  As we read through Mark, consider that all that Yeshua lived out in what He said and did, to the very moment of the end of His life as a Man, was in the context of fulfilling the Hebrew Scriptures.

How ironic it is then that within a few hundred years almost all that was Hebrew or Jewish, including Scripture, was removed by its leaders from the church.  The Reformation of the church certainly did what it's name implies, it reformed many wrong doctrines and did away with many heretical practices, but it was just that, a reforming of church ways; it was not the Restoration that Peter said must take place before Yeshua's return. To quote Peter again as it continues to be a foundational verse for this study, "Yeshua is withheld in heaven until the restoration of all things as spoken by the prophets from the beginning" (Acts 3:21). It is those things we're in search of today and in this study!   

Please note also that there is not one place throughout the entire Tenakh, the Old Testament, where the Torah is referred to as "the law." Rather, the Hebrew words used are more along the lines of teachings or instructions. The Hebrews did not regard the Torah as "you better keep these or else..." but rather as instructions on how to live the best way of life according to all God had taught them. We will talk more later about this when we come to Yeshua's relationship with the Pharisees, but keep in minds that how we may read the word "law" in our English bibles does not present us with an accurate picture of Israel's relationship with YHVH. Think of the teachings also not so much as being Jewish but Godish!  Because it is God who gave Israel their entire way of life through the Torah which Yeshua embodied.

Some of this may be foreign to those who have been raised in the church that has been so alienated from Yeshua’s life as a Hebrew because anti-Hebrew misinterpretations became entrenched rather early on in the church. Even that word church is a misinterpretation of another word, ekklesia which is actually a Greek word, having to do with those who are called out for a purpose. Believers are certainly 'called out' of the worldliness around us. Though we are 'in' the world, we are not to be 'of' the world. You already knew that, right? In meeting together, the ekklesia formed a Kehilla, a Hebrew word having to do with a congregation meeting together in meaningful relationships. Messianic congregations in Israel today are still identified as Kehillote (plural for kehilla).  The term doesn’t have to do with a building, but even so, coming together still had to take place somewhere. Somehow though the word "church" brings up in each of our minds a number of connotations that would not have been familiar to our first century Hebrew brothers and sisters. 

I'm not saying any of this is bad, or that there aren't legitimate ways we are to adapt to the cultures in which we now live, or that anything 'modern' is against the will of God. Of course not, but you may agree that on the whole we do not look like the Book of Acts in terms of spiritual commitment and overarching love for Yeshua. Not yet anyway.  But if we are to give any thought to what God might want to restore to His people, consider that the pristine kehillot would not have even had a clue of what would come about among believers in Yeshua. They would not have envisioned one pastor as a leader who would be the only person who speaks at meetings (even Paul had dialogs, not monologs).  The early believers would not have imagined rows of pews where believers sit silently and passively without anyone contributing insights or revelations, prophetic words of the intentions or affirmations from God or encouragement of the Holy Spirit, or where there would be no messages in tongues with interpretations to reveal God's heart on specific issues - all of which was normal in meetings among the believers. Nor could they have imagined that the power of the Spirit to bring healing would be rare and deliverance from demons just about non-existent. Worship bands of professional musicians, not to mention ear-blasting sound systems, would have confounded them, and certainly, God help us, they would never have even conceived of the Feasts of the Lord having been considered heresy and replaced by two pagan-influenced holidays called Easter and Christmas. Add to all this that it would have been incomprehensible to them that their sacred day of Shabbat would be changed to  when the Roman sun god was worshiped, a day called sun-day, mixing worship of Yeshua and this false god together - thus violating two commandments to keep the Sabbath on the eighth day and to never worship a false god.

Can you see why God, who could envision what would happen, would speak prophetically through Peter and say to Israel, "Yeshua is withheld in heaven until the restoration of all things as spoken by the prophets from the beginning" (Acts 3:21)?  I believe we are in that day or restoration.  Israel is God's prophetic time piece and prophesies are being fulfilled regarding Israel more now than ever before. Not the least of which is the restoration we are talking about.  

When man seeks to bring about the Kingdom of God by their own efforts and ideas, it will eventually become what human kingdoms are made of and not of the spiritual power and merciful grace of God. It inevitably becomes more earthly than heavenly. On the other hand, no one could have imagined or accomplished what God did by the power of His Holy Spirit in the early church. Indeed, they would not even have had the vocabulary to describe what unfolded. I suspect the same thing is true of the work that God will do in His people who will yield to Him as He prepares us for Yeshua's return,which is to say, the move toward the ultimate establishment of the Kingdom of God on the restored earth. As we go through this study, it is my prayer that the Holy Spirit will bring truths to us that will bring us to deeper truths and consequently to a deeper trust in and love for Him.

Only God can bring about what is fully "of" Him.  We say, Lord, do by Your Spirit what needs to be done in our lives to make us one with You and instruments of glory.  Amen.
 
Till next week ,chaverim (friends, pronounced ha-ver-eem),
Lonnie 

This article may be shared but must include:  Shared with permission by Lonnie Lane, at Lonnielane.com, August 2016.