Sid: We want everyone everywhere to be red hot for the Messiah. But you know something there has been within traditional Judaism so much tradition that that has worked in that it’s hard to see God. It’s hard to have an experience with God; it’s hard to even see the Messiah within traditional Judaism. But that same leaven has creeped into traditional Christianity. The thing that’s started by Jews by the one who went… He died it said on the cross “The King of the Jews.” The thing that you had to actually convert to Judaism to even be a follower of Messiah has become opposite of Judaism today. Why did this happen? But even more important than that, why is God restoring what I believe is the same vitality and vibrancy and miraculous where each person was a worker. The first believer’s in the Messiah did not have a written New Testament. The first believer’s in the Messiah did not have what we call churches. The first believer’s in the Messiah did not have Bible Schools. The first believer’s in the Messiah did not have great articulate speakers. The first believer’s in the Messiah had an encounter with Jesus; the least believer would lay hands on the sick and the sick would recover. They each had a job to do and it was vibrant; it was as a matter of fact I almost hate to call it Christianity because when we use the word Christianity we think in the stereotype of what it’s evolved to today. I really believe that Christianity is a misnomer. It should be New Covenant Judaism where the Messiah broke down the middle wall of separation between two people groups. The only two that existed Jew and Gentile and made them something brand new One New Man. But there is reasons why these things happened and there’s reasons why you as a Gentile Christian for the first time perhaps in your life are beginning to say “I want to know my roots; I want to know what that first Church was like; I want to get as close to the Messiah as I can; I want to fulfill my destiny. And God is drawing Gentile Christian’s by His Spirit to have a restoration of what that first church was like. Part of that restoration is to understand that what the culture was like at the time. Now on yesterday’s broadcast and I have and I’m speaking to him from his home in Tiberias, Israel. I have today my friend Dr. Bob Fischer. We’re talking about his new DVD that he just came out with that he called “The Jewish Origins of Christianity.” It’s actually a college level course which you can find out how you can get credits for it if you want it. But most people aren’t going to want to do it for a college level credits they’re going to want to do it because they want to understand Jesus; they want to understand what was going on in the New Covenant. They want the New Covenant to have that further dimension of understanding the culture because it changes a lot of the thinking in the New Covenant when you understand the Jewish culture which Jesus took for granted everyone understood it when He was writing His various letters. But today it’s been so denuded from the Church. And one of the most fascinating things Bob as I’ve taken your course is the 3 major people groups within Jews at the time Jesus came. Two we know the Pharisees and Sadducees. And as a matter of review tell me a little bit about those 2 groups that most Christians have heard of.
Bob: Yes Sid, well the Sadducee were the people from the aristocratic class of Jewish society at the time. They were they rejected all scripture apart from the Torah and they maintained this elaborate sacrificial system in the temple. They made up most of the Sanhedrin and they were basically apart from the people and they had a theology that was very narrow in its origin. They didn’t believe in bodily resurrection or even an afterlife. And so when the temple went away so closely tied to temple when the temple was destroyed in ’70 they just basically vanished and they didn’t leave a legacy.
Sid: Well what did the Pharisees believe in?
Bob: Pharisees had a different view; they did believe in bodily resurrection and they did believe ultimately that there would be a Messiah. But a totally different Messiah than we understand having learned from the Essenes. They believed the Pharisees believed in a Messiah that would come at the end of days to right all of the world’s problems. He would be a king and a prophet and a great military leader. But they emphasized that he would by no means be Divine, he would not be in anyway a god. They were offended by the very notion of that. So they were quite different. So they evolved; the important thing to understand is that the Pharisees became what today is Rabbinical Judaism. But this third group the Essenes it’s important for us to point to them because they were the precursors of all subsequent Christianity.
Sid: And yet we don’t hear much about them. Where did you get most of your understanding for the Essenes for the course you did?
Bob: Well I did a lot of research Sid. I found a great deal of information in early Roman Catholic writings interestingly enough where the church fathers were speaking out against the Nazarene Jewish Believers by reference to the Essenes they’re selves.
Sid: So when we read about Nazarenes that was the Essenes that believed in Jesus?
Bob: The Nazarenes were to start out with were around before Jesus showed up. They were the principal subgroup of the Essenes. And when Yeshua came along and appeared they were the ones who embraced Him in droves. And in one day you know as we appointed out there were 3000 that came into the faith. And they became known as the Nazarenes; they’re referred to in the Book of Acts as the Nazarenes. They’re also referred to as the Way. So you don’t have any references directly to the Essenes probably because Yeshua was fighting against the teachings of the Sadducees and the Pharisees but He was very much in consonance with the teaching of the Essenes, who He and Paul and others referred to as the Way and the Nazarenes.
Sid: Okay, what was their lifestyle like as Believers?
Bob: Well there were 2 groups if we’re talking about the Essenes we’re talking about the group at Qumran which was considerably smaller they were celibate Monks. But the main body of the Essenes were a variety of communities that were not celibate. But they functioned in the same belief system of Qumran and they were all over the Galilee and they were all over Judea and Samaria and all over Syria, what today is modern day Syria. There was something like you know by the estimate that I tend to adhere to that there was something like 400,000 of these people at one point in time. But I’ve heard estimates that there was as many as a million who had ultimate by the end of the first century converted to the understanding that Yeshua was the Messiah.
Sid: Now how did something that started so Jewish shift gears and become what is known today as the opposite of Judaism? How was what is called Judaism how was it hijacked by the Pharisees rather than the Essenes who were the forefathers of Christianity? I mean how did all of this happen?
Bob: Well the Essenes basically disappeared; I mean they didn’t disappear they became the Nazarenes that ultimately became the beginnings of Messianic Judaism if you will. But the important thing here is that Paul and others you know Peter went out particularly Paul went out. And in 4 monumentally successful journeys to the Gentile world the Gentile Christian Church was created. And the Gentile Christian Church is a wonderful institution but at the time of its origination it combined many of the paganistic understandings of the local culture. So what we ended up with were a variety of blends of pure Torah understanding and pure understanding of who Yeshua was blended with a variety of these paganistic understandings.
Sid: Now why did… I know we can only speculate, but within Judaism it’s so important to separate the clean from the unclean as you read the Old Covenant. How come they merged the two within early Christianity?
Bob: Well there was a big argument between Paul and the group on Mt. Zion over this very issue. You know the argument was “What did Gentiles have to do to become part of this movement?” And they finally came to grips with it and the council of Jerusalem met in ’49 and while Peter and others held on and said “Look, these people have to be circumcised; they have to be fully Torah compliant.” Paul spoke very strongly against this notion he said “Let’s keep it limited.” So in the results in the Council of Jerusalem there was simply 4 things that came out. Four very fundamental things: 1) They weren’t supposed to drink or they weren’t supposed to eat blood. 2) They were to refrain from sexual immorality and so forth. You know there were 4 fundamental things that really were simplistic for them. So the point I’m getting to is that they didn’t have to keep Biblical Kosher that didn’t apply to them. They didn’t have to be circumcised; they didn’t have to keep Torah it wasn’t required. They had to do 4 rather simple things.
Sid: But how did they make the shift… not only did they add paganism but they denuded the Church of any of its Jewish roots. Why did they do that?
Bob: Probably because the architect of this thing was a man named “Constantine the Ist.” Who in 313 AD declared that Christianity would be the state religion. And …
Sid: I’m sorry Bob we’re out of time we’ll pick up here on tomorrow’s broadcast.
