[First posted in 2012 when we started this website. James Tabor in Restoring Abrahamic Faith], gives his analysis of where Christianity deviates from the foundational teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures. Chapter 5 is titled “Turning to God” —a fitting finale to his thesis on returning to the simplicity of Abrahamic faith.
A Christian reading this might think, “but that is what I have done all my life, turned to God!” Well, we have repeatedly emphasized in this website that many God-seekers call on ‘God’ or the God of their religion. Pause and reflect on what this chapter posits, just as we did at the fork on the road we faced while traveling the ‘religious’ pathway’ all our life —called Christianity. We had to ask ourselves:
“Who is my God”
“What is His Name?”
“Is my God the One True God?”
“How do I know?”
“What is the source and basis of my belief?”
Reformatting and highlights added.–Admin1]
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Christianity, while claiming to be thoroughly Biblical, nonetheless represents a fundamental departure from the HEBREW FAITH in these areas. Note how evangelist Billy Graham sums up his understanding of the uniqueness of Christianity:
“Christ was unique first of all in his person. The Bible’s consistent testimony is that Jesus was not like any other person who has ever lived—because he was God in human flesh. Yes, that’s hard to understand. But the Bible tells us that God loves us, and he expressed that love to us by coming down to earth. God took upon himself human flesh, walking on this earth to show his love and concern for us. Christ is unique also because of his mission. Yes, he did some of the things other religious leaders have done. But Christ came primarily to bring salvation and he did this by becoming the complete and final sacrifice for our sins through his death on the cross. Christ died for us and rose again to give us eternal life and to come into our lives right now to change us. My prayer is that you would understand who Christ is and what he has done for you — and then that you would open your heart to him and become a Christian. Turn to Christ today. [Source; a syndicated daily newspaper column.]
From the perspective of the Hebrew Bible, this typical expression of popular Christianity is off the mark at every point.
- First, it compromises the fundamental idea of the ONE GOD, which Jesus himself constantly affirmed, and it imports the pagan idea of the God-Man coming to earth.
- Second, it ignores the vital, dynamic, Biblical concept of the Kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus and the Prophets always associate with the messianic mission. The result is that “salvation” is reduced to an individual attempt to “save one’s soul” and escape this world for heaven.
- Finally, it tells people to “turn to Christ,” compromising the clear Biblical teaching that we are to turn to YHVH God alone.
The Bible says that Abraham put his faith in YHVH God, kept His laws, commandments, and ordinances, and taught that WAY to his children (Genesis 15:6; 26;5; 18:19). He relied on YHVH’s promises that his descendants would become a great nation in the land of Israel and ultimately bless the entire earth. He is the “father of all the faithful,” that is, those who share his Faith.
Each of these fundamental elements of BIBLICAL FAITH stands in sharp contrast to what Billy Graham presents here. Dr. Graham’s message ignores the great doctrines of the ONE GOD, the revelation of the TORAH, the centrality of Israel, and God’s messianic PLAN for the Kingdom of God to be realized on this earth and not in heaven. I am sure that Dr. Graham would immediately respond that he does believe such things. But the point here is a simple one: All the fundamentals of the ABRAHAMIC FAITH are missing from his summary of what he considers most vital to Christianity. And yet, the substance of Dr. Graham’s summary is the lifeblood of the evangelical Christian message.
Traditional Christianity, in all of its forms, Roman and Greek Catholic, as well as Protestant, is far removed from ABRAHAMIC FAITH. By the end of the first century C.E., the battle was largely lost. Those original followers of Jesus, who remained faithful to TORAH and Prophets, had become almost completely marginalized. What emerged, particularly by the third century C.E., was a new, almost wholly pagan, Hellenistic, quasi-Gnostic, anti-Jewish amalgamation. Although Christianity held on to the so-called “Old Testament,” fundamentally a great apostasy, or “falling away” occurred.
There are three great pillars of BIBLICAL FAITH: God, TORAH, and Israel. Christianity repudiated all three. It is no surprise, accordingly, that Jews repudiated Christianity. How could they do otherwise?
The clear teaching of the TORAH and Prophets of the ONE Creator God was recast in various ways, whether as the Trinitarian idea of God in three Persons with Jesus declared to be YHVH born in the flesh or the adoptionist notion that the human Jesus became God. Surely no one would maintain that Noah, Abraham, Moses or any of the Prophets had such ideas, and our most reliable sources on the historical Jesus indicate that he would have repudiated such views as well. As we have seen earlier, Jesus affirmed the Shema and rebuked those who called him “good.” One must go to ancient Greek, Egyptian, or ancient Babylonian traditions for tales about human beings fathered by gods, or of mortals assuming the status of divinity. There is not the slightest hint of the God-Man idea in the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
The TORAH, declared to be the definitive revelation of God according to the Hebrew Bible, was pronounced “null and void,” abrogated, obsolete. David had written,
Oh how I love Your TORAH, it is my meditation all the day,
and millions of Christians were taught to actually despise the TORAH as an inferior “Jewish” stage of primitive religion. It was characterized as harsh, restrictive, and lacking in spirituality.
Jesus had declared that not a letter of TORAH would be abrogated, and not even the least of the commandments (mitzvot) would pass away, but his words were either ignored or reinterpreted. Christians who did continue to observe the Sabbath Day, the Holy Days, or follow the dietary laws were condemned as “Judaizers” and put out of the Church. The “Old Testament” was relegated to inferior status, and in popular Christian thinking, the “loving Heavenly Father” was contrasted to the harsh and fiery Jewish God YHVH. Christians largely lost touch with the Hebrew language, Hebrew modes of thought, and any connection with the rich history of the Jewish interpretation of Scripture.
The people of Israel, known to the Church as “the Jews,” were totally displaced and replaced with the doctrine of the new “spiritual Israel,” the largely Gentile Christian Church. All the promises of the Prophets about God’s PLAN for the Restoration of Israel were now applied allegorically to the Christians. The Jews were seen as a despised, pitiful, God-forsaken race, possessing no spirituality, and hopelessly damned for their rejection of Christ. The teaching about the Kingdom of God on earth, so tightly bound together in Scripture with the fortunes of Israel, was made into a dualistic, Hellenistic, “hope of heaven” after death.
As time went on, Christianity took up every pagan way with a vengeance: holidays, customs, dress, habits, rituals, polity, and superstitions. The list is endless. Jesus the Nazarene, the observant Jew, was transformed into “Christ,” the Hellenistic, Serapis-like Savior God with long hair and effeminate features. The mikvah , or ritual immersion, became “baptism,” a mystical initiation into the cosmic body of Christ. The kiddush, a blessing of wine and bread to begin a meal, became the Mass—eating the body and blood of God. Churches became indistinguishable from the idolatrous temples of Greco-Roman culture. The Spring fertility festival became Easter; the Winter Solstice celebration became Christmas; and the Sabbath became Sunday. God’s Holy Days, such as Passover and Pentecost, were negatively labeled as “Jewish.” The host of quasi-deified “Saints” began to function much like a pagan panoply of ancient gods who could be supplicated for various needs and requests.
By TORAH standards Christianity in its full Roman/Greek dress represented a kind of “new Babylon,” as Alexander Hislop’s classic work, The Two Babylons has documented.
The Evangelical Christians, through their Biblical orientation, made a partial return to a more BIBLICAL FAITH. The Reformers (Huss, Luther, Zwingli) rejected many of the more pagan elements of the Roman and Greek Catholic tradition. However, they did not advocate a full return to the ancient HEBREW FAITH of Jesus and his early Jewish followers. Most Protestant churches continue to affirm the Trinity, with Jesus worshipped as God. Indeed, they often make the confession of the “Deity of Christ” the test of the faith. They hold that the “Old Testament,” or TORAH, as a spiritual way of life has been replaced by the New, even while remaining “inspired” Scripture. Yet if one tried to actually follow the TORAH, as a spiritual way of life, he or she would be seen as “Judaizing” or trying to “earn salvation by the Law.” Many would maintain that the Church has replaced “physical” Israel, and that Jews who do not believe in Christ are damned to Hell.
The message of the Kingdom of God on earth is largely lost, replaced a Hellenistic dualistic message of escape to heaven. Salvation has come to mean saving your soul, and as many other souls as you can, as quickly as you can. All who “receive Christ,” which means asking him to come into your heart as personal Lord and Savior, have instant eternal life. Those who “reject Christ” are eternally doomed in Hell. The figure of Christ and what one believes about him, becomes the one great question of life —Was he God in the flesh who died for sins to bring salvation to those who believe in him?
There are many segments and pockets of the evangelical Christian spectrum that have gone further in a return to the ancient Hebrew roots of Christianity. Some have rejected, or seriously modified, the “Jesus as God” doctrine, but they are usually labeled as heretical and dangerous by the mainstream. [See Anthony Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound (Latham, MD: University Press of America , 1998).
Others affirm that God’s promises to “physical” Israel continue to be valid, and accordingly, rejoice in the return of the Jews to Israel in this century, heralding it as the beginnings of the Restoration spoken of by the Prophets. A few are beginning to seriously explore the Hebraic, Judaic, roots of early Christianity and are trying to recover, both in faith and practice, some of those lost and forgotten practices and perspectives.
. . . Were Jesus to return to our culture as an ordinary human, transported from the first century, would he feel more comfortable in a Sunday morning Southern Baptist worship service, a Roman Catholic mass, or at a Jewish Synagogue on the Sabbath? . . . the answer is obvious.
In the final analysis there is only one fundamental flaw of Christianity. It has cast all its doctrines in terms of the “other world.” At the heart of it all is the heavenly Divine Christ who deals with “spiritual” Israel, and seeks to save souls for eternal life in heaven. BIBLICAL FAITH has a heavenly dimension, but it is always cast in the opposite direction.
The whole perspective and goal is that God’s will be done on earth, and that HIS PLAN be realized in history.
His WAY is a way of life here and now, not a preparation for death.
[Footnote: For a general very reliable introduction to Judaism, which stresses this objective, (read) Herman Wouk, This Is My God.]
As Moses told ancient Israel 3500 years ago:
For this commandment that I command you today is not too wondrous (i.e., hard, difficult) for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it?” . . . But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil . . . therefore choose life that you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:11-19).
It is noteworthy that the Christian Holy Bible ends with what is called the “Old Testament” in contrast to the last line of the Hebrew Bible. Both the “Old Testament” and the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, contain precisely the same books but arranged in a different order. The Christian “Old Testament” ends with the book of Malachi, whose last words are:
Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of YHVH comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts ochildren to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Malachi 4:5-6).
In contrast the Hebrew Bible ends with one of the latest books of the canon, 1 & 2 Chronicles (which were counted as a single “book”). The last verse is quoting the Persian King Cyrus (Hebrew Koresh), whom YHVH calls “His messiah” or anointed one (Isaiah 45:1). The final words simply invite all who will return to the land:
Whoever is among you of all his people,
may YHVH his God be with him.
LET HIM GO UP.
There is a world of difference in meaning between these two endings. One puts us on the edge of our “apocalyptic chairs,” waiting for the next event to unfold in God’s prophetic PLAN, while the other bids us to act with practicality and intentionality, and throw ourselves into participation in the PLAN. It is a practical and immediate call, as if the dramatic and the apocalyptic might depend first on us carrying out the practical task “at hand.” For as Moses said in his final words about the TEACHING,
It is not in heaven.
This is indeed a fitting ending for a book on Restoring Abrahamic Faith, since Abram of old was told to leave his homeland and “go up” to the Promised Land, sight unseen. He had no dramatic signs from heaven, no miracles and wonders along the way, and according to the narrative in Genesis, the VOICE that called him at age 75 he did not hear again until he was age 99. Yes, that is truly ABRAHAMIC FAITH—strong, practical, immediate, and steadfast. May it serve to inspire all those “children of Abraham,” in flesh and in spirit, even in our time:
“Let him go up.”