About BTHG

The Purpose of the Site

TO GO DEEPER. To go beyond the normal basics of Faith and to dig into the DEEPER meanings of what Jesus did while on earth. To spread the Word of God from the original Jewish/Hebrew perspective. To show the Jewishness of the many wonderful things Jesus (Yeshua, His given Hebrew name) did that are missing from a lot of Christian pulpits. The miracles, the teachings, the responses, His whole life was from His completely Jewish viewpoint because Jesus WAS completely Jewish. (see here)

*We would all like to see the Church “restored” to what it was in the first century. Or so we say. Certainly it would be good to restore the zeal of the first believers, the righteousness of their lives, their willingness to follow Yeshua the Messiah no matter what the cost, their being filled with the Holy Spirit, their eagerness to pray, their assurance and experience that God performs miracles in response to faith.*2

*Stern Ph. D., David H. (2010-01-01). Restoring The Jewishness of the Gospel: A Message for Christians Condensed from Messianic Judaism
*2 Also see article by Roy B. Blizzard ” What has happened to the Church?”

 

We unconsciously read the Bible through the lens of gentile Western Christianity as formed and defined by our early Church Fathers. They were right about much of it; but wrong about some critical areas that their anti-Jewish bias blinded them to. And it has fallen to us, in this present generation, to try to right these wrongs so that we can see God for who He really is, His plan of redemption for what it really is, His Jewish people for who they are to Him, and where we (as His followers) fit in to all that. 

Paul through his whole life and especially when writing the New Testament books thinks like a Jew, and behaves like a Jew, because he is a Jew. When we read his writings, we need to see them from his Jewish viewpoint. Thus when he writes his letters (his Epistles) he unconsciously does so from a Jewish perspective. Why? Because he is not a gentile, even though he has some familiarity with gentiles. More, as he has stated plainly himself, he is a Hebrew of Hebrews and a Pharisee of Pharisees; he is among the most pious and most strict of Jews. He said this many years after becoming a Believer and an Apostle. His zealous and highly educated Jewishness is the underlying context atop which he has layered the meaning and impact of all he wrote in his Epistles!! We need to “SEE” that, understand that, concider that to understand God’s message completely.

 

The book of John tells us that Yeshua is the Word, and the Word is God. (Yochanan) John 1:1-4, 14. Every Christian knows that “the Word” is just another term for Scriptures or Bible or Torah. But what “word” was John talking about? Believers rarely stop to think that the Word of God for John, and Paul, and Peter and all the rest of Christ’s disciples was the OT, primarily the Torah. There was no such thing as “other Scripture” than the OT for at least 150 years after Jesus’ death on the cross. There was no such thing as a New Testament until around 200 A.D. So as far as what John was directly referring to in his book as the meaning of “the Word”, it was ONLY the Old Testament. Jesus, Yeshua, was the Torah!!

The Point

I can’t say it any better than Tom Bradford did in his lessons on Vayikra (Leviticus).

The New Testament is God breathed and part of God’s Word. But to make the New Testament as the only surviving remnant or still-valid portion of God’s Word is a grievous error. Further it is intellectually inaccurate (if not dishonest) to say that any reference to the Word or to Scripture in the New Testament was referring only to itself. Not one NT writer had any inkling that a century or so after their writings that panels of church leaders would get together and declare the epistles, gospels, and apocryphal letters as new Scripture.
Jesus put all this in this way:
John 5:46-47 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. 47 “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?
In John 5 Yeshua is in the Temple, on Sabbath, talking to some Jews. Now these Jews would argue vehemently that they CERTAINLY knew Moses and what he wrote. But, in fact they only thought they did. What they knew most, and what colored the Torah scripture they read, were their doctrines and traditions The fully compiled works of Tradition called the Talmud

It was also known as Oral Law, Oral Tradition, or Oral Torah (Oral because, rather than being written down, for a long time it was handed down verbally). The best way to think of all these Traditions is as commentary by religious leaders; commentary that consists of rulings and teachings. . They would try to pound the Scripture into a mold created by Tradition.

Christianity has done the same thing for 1800 years. We establish doctrines and then make the Scriptures read in such a way to validate those doctrines. Scriptures that don’t validate the doctrines are left out of the argument, or more often, verses are taken completely out of context and ascribed to some meaning about which they have nothing to do.
Yeshua is telling all who will listen that the Torah of Moses is the foundation for understanding everything that follows it (including the New Covenant) means. How, Yeshua says, can you possibly believe MY words, if you won’t believe Moses’ words….FIRST? Understanding Moses is important not just to Jews but also to gentiles. So, I ask you, how do you think we can possibly understand what Jesus was MEANING by the things He said, if we not only don’t understand what Moses was meaning, but have never even seriously read his words? Or worse yet we discount those words, say they are just a burden that has been lifted from us and discarded by the very one who has just said that FIRST you must believe Moses?
Second matter; it is particularly hard for Americans to read the Torah without bristling at some point, because it constantly shows Yehoveh destroying individuals, even entire nations, for the sake of His elect group as a whole, and for the sake of His purposes. If we want the truth then we must view God in the context of who He actually is and not in the context of what we’d like to have. The God we see in Torah is the truth, just as the God we see in the New Testament is the truth. One has not given way to the other; they are one in the same. Yehoveh has not discarded some of his attributes in favor of others; the sum of the parts paints the best picture of the whole.

How often do we hear, even in some excellent Bible teaching churches, that God’s love is too great to damn everyone to Hell and eternal separation from Himself who does not submit to His Son… that His holy back surely could not be turned on those who live a good and moral life, give to charity and care for the poor, are nice and generous to a fault, even spiritually oriented, but cannot bring themselves to make Yeshua the Lord of their lives… surely a loving and merciful God would not do such a thing. The God of the NT is no less severe than the God of the OT because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. You are either clean and holy and in the Kingdom of God… or you are unclean and unholy and out of His Kingdom. And that judgment is made purely on whether or not you trust Yeshua Ha’Maschiach (Jesus the Christ).”

This Web site

Is simply just shedding new light on the B’rit Chadashah (New Testament) using the Old Testament (Tanakh)

 Tanakh or Old Testament
So, let us be clear: The Tanakh, which is sometimes called the Hebrew Bible, is simply another name for our current OT. The Torah is but the first 5 books of the Tanakh (OT). The Talmud is NOT Holy Scripture at all. Rather, it’s a huge gathering of Jewish religious commentary.
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The New Testament is called the B’rit Chadashah in Hebrew, meaning “New Covenant” (the word B’rit means “covenant” and Chadashah means “new”). Like the Tanakh, it can be divided into three main parts: Gospels/Acts (corresponding to Torah), Letters (corresponding to Ketuvim), and Revelation (corresponding to Nevi’im).*

*See Compare the Covenants New Wine and old Wineskins by John J. Parsons

Slowly but surely I will present some of the familiar stories from the life of Yeshua (Jesus) and plug in the deeper Jewish meaning behind what is really meant to be told, most of the time not taught in mainstream Christian churches but none the less the absolute Truth! It is the intention of this site, if you have stumbled upon it, to STRENGTHEN your Faith, not replace it or change it, but to ADD to it.

The Old and New Testaments are inseparable and only when used together do we have a complete, unified, divinely-inspired Bible. The Old Testament makes up about 60% of the entire bible. When we ignore it, we ignore the bulk of God’s Word. The Old Testament (which is valuable in and of itself) is alive and well and forms the necessary basis for proper understanding of the New Testament. Old Testament as critically important because it forms the foundation for a proper context and understanding of the New Testament, and it answers many theological questions that the New Testament doesn’t address.

The Main Point!!!

Once again I’ll let “Torah Class” do the talking:

Look in Matt 5:17-19

Complete Jewish Bible Version
Presenting the Word of God as a unified Jewish book, the Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) is a translation for Jews and non-Jews alike. It connects readers with the Jewishness of the Messiah. Names and key terms are returned to their original Hebrew and presented in easy-to-understand transliterations, enabling the reader to say them the way Yeshua (Jesus) did.

or CBJ: 17 “Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. 18 Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah — not until everything that must happen has happened. 19 So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christ did not come to do away with, or abolish, the Torah, He came to complete it. Not in the sense of complete as to finish, and finish in the sense of end; in your Bibles probably “fulfill” is the word used instead of complete. The Greek used here is the word “pleroo”. Go check any good concordance and it will tell you it means to fill up, to accomplish. But, in our modern English vernacular fulfill gives the sense of something that is ended. Rather, the true meaning of fulfill is to “fill full” or “fill up”. Pleroo would be a good word to tell the attendant at the gas station (if there WERE such things anymore)… because it has the sense of “fill’er up”; Christ came to fill full the Torah of meaning, or bring it to its fullest extent.

The two Testaments, earlier and latter, OT and NT, work together.

You cannot separate them as has been attempted for centuries. The OT is the foundation of the Bible. The Old Testament sets the stage for the NT. The Old Testament lays down all the premises by which we understand the New Testament.

 

It’s The Bible, Act One. The NT is formed based on the OT; it’s a continuation of the OT. It’s Bible, Act Two. In fact, about 50% of the statements in the NT ARE the OT. They are completely intertwined. It’s pretty tough to read any book, see any play, and watch any movie by starting in the middle. We may well get something out of it. But, we are just as likely to take the part we see in the wrong context, and come to some conclusions that are several degrees off course. That’s what we do when we attempt to understand the Bible by beginning with, and not going beyond, the NT.

The Bible that Jesus, then the early Disciples, then the Gospel writers, Paul, and even John the Revelator studied and taught from was the OT!!!! Let that sink in for a moment. There was NO New Testament when ANY writer of the Bible was alive. The ONLY Bible that existed for these men…and for Christ…was the Hebrew Tanakh, our OT!! Any and all references to Holy Scripture by Jesus or the Apostles were to the OT. The admonition we get in NAS 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;” was specifically referring to the Hebrew Bible because there was no such thing as a New Testament in that era. Let’s be CLEAR, while I have no problem at all in accepting the NT as holy, inspired of God, and entirely belonging in our Bibles… that statement from Paul to Timothy was in no way referring to something that did not even exist yet. It was not meant to be prophetic… Paul was not speaking to a future time. He was speaking about the Torah, the writings, and the prophets. Paul had no idea that several decades after his death, that there indeed would be ADDITIONAL writings added to the holy canon of the Bible… writings that we call The New Testament.”

So I hope and pray that you will find it only natural to connect the laws and instructions of the Tanakh to the teachings and actions of our Lord and Savior Yeshua Ha’Maschiach (Jesus the Messiah).

*http://www.torahclass.com/ used as source Torah Class with Tom Bradford
Is an excellent study of the Torah and free to watch from your computer or download each lesson

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