Chapter
10.
“Christian” or
“Messianic?”
Fast-forward another few
years. Sha’ul has completed a number of missionary trips throughout the
entire Mediterranean region, and has returned to Jerusalem for a visit. Upon
his arrival Ya`akov and a number of the other Zakenim[101] report to him a false rumor they have heard:
Now
what they have been told about you [Sha’ul] is that you are teaching all the
Jews living among the Goyim to apostatize from Moshe, telling them not to
have a b’rit-milah[102] for their sons and not to follow the traditions.
(Acts 21:21).
Of course this was not true,
and to demonstrate to the entire Messianic Community, both in Jerusalem and
throughout the Diaspora, that the rumor was false, Sha’ul agreed to publicly
demonstrate his obedience to Torah by undergoing a purification ritual in the
Temple along with four other members of the Jerusalem Community, so that
“everyone will know that there is nothing to these rumors which they have
heard about you; but that, on the contrary, you yourself stay in line and
keep the Torah.” (Acts 21:24). Sha’ul had emphatically not been
teaching that Torah had been cancelled, or that obedience to Torah is
optional, but only that Gentiles coming to Messiah do not need to be
circumcised to become righteous.
Please hear me well: Sha’ul never
stopped being a Jew to become a Christian! Neither did the tens of thousands
of Jews in Jerusalem who had come to faith in the Messiah by this time.
During Sha’ul’s meeting with
the Zakenim, they had told him, “You see, brother, how many tens of
thousands of believers there are among the Judeans, and they are all
zealots for the Torah.” (Acts 21:20)
As David Stern correctly
translates in the Complete Jewish Bible, the Greek word in this
sentence that most English translations render as “thousands” is “myriads,”
which is the Greek word for “ten thousand,” not “thousand.”
By most estimates, the
population of Jerusalem at this time was about a hundred thousand. One or two
myriads would not be referred to as “how many myriads,” but three or
four myriads might be, and three or four myriads would represent
between 30 and 40 percent of the population of Jerusalem at the time.
And these Messianic
Jews were all still zealous for the Torah. They had given up nothing
of their “Jewishness” in order to become “Christians.”
Later, at his trial before
the Kohen Gadol Hananyah[103] and the Sanhedrin, Sha’ul did not say that he
used to be a Pharisee; he said, “Brothers, I myself am a Parush[104] and the son of P’rushim[105]“ (Acts 23:6).
A few days later he stood
before Governor Felix, and again defended his “Jewishness:”
“But
this I do admit to you: I worship the G-d of our fathers in accordance with
the Way (which they call a sect[106]). I continue to believe everything that accords
with the Torah and everything written in the Prophets. And I continue to
have a hope in G-d — which they too accept — that there will be a
resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Indeed, it is because
of this that I make a point of always having a clear conscience in the sight
of both G-d and man. After an absence of several years, I came to
Yerushalayim to bring a charitable gift to my nation and to offer
sacrifices. It was in connection with the latter that they found me in
the Temple. I had been ceremonially purified, I was not with a crowd, and I
was not causing a disturbance.” (Acts 24:14-18).
Two years later Sha’ul was
still in prison in Caesarea, and was brought before the new governor, Festus.
He told Festus, “I have committed no offense — not against the Torah to
which the Jews hold, not against the Temple, and not against the Emperor.”
(Acts 25:8).
The only possible
interpretation of these statements is obvious: Sha’ul was still living
a totally Torah-observant life-style.
Several days later,
Sha’ul appeared before King Agrippa, and challenged him to find any fault
with his Jewish life-style, because Agrippa was “so well informed about all
the Jewish customs and controversies” (Acts 26:3), and Agrippa was unable to
find any fault in him.
Months later, Sha’ul finally
arrived in Rome to be placed in prison awaiting his trial before Caesar. Soon
after his arrival, he called together the leaders of the Jewish community in
Rome and essentially presented himself for their examination. “Brothers,
although I have done nothing against either our people or the traditions of
our fathers, I was made a prisoner in Yerushalayim and handed over to the
Romans” (Acts 28:17). And they replied to him, “We have not received any
letters about you from Y’hudah,[107] and none of the brothers who have come from there
has reported or said anything bad about you” (Acts 17:21).
The Book of Acts ends with
Sha’ul spending an additional two years in a Roman prison. While many believe
it was this imprisonment which ended with his martyrdom, others believe
(primarily from information found in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) that
Paul was released, preached several more years, perhaps going all the way to
Spain (cf. Romans 15:24), and was then returned to Rome to be executed (ca.
64-67 CE), probably by Nero as part of his plot to blame the burning of
Rome on the Messianic Jews.
But nowhere in either sacred
or secular history is there any evidence that Sha’ul (or any of the other
Shliachim or any of the early Messianic Jewish Believers) died as anything
other than a Torah-observant Jew who knew and trusted Yeshua as Israel’s
Messiah.
Sha’ul didn’t “plant” any
“churches” as we know them, and he never taught anything other than
the Judaism in which he was raised and lived his entire life, with the
addition of a resurrected Messiah.
On his missionary journeys
he always went to the synagogue in every city and there he preached
Yeshua as the resurrected Messiah. Some believed and others didn’t believe.
Among those who believed he appointed Zakenim[108] to be their shepherds, but he never
encouraged them to leave the synagogue, and he never taught against
the Torah or against a Torah-observant life-style.
Not many years before his
death he is recorded speaking to the Jewish leaders in Rome, but not
about anything called “the church,” but about the “sect of Judaism” (Acts
28:22) that had come to be known as “the Way”—the exact same sect of Judaism
that today we call “Messianic Judaism.” |
