For those who don't know, this web site was originally a "Hebrew Christian" site, started in 1994. In late 2001 many people noticed massive changes in this web site, and wrote to ask if I have had a change in belief, and why. The basic question was always, "Don’t you still believe that Y’shua is the Messiah?" While I tried to write an article to explain why I no longer believed that Y'shua/Jesus is the Messiah, I realized that it would be much easier to ask, "Why do you believe this?" It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain why one does not believe something. It is much easier to explain why someone does believe.
The search for truth had, in the previous few years, led us to see that the Writings of the Nazarenes (better known as the "New Testament") should not be considered Scripture. People, after all, wrote it, while G–d wrote the Torah. Even the New Testament itself doesn't say that it is divinely inspired! The "Scriptures" that are being referred to in the New Testament as being "divinely inspired" are the only Scriptures that the followers of Jesus had - the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets and Writings).
As we learned when we researched the origins and the canonization of the "New Testament," most, if not all of the writings of the Netzarim were originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, not Greek! We know absolutely, positively, that the book of Matthew was written in Hebrew, because the early "Church Fathers" said so! And yet, there they are, right up to this day, going on and on about how this Greek word means this, and that Greek word means that, teaching and translating from a second generation (at best) translation!
Yes, we have some versions of Matthew in Hebrew, but we have absolutely no way of knowing how much its current condition was influenced by the Greek and Roman Church! We don’t have the original, and we don’t have a documented line of possession. And what about the other books of the "New Testament?" Sure, we now have English translations of Aramaic versions of the New Testament books, but do we have any way of knowing how original they are? After all, they have been in the possession of the Syrian Church of the East for almost 2,000 years!
The search for truth led us to see that we could not take the New Testament as infallible, but we felt that maybe we could use it as an historical document to understand the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. That was okay until someone asked me how I know that the New Testament is an accurate historical document. So I set out to find some way of proving that the New Testament is an accurate historical document. I could not find any such evidence. There are no parallel writings; there are no archeological finds. In fact, there are some historical facts that disprove many of the things written in the New Testament, not to mention it's own contradictions with itself.
The first is that the Church readily admits that "some" things were added to the New Testament, to "clarify Church doctrine." The second is that the only real argument they have for taking the New Testament as an historical document is that the Church "always" has!
We can spend all day talking about what proves an historical document's accuracy, and even about large parts of the New Testament that should, if they were true, be supported by physical evidence or documentation but aren't. But the main question is, if there are so many problems with the historical accuracy of the New Testament, can we trust any of its "evidence" that Jesus is the Messiah?
In our search for accuracy and truth, can we therefore logically conclude that Jesus is not the Messiah? Well first of all, we can prove that he didn’t fulfill all of the requirements of the Messiah! The only things that we can accept are that Jesus was an itinerant Rabbi, and that his followers, especially after his death, believed that he was the Messiah. It happens to be a fact that most of the famous Rabbis throughout history had students who thought that "their Rebbe" was the Messiah. This was true before Jesus, this was true after Jesus, and this is true to this very day, where there are still some people in the Lubavitcher Movement who believe that Rebbe Schneerson is the Messiah.
The next important question is basic to the belief of Christianity and Messianic Judaism. And that is, "Where is it written that one of the requirements for eternal salvation is the belief that a certain person is the Messiah?" For years I took for granted the idea that all one must do is believe in the correct person being the Messiah, and G–d would for some reason take mercy on them. You see, in my most vulnerable days of needing something spiritual in my life, I swallowed hook-line-and-sinker that this was necessary. But where is it written? This belief is closer to the definition of a cult! Supposedly the New Testament is a fulfillment of the Tanakh ("Old Testament"), and supposedly Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah, but where is it written? It isn’t. It isn’t written anywhere! These things were either made up or merged into the faith of the followers of Jesus from Pagan religions.
I believe that what Jesus taught was that the Torah, and only the Torah, is the narrow path to the Throne of Glory. Sure, he may have said that his students could only come to the Father through him! It is necessary for a student to go through his Rabbi, in other words, following his teachings, walking in his footsteps, to learn the Torah, to learn from him the heart of G–d. The Rabbi is the door that one must go through to find the correct path.
What I did find during my search for evidence of the historical accuracy of the writings of the Nazarenes were two truths about the relationship between the "Church" and the New Testament.
The belief which became Christianity was created well after the life of Jesus, and mostly by Saul of Tarsus (called Paul in the New Testament) and by the Emperor Constantine centuries later who twisted the belief of the followers to suit his own political needs.
The search for Truth can be painful, it can make you an outcast, it can destroy a reputation, a career, whatever, but the search for the truth can never be a bad thing. It must be done, and we must follow our hearts and minds instead of our hopes and fantasies.
In these past years we have studied what the Almighty wants from us, wants in our lives. We’ve studied different aspects of the Shabbat, the Festivals, the Kosher laws, etc., but while studying these things there has always been a single most important truth: that the Torah is the teaching of the Creator of all eternity. We have learned that all of the time that we spend trying to find loopholes, trying to find out why this commandment or that commandment doesn’t apply to us, trying to show that somehow Jesus changed something — all that time and all that effort is nothing short of rebellion against the Creator of everything.
So what monumental theological stance does this all come down to? Nothing complicated — only that the Torah has everything in it that we need to have a correct and personal relationship with G–d. So how do we go about learning about Torah? Do we go to the Messianics, where many of their leaders were brought up and educated as Christians, and later in life "found" their (modified) Jewishness? Do we go to the Netzarim (Nazarene Judaism), where many of their leaders are basically Torah Observant, but who hold on to beliefs of paganism, Christianity, and the mystery religions? Where do we go? What do we do when the search for the truth hits a dead end because of the lack of scholarship?
How about if we could find a group of people who have been passing down the Torah letter-for-letter, passing down all of the ancient understandings of the Torah from generation to generation for at least the last 4,000 years? Wouldn’t that be a better place to learn about the Torah, learn about G–d and develop the most intimate possible relationship with Him?
That is our current journey — Teshuvah — returning to the teachings of the Creator. That is why we moved into an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, attended an Orthodox Synagogue, learned from Orthodox Rabbis, and finally made Aliyah (emigrated to Israel) to a religious yishuv. Because it is the only way which has been ordained for G–d’s chosen people.
That is the reality of the universe. All the rest is dust and illusion.