Anders,

I have put much prayer and thought into responding to you before I wrote this. I also Googled your name to find out more about you, because I want my response to be genuine and personal.

First of all, I want to point out that we have much more in common than we have differences on. For that, I am grateful, since it is a joy to meet someone of similar faith.

We do, however, have some points on which we differ.

First, I do not believe it is correct to name the promised messiah “Yehoshuah” any more than it is to name him “Jesus.”

You see, for his name to be Yehoshuah, there would have to be a “hay” in his name. There is not. That is why, on my blog, I refer to him as Y’shua or Yeshua, which more accurately reflects the Messiah’s Hebrew name.

This, however, is not a major point.

An area where I have a more significant disagreement with you is in you characterizing Messiah Yeshua as a member of the Pharisees. There is absolutely no documented proof which would support such a conclusion.

You also assert that Yeshua obeyed all of the oral Torah, which you claim was commanded by and originated with Moshe. Here, we must also differ.

Despite rabbinic tradition that supports your claim that the oral Torah originated with Moshe, there is no support for this claim in the Torah itself. While there is plenty of support for it in the Talmud and other rabbinic documents, the lack of support for this claim in the Torah itself calls it into question.

The historical fact is that the Pharisaic rabbinic movement was not even around at the time of Moshe and did not rise in Israel until much later. Therefore, this claim of an oral Torah originating with Moshe is called into even further doubt.

In the Torah itself, whenever the Mosaic Torah is referred to, it is always referenced as being a written document and not an oral tradition. The rabbinic oral traditions arose long after the time of Moshe, and therefore are the work of men, not divinely-inspired as was the Torah itself.

Also, the oral Torah is often contradictory, not only of itself, but more importantly of the Torah, and speaking as one sincere believer to another, I cannot place any document that contradicts the Torah on the same level of authority as the Torah itself. HaShem is not a God of confusion, but a God of eternal and unchanging truth.

Now, with that being said, let me make something perfectly clear: I am not intending to denigrate the value of the oral Torah completely. In fact, it is of much value. I simply do not place it on the same level of authority as the Torah itself, and where it contradicts Torah, I must disregard the oral Torah.

Yet I do observe many teachings of the oral Torah. While Torah commands us to celebrate God’s appointed times - the feasts and festivals of the L-RD - it is the oral Torah that helps us understand HOW to celebrate those times.

The rulings of the Beit-Din offer quite a bit of insight into how those who love and fear haShem might apply the Torah to civil life and law. There is no question that there is insight of value to be found in the oral Torah.

Yet it is not always correct; at times, it directly contradicts Torah on important matters, and in the cases of such conflict, again, I must go with the written Torah of truth, not the Oral Torah of men.

Also, one must realize that not all of the oral Torah was established at the time of Messiah Yeshua. In fact, there are large sections that were written after His time on Earth, and in reaction to his life, death and resurrection. Obviously, messiah Yeshua could not have followed sections of Oral Torah not yet established during his time on Earth, and certainly could not “obey” sections of Oral Torah dedicated to claiming he was a false prophet or a false messiah. Such teachings, sadly, are also part of the Oral Torah.

There is much Talmudic support for Messiah Yeshua’s messianic title. There is no support for the view of him, however, as both a messiah AND a Pharisee.

I also find no support for the view that so-called “Christianity” was an invention of the Hellenistic Jews and the Sadducees. One must remember that the Sadducees are a group of first-century Jews who taught that there is no resurrection - whereas so-called Christianity teaches of a resurrected Jesus, making the Sadducees a very unlikely “brain trust” behind such an alleged conspiracy.

My view is simpler: Early, first-century followers of Rabbi Yeshua were messianic Jews; they followed Yeshua as messiah, but still practiced and followed the Torah teachings handed down by Moshe. While this included some oral Torah traditions, I do not believe it included all of the oral Torah.

As time went on, however, an influx of Gentile converts soon began to overpopulate this movement of messianic Jews, and especially following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, a rift grew between messianic Jews and Christian Gentiles.

Christian Gentiles soon began to (wrongly) abandon the the Torah, the practice of the Sabbath, and, by the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicea, the Christian Gentile movement’s anti-Judaism was formalized and made church doctrine.

Genuine messianic Jews continued for a while beyond the first century, but were rejected by both Jews and Christians, and the genuine movement of (written) Torah-observant Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua soon died out; this brand of faith has re-emerged only within the last 100 years or so, rising to prominence only within the last 30 years or so.

Anders, I welcome your correspondence and the common ground we share, even though we differ on some issues. I hope you take my response in the friendly spirit in which it is intended. May haShem and His Messiah, Yeshua, bring you shalom, and shalom to all of Yisra’el and Yerushalayim!