The Way: The Small Movement That Shook the World

By Rick Richardson

This book focuses on the events of the first century, and how the “Jesus movement” impacted the course of history. It is an untold story of heroism, tragedy, deceit, compassion and prejudice, and an attempt to erase history, creating the greatest cover-up the world has ever known. Whether you are a Jew or a Christian, most everything you believe about Jesus and his movement is incorrect. He was NOT who you think he was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781698700342

Rick Richardson

Rick Richardson is director of the Billy Graham Center Institute and its Church Evangelism Initiative, and professor of evangelism and leadership at Wheaton College Graduate School. He previously served as evangelism and discipleship pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois, and helped launch Willow Creek Community Church's first multisite campus. His books include Reimagining Evangelism and Evangelism Outside the Box.

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Copyright 2020 Rick Richardson.

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ISBN: 978-1-6987-0033-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0035-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0034-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905290

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Cover Art: Painting by 19th century artist Nikola Ge (1831-1894)

The Judgement of the Sanhedrin: He is Guilty

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Author Photo by Jessica Strand

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

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THE WAY

The Small Movement that Shook the World

Chapter OneTwo Different Worlds

Chapter TwoHistory and Politics

Chapter ThreeWaiting for Messiah

Chapter FourThe Way

Chapter FiveAn Innocent Man

Chapter SixLife After Death

Chapter SevenThe Mystery of the Birkat haMinim

Chapter EightGentiles on Their Own

Chapter NineThe Divide

Chapter TenThe Way Back

Appendix

Dedicated to Susan Richardson, Crystal Stivers and

Shomier ben Magen for our journey together.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my wife Susan, Rick Eskenazi, Patrick Quain, Lori Madsen, Larry Azose, Rabbi Avraham Maimon, and especially Albert S. Maimon for their review and suggestions.

ONE

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS

Building a Bridge

This book focuses on the events of the first century, and how the Jesus movement impacted the course of history. The events of this time have had a tremendous effect on the world, and yet they are viewed from a very different (and sometimes opposite) perspective by those who were impacted by them. How can that be, and why does it appear there is no way to bridge the gap between Judaism and Christianity? In this book I hope to build that bridge between our irreconcilable differences, or at least come to a better understanding as to what and why those differences are.

Two Distinctly Different Texts

There are certainly a number of challenges to work through. To begin with, even though the Talmud and the New Testament may focus on the same period of time, they appear to come from two different universes. From a surface reading, they seem to have very little information in common. Much of the difference stems from the fact that they are culturally different texts.

The New Testament is primarily a Greek text. It is straight forward with its accounting of events and timelines, and it follows a storyline that focuses on the story and meaning of the text, and not the text itself. Order and time sequence are important in a Greek perspective. That is why, even though Christians have the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach (Old Testament), as part of their own Bible, they have rearranged the order of the books. The books are all exactly the same; although the arrangement is different so a chronological order can be established.

There is not a sacred text in Christianity; instead there are sacred doctrines and sacred beliefs. The letters and the words of the text itself, however, can be changed if it clarifies the meaning. In a typical church, there are no study groups reading the text in its original Greek, discussing why this letter or that word, is used, or why this subject is followed in the text by that subject, or how the root of this Greek word has the same (or completely different) meaning from a similar root of a word in the same verse. Because the text (the words and letters) have changed over the course of time to clarify the meaning, the New Testament contains a considerable amount of added text.

The Tanach is a Hebrew text, and the text itself is important, more so than even the meaning. In nearly every synagogue each week, there are a number of study groups reading their texts in the original Hebrew. They discuss why this word is used, rather than that word, or why a phrase seems to be out of sequence, or what message is found hidden within the text.

So, a Greek (Christian) text is culturally very different from a Hebrew (Jewish) text, and the way someone studies the New Testament is, at many times, the opposite from the way that someone studies the Tanach. Similarly, the Talmud is culturally quite different in its presentation from the New Testament. Putting these two texts together to discover a more complete history is a challenge, to say the least.

Let us start with a quick summary of the Greek text, The New Testament. The New Testament starts with the Four Gospels, the story of Jesus’ life (primarily the last 3 years – from about 27CE to 30CE). Next is the Acts of the Apostles; an accounting of events over the next 36 years – till about 66CE. After that there is a collection of letters (mostly from Paul). The New Testament ends with the book of Revelation; an apocalyptic book filled with symbolism and end-time predictions.

So, what about the text itself? To begin with, we don’t exactly know what the original text was. Again, because preserving letters and words in the original language is not of primary concern, there are countless places where the text has been changed or added to. Out of the few thousand early manuscripts extant, there are no two that are identical. This is not to say, however, that they should be disregarded. On the contrary, they are extremely important and necessary in establishing a basic timeline. However, while exploring and evaluating the culture of the first century, some of the information (preserved by predominantly Gentiles) is often not totally understood in the proper context.

What about the Talmud? The Talmud is very different, in form and function, from the New Testament. The Talmud is designed to study. The first-time reader will often be left confused and disoriented, because the Talmud does NOT follow a timeline, so establishing the exact time that an event took place is not a simple thing to do.

Although the text may often seem like there is a group of rabbis, sitting around a table discussing a particular subject (while frequently going down totally unrelated rabbit trails that head off into obscure tangents); in reality, the Talmud is a masterfully written collection of comments from rabbis that are, at times, thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart. All the seemingly unrelated information is deliberately included to tell us something of importance.

Again, the Talmud is not meant to be an historic accounting of events. There are midrashic stories that relay messages rather than reality or facts. The Talmud consists of 63 tractates (with headings like tents, hands, corners and mixtures) and is over 6,200 pages long. And although it was written a few hundred years after the first century, it contains vital information from that time and before.

Let me state again, the Talmud is NOT a story of events; rather it is a document of discovery, meant to study and uncover information. This is an extremely important point to understand. Even if it SEEMS that there are random (or even useless) pieces of information contained in the Talmud, that is not the case. There is a specific reason for that information to be placed there. Usually this information has a juxtaposition to the pertinent topic, however, sometimes it gives a general piece of information that can be used to understand other passages.

An example of this would be certain places where we read in the Talmud that a sage said the Shema or did other practices according to the view of the School of Shammai (whom we will introduce in our next chapter). We are then able to determine what OTHER beliefs the School of Shammai may have, based on practices of that sage in other passages.

BOTH texts will be very important in discovering a true and accurate history of the first century. We will still, however, need to take into account that reality is often greatly colored by those who tell the original stories, and as we will see, there are times very early in the development of the Christian faith where misunderstandings happened. The perspective of the authors and compilers of the early texts will drastically shape the opinions and attitudes of future generations, and it is often to a view of reality that is not entirely accurate. Why would that be?

Sometimes this perspective came out of ignorance (there was no intent to mislead); the compiler simply did not know something. Sometimes, however, there was a deliberate attempt to deceive or cover-up an unwanted reality.

Censorship

In addition, the Talmud has been censored at various times to remove any references about Jesus.

Whole paragraphs have been deleted; words have been expunged or substituted; spellings have been changed, thoughts mutilated, and manuscripts seized and burned. Wherever in these rabbinic writings it was thought by the Church-appointed censor that a reference might possibly allude to Jesus or Christianity, it became the target of attack. … As though this were not enough difficulty, it was compounded by a self-imposed censorship on the part of the Jewish communities, as a practical means of confining within limits the vicious persecution of their books and their lives.

Thus, in 1631CE the Jewish Assembly of Elders in Poland declared: We enjoin you under the threat of the great ban, to publish in no new edition of the Mishna or the Gemara, anything that refers to Jesus of Nazareth … If you will not diligently heed this letter but run counter thereto and continue to publish our books in the same manner as heretofore, you might bring over us and yourselves still greater sufferings than in previous times. [Rabbi Morris Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, Page 3-4]

What Year is it?

You will notice that, rather than using the Hebrew year that counts from creation, I will use the Roman year that counts from the birth date of Jesus. However, I will use BCE and CE (before common era and common era) rather than BC and AD. So, the destruction of the Temple, for example, would be in 70CE, rather than the Hebrew year of 3830. Also, throughout this book I will be referring to the first century. I use this term as a common reference point, without placing any religious connotations to its use.

What’s in a Name?

Since this book focuses on Jesus and the original intent of his movement, one of the first questions that I had to ask was what name should I use for Jesus? This, on the surface, seems like an odd question. If you are writing about Jesus you would simply use the name Jesus, wouldn’t you?

Actually, it is a bit more complicated than that. Every name carries with it a certain amount of intellectual and emotional baggage that should be considered. There is a lot of tradition that is associated with the name, and simply saying it presents many preconceived feelings and opinions.

About 20 years ago, the name "Yeshua became used more by Christian Hebrew Roots groups because it carried much less baggage. Used today, however, that name is much less neutral. Many Jews use the name Yeshu", but that carries unnecessary negative connotations. Some also say J.C., that I felt contained a casual disrespect. Still others avoid using a name and say the Nazarene, or the cumbersome "the founder of Christianity. I considered using Joshua (the modern pronunciation of the name) for a bit, but in the end decided upon simply using Jesus", for simplicity and clarity.

Methodology

In the writing of this book I will often be asking, What would you EXPECT to have happened?, and I will employ Ockham’s razor: the simplest answer is probably the correct one. Although I will be using conjecture and speculation to fill in the blanks, the conclusions that I will present come from information that is written plainly in the text, or that we can find ample evidence to support. And yet, they lead us to what may seem to be an unbelievable explanation; an explanation that is, however, obvious and clear.

If the conclusions are obvious, why hasn’t the information been presented in this way before? It is because our beliefs set our view of reality.

One year, on Hoshana Raba, I attended a lecture given by Rabbi Gold, at the Orthodox Union Building in Jerusalem. He began by stating the phrase, If I hadn’t have seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it, and then said the opposite phrase is even MORE true; If I hadn’t have believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it. The way that we look at the world, our acceptance of truth, and individual reality is based on pre-conceived beliefs. If we did not believe the world to be a certain way, we would not see evidence to support that view.

The first people who went into space looked down at the world below them in completely different ways. The American, who was a person of religious faith, found proof and confirmation of his beliefs by experiencing the wonder of creation. The Russian, who was an atheist, found the quiet expanse of space to be proof and confirmation that there was no God. Both people looked down at the same earth, and came to two completely opposite conclusions, based upon their individual beliefs they had BEFORE they experienced their first-time venture into space.

The same can be true of someone who believes in conspiracy theories, who continually finds proof of his theories because he cannot view the world differently. Our preconceived beliefs often prevent us from seeing the world from another perspective.

The more we invest in those beliefs, the more difficult it is for us to see things any other way (even though the beliefs may be totally incorrect). We are stuck in what is called cognitive dissonance with an overwhelming investment.

Investment

What do I mean by an investment in beliefs? They are beliefs that are based on incorrect or misunderstood information. We then create a reality that allows us to comfortably maintain that belief, and when something seems to not fit we create more beliefs to support our original one.

Over a period of time we have collected so much created reality that our investment becomes so great, we are unable to change (even with clear and obvious information that supports an opposite view).

This development has happened both with Christianity and Judaism; but to begin with, let’s try to understand the major difference between the Jewish and Christian beliefs, and why it exists to begin with.

The Wrong Question

Many Christians believe that the difference between our two religions is that Jews do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah. That is NOT the major point of disagreement, although many Jews seem to also expend a lot of effort trying to prove why Jesus is NOT the Messiah.

This, however, is not the question that should be asked. The disagreement (one that is unacceptable in Judaism) is the belief that Messiah is God. The question of "WHO Messiah is is unimportant, compared to the greater question of WHAT Messiah is".

In Judaism, no one is expecting or looking for a virgin birth. There is no expectation of God coming down to earth to die for our sins. Why would that be? According to Jewish theology, Messiah never has been, or ever will be, considered to be God. So, if that is the case, over the past two thousand years the wrong question has been proposed. The argument over WHO Messiah is, is a silly argument, if