Thou Shalt Not Covet

 

The Nascent Sanhedrin lawyer Rabbi Yeshayahu Hollander with Pope in 2014. 

“You broke the 10th Commandment,”

Yet he represented the Vatican in their case 

to claim the property of the Upper Room. 

The Second Vatican Council was initiated by Giovanni XXIII (‘the good pope’) who aided Jews during the Holocaust, he also presented Decretum de Iudaeis before the Council. He passed away before Vat II was finished and Paulo VI presented the council’s defining document called Lumen Gentium (Light to Nations), this quickly followed with Nostra Aetate in dealing with the major religions, especially Judaism.

The apologies toward other religions began, and emphasized from John Paul II to Francis. Still Rome’s motives are unclear while gestures toward the other religions shifted. Its view of itself as ‘the mother church’ continued by absorbing and with a new language and compassion, all with the Virgin Mary at the center which implies its own centrality and here Rome has doubled down on its Marian devotion beyond the Theotokos. Thus, Judaism as the ‘cultivated olive tree’ and the centrality of Jesus Christ points to a revelatory religion system based not on relativism but on Scripture. 

The Vatican ‘Scudo’ and the 10 Sefirot tree (look familiar?)

 Da’at has been shattered; The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil 

absorbed without true knowedge and blatent supersessionism. 

“Those who speak don’t know. 

Those who know don’t speak” 

(the Oracle Keepers)

Oracles of God

Blessed are the Peacemakers (Meshulam, Noahides) 

How must one understand the long history of spoken tradition behind the Oral Torah (Mishna, Talmuds, et al), and with so much empasis on Hebrew texts or even other languages, i.e Aramaic, Kione (Judeo Greek), Proto Arabic (Judeo-Arabic) et al; should the textual paper trail operate secondary and confirmatory? 

I think so, as the most revelatory text is the LXX or Septuagint, produced by Jewish scribes in the 3rd-2nd century BC, it reveals the Oral Torah and given alongside the Written Torah. Throughout NT texts ts influence is evident; for example Jesus’ reading in the synagogue in Luke 4:16 with Isaiah 61. Speculative interpretations aside, the language tracks the LXX.

Bart Ehrman concludes that all the different NT texts do not change the meaning but there are many mistakes that ‘misquote Jesus’ or at least his presuppostion that he was founding a new religion. The problem emerges later with the integration of early Christians, as both proselytes and lost sheep Jews.  Then much later after Constantine (who outlawed the Bema seat Synagogue in 333) rejected the authority of the Pharisees or the Eastern synagogues. 

The late 1st century Jerusalem dispersion had plenty of communities it interacted with to the East, which the victors of a new religion slandered, marginalzed and persecuted by a narrative increasingly fragmented as documented with historical scholars, but what about Jewish sources?

Jesus said in Matthew 23, obey the Pharises, for they sit in the (Bema) seat of Moses. Do as they say (Paul and Acts 15), don't do as they do (Haredi Ultra-Orthodox Judaism like Hillel and Gamielel) and certainly not any Zealots, for Jesus was not one, yet affirmed the authority of Caesar, so choose your side. In Titus, Pauls calls out fables and the traditions of men. The books of Enoch are in view here, he never quotes them directly.  Granted the Enochian Corpus did hold legitimate ideas but must be understood as total fantasy like a Frank Peretti novel, much like all speculative prophetic literature today, fantasy, like C.S Lewis and Tolkein. 

Another interpretations of Judaims as the traditions of men is certainly the Shammai and Saducees pushing their political alignments. The same as today with Judaism that rejest the role of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Basically the Oral Torah, for us as Hebrews from the nations is to graft into believing Israel (cultivated olive tree) which has always existed even before Abraham with the Anshei HaShem. To go back and argue with Constantian Christianity, German higher critics or modernity fails if one does not search out the old faith. Let us not hold the Christian faith that built its house on the sand through variations of Christianities that do not understand One revelation and One mission of our Lord, who has visited his people many times and does not change with dispensations or marginalize the Pharisee tradition of Gamaliel followed by Paul. 

Evangelical Zionist Dispensationalist thought irrationally loves the State of Israel, and Reformed Covenantal streams rationalize the church as true Israel, yet both (as caricatures) seem to have an audacity to tell the oracle keepers who they are. So we may join together and BE the righteous ones in this world by properly understanding our authoritive textual history passed down by the system of oral teaching along with the text seemingly secondary, but for Messianic Hebrews it definitely is not. Inerrancy also means a mathematical miracle, and consonants need a non existing text with verbs, such is explained with ancient orality and the long legitimate Kabbalah tradition and its trail of blood not a Jewish ethnic exaltation.

👉 The Miracle of the LXX

Symmetry: Judaism and Christian Faith Not Christianity

Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik (also known as Elias Soloweyczyk) was likely born in Slutzk, Russia, in 1805. He died in London in 1881. He was the grandson of Hayyim ben Isaac of Volozhin (1749–1821), founder of the Volozhin yeshiva in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Elijah Zvi was an early member of the Soloveitchik family, which became a rabbinic dynasty during and after his life- time and a decendent is the current president of Yale University. 

He was educated in the Volozhin yeshiva, the most prestigious Jewish institute of higher Jewish learning in the nineteenth century. Comparisons between Jacob Emden (1697-1776) and Soloveitchik are reasonable, and Soloveitchik himself may have viewed Emden as a precedent. Upon closer examination, however, Emden and Soloveitchik have little in common other than their belief in the morality (and non-idolatry) of Christianity and their belief that Jesus did not come to eradicate the law for Jews. Unlike Soloveitchik, Emden, who was familiar with the Gospels (he cites them often) never wrote extensively about them and never quite claimed, as Soloveitchik did, that there is no categorical distinction between Judaism and Jesus’ or “Christianity” bettter termed the Christian Faith.

This commentary, constructed by someone deeply knowledgeable of classical Judaism, executed with passion, candor, and sincerity, and driven by an unyielding, albeit naïve, belief that the author had solved a millennia-old problem between the two religions. Still, Soloveitchik offers us a window into the mind of one Eastern European Jew sifting through modernity and who courageously confronted what Jews mostly took for granted: the irreconcilability of Judaism and Christianity which stands, however allowing the Christain faith its vast scope and perhaps a better image of Jesus of Nazareth not the accretions of the folk knowledge distorted by Talmudic ignorance, just contorversy. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik provides a great effort in reconciling Maimonides (RAMBAM) for the Litvak Perushim and this direction is appropriated by some Hassidics (although highly criticized by the Lithuanian Jews and other groups) mostly Chabad as their Rebbe Menachem Schneerson ecouraged such study throughout the remnants of Yiddish Judiasm today. Maimonides is analagous to what Thomas Aquinas’ devotion upon Aristotlian texts did with providing Rome a symmetrical system. Maimonides, the author of the “Guide for the Perplexed” would align with Classical Theism over what can only be described as panentheism of the Qehal’s Kabbalah which the RAMBAM rejects. Thomas’ metaphysical analogia entis and its logical conclusion through the work of Meister Eckhart stands analagous. Therefore, the ‘Great Western Tradition’ is not compatable with Modern Judiasm, but cut from the same cloth. However, Soloveitchik brings us back to the New Testament text and this is a safe place to dwell, even if his comment may seem earthy and unfamiliar. 

The history of the twentieth century was not kind to Soloveitchik’s prediction, and, perhaps partly as a consequence, he and his work swallowed into obscurity until now. May we examine it anew. Not necessarily as a template for the reconstruction of Judaism and Christianity as much as a valiant attempt to bend the arc toward an era of co-existence and tolerance built on the dunghill of mutual animus and lingering hatred. Nevertheless, Jesus of Nazareth must be read as the Christ for there is no ‘yeshua’ in any other name.

👉 Soloveitchik’s Commentary of The Gospels