The Real 'Jesus" part 1

If Jesus or one of his first disciples opened a congregation down the street in any town, USA, I doubt most Christians would ever attend.  The expression of faith found there would be altogether strange to the stream of Western Christianity.  The comforts and familiarity of modern churches would keep most Christians flocking to their contemporary brands of ‘faith’, so much so that many supposed followers of Christ would mark Yeshua off as a weird cult leader!


Now why would I say such a thing?  Because Jesus’ real name is Yeshua.  He was a Jewish carpenter become Rabbi in the last days of the Temple.  All of his disciples were Jewish.  They attended synagogue.  When in Jerusalem, they gathered at the Temple courts often.  They never celebrated Easter or Christmas, but attended the biblically appointed times of Passover, Firstfruits, Day of Atonement, Tabernacles, and others.  Sunday 11am was not a sacred hour, but sundown Friday marked  the beginning of Sabbath, which they honored with solemnity.  They didn’t ring bells, but they blew the shofar.  They didn’t read the Authorized King James Bible, they had the Tanakh (Old Testament), in Hebrew, as Holy Scripture.  They would teach from those texts day after day.  They never recited the ‘Apostles Creed’, but they they would have recited ‘Hear oh Israel, the Lord Your God, the Lord is One...”  Are you interested in meeting the real Yeshua?  Or are you too comfortable in a centuries old lie to be a lover of truth?








To many Christians, the name ‘Jesus’ is very dear.  That’s okay.  There is power in that name, because it's connected to the man.  But did you know that the name ‘Jesus’ is less than 400 years old?  The original name ‘Yeshua’, was slowly changed.  It began when the Greeks transliterated the hebrew into greek, but gave it a masculine greek ending.  That became in Latin language, Iesus.  This endures for centuries.  In the 1611 King James Bible (the only one actually authorized by King James), the name appears as ‘Iesous.’  Not until the 1700s does the name ‘Jesus’ show up in print!  With the changing of His precious name, many other things about this man were veiled as well.


It’s much more likely that Jews would recognize the worship there at Yeshua’s congregation. But even so, most Jews would find Yeshua’s ways strange and different.  Modern Judaism is more different from 1st century Judaism than many Jews would like to admit.  When the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the Sanhedrin reconvened at Yavneh.  Give thanks to HaShem that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai was able to make a deal with Vespasian.  For Vespasian allowed Yochanan to start a Torah school in Yavneh, where the Sanhedrin reformed.  He led the beginnings of reinterpreting what it meant to be ‘Jewish’ without a Temple.  Bet Hillel directed the Sanhedrin, and the Pharisees directed the path that became modern rabbinic Judaism, while other streams of thought largely faded away.  So would a 21st century Jew even recognize the authentic Faith of their forefathers?  Does going to Jerusalem and offering an animal sacrifice have a familiar weight to it, or is it just a story?


Both Jews and Christians are often shocked and confounded that they have a united history.  The Christian ‘Jesus’ often portrayed simply doesn’t look like a modern Jewish Rabbi.  And either way you take the story (a ‘Christian’ Jesus or Jewish Rabbi Yeshua), you’re re-creating a picture of this man that simply isn’t Him.  You’re creating an idol by the name of a man that lived 2000 years ago.  And false ideas of who he might have been have long hindered what he so desired to do among his followers.  I believe that Yeshua is able to reconcile Jew and Gentile.  I believe that the Real Yeshua, should we come to know him and understand him, will be a light for unity among Jews and Christians, not the dividing point of hostility that both groups have used against each other.