What’s Going On

I know that it's been a while since I posted on here. Just a short update with the expectation that I'll be updating more later....

I've been working on my Hebrew with some friends online, still working hard to make a living.

I've begun reading בגן האמונה In the Garden of Emuna. I'm reading the Hebrew version. It's absolutely great.

I'll be updating some more soon. Sorry this is so short and that I haven't updated sooner. I'll give a fuller report later on.

Yours,
Jason

Update Times Two

Just a couple of updates:

(1) The JHR Online forum is back online after so much struggle. Notice that the URL has changed; so, change your bookmarks. :)

(2) I was informed today that I received a raise effectively immediately and retroactively for the last month. I thought I'd share the news. It's not a huge raise. It amounts to just under a dollar per hour more, but it's welcome news nonetheless.

I'll be trying to put something together for the blog this week. Hope to hear from you folks either here or on the forum!

Jason

The State of the Forum

Regarding JHR being offline, I've been working like mad to get the thing going again, and it's been unsuccessful. Hopefully it will be back online in the beginning of the week. I tried to do the update (to MyBB 1.4), and it crashed the whole thing. I've got a back-up for when it gets replaced, but I haven't been successful yet in my attempts to get a functional set of features on the board. I'm going to try to go back to version 1.2 before Shabbat arrives. We'll see what happens. I'm in the process of deleting all the files from the 1.4 install (that I redid last night) right now, and afterwards I will drop the SQL entries and start over with 1.2. If it works, I'll install the security updates (which are safe) up to 1.2.14 and then attempt a re-import of all the old posts (PLEASE WORK!). Hopefully we'll be back up soon.

Update

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I just finished installing the older software (MyBB 1.2) so that I can have it as a clean base from which to upgrade to the newest version (MyBB 1.4). My fear is that I have lost the post information. This was the first time that I've ever made an attempt to backup and restore a forum, and I am highly afraid that I took a wrong step. I hate to admit it, but I believe the forum will be starting over from the ground up. :(

The Trinity and “Echad”

In his The Defense of an Essential: A Believer’s Handbook for Defending the Trinity, Nick Norelli took up the argument common among missionaries that echad (אֶחָד – the Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:4 to say that HaShem is “one”) “is a word that allows for plurality within one and diversity within unity” (page 3). This is the most common argument when the subject of the Trinity comes up in the face of the declared unity of G-d in the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Is it true that echad refers to a “compound unity” as missionaries say? Actually, no. It isn’t true in the least. The word echad is used in the same way as the word “one” in English. That is, it means a singular as opposed to a plural. If I say that I have one book, I mean that I have one and not two. Similarly, when I tell you that I want one hamburger from the grill, I mean just one – and not two. It is not the word “one” or echad that indicates a compound unity – not in the slightest. It is the noun to which the number refers which itself may be compound. A hamburger is composed of a bun, meat, sauces, and toppers. A hamburger itself is a compound unity, just as a cluster of grapes is a compound unity. It is not the word “one” that indicates or allows for plurality. Rather, it is the nature of the composition of specific nouns that indicates compound unity. This is true with everything we see in the world of our experience, which is always compound.

What do I mean that it is always compound? If I have a chair, the chair is made of pieces that have been assembled to create one object. The chair itself is a compound unity of all of the pieces. Such is also the case with my hamburger above, and the book to which I referred is composed of hundreds of individual pages, some kind of binding (thread or glue) and two covers. Everything we see in the physical world is a compound unity. Even a block of wood that looks like one thing is truly a compound, being made of millions of atoms of various shapes and compositions, and each atom is further made up of other particles. What does this lead us to? We know that in our existence, there is no such thing as an absolute unity. We do not have a single example of such a substance.

What do we mean when we say “one”? We mean simply “not two (or more)” of something. It is not the word “one” that allows for or bears the sense of composition. Rather, it is the thing itself to which I refer which contains and bears this sense. This is always the case. “Echad” does not mean compound unity. “Chair” means compound unity. “One” refers to a singular subset of existence.

Here’s the issue with the passage from Deuteronomy 6:4.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל: ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ ה׳ אֶחָד
Hear, O Israel: HaShem is our G-d. HaShem is one.

The word echad appears at the end of the verse, the leftmost word in the Hebrew quote. Does “echad” mean “compound unity”? Of course not. How can we determine what it means? The Hebrew says YHVH echad, “HaShem is one.” We know that the idea of compound unity is contained in the noun associated with the number “one”. In this case, the missionaries come to the conclusion that this is a compound unity, not based on the meaning of the word echad – which is really a distraction – but based on their assumed description of the nature of HaShem.

Trinitarians assume that HaShem is three persons, based on Christian theology. From this assumption, they place a compound unity within the text of the Shema, thus creating a circular argument.

1. Assume that HaShem is plural in nature (“three persons in one”);
   
2. Define “HaShem is one” with our assumption; and,
   
3. We have a “compound unity” along with echad in Deuteronomy 6:4.

In other words, there is no argument for the Trinity within the word echad in the Shema. What missionaries do in effect is simply explain away the use of “one” in this verse, as if it really means nothing.

But what does “HaShem is one” mean? Why does the Torah have the need to make this proclamation?

The word “G-d” in Hebrew is elohim. This is a plural form. It can refer to “the gods” of the world (which are really nothing), the chief god of a given people group, or to the G-d of Israel. The Shema, as quoted above, states that “HaShem is our G-d.” What if Israel had assumed in hearing “HaShem is our elohim” that the name YHVH (that is, HaShem) was referring to more than one person? What if they had continued to say “these are your gods” (Exodus 32:4) while still proclaiming that they were worshiping HaShem (Exodus 32:5)? The Erev Rav who came with Israel out of Egypt claimed to worship HaShem even while they were worshiping a golden calf, who represented their plurality of gods (this is why they said “these are your gods” [Hebrew: אלה אלוהיך] rather than “this is your G-d” [in the singular]).

In their sin, the people associated plurality with the name of HaShem. Moses, therefore, proclaimed to Israel that this association of plurality with HaShem was off-limits, because HaShem is not “these” (in plural) but only “one” without a second. If you say “two” or “three” in relation to HaShem, then you have violated this very important principle in the Torah. Moses shouted for Israel to hear that HaShem is our G-d, to the exclusion of all others, and that HaShem is one and cannot be worshiped as a plural being. It was a call to Israel to worship and love the one and only Savior who brought us out of Egypt.

This is the meaning of our text. Is echad a marker of compound unity? No. Compound unity (and what a strange designation that is!) is found within existents, not within an attributive adjective. HaShem just happens to be an existent (the ONLY Existent) in whom plurality cannot be postulated. The Christians assume plurality, just as the Erev Rav assumed plurality was attributed to HaShem based on the word elohim, since it is plural in form (though not in meaning). However, their assumption is in direct violation of what Moses was trying to get across to the people:

HaShem is not a group of gods! HaShem is not a chief god! HaShem is ONE, the ONLY ONE! You shall love him with all your heart, soul, and might! Do not associate plurality with him, and do not worship any other besides him!

This is the meaning and intention of the Shema, the call for Israel to devote themselves to and love HaShem, not a justification for late Christian theology.

Why Should I Learn Hebrew?

I am a language nut. I admit it. I enjoy grammar, syntax, semantics, phonology, phonetics, general communication... you name it! These things are simple pleasures in a world of confusion and disarray. To me, the idea of universal grammar is both thrilling and challenging. To a certain extent, then, it is only natural that I would enjoy the study of Hebrew, a language that is filled with power of expression, concretized abstractions, and interesting grammatical structures and patterns – not to mention the spiritual creative power that accompanies this language according to Jewish lore.

On the other hand, there are those for whom language study is not a pleasure. The prospect of setting out into a vast unknown land may frighten them beyond words, or they may bravely venture out into that land of discovery only to find that once they have left their comfort zone, it's more than they bargained for. The well of motivation dries up, the clouds of uncertainty settle in, and soon they find that they've lost their footing.

If you are one who has reached that point in your study, this post is for you! Why should you learn Hebrew? What motivation could you possibly find to venture out into the apparent darkness (though it is truly a world full of light – hidden, supernal light!)? How can you step out of the clouds and begin to place your feet back on the solid path toward better understanding? Read on...

Here are a few keys to putting your best foot forward when it comes to the path of learning. The first is outright motivation. Sit down before you begin to study and ask yourself why you are doing it. Are you studying just for the sake of studying? Or, are you studying Hebrew because you really believe that it is within your grasp? Attempting to learn something that you believe is beyond you will always turn out to be a waste of time. Do you really believe that you can learn Hebrew? If you do not believe in yourself, you are closing the gate before even getting to the path. You must believe in your own ability to learn and to grasp things, even if they seem difficult at first.

If you believe in yourself, get ready to step out of the gate. The next motivational question you must ask yourself is simply Why?. Why do you want to learn Hebrew? Why do you think you should engage in such a study? If you believe in the Scriptures and want to know what they say, this is your motivation. If you want to be able to communicate with your friends and family when you come to Israel the next time, this is a different motivation altogether. If you just want to be able to engage in discussions between missionaries and countermissionaries and understand which one is telling the truth when they say Thus saith the Hebrew verse, then you have yet another motivation. Why are you at all interested in studying Hebrew? Once you have discovered your own motivation, the question of Why? will answer itself.

If you cannot find your own motivation for learning Hebrew, then you should really not engage in any study of the language, since it will just be a frustration to you.

But, if you can sit down and clarify why you're interested in Hebrew, it will help you to decide what kind of study to engage in – which road to take on your quest for knowledge. Not all roads lead to the same place. There are some paths for learning Biblical Hebrew, others for learning conversational Hebrew, and still others for learning the Hebrew of the Mishnah and other Rabbinic literature. Your goals and motivations will determine if you should join an online group for Biblical Hebrew (such as those hosted on the SelfStudyHebrew group on Yahoo!) or one for spoken Israeli Hebrew (such as those hosted on my JHR Online forum). Understanding your motivation will ensure that you take the right path to achieve your personal goal in learning Hebrew.

The last bit is to know where to turn when you have a question. Too often we get our study underway and the motivation is abundant. However, as time passes and we start to get somewhere along the path, we get tired and lose sight of the goal. At that point, we need to step back and remind ourselves of where we're going – we need to find what is keeping us from progressing. Do you need help with some particular grammatical issue that you have not quite understood? Do you simply need someone to talk to in order to regain your perspective on the matter? If you need someone to talk to with questions about grammar, usage, or anything else – or if you need someone to get your goal back in focus – I am here on the JHR forum and on this blog to get you back on the path.

Please, use my knowledge and experience to keep yourself out of the clouds. Ask me anything you want, and I will get an answer even if I don't know it myself. I want to help you to learn the language and keep on with your study. Let's keep walking ahead, even if we're at different points on the path or on different paths altogether.

Yours,
Jason

Basic Proofs of Christianity

So, everyone. I have just moved to a new apartment. I think that I will now have time so that I can finally become a little more active on this blog. I've been busy setting up the new JHR Online forum, which is much better than the old one – not to mention getting myself into a job and a life in general over the last year!

This is something for which I am very ambitious. I want to begin to lay out, first of all, my reasons for having left Christianity – that is, how I believe true religion can be found.

The way I see it, the claims of Christianity can basically be viewed together as a three-legged stool attempting to support the basic claim that Christianity is true. If any one of the three legs falls, the support disappears, and the body of claims come toppling down.

In the case of Christianity, the three basic claim groups are: 1) Yeshu fulfills me personally (personal testimony); 2) Yeshu fulfilled the prophetic expectation of the Messiah (prophecy fulfillment); and, 3) The New Testament is an accurate record of the continued revelation of the G-d of Israel (NT authenticity).

If any one of these claims can be disproved, the weight of Christian argument comes tumbling to the ground. Christianity depends on all of these things being true, though less so the claims of personal testimony, since these tend to accompany every form of religious expression based in a belief in a higher power.

Personal Testimony as Proof

When asked why they believe in Yeshu, most people will respond that they believe because he has "set them free" or "delivered them" from a sense of guilt or fear, or even from a string of bad habits. This personal testimony is, for many, the strongest evidence that one can have for the truth of Christianity. What I came to realize is that they are right. There's nothing more important in our lives than finding the strength and motivation to break our bad habits and to move into a higher state of consciousness, wherein we consider others in our decisions regarding right behavior.

In this case, Christianity can definitely be said to produce effects. There are many who spend their whole lives drinking and abusing, but when they become spiritually convicted by what they perceive to be the truth of Christianity (the existence of "Christ"), they abandon their evil behaviors and begin to live more upstanding lives.

From this perspective, I have nothing against Christianity – just as I have nothing against Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, or Jehovah's Witnesses, which all create moral behavior in their faithful masses. Are all Christians moral? Of course not. However, Christianity does have the power to create moral behavior in the lives of those who believe in it, and in this regard they have one leg to stand on.

Prophecy Fulfillment as Proof

Most of the New Testament focuses on this aspect of Christian proofs. The Gospels were composed in such a way as to attempt to establish that Yeshu was the Messiah by referring to the many prophecies in the text of the Tanakh that the Messiah stood (stands) to fulfill. This body of proofs is also the one that receives more attention from missionaries and countermissionaries than all the rest. Essentially, this is because the first set of proofs is subjective and cannot be rationally proved or disproved, while the third set of proofs (those dealing with the accuracy of the New Testament) are less easily understood by those untrained in the area of textual criticism.

As a third-year student at Ozark Christian College, I enrolled in a survey course of the Jewish Prophets under Dr. Larry Pechawer, who was also my Hebrew professor. In this course it was required that we read the texts of the Prophets' writings and write reports on the themes that appeared there. I took advantage of the time to read the chapters together in English with the Hebrew open for perusal for the first time in my life. That introduction to the Prophets taught me more than I ever expected to learn from the Bible, and before long I was convinced (without even asking anyone for explanations or checking commentaries) that there was no way that Yeshu (J*sus) could have been the Messiah based on the text of the Prophetic Scriptures.

The question of Yeshu's fulfillment of messianic prophecies will be dealt with throughout the posts that I plan to place on this blog. It is the leg that is most easily removed from beneath the stool.

New Testament as Proof

The final supportive claim of Christianity is that the New Testament is accurate both historically and theologically, serving as a completion of the revelations of G-d through Israel.

The problems in the New Testament actually exist in both of these areas. Theologically, it disagrees with the Tanakh on several issues (which will be elucidated more clearly in the future on this blog along with links for further reading), such as: the place of the Torah in the grand scheme of things, the efficacy of animal sacrifices in providing atonement for sin, the centrality of the Jewish people in the plan of G-d, the role and definition of Messiah ben David, and the definition of "humanity" and "deity" and their relation to each other.

Additionally, there are ways in which the New Testament is even internally contradictory. From the simple disagreements between Matthew and the other Synoptic gospels (namely, Mark and Luke) in parallel passages, to the obvious disagreement between the Synoptics and John regarding the day of Yeshu's crucifixion, to the problems that exist between the various gospels regarding the events of "Resurrection Sunday."

Conclusion

The conclusions that I came to in my own studies was that Christianity simply cannot stand because it really has only one foot in the tripod. While it is true that Christianity has demonstrated through the years that it has the power to change lives (and this is really the benefit of religions in terms of society), it is also the case that the other two feet of this stool are not strong enough to hold the claim up.

I came to the conclusion that Yeshu as presented in the New Testament simply does not succeed in fulfilling the prophecies of the Tanakh relating to the Messiah, and the New Testament has too many idiosyncrasies to pass it off as revealed from the Almighty.

These and many other topics will be taken up in this blog. If you have any questions along the way regarding to clarity or coverage, don't hesitate to contact me.

Questions for Comment
For Christians: Would you agree that these three things must be firm in order for Christianity to stand true? Is there anything else that you believe Christianity is absolutely based on?
For Countermissionaries: Have you ever heard a proof for Christianity that lay outside of these three groups?

Definitions

From the beginning, I find it necessary to put definitions in place regarding my views so as to define where I stand on certain issues early on.

Judaism is religiously autonomous from Christianity. Traditionally it does not accept as authentic any form of Christian faith – even when it is encased in Jewish terminology, as in such religious creations as Jews for J*sus and Netzarim Judaism. Judaism and Christianity are to their core essentially different religions, with dissimilar views of human nature, human destiny, and divine character and essence.

Recently it seems that a desire to mix and match Judaism with Christianity has become really popular. (The JHR forum that I administrate is witness to the popularity of this type of religious thought.) Such mixtures, even if defined as reinstitutions of dead religious forms*, are neither Judaism nor Christianity – denying basic doctrines of both religions in order to create an artificial compromise between the two. This, of course, applies less to the Jews for J*sus movement, which is far less Jewish in its mode of expression than other messianic groups or those who call themselves Netzarim. It is little more than Christianity written in Jewish terms, having received their theology from mainstream Christians rather than from rabbis at any point in Jewish history.

I am very interested in hearing from others who have had run-ins with Netzarim. I cannot really get enough of a grasp on their claims yet to show why it is not Jewish by nature (especially since many of their beliefs are similar to the Lubavitchers), and I want to hear from others who have dealt with their claims.

Signing out for the moment. Be well.

Jason

* "Netzarim" say that their practice is a sort of resurrection of the form of worship and faith practiced by J*sus ("Yeshu", "Yeshua" or "Yehoshua") and the disciples about 2000 years ago.