Who Was Yeshua ben Miriam?
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See Also: Post-Constantine Nicene Christianity
Yeshua ben Miriam, better known as Jesus, Son of Mary, may be the most misunderstood Jew in world history!
Who was he? There is little documentation from his lifetime outside the Christian New Testament. Yet, his influence on the world and billions of people cannot be overstated, whether of his followers or his detractors.
As with the religion that sprang from the monotheistic revelations of Moshe the Hebrew (Moses), the Way sect of Yeshua underwent a dramatic alteration. With Judaism it was the rise of the Prushim or Pharisees circa first century CE. With the Way sect it was conquests of Constantine and the rise of Catholicism. Both events fundamentally altered the original movement. Biblical Judaism was replaced by Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament's Jewish Way sect was replaced by Catholicism. Christian attempts to rediscover the Way sect have failed largely due to continuing acceptance of the Vatican's Nicene and other creeds.
Most everything known about Yeshua/Jesus comes through the Roman Catholic Church, established 300 or so years after his execution (although some of their source materials date from the mid to late first century, around 40-60 years after Yeshua's execution). Despite this lack of objective evidence, millions of people today maintain unshakable emunah (faith) in their understanding of him and his teachings. Christianity hails him as the Messiah of Israel despite the fact that he did not meet the biblical requirements. The vast majority of Christians believe he was God incarnate, and most that he was part of a triune godhead.
C.S. Lewis, in a BBC radio talk show and his writings, famously proposes a dogmatic trilemma concerning Yeshua — a choice among three options, each of which is in some way difficult to accept. This trilemma argues that he was either a "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" [or Mad, Bad, or God incarnate]. There is, however, a perfectly viable and even more realistic option: He was what he claimed.
Yeshua was a religiously observant first-century Jew who felt the Pharisees (and Sadducees) were abandoning the religion of their ancestors and replacing it with what he called the "teaching of men," especially Talmudic or Rabbinic Judaism. Based on my studies, this was the essential belief system of Derech Yeshua, the Jewish Way sect, that emerged from those who knew and followed him. In this section of AllFaith.com, we'll seek to rediscover these teachings.
Yeshua likely lived essentially as presented in the Gospel accounts. According to them, the rabbis who knew him came to regard Yeshua as a heretical teacher (rabbi/Pharisee) whose reforms challenged their authority. Yeshua rejected the overdependence on the Talmud, referring to it as "the teachings of men, not God" (Mark 7:7-9). Most Pharisaical (i.e., Rabbinic) authorities rejected him and his reforms from the beginning of his public life. He referred to the Rabbinic hierarchy as "whited sepulchers filled with nothing but dead men's bones." In other words, he charged that the Rabbis ordered the people to follow their Talmudic laws and treated the Torah of Moshe as something dead and buried. Rather than holding to the Torah of Moshe and developing ever deeper spiritual understandings themselves, they were to mindlessly parrot the teachings of the Rabbis without question.
The First Century was a difficult period. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism had to be fundamentally reformed to survive. Without the Temple and the Land, no one could practice Biblical Judaism, which required regular sacrifices at the Temple. Without the Jerusalem Temple no one could be made ritually clean. Biblical Judaism was Temple Judaism.
The Rabbis claimed authority over this vital work and made up the story of Ezra and the Men of the Great Assembly to justify it. The story has no biblical nor historical foundation. Derech Yeshua (the Way sect built around his reforms) believed the teachings of Yeshua maintained biblical Judaism as intended by Moshe and considered Yeshua:
Deuteronomy 18:15 "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' 17 And the Lord said to me, 'They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him."
According to this quote, this man, whoever he is, will be a prophet like Moshe, not an incarnation of God. For the Way sect, such verses provided biblical support for their faith in Yeshua.
In both systems, prayer with intention replaced animal and grain sacrifices. Derech Yeshua, however, was sola scriptura, meaning they were not dependent on the extra-biblical authority and teachings of the Rabbinate. The rift was largely political that divided the two movements. Paul explained to Timothy:
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the anointed man Jesus.
The Way Followers sincerely hoped Yeshua would be the Jewish Messiah even though he did not fulfill the essential biblical requirements. The author of the New Testament Book of Hebrews tries unsuccessfully at length to convince his fellow Jews of this.
As time passed and Yeshua didn't return to meet the biblical Messianic requirements as hoped, his believed Messianic role transformed from a political leader — which is the biblical role of the Messiah — to a spiritual concept out of sync with the biblical prophecies. The sect became missionary-minded and sought to explain his failure to perform, saying that one day he would return from the dead and complete the requirements even though this lacks biblical support.
Of course, God can do anything, including resurrect whoever He wishes; however, there are at least two problems here:
Yeshua was an arguably specially empowered or anointed (Greek 'christed') Torah teacher and reformer, but he was not the biblically described Messiah. This situation is similar to Chabad in our days. Many Chabadniks were certain Rabbi Schneerson was the Messiah but died without meeting the qualifications. A sect of Chabadniks still believe he will return as Mashiach. Mashiach ben David is yet to come. We continue to wait.
After 70 C.E. Rabbinic Talmudic Judaism prevailed among the Jews. The Way sect continued to grow, mostly among Gentile converts. During the sect's second and third hundred years, they embraced what the Apostle John warned of as the Roman Nicolaitan philosophy. As a result, "those who say they are Jews but are not" led the Way sect into accepting Emperor Constantine's Christendom and it replaced the Way sect with the Church.
As the Church consumed the Way, they deified Yeshua and created a Trinity conception like most Roman religions. But divinity was something never claimed by Yeshua nor believed by his disciples. The Torah is clear that there is only one true God and that He is echad or indivisibly one. He does not incarnate like the Pagan gods. The claims of Yeshua's divinity, which neither he nor his followers believed or had even conceived of according to the New Testament, violate the Torah they followed and hoped to restore to the Jewish people.
There is enough evidence to accept that Yeshua lived, that he was a religious Jew and a teacher later in his short thirty-three years of life. In this section, we will seek to unravel this great mystery and determine what Yeshua and his followers believed and taught.
Note: This section of AllFaith.com suffered greatly from the Rabbinic censorship I was subjected to while earning my smicha (Jewish ordination) and the attempt by Network Solutions to 'cancel' me and steal the domain (which they unjustly took offline for nearly a year). I am now engaged in a significant update. Please be patient as you read my linked studies. AllFaith.com is Back!
What is known:
Yeshua ben Miriam was born around 7 BCE to a Jewish teenager named Miriam (translated as Mary in English). By the time he turned 12 he was questioning the teachings and authority of the rabbis (Matthew 21–23). When Yeshua was around 29, he began gathering talmidim, or disciples. All of them, except Peter, were teenagers at the time. For three and a half years, Yeshua taught his Jewish restoration reforms to the Jews of Jerusalem and surrounding areas, hoping to encourage them in two specific areas:
- To make teshuvah (repentance) and return to Torah Judaism with sincerity and mutual love.
- To warn that the rise of Talmudic Judaism was leading people away from the Written Torah and posed a grave danger.
Yeshua had no intention of starting a new religion. The idea would have been repugnant to him (John 4:22, Matthew 15:24, Matthew 23:1-4, etc). After three and a half years of public teaching, Yeshua was arrested for sedition against the occupying Roman rulers and put to death by them on a wooden stake (stauros means stake or tree, not a cross).
Followers and elders of the Jewish Way Sect (Derech Yeshua, the Way of Yeshua) spread his teachings throughout the known world. The Way sect proliferated, mostly among non-Jews but with many born Jews as well.
Yeshua's brother, James, led a beit din (religious court) as recorded in Acts 15, establishing a dual structure for the Way sect: Jewish followers would continue to practice Judaism harmonious with Yeshua's reforms, and non-Jews would observe the Seven Law Covenant finalized through Noah, as Yeshua taught.
Much of what has flowered into the diverse Christian denominations arose from this simple narrative of the first century carpenter turned religious reformer. This is not to discredit the later beliefs but to uncover their origins.