So You Think You Know Jesus?

So You Think You Know Jesus? By D. Thomas Lancaster
http://ffoz.org/blogs/2010/08/know_jesus_better.html/

"Most Christians claim to know Jesus, but most of us don't.
Yes, we know Him as our Lord and Savior, and we know a few parables, a few miracles, and about how he died and rose, but it pretty much stops there. It is possible to be a Christian your whole life and never get to know the real, historical, Yeshua of Nazareth, the first century, Galilean-Jewish rabbi.

Of course, we get to know Jesus by reading the Gospels, but unless you grew up in a Torah observant Jewish home and happen to have an education in first century Judaism, you are not going to understand the Gospels very well.

Remember the first time you had to read Shakespeare? Reading the Gospels without a Jewish perspective and without their rabbinic context would be like a third-grader with no familiarity in Shakespearean English trying to read and enjoy Hamlet. To understand the story and the teaching of Jesus, you simply need more information.

We can get more information from Bible commentaries. Unfortunately, not a lot of people read Bible commentaries. Most people don't even read the Bible, much less a boring commentary in small print with a lot of big words. Even when we do read commentaries, they are sometimes not very helpful. Most Gospel commentaries were written by Christians who did not know Judaism much better than any other churchman. Worse yet, some Christian Bible commentaries are skewed by anti-Semitic prejudices, anti-Torah doctrines, and replacement theology. Those interpretations turn the teachings of Yeshua backwards. A lot of Christian teaching is based upon Christian misinterpretation due to ignorance about the Jewishness of Jesus.

But what if there was a commentary that read more like a story? Imagine a commentary on the Gospels that provided all the important Jewish background information and rabbinic parallels, but did so in a story format, while following the life of Yeshua from His conception to His ascension. Suppose that this commentary harmonized all four Gospels into a continuous narrative so that it felt more like you were reading a novel about Rabbi Yeshua than a commentary on the Bible.

Sound good?
Get on board this fall. Subscribe to "Chronicles of the Messiah," the new Torah Club Volume Four, and get to know Yeshua better.
About the Author: D. Thomas Lancaster is Director of Education at First Fruits of Zion, and regular contributor to Messiah Journal. He is the author of the Torah Club programs, and the books Grafted In, Restoration and King of the Jews."

http://ffoz.org/blogs/2010/08/know_jesus_better.html/