On the outer edge towards the southern side of Mount Zion, next to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem (the Jewish Quarter of is known as the Rova), one sees very breathtaking views. There is a particularly good viewing spot about halfway up – or down – depending on ones perspective, to an amazing panoramic view.
Off in the distance about a mile or a little more away, facing in a southerly direction and spread out before you is the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is where Yeshua spent 40 days speaking to his beloved Taught Ones about the Kingdom, and by many proofs, it was indeed he who was with them! Cf. Acts 1:1-12.
In between the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion is the Kidron Valley, and the Garden where Yeshua went through the excruciating agony of knowing what he was facing very very soon – his crucifixion just outside his beloved Jerusalem. Cf. Lk. 19:41. Yeshua wept – wept for Jerusalem.
If from Mount Zion one looks downward rather than straight ahead, you see the Valley of Hinnom.
The Valley of Hinnom, Gehinnom, is a very real place (translated, “hell”). Today, looking downward you will see it full of stone homes where Arabs live. (Unfortunately, tourists need to be careful with Arab cabdrivers because my experience is that they are always looking for ways to take advantage of them).
In Yeshua’s time Gehinnom served as Jerusalem’s garbage dump. Modern recycling was of course unknown 2,000 years ago. How did the city reduce the pile of garbage? By burning it; fires were said to be burning 24/7 there.
The Romans dumped the unclaimed bodies of crucified criminals there.
Yeshua Hamashiach does not deal in concepts; he teaches what is concrete. Yeshua the Jew and of Hebrew heart – not Greek-Latin-English “mind” – uses physical metaphors to illuminate great spiritual truth. (Mt. 1, 27:46, Lk. 4:16, 19:41, Yochanon 20:16, Acts 26:14-15, 3:13-16, Rom. 1:3, 9:4-5, 2 Tim. 2:8; cf. Lk. 1:30-34, 2:21-24, Rev. 3:7, v. 12, Rev. 5:5, 22:16 et al.).
Yeshua does not talk about “hell” in conceptual terms but again, being of Hebrew heart, in terms of concrete reality. He does the same with the Kingdom – a word found 111 times in the Good News. Yeshua talks about the Heavens – Heaven in Hebrew is plural – the same way. That is, as a concrete reality now breaking in!
At the Last Passover Seder (means “order”; not “The Last Supper”; another term of de-Judaizing, de-Hebraicizing Yeshua’s life!), Yeshua speaks of physical actions eating and drinking in the kingdom Lk. 22:15-16.
Does the Good Doctor Luke in the opening of Acts tell us Yeshua taught the Taught Ones what “theological positions” they need to believe in? Did he expect when they received the Ruach Hakodesh (Acts 2), it would be for the purpose of “tongues” and individualistic ecstatic experiences – a focus of the pagan cults he prohibited? Cf. Mt. 7:21-24 v. 23 (!).
Yeshua taught about the Kingdom; a totally Hebrew Scripture-Hebrew-Jewish-and P’rushim (“Separate Ones” “Pharisees”) emphasized concrete reality, that had not yet been fully realized.
Yeshua’s 40 days on the Mount of Olives is of course reminiscent of the 40 days Moshe spends on Mount Sinai with the LORD.
In Acts 1:6, we read that the Taught Ones were asking Yeshua, is the kingdom being restored to Israel? In Luke’s KG rendering of a Hebrew or Aramaic original the Kingdom is very specific and limits what is referred to (articular accusative, used by Luke accordingly to do so).
In KG both Kingdom and Israel are specific references. Luke’s KG puts them at the end of Acts 1:6 for emphasis.
In short: the Taught Ones attention is specifically very focused directly on the Kingdom and to where it is being restored – specifically to Israel. (Articular dative to indicate specifically where – here Israel).
In the Taught Ones’ Hebrew or Aramaic (Hebrew’s very closest Semitic sister language, more everyday than Hebrew) original, the more deeply indicates “the positive bearer of existence – actuality”.
The Taught Ones are not – at all (!) – asking about the Kingdom being restored to Israel in terms of its “theological concept/theological position”, but rather they ask about its concrete reality.
We have a fundamental and foundational question for some perhaps, a very inconvenient truth. Why doesn’t Yeshua respond as post-Biblical Western Tradition does? “It’s about the Church/church”.
Where is Yeshua’s teaching here about “the Church”?
The Gospel reveals all kinds of teaching by Yeshua about the Kingdom. As we mentioned; 111 references according to our KG concordance.
The number of uses of the KG ekklesia – which should be translated assembly – not “Church” (!). There is one reference to the Universal Assembly in the entire Gospel.
If “Israel” is rejected; “the Jews rejected him, so he rejects them” – as Western Tradition subtly and not so subtly teaches, why doesn’t Yeshua teach this to the Taught Ones?
If it is – in fact – not found in the Gospel, surely must not Yeshua teach “the Church/church” in the days before his Ascension from the Mount of Olives?
Why doesn’t Yeshua teach them to go to “the ends of the Earth first, and Jerusalem last – if at all – in Acts 1:8?
Does Yeshua, in the process of sending them out from Jerusalem, expect them to spiritually leave Jerusalem (God forbid!), and go to Athens to learn about God and himself?
After all that is exactly what the Early Gentile Fathers did – they debated “Jerusalem or Athens” – as the place to learn of Truth.
Was Gentile leadership authorized to do so? By Whom? When? Where? Why? During the “Jerusalem or Athens” debate, Tertullian – no friend of “the Jews” – nonetheless wrote, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”.
Why doesn’t Yeshua instruct the Taught Ones to not just physically leave Jerusalem, but abandon it – and its people – spiritually as well? Why doesn’t Yeshua instruct Paul, in the process of sending Paul to the Nations, to “go to the Nations to learn of me”?
Acts 17:16-32 finds Paul in Athens. Early Gentile leadership decided “Athens” was the place to learn of God and Yeshua. Actually, Athens was the place along later with Rome – and its Latin – where Yeshua Hamashiach was stripped of his Jewish humanity, de-Hebraized, and recast as “JC”.
Why doesn’t Acts 17:16-32 tell us that Paul went to Athens to learn about God? If “Athens” and “Greek” ae the “sources” to learn about God and Yeshua, why does Acts 17:16-32 show Paul explaining to the Athenians Who God is; rather than the other way around? Cf. Acts 17:22-32.
One might well say, “The Early Gentile Fathers may have gone away from the Bible but look at the “Re-Formers”. They – didn’t they – returned from the Traditions of Men to “the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, we stand only on the Bible”. “Wasn’t this based on Martin Luther’s famous response, “sola Scriptura” “only Scripture”?
We should note “sola Scriptura”; is that Hebrew? Is it even KG? No; it is Latin.
The great “key” question is, “Did the Re-Formers – in fact – actually return to Scripture?”
Did the Re-Formers actually leave Romanism for “sola Scriptura”? Or, did they actually just “Re-Form” the Romanism they “claim” they left?
Did they repudiate their Romanism predecessors’ repudiation of “the Jews”, the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, to return to Jerusalem as their spiritual source? Did they return from Athens-Rome to Jerusalem as their spiritual source of truth?
Tragically – beyond words – no. Luther, Calvin and others continued to write about God and Yeshua and the Bible, in Latin.
Despite the fact that Luther said, “those who study the Bible in Hebrew drink from the source, those in Greek from the spring, those in Latin, downstream”, Latin remained the “Re-Formers” prima facie spiritual language!
The “Re-Formers” also did not replace Romanism’s Replacement Theology. That is, that the Gentile Institution on Earth was “the new/true Israel”. Nowhere in the 68 uses of Israel in the RCS – not even once – do we find the KG words “alntheia” (“aletheis”) Israel “true Israel”. Nor do we find either of the two KG words for new – “kainos” new in quality, renewal”, or “neos” “new, young, fresh, new in time”, i.e., “brand new” used with Israel!
There are 68 uses of Israel in the RCS. Not once – not even once – is kainos (renewed, new in quality), neos (new in time), or aletheia (true) used with Israel. If Yeshua thought “the Church is the true/new Israel”, wouldn’t that forty days on the Har Tz’itim (Mount of Olives) have been the time to say so?
This – “Replacement Theology” – would be a fundamental and foundational sea change. Does Yeshua teach it? If so, where? Why are the Taught Ones asking about the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel if Yeshua had taught them it was/is/will be (God forbid!) “replaced by” the Church?
Again, if Yeshua – Yeshua – sends them out primarily to talk about “the Church”, we have to ask two questions. Again, where is this in Acts 1 before Yeshua’s Ascension? How do we account for the Gospel’s
- 111 references to the Kingdom
- 1 reference to the Universal Assembly?
Regarding the word “Church/church”: We point out in our teaching the following. To translate the Greek ekklesia used by the Jewish Brothers for the Hebrew assembly by “Church” is totally intellectually dishonest! There is absolutely no etymological (word root) basis to translate ekklesia by “Church” rather than assembly.
We conclude for here with the following from The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament by Frederick William Danker. He is considered one of the world’s top Koine Greek experts. Danker was professor emeritus of “NT” at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. (Not exactly a “Jewish roots” denomination). Danker writes:
“assembly” – “1, in the early Messianic community of pers. gathering in a meeting place” usage in b is closely connected with the understanding of Israel as God’s chosen community and Christ followers/Messianists in legitimate continuity, hence – 2 “God’s people as a community”, assembly, congregation – a. specifically in ref. to OT Israel…”
Danker goes on to point out local and global uses of ekklesia and ends with (the gloss ‘church’ is freq. used to render e. i.e. (ekklesia), but the result that connection with usage in the LXX (i.e., Septuagint; first translation of the Hebrew Bible into KG) and connection with Israel is lost). (Our emphasis).
In Part 2 of our blog we will see the loss of the connection with concrete Israel, the “concept” it became, and how that led to a very inconvenient truth; how the world’s strangest men’s suit jacket wound up on Mount Zion, just down below from the Upper Room of the Last Passover Seder, and across a narrow pathway from King David’s tomb.