What did Paul really think of the Torah?

In this episode, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss the Old Perspective on Paul, New Perspective, Fresh Perspective and Radical Perspective (also called "Paul within Judaism").

Paul insists that gentiles should no longer have to abide by the covenant markers in order to worship the God of Israel, but does it follow that he believed the Torah was now abolished? No, it was rather fulfilled in Jesus, and in the Messianic Age, the time has come for the nations to worship the one God as the nations.

The nations will be recognizable as nations because they don't give up their own cultural boundary markers in their worship of the one God, but have baptized them instead. What a beautiful image!

Did Paul really convert on the road to Damascus? As a Torah-observant Jew, conversion would have meant turning away from the one true God of Israel, so Paul certainly would not have considered it as such.

Clearly, there was a change of heart, but how can we properly understand this in light of what we have learned through this season so far? We discuss how, from Paul's point of view, his understanding of who God is, the covenant that He has made with His people, and the purpose of the covenant to bring in all the nations, is being fulfilled - not changed.

The people of the first century lived in a god-infested world. In fact, we still do, though in our society we experience it more as a god-vacuum, as our theological imagination is devoid of divinity and the spiritual realm.

At the time of Jesus, it was understood and accepted, even by Jews, that every nation was associated with multiple gods. Jews were not monotheist in that they believed there was only one god, rather they were set apart because they believed that their god was the one True God, the Most-High God, to whom all other gods were subject. It's more accurate to call the Jews monolaters, a people who would only offer worship (latreia) to their one true God.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey explore what it would have been like for the average everyday Jew to navigate this world of multiple gods, participating in society along with the nations, and also why it would have been difficult for early gentile Christians to adopt monolatry.

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri field a question from one of our listeners in regards to the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. We reflect on the four roughly divided sects of the Judaisms of the first century (Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes) and also how some Jews probably intersected more than one of the categories, or never properly belonged to any of them. Mapping geography on top of this adds a new dimension, and is affected by the primary focus of these groups.

We also learn about a canonized saint within the Orthodox tradition who is also a key figure in Jewish tradition, who held a senior position in the Sanhedrin, and is considered in the Mishnah to be one of the greatest Jewish teachers.

There were many different ideas among the various Judaisms about what and who the Messiah might be, that coalesced around one or more of three central expectations having to do with land, kingship and temple.

Many Christians think that Jesus was rejected because he wasn't what the Jews had expected, for instance, a spiritual teacher instead of a military leader. On the contrary, Jesus touches on every single one of the messianic expectations - and that was the confusing part! Everyone had something to object to.

There was no prophetic messianic checklist with boxes that needed to be ticked off. There is so much more to it than that. We see that in Jesus, every aspect of the scriptures is fulfilled, every part of the history and life of Israel is taken up, recapitulated and lived out in its fulness in the life of Jesus.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss all this, as well as the wrinkle in the story - if the Messiah has come, where is the messianic age?

In today's episode, we take a closer look at the Gospel of John, the gospel from which we drew the title of this series, "Salvation is from the Jews". It is generally considered to be the odd one out among the other gospels, telling the story of Jesus from a very different angle. Some claim that it is even antisemitic, as the opponents of Jesus are often blanketly called "the Jews". Often? In actual fact, 71 times. But who's counting?

Fr Geoffrey explains how we can better understand this term within different contexts by exploring the history of Judeans, Galileans and other Israelites. We'll also see how in his gospel, John beautifully connects Jesus' words with the Jewish feasts that are occurring during his ministry (such as Passover, Purim, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of the Dedication), with Jesus riffing off these festal themes and calling people back to the true meaning of the feasts. Often connected to these feasts are the "I am" statements of Jesus, also uniquely found in John's Gospel.

The more we know about Jewish history, feasts and practices, the more the gospel comes to life!

Jesus is a Pharisee.

This might be hard to take, as many of us grew up equating the word "pharisaic" with "hypocritical" - sadly, a definition that still can be found in the Oxford Dictionary. So what is it that the Pharisees believed, and how can we say that Jesus was one?

Today we'll do a deep dive into understanding the different Jewish groups that existed in Jesus' time. As we talked about in the last episode, Jesus drew his disciples from these various groups to show the renewal of all of Israel and the inclusiveness of his Kingdom.

We'll see how Christian theology picks up on some aspects of Sadducean, Essene and Zealot theology but is more like a sibling to Pharisaic theology. In fact, Christianity is super-Pharisaic, not anti-Pharisaic.

Jesus often seems to be transgressing against the Torah and upsetting the experts in the Law, overthrowing their strictly rules-based religion in favour of a grace-filled one, yet is that really what is happening in the Gospels? Far from it. As we've discussed in this season, these inter-Jewish debates were actively being held in his day, and his viewpoints were shared by other rabbis. In many cases, Jesus held to an even stricter standard of Torah observance.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey examine how it was not the theology that Jesus proclaimed that led to his execution, rather it was the authority that he claimed, as Son of Man, Son of God, that the leaders (both Jewish and Roman) objected to. The fact that he was indeed at the heart of his Jewish tradition and made those claims, made it all the more objectionable. He was not some crazy marginal figure that could easily be ignored. He knew what he was about.

We also take a look at the Jewishness of his followers, a ragtag collection that represent the various types of Judaisms of the first century, and the symbolism of choosing twelve men in particular.