No milk with meat. Really?June 3rd, 2010 Can someone explain this prohibition to me? According to the Talmud, it is forbidden to eat milk and meat at the same time. This ruling is deduced from the verse, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. (Deuteronomy 14:21)” What the verse states is a far cry from what the rabbis have come up with: that it is against God’s will to eat milk and meat. It is more likely to have prevented the Israelites from practising the fertility rites of the Canaanites around them. Yet the rabbis have construed this meat and milk prohibition from the verse and have then said that to disobey it is to disobey Torah. Why? This ruling is even more difficult to comprehend when one considers that Abraham, (whom many religious Jews believe followed all the Talmudic laws,) provides a luncheon to God and his two angels in Genesis 18 and clearly disobeys this provision. “Then he [Abraham] took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them [God and his two angels]. (Genesis 18:8)” So Abraham gave to God and his angels some milk and meat together. Not only that, but the same verse goes on to tell us that Abraham, “stood by them under the tree while they ate.” So God ate the curds and milk along with the calf that had been prepared! How did the Jewish sages come up with this interpretation of Deuteronomy 14:21, how did they justify this interpretation, and how did they defend it in light of what we see in Genesis 18:8? I would love to get a coherent explanation. Contributed by Daniel Muller, General Director of New Covenant Forum. Posted in Jewish Tradition, Talmud vs. Tanakh, This, That, The Other Thing, Uncategorized | 3 Comments » Nothing but the truthMay 19th, 2010 I have a friend named Alan who is a Jewish believer in Yeshua (Jesus). After he became a believer some years ago, he went to Israel and lived for about a year with a Lebovich family. He told me he remembers one of the men in the family making this statement: “You don’t want to read the New Testament to much or you’ll start to believe it!” What an ironic statement. The gentlemen was warning Alan – warning him that the New Testament can lull him to a false truth just by reading it. What is more logical, however, than that reading the Gospel can lead to belief in Yeshua as Messiah because its claims are genuine and true? I would go one step further however. I suggest to you, dear reader, that the fact that the New Testament is true is what makes the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures or “Old Testament”) true. If Yeshua was not the Messiah as he and his disciples claimed; if he did not die on the cross for our sins and was not raised on the third day; if faith in him is not the way to eternal life, then the Tanakh is false and is not to be followed or believed in. The Tanakh promised a righteous servant who would be as one accursed, cut off from his people and killed – one who would be an asham (a guilt offering) for our sins though he was sinless, and through whom he would share his victory by giving eternal life (see Isaiah 53:1-12). Furthermore, the Tanakh promised a B’rit Hadashah – a New Covenant – that would not be like the covenant he made on Mount Sinai. This is a new covenant in which God’s laws would be written on our hearts and by which our sins would be remembered no more (see Jeremiah 31:31-34). Not only that, but this Messiah would come to his temple (Malachi 3:1). Yeshua fulfilled these promises and they could only be fulfilled by him. There are many other promises of Messiah that were fulfilled by him and him alone. And so God’s promises are fulfilled and we can see his faithfulness in keeping his word in Tanakh and the trustworthiness of the promises of Tanakh. Meanwhile the rabbis continue to deal with an Old Covenant that no longer is binding. How could it be? There is no temple in which to fulfill all the Levitical laws, a good third of the laws of Torah. There is no way given in Tanakh by which we might have atonement for our sins, since the temple has been destroyed. Instead, they have added and subtracted to the laws God gave Israel, something that they were warned not to do. Although there is much that is beautiful in rabbinic traditions, the truth of the matter is that they by and large make the truths of Scriptures into not-truths. They nullify God’s law and God’s promises in favour of their own traditions. This is why Yeshua said in the Gospel of John 5:45-47,
If the Tanakh is true, then the B’rit Hadashah is true. If the B’rit Hadashah is false, then so is the Tanakh. Read the whole of Scripture for yourself and you will see that it speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And that is why if you read the B’rit Hadashah enough, you may very well come to believe it! Contributed by Daniel Muller, General Director of New Covenant Forum. Posted in Jesus and Jews, Jewish Tradition, Jews and Jesus, Messiah in the Tanach, Talmud vs. Tanakh, Uncategorized | No Comments » Persecution of righteous Israel?April 19th, 2010
Dr. Brown brings up an excellent point. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob promised blessing to the righteous. In Deuteronomy Chapter 28, an intrinsic part of His covenant commitment with Israel, the Lord says that he will bless Israel when they are righteous and curse Israel when they are unrighteous. This is a common theme that is aptly taken up by the prophets as they continually warned Israel of their behaviour towards God and the consequences of their disobedience. Indeed, one of the problems with the identification of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 as the Nation of Israel (an interpretation first popularized in the 11th Century by Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak, known as Rashi) is that the suffering servant is clearly defined as a righteous servant. If this servant represents the nation of Israel, then God has broken his promise. It is far better to interpret this passage as speaking of the Messiah, as even the Talmudic sages did when referring to it. So if the Jewish religion of the rabbis is correct, why was Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed in 70 AD? Why have our Jewish people been under continual dispersion for the last 2,500 years? Why, in fact, have we been the subject of the curses of Exodus 28 rather than the blessings? Is it not possible evidence that the Jewish religion of the rabbis is not the biblical Jewish religion – not the Jewish religion according to God? Is it not also possible that the state of Israel exists today, at a time when there are more Jewish people coming to faith in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) than since the time of Yeshua itself, in preparation for the fulfillment of the prophet Zechariah’s prophecy? “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. (Zechariah 12:10)” Really, what makes more sense? Think about it! Contributed by Daniel Muller, General Director of New Covenant Forum. Posted in Jesus and Jews, Jewish Tradition, Jews and Jesus, Talmud vs. Tanakh, Uncategorized | No Comments » |
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Reading Michael Brown’s book, “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus” (Purple Pomegranite Productions), I came upon this inciteful statement:
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