great again today…when you hear a stranger say oh my god…are ye mediums or what…what you said was  exactly right….how did ye know ….

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To my wonderful daughter and all of ours friend ….have a great day

To my wonderful daughter-in-law ….have a great day

Hi

I have uploaded the talk and the Phil worship songs

Opening Worship

Opening worship 2

Romans_Part_1

Romans_Part_2

Romans_Part_3

End Worship Song

This book is the most amazing book on the reality of the historical Jesus I have ever read. Boyarin, a Jew, shocks his world(Jewish) and our world (Christian) with insights into the historical context of the messianic hopes and theology of the 2nd temple period. It certainly brings the prayers of Jesus and Paul nearer to fulfilment.

At last we have a definitive statement of the historical truths that lie behind the narrative about Jesus the Messiah.  Boyarin allows us to peek into the world of 2nd Temple Judaism and see the current topics of interest that were circulating among the jewish teachers who were expecting the coming Messiah.

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An Itunes course is available from M L satlow on this subject and it is fantastic……

http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/from-israelite-to-jew/id413125976

Various Applications of the Term.

Term used in the Talmud and Midrash for a Jewish heretic or sectarian. Its etymology is obscure, the most plausible among numerous explanations being that given by Bacher, namely, that it is derived from the Biblical (= “species”), which has received in post-Biblical Hebrew the signification of “sect”; and just as “goy,” which in the Bible has only the meaning of “nation,” took later the sense of “non-Jew,” so “min” received also the signification of “sectary.” As expressly stated by R. Naḥman (Ḥul. 13b), the term “min” is applied only to a Jewish sectary, not to a non-Jew. It is variously used in the Talmud and the Midrash for the Samaritan, the Sadducee, the Gnostic, the Judæo-Christian, and other sectaries, according to the epoch to which the passage belongs. Yerushalmi states that there were, at the time ofthe destruction of the Temple, no less than twenty-four kinds of minim (Yer. Sanh. x. 5). Thus the min who (the Midrash states) derided Alexander the Great for rising before the Jewish high priest Simon the Just (Lev. R. xiii.) was undoubtedly a Samaritan. The minim referred to in Berakot ix., on whose account the custom was established of closing the benedictions with the words “from eternity to eternity” in order to emphasize the existence of more than one world, were undoubtedly Sadducees, who, as known, denied the existence of another world. In passages referring to the Christian period, “minim” usually indicates the Judæo-Christians, the Gnostics, and the Nazarenes, who often conversed with the Rabbis on the unity of God, creation, resurrection, and similar subjects (comp. Sanh. 39b). In some passages, indeed, it is used even for “Christian”; but it is possible that in such cases it is a substitution for the word “Noẓeri,” which was the usual term for “Christian.”

During the first century of Christianity the Rabbis lived on friendly terms with the minim. Rabbi Eliezer, who denied to the heathen a share in the future life, is said to have discoursed with the Judæo-Christian Jacob of Kefar Sekanya and to have quietly listened to the interpretation of a Biblical verse he had received from Jesus (’Ab. Zarah 16b; Eccl. R. i. 8). Ben Dama, a nephew of R. Ishmael, having been bitten by a snake, allowed himself to be cured by means of an exorcism uttered by the min Jacob, a Judæo-Christian. These friendly feelings, however, gradually gave way to violent hatred, as the minim separated themselves from all connection with the Jews and propagated writings which the Rabbis considered more dangerous to the unity of Judaism than those of the pagans. “The writings of the minim,” says R. Ṭarfon, “deserve to be burned, even though the holy name of God occurs therein, for paganism is less dangerous than ‘minut’; the former fails to recognize the truth of Judaism from want of knowledge, but the latter denies what it fully knows” (Shab. 116a).

Prayer Against Minim.

On the invitation of Gamaliel II., Samuel ha-Ḳaṭan composed a prayer against the minim which was inserted in the “Eighteen Benedictions”; it is called “Birkat ha-Minim” and forms the twelfth benediction; but instead of the original “Noẓerim” (= “Nazarenes”; see Krauss in “J. Q. R.” v. 55; comp. Bloch, “Die Institutionen des Judenthums,” i. 193) the present text has “wela-malshinim” (=”and to the informers”). The cause of this change in the text was, probably, the accusation brought by the Church Fathers against the Jews of cursing all the Christians under the name of the Nazarenes. It was forbidden to partake of meat, bread, and wine with the min. Scrolls of the Law, tefillin, and mezuzot written by a min were burned (Giṭ. 45b; Yer. Shab. 14b; ‘Ab. Zarah 40b; Shulḥan ‘Aruk, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 39, 1; ib. Yoreh De’ah, 281, 1). An animal slaughtered by a min was forbidden food (Ḥul. 13a). The relatives of the min were not permitted to observe the laws of mourning after his death, but were required to assume festive garments and rejoice (Sem. ii. 10; Yoreh De’ah, 345). The testimony of the min was not admitted in evidence in Jewish courts (Shulḥan ‘Aruk, Ḥoshen Mishpaṭ, 34, 22); and an Israelite who found anything belonging to one who was a min was forbidden to return it to him (see Ḥoshen Mishpaṭ, 266, 2).

According to Maimonides (”Yad,” Teshubah, iii.) the term “min” is applied to five classes of heretics: to those who deny the existence of God and His providence; to those who believe in two or in more than two gods; to those who ascribe to God form and figure; to those who maintain that there existed before the creation of the world something besides God; and to those who worship stars, planets, or other things in order that these may act as intermediaries between them and the Master of the World.

Sect of primitive Christianity; it appears to have embraced all those Christians who had been born Jews and who neither would nor could give up their Jewish mode of life. They were probably the descendants of the Judæo-Christians who had fled to Pella before Titus destroyed Jerusalem; afterward most of them, like the Essenes in former times, with whom they had some characteristics in common, lived in the waste lands around the Dead Sea, and hence remained out of touch with the rest of Christendom.

For a long time they were regarded as irreproachable Christians, Epiphanius (”Hæres.” xxix.), who did not know much about them, being the first to class them among heretics. Why they are so classed is not clear, for they are reproached on the whole with nothing more than with Judaizing. As there were many Judaizing Christians at that time, the Nazarenes can not be clearly distinguished from the other sects. The well-known Bible translator Symmachus, for example, is described variously as a Judaizing Christian and as an Ebionite; while his followers, the Symmachians, are called also “Nazarenes” (Ambrosian, “Proem in Ep. ad Gal.,” quoted in Hilgenfeld, “Ketzergesch.” p. 441). It is especially difficult to distinguish the Nazarenes from the Ebionites. Jerome obtained the Gospel according to the Hebrews (which, at one time regarded as canonical, was later classed among the Apocrypha) directly from the Nazarenes, yet he ascribed it not only to them but also to the Ebionites (”Comm. in Matt.” xii. 13). This gospel was written in Aramaic, not in Hebrew, but it was read exclusively by those born as Jews. Jerome quotes also fragments from the Nazarenic exposition of the Prophets (e.g., of Isa. viii. 23 [in the LXX. ix. 1]). These are the only literary remains of the Nazarenes; the remnants of the Gospel according to the Hebrews have recently been collated by Preuschen in “Antilegomena” (pp. 3-8, Giessen, 1901).

Jerome gives some definite information concerning the views of the Nazarenes (”Ep. lxxxix. ad Augustinum”).

Jerome’s Account.

“What shall I say of the Ebionites who pretend to be Christians? To-day there still exists among the Jews in all the synagogues of the East a heresy which is called that of the Minæans, and which is still condemned by the Pharisees; [its followers] are ordinarily called ‘Nazarenes’; they believe that Christ, the son of God, was born of the Virgin Mary, and they hold him to be the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and ascended to heaven, and in whom we also believe. But while they pretend to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither.”

The Nazarenes, then, recognized Jesus, though it appears from occasional references to them that they considered the Mosaic law binding only for those born within Judaism, while the Ebionites considered this law binding for all men (Hippolytus, “Comm. in Jes.” i. 12). The Nazarenes therefore rejected Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Some accordingly declared even that the Nazarenes were Jews, as, for instance, Theodoret (”Hær. Fab.” ii. 2: οἱ δὲ Ναζωραῖοι Ἰουδαῖοί εἰσι); that they exalted Jesus as a just man, and that they read the Gospel of Peter; fragments of this Gospel of Peter have been preserved (Preuschen, l.c. p. 13). Aside from these references, Theodoret, however, makes the mistake of confounding the Nazarenes and Ebionites; he is the last one of the Church Fathers to refer to the Nazarenes, who probably were absorbed in the course of the fifth century partly by Judaism and partly by Christianity.

The term “Minæans,” which Jerome applies to the Nazarenes, recalls the word “min,” frequently used in rabbinical literature to designate heretics, chiefly the Christians still following Jewish customs; the Rabbis knew only Judæo-Christians, who were either Ebionites or Nazarenes. Hence they applied the name “Noẓri” to all Christians, this term remaining in Jewish literature down to the present time the designation for Christians. The ChurchFathers, Tertullian, for instance (”Adversus Marcion.” iv. 8), knew this very well; and Epiphanius and Jerome say of a certain prayer alleged to be directed against the Christians that although the Jews say “Nazarenes” they mean “Christians” (”J. Q. R.” v. 131). In the Koran also the Christians are called “Al-Naṣara.” The name may be traced back to Nazareth, Jesus’ birthplace. The Mandæans still designate themselves as “Nasoraya”; and they were formerly incorrectly regarded as the remnant of the Nazarenes (W. Brandt, “Die Mandäische Religion,” p. 140, Leipsic, 1889).

n the 4th century Jerome also refers to Nazarenes as those “…who accept Messiah in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old Law.” In his Epistle 79, to Augustine, he said:

What shall I say of the Ebionites who pretend to be Christians? To-day there still exists among the Jews in all the synagogues of the East a heresy which is called that of the Minæans, and which is still condemned by the Pharisees; [its followers] are ordinarily called ‘Nasarenes’; they believe that Christ, the son of God, was born of the Virgin Mary, and they hold him to be the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and ascended to heaven, and in whom we also believe. But while they pretend to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither.^[23]

Jerome viewed a distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites, a different Jewish sect, but does not comment on whether Nazarene Jews considered themselves to be “Christian” or not or how they viewed themselves as fitting into the descriptions he uses. He clearly equates them with Filaster’s Nazarei.^[24] His criticism of the Nazarenes is noticeably more direct and critical than that of Epiphanius.

This following creed is from a church at Constantinople at the same period:

I renounce all customs, rites, legalisms, unleavened breads & sacrifices of lambs of the Hebrews, and all other feasts of the Hebrews, sacrifices, prayers, aspersions, purifications, sanctifications and propitiations and fasts, and new moons, and Sabbaths, and superstitions, and hymns and chants and observances and Synagogues, and the food and drink of the Hebrews; in one word, I renounce everything Jewish, every law, rite and custom and if afterwards I shall wish to deny and return to Jewish superstition, or shall be found eating with the Jews, or feasting with them, or secretly conversing and condemning the Christian religion instead of openly confuting them and condemning their vain faith, then let the trembling of Gehazi cleave to me, as well as the legal punishments to which I acknowledge myself liable. And may I be anathema in the world to come, and may my soul be set down with Satan and the devils.”^[25]

“Nazarenes” are referenced past the fourth century AD as well. Jacobus de Voragine (1230–98) described James as a “Nazarene” in The Golden Legend, vol 7. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) quotes Augustine of Hippo, who was given an apocryphal book called Hieremias by a “Hebrew of the Nazarene Sect”, in Catena Aurea — Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27. So this terminology seems to have remained at least through the 13th century in European discussions.

wikipedia

Hi I have uploaded the talk here

Ger done great work using Neusner Judaism and Christianity and Nehemi Gordon The Hebrew Yeshua v The Greek Jesus on youtube.

He covered the historical issues from the reign of Herod including the wars of 67-70 ce and 125 ce.

He gave a brief intro to the various sects of Judasim and gave a breakdown of the 5 tenets of Rabbinic Judasim (This was based on the Nehemi Gordon youtube video.)

It is clear that Rabbinic Judasim is not really related to the Hebrew religion as noted in the OT and is a redefinition of ‘Israel’ in a non biblical way.