Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God

 WHY SOME JEWS LOOKED FOR CHRIST …continued

Continuing with the TALMUD OR TORAH....what is Saul saved from ???

This Gemara defines “David” in this passage to refer to the Davidic Messiah and the “tabernacle” to refer to his physical body. Since the context of this Gemara is that of the resurrection, “raise up” in this context most certainly refers to “resurrection” This is very profound, because we have in this Gemara a reference to a “resurrection” of the physical body of Messiah being seen in Amos 9:11.

There is also evidence that this understanding of the “Tabernacle of David” in Amos 9:11-12 as being a reference to the Messiah existed by the first century. A document found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 gives the following commentary in Amos 9:11:

“I shall raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen” (Amos 9:11). This passage describes the fallen Branch of David, whom He shall raise up to deliver Israel. (Q174 III, 12-13)

This must be the reason that Ya’akov cites the verse in Acts 15:16 as having an application not only in the Millennial Kingdom, but in the very time period of the Acts 15 council. Ya’akov was well aware that the “Tabernacle of David” was a reference to the body of the Messiah, and that its being “raised up” was understood as a prophecy of a resurrection of the Messiah after he had “fallen” (died).

But now lets return to Paul’s defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:6. Paul is in effect claiming m.Sanhedrin 10:1 as his defense and in doing so he is also claiming the Gemara attached to that Mishna, the doctrine of the death and resurrection of the Messiah as foretold in Amos 9:11. In fact Paul was appealing to a ruling by the Pharisaic Sanhedrin as recorded in m.San. 10:1. The result is that the political Sanhedrin falls into chaos, because on this very issue the Pharisees of the Pharisaic Sanhedrin had pronounced all Sadducees as apostates.

No doubt, if Paul had not been immediately removed from the room, he would have taken the opportunity to begin proclaiming the death and resurrection of Messiah as found in Amos 9:11 as a prophecy of Yeshua, Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.
The Pharisees were?

A religious society, chiefly of laymen, frequently mentioned in the New Testament . . . a movement toward religious puritanism, marked by the Priestly and Holiness codes and stimulated by the reformation of Ezra and Nehemiah. (Ezra 6:21 and Nehemiah 10:29). Where it characterizes one 'who separated himself from the spiritual uncleanness of the gentiles of the land' and from Jewish 'people of the land' to follow the law of God. 

The Pharisees drew their following from all sections of the people irrespective of economic, social, and hereditary distinctions. They included priests and even members of the high priestly families. Their influence radiated not from the market place, but from the synagogue as the center of the threefold activity of study, worship, and works of charity. All in a false piety and pretence.

Their chief distinction derived from their attitude toward the Law. As the word of God, the Torah, they believed, must be adequate for all times and circumstances. Accordingly, they devoted themselves to the interpretation of the Scriptural text in such a way as to find within it light for all conditions of changing times. 'Turn it and turn it again, for everything is within it.'

The Pharisees also drew the antagonism of John the Baptist and Jesus and His disciples and particularly of Paul whose messianic claims and antinomy teachings which they rejected. In consequence they were branded as bigoted formalists, hair-splitting legalists, and crafty hypocrites, devoid of "charis" the love of others. (Mark 7:1-23; Matthew 23; Luke 11:38-54).

The Pharisees were in a sense Churchmen rather than statesmen. They emphasized spiritual methods. Their interests lay in the synagogue, in the schooling of children, in missionary extension amongst the heathen. Hence we are not surprised when we learn that, after the conflicts with Rome (A.D. 66-135). Pharisaism became practically synonymous with Judaism. 

The priesthood was a closed corporation. No man who was unable to trace his descent from a priestly family could exercise any function in the Temple. But the Pharisees and the Scribes opened a great career to all the talents. Furthermore, the priesthood exhausted itself in the ritual of the Temple. But the Pharisees found their main function in teaching and preaching. So Pharisaism cleared the ground for Christianity.

. . . About The Scribes?  

No comments: