Some imagine that the the first people in Jerusalem who accepted Jesus as the Messiah radically broke away from the Jews, forming a new religion. We might even picture the apostle James, brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, wearing Byzantine Orthodox robes and serving at a Christian temple across from the synagogue. Of course, this was hardly the case. So what did the first century ecclesia in Jerusalem look like?

The early Jesus followers were primarily Jews, continuing on in their Jewish faith and practice. They would not have thought of themselves as fundamentally departing in any way from what they believed before. They still believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and they would have still participated in temple worship.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss what these believers would have added to or complemented their synagogue and temple practice with, the relationship between gentile believers and Jews, and how the destruction of the temple and then the fall of Jerusalem drastically changed the culture of the ecclesia.

What does the coming of the Messiah of Israel mean for the nations, and does it mean something different for Israel? 

With a careful reading of the first three chapters of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, especially as we consider the pronouns used, we see a distinctness in terms of Jew and gentile, as we also witness them coming together. Emphasizing their distinctness does not deny their unity; on the contrary, their differentiated unity, and unified diversity, is cause for rejoicing!

Both are unique, and both are called to participate in the worship of the one true God, the Most High, enacting the Kingdom in their own particular ways. Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri explore why the call for the nations to worship in their own tongues, within their own cultural norms, is such a beautiful thing, and also discuss what changes for the Israelites with the coming of their Messiah.

We take a closer look at chapter 11 in the letter to the Romans, where Paul is talking about the relationship between Israelites and gentiles, and in particular how the gentile believers should relate to the Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. By inference, it should give us something to say about how we as Orthodox Christians should be relating to Rabbinic Jews today. If we are to believe Paul, we are in the same eschatological moment, and the same framework should apply.

In this episode, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will be looking at different translations of the Bible, and the history behind those translations, when certain words were added and new meanings layered in. Our English translations are thoroughly infected by the Old Perspective that we discussed last time, and when we return to the Greek, in light of the Paul within Judaism Perspective, the complexion of the themes and metaphors are completely changed and make a whole lot more sense!

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.