New Testament From Jewish Point of View - A Temple Israel Long Beach Zoom Class

We seem to have more and more fun each week!  Monday, July 25, 2022, was no exception!  Jo Ann, Dan, Steve, Karen, Dave, David, Odette, Robin, Merrill, and Jessica attended. After Dan led us in singing our usual opening ritual of “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” we read the entire essay on Messianic Judaism that is in the Jewish Annotated New Testament.  We read the first four pages and then took a break to discuss and then read the last four pages of the article and continued our discussion.  We learned that Messianic Jewish groups do vary and that Jews for Jesus is the most well-known group in Messianic Judaism. Some of our class didn’t understand the difference between Jews for Jesus and other messianic groups. We learned that Messianic Jews are Christians that mix Jewish rituals with their belief that Jesus is the one God for all. We also learned that are Catholic Hebrew Christians. Karen shared a lot about herself.  She prefers to call herself a “Believer....

Monday mornings are getting to be quite fun!  As usual, our class was great.  Jo Ann, Dan, Steve, Karen, Merrill, Dave, David, Jay, Norky, and Jessica attended.  We missed Robin and Randy and Odette. Below is a summary written by Dan of what went on: NT from Jewish Point of View July 18, 2022 – Galatians chapter 5 and 6 In case we missed the message earlier in his letter, the Apostle Paul makes it explicit that gentiles (adults at least) may not allow themselves to be circumcised. Doing so would obligate a person to obey the whole of the law of Moses. He wrote that for such a person “Christ will be no value to you at all”, he will be “alienated from Christ” and “fallen away from grace”. Ouch.  He goes on to say that all you need to do is love your neighbor as yourself. Then he lists a series of bad activities and attitudes to avoid and to instead exhibit the “fruit of the spirit”. Simple. David said later on the church came up with its own set of laws which included ...

Of course we had a wonderful and fun class on Monday, July 11, 2022!   I think we all missed studying together on last Monday, July 4.  That was the first time since we started studying together in October of 2021 that we’d skipped a week. Jo Ann, Dan, Steve, Karen, Dave, David, Robin, Norky, and Merrill attended.  We missed Odette, Jessica, and Jenny. After some visiting, Dan led us in our usual “Give Us That Old Time Religion” opening song and then we began our study.   Below is a short summary of what Dan wrote about our time together:   New Testament study from a Jewish point of view July 11, 2022 We studied chapters 4 and 5 of the letter of Paul to the Galatians. In this passage Paul criticizes the Galatians’ adopting traditional Jewish practices. A puzzling idea is Paul’s use of the term “the curse of the law” which made “the law” sound like a bad thing, at least for gentiles. He compares observing Jewish tradition to slavery, using the illustration of Sar...