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

  As always, we had a good discussion and time of learning together.  Jo Ann, Dan, Karen, Dave, Randy, Robin, Merrill, Norky, and David attended.   We were glad Randy and Robin could attend while they were on vacation. Below is a summary written by Dan of what went on: We covered the third Epistle of John today, coming to the conclusion that this letter is a "letter of introduction", with the writer who calls himself/herself? "the Elder" to a leader named Gaius of a congregation of believers in Jesus in an undisclosed location. The men bearing this letter request the cooperation/assistance of Gaius. It is interesting that another local leader named Diotrephes opposed extending assistance by anyone in the congregation to these same men. According to the introduction in the Annotated New Testament, the Elder appears to a Jewish leader of a group of Jewish believers in Jesus.  We discussed the division of good and bad mentioned in the letter. Do good = belonging to God...

Again, we all had so much fun learning together on Monday, October 17, 2022.  Jo Ann, Dan, Dave, Karen, Amy, David, Randy (Robin was present for a bit), Norky, and Jessica attended.  We missed Steve who had another commitment and we also missed Merrill who was ill. Below is a summary written by Dan about what went on: We covered the 5th chapter of the epistle of I John as well as the introduction to the epistle of 2 John. We noticed that some themes from earlier chapters were repeated in I John chapter 5. Dan brought up the contrast between the teaching in this chapter of I John that prayers are answered if they are according to "God's will" versus the teaching quoting Jesus in the gospels of Mark and Matthew in which anything is possible to the person who believes without doubt. Others added that the teaching of I John could be the result of logic and experience. The introduction to the 2nd epistle of John brought up that the epistles of John could have been written by d...

Today was the morning service at Temple Israel for Sukkot, so we may have had a smaller group than usual, but Jo Ann, Dan, Steve, Karen, Jay A., Merrill, Dave, Robin, Randy, Amy, and Norky attended.  (Dave left early to attend the Sukkot service.) Below is a summary of what went on written by Dan: We were glad to welcome Jay to our group! After singing "give me that old time religion" we studied chapters 3 and 4 of the first Epistle of John. During our discussion we covered Aquarius, atonement, children of the devil, commandment, consciousness, Donald Trump, penance, repentance, sin, and especially love, love, love (it's all you need). We discovered the commandment that was referred to in this letter was to believe in Jesus and to love one another. Dan and Jo Ann sang "Beloved let us love one another" as a blast from the past of the 1970s.Randy said the words reminded him of Aquarius. Merrill described how from anatomy, nature and astronomy everything looks like...

We were very glad to be back together after not meeting on Rosh Hashanah on Monday 9/26/22.   Jo Ann, Dan, Steve, Karen, Merrill, Dave, David, Randy, Robin, and Norky attended.   Below is a summary of what went on written by Dan: We delved into the first two chapters of the First Epistle of John, including the introduction from the Annotated Jewish New Testament. It was noted that themes like "light and darkness" which run through this letter mirror similar ideas running through some Jewish schools of thought.  One question was "is there a difference between the Jewish view of sin and the Christian view of sin?" Steve pointed out that Jews view sin as "missing the mark" as in archery. The Christian view of sin has to do with "original sin" resulting from the sin of Adam in the garden of Eden. There was a discussion of what it meant for Christians in IJohn 1:9, that if we confess our sins God will forgive "all wrongdoing". Is this a blan...