Replies

Jewish ritual, TC. Buggman has also married a Jewish wife and is raising Jewish children. Disciples of Yeshua the Messiah, yes, but Jewish nevertheless.

If you want to consider me to be no more Jewish than Timothy, that's your problem, not mine.

Shalom.

You must forgive topcat. He’s wrong on so many issues but I keep trying. I’m not sure he understands the difference between the Jewish ancestry and the Jewish religion.

(stands back and waves tentatively at topcat.)

Jewish ritual, TC. Buggman has also married a Jewish wife and is raising Jewish children. Disciples of Yeshua the Messiah, yes, but Jewish nevertheless. If you want to consider me to be no more Jewish than Timothy, that's your problem, not mine.

I realize it been awhile since we discussed you experience, but let me try to recall my understanding. Please feel free to correct my understanding here.

You are a follower of Jesus Christ (aka Yeshua Ha'Mashiach) and are associated with a messianic congregation. In fact, I think you like to be called “rabbi.” You claim to follow the Mosaic law given to ancient Israel in some fashion.

You were born a gentile with no identifiable Jewish roots. Unlike Timothy, you were not even leaning Jewish. A few years ago you underwent what could be called ritual conversion in this messianic congregation, including, as I recall physical circumcision. Another way of putting it, you did not convert to a recognized branch of Judaism and then convert to messianism/Christianity.

I believe your wife is of Jewish ancestry, but, like yourself, now self-identified with this messianic congregation.

Messianism is not considered one of the official branches of Judaism. In spite of your messianic “conversion,” you would probably not be considered Jewish by any of these branches. E.g., it’s doubtful that you could claim Israeli citizenship under their law of return.

Since there first century and the end of the old covenant age, there is only one operative covenant, that is, the new covenant.

Under the terms of the new covenant, they is no procedure or ritual for a bona fide gentile to “become Jewish” in a Christian context.

Pardon the crudity, but in my opinion what you underwent is akin to a spiritual sex change operation. It’s a denial of what you were born, and how that works itself out within the body of Christ, where “there is neither Jew nor Greek.” I’m sure you’ll admit that you are now no more a child of Abraham than your uncircumcised fellow gentiles.

Unlike the rather unique experience of Timothy we find in the Bible (2 Timothy 1:5), who finalized his Jewish upbringing by undergoing circumcision in order to not be an offense to other Jews in the temple, it’s hard for me to image that real Jews take very kindly to your experience.

It’s clear from the Bible that Jesus calls no one to be circumcised. Faith is not based on nor proven by adherence to (ersatz) old covenant rituals. All that matters to Christ is circumcision of the foreskin of the heart. The external testimony of the heart circumcision in the new covenant is water baptism, a sign universally applied (Eph. 4:5).

I’ve been hard on messianics in the past because I think their cultish religion is dangerous to the body of Christ. This notion of Christian “conversion” to ersatz Judaism smacks of spiritual superiority. Your experience has not changed that opinion, merely strengthened it.