Grace & Knowledge Blog

On October 10, the Church of the Messiah held its annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration at Beavercreek Church of the Nazarene.  

The festivities began at 9 AM with some worship music.  Then Dwight Pryor began a talk on the book of Ecclesiastes, a text traditionally read during the Feast.  Following Walter Kaiser's excellent commentary,  Dwight intended to explain why Ecclesiastes is a very appropriate book for a season of rejoicing, since it identifies the only source of lasting joy.  Unfortunately he wasn't feeling well and was not able to complete the remarks he had prepared. (He was taken home and felt better after getting some rest.)

Next Lois Tverberg gave a presentation on Jewish prayer in the time of Jesus, summarizing the material in Chapters 6 and 7 of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus.  In particular, she discussed the meaning of the Lord's Prayer and explained the Jewish practice of saying short prayers of thanksgiving throughout the course of each day.

After eating a light lunch that we had packed, we took a walk around the neighborhood before the afternoon events.  After lunch, Keren Pryor talked about how the annual cycle of festivals helps us to walk in...

Tags: church of the messiah, dwight pryor, feast of tabernacles, lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

Today was the first day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles.  A special guest at the Church of the Messiah was Dr. Lois Tverberg.  Lois noted that she had enjoyed celebrating the Feast with the Church of the Messiah since 1998.  (The same is true for me.)  That year Dwight Pryor gave a wonderful in-depth teaching on John 7:37-38, where Jesus proclaims at Sukkot in Jerusalem:

On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out,  “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’ ”  (NET Bible)

Lois revisited the background of this verse, exploring the significance of water in Jesus' culture. 

She noted that the Feast has traditionally symbolized both the abundance of the fall harvest and Israel's 40-year sojourn in the desert, an unusual juxtaposition.  But this combination makes more sense when we realize that the Feast in Israel comes at the end of a lengthy dry season. 

Because rain in Israel is both scarce and crucial, prayers for rain have always played an important role in Jewish festival observance.  (Lois noted that modern Jewish...

Tags: church of the messiah, lois tverberg

Malachi 4:2 has long been recognized by Christians as a messianic prophecy:

"But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings" (NIV).

In particular, this verse may be in view in Luke 1:78. 

One detail of this verse's connection to Jesus is not so widely recognized, however, outside of the Hebraic roots/Messianic community.  As Lois Tverberg explains in Chapter 11, footnote 8 of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, the Hebrew word for "wings'' in Mal 4:2 (kanafim) also refers to the "corners'' of a man's garment, to which tassels (tzitziot) were attached.  And so when people received healing by touching the "hem" of Jesus' garment (Mark 6:56), they were being healed by his "wings".

I first learned about the connection between Malachi 4:2 and the tzitziot of Jesus from a Dwight Pryor tape in 1998.     

New Testament scholar Dale Allison has found that this connection is not a new development in Christian exegesis.  In a recent article, he reports that it is mentioned in the Testimony Book of Pseudo-Epiphanius, a Christian source that has been dated to the fourth century AD.  He has also found it in the...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

If you had asked me 30 years ago what the Kingdom of God was about, I would have mentioned the future reign of Christ over the whole earth.  I might have quoted Dan. 2:44 or Rev 11:15, as Herbert Armstrong did in his booklet on the subject. 

In those days in the old Worldwide Church of God (WCG), we placed a lot of emphasis on that coming kingdom.  We were adventists, and the reality of Jesus' second advent was very important to us.  And so in reading Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom in the Gospels, we tended to emphasize some verses and read past some other ones.

Later, when WCG instituted doctrinal reforms in the 1990s, it began to present a more complete teaching that recognized the Kingdom as both a present and a future reality.

In chapter 13 of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg give a wonderful summary of Jesus'  multifaceted teaching about the Kingdom of God, enhanced by comparison with early rabbinic teaching. 

 Like the rabbis, Jesus seemed to see the Kingdom broadly in terms of God's reign.  And so to pray  "thy kingdom come" means not only  to pray for Jesus' return, but also...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus, wcg

One important part of Christianity's inheritance from Judaism is the concept of discipleship.  As Lois Tverberg and Ann Spangler show in the fourth chapter of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, making disciples is central to both Jewish and Christian traditions--see Matt 28:19 and Pirke Avot 1.1.

Tverberg and Spangler explain that first-century discipleship was not just about conveying information; rather, it was about effecting a personal transformation.  Like an apprentice to a skilled craftsman, a disciple entered into a prolonged close relationship with a teacher, imitating the teacher's actions as well as drinking in the teacher's words.

The prototype for the teacher/disciple relationship is the relationship between the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha.  When Elijah calls Elisha, Elisha puts his own plans aside to become Elijah's servant (I Kings 19:19-21).   Elisha's dedication to Elisha becomes the model for  the disciples of Jesus hundreds of years later--see e.g. Luke 5:1-11; 9:57-62.  

There are more parallels here.  Elisha will eventually see his beloved teacher ascend in a heavenly chariot after asking for a "double portion" of the spirit of Elijah (2 Kings 2), prefiguring the ascension of Jesus and the Pentecost event.

Tverberg...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

A few years ago, a Time Magazine article identified "Re-Judaizing Jesus"---especially, embracing the  principle that Jesus can't be properly understood apart from his first-century Jewish context---as a major trend.

On the level of scholarship, this trend means that the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" is at long last fully living up to its name. 

Originally, the  "quest" was about skeptics describing a Jesus they could believe in.  The goal was to separate the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith".  For example, American President Thomas Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher but didn't believe in the Virgin Birth,  the Resurrection, or Jesus' healing miracles.  He produced an edited version of the gospels, removing all traces of the miraculous.

Such efforts failed to pay sufficient attention to the historical background of the gospels.  As a result, their authors created Jesuses in their own image.  While critical of the gospel text, they uncritically passed along false negative stereotypes about first-century Judaism.  These defects persist right up through the work of the modern Jesus Seminar.

But in the recent "Third Quest", the emphasis has been on the Jewishness of Jesus.  There's been a great deal of fruitful interaction between Christian and Jewish scholars.  Scholarly commentaries from...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

Every year we look forward to the Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Dayton, Ohio, sponsored by the Church of the Messiah.  We began attending these events in 1998, and they have enriched our lives greatly.

 This year (on Oct 10) a featured speaker will be Dr. Lois Tverberg, founder of the En-Gedi Resource Center and author (with Ann Spangler) of a great new book called Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus:  How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform your Faith (Zondervan, 2009).

I have long been an admirer of Dr.  Tverberg, who gave up a career as a biology professor in order to pursue her passion, sharing the excitement of learning about Jesus in his first-century Jewish context.

Zondervan has generously sent me a review copy of Lois's new book.  Over the next few months I'll post comments on it from time to time. 

Tags: church of the messiah, feast of tabernacles, lois tverberg, rabbi jesus