Sabbath Meditation: Abraham's Election by God
Michael Wyschogrod, a modern Orthodox scholar, wrote the following in 1961 for a conference in which various thinkers were asked to write a Jewish affirmation. This excerpt from Wyschogrod’s affirmation is a fitting meditation for this week as the Torah…
Finding Early Israel, Pt 2
In the November/December issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (a magazine I encourage you to subscribe to and read), Avraham Faust writes about evidence in the archaeological record for early Israel. What is the big deal, some of you might ask,…
Non-Jewish Messianic Judaism?
Today I really wanted my blog to be about finding early Israel (see the post below this, which is really the focus for today). But I saw something on iTunes and had to bring it up. I was looking over…
Finding Early Israel, Part 1
A nomadic people settle in a great empire and become a slave class for centuries until a deliverer leads them out through a wilderness and a generation later into a land they can conquer and call their own. This is…
Progress and Protest at the Western Wall
Until the recession hit, I was on a routine of leading a tour every December to Israel. I was last there December 2008 and it was my seventh trip. One of the benefits of going every year is seeing the…
The New Testament, Jews, and Torah
I got a question by email recently from a Jewish Christian who does not keep Torah and who has thus far believed that the New Testament and Christian theology indicate that when a Jew follows Christ, the Torah is no…
PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Kingdom of Heaven, Pt 1
Yeshua had a central message. It was the first thing he ever taught. It was always in the background of everything else he taught. It is the key to understanding Yeshua and it is not a secret. It is well-known…
Noah in Context: Meaning and Purpose
What if the ruler(s) of the heavens were capricious, vindictive, and immature? At times, life is harsh and it
The Noah Story and Mesopotamian Myth, Pt 2
In Part 1, I presented the famous Sumerian/Babylonian/Assyrian flood story which passed down over more than a thousand years through Babylonian poets into the new Assyrian empire, where it has come to us through the results of archaeological exploration. As…
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