In Gen­e­sis 18 three men vis­its Abra­ham and promise that he would have a son through Sarah. Hear­ing this, stand­ing at the tent door, Sarah laughs.

Gen 18:
13 And the LORD said to Abra­ham, “Why did Sarah laugh, say­ing, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?‘
14 “Is any­thing too dif­fi­cult for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Abra­ham appears to speak to only one of the men. Chris­tian­ity believes that this was the pre-incarnate Christ. (more…)

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There is no com­plete agree­ment among schol­ars regard­ing these groups of Jew­ish fol­low­ers of Jesus. From the Church fathers we can gather some ideas regard­ing their beliefs and prac­tices. It appears that the early Jew­ish believ­ers were known by both these names, but from the third cen­tury they became two dis­tinct groups, with the Nazarenes adopt­ing a more ortho­dox doc­trine, but the Ebion­ites either adopted or retained a quite non-orthodox one.

Let’s con­sider some of these quotes. (more…)

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Jesus said the fol­low­ing in Matthew:

Matthew 22:32 “I am the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, BUT OF THE LIVING”.

Did he mean that they were alive? To under­stand what he said, we need to con­sider Jew­ish thought. (more…)

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It depends who you ask

The term “Jew” is derived from either Judah or Judaea, I am not sure, but it doesn’t really mat­ter. What mat­ters is how it was used. In the first cen­tury it was used of those who belonged to the reli­gion of the covenant peo­ple. The race is referred to as Israelites, but the reli­gion was Jew­ish. Thus, Paul can argue that those who were of the faith of Abra­ham were true Jews. (more…)

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In Ch. 1 and 2 Paul estab­lishes that the gen­eral con­di­tion of mankind — both Jews and Gen­tiles — is pretty bleak. There is a hor­ri­ble sin prob­lem in both camps (we have seen ear­lier that the lan­guage of the Bible is not all-inclusive). He then concludes:

Rom 3:19 Now we know that what­ever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [i.e. Jews], so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held account­able to God. 20 For no human being will be jus­ti­fied in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowl­edge of sin. (more…)

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