SAUL OF TARSUS AND THE ROMAN EPISTLE

[jeremiah1five]

The Apostle Saul's theology revolved around what’s called the Halakah of the Pharisees.
Saul thinks, speaks, and writes and instructs using the Halakah he learned at the feet of Gamaliel.
Since meeting his Messiah on the road to Damascus, Saul somewhere and somehow began assimilating a new Halakah, the Halakah taught by Yeshua of Nazareth.

Saul's dilemma was this: Yeshua told him he was to be the emissary of this new Halakah learned from Christ. The problem was there was no school to teach. This because Jesus was now in heaven and Messianic Judaism knew nothing of this new thing God was doing in the earth and the Promised New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34) was now upon the House of Israel. Beside this, there was no precedent in Jewish history for offering salvation to Gentiles on faith in God. So, Saul had to think it through and come to some conclusions and establish solutions and make rulings to go by. In other words, from Saul's perspective as a rabbi he was establishing Messianic Halakah, a Halakah that included the advent of Messiah Yeshua and everything it entailed, as well as the manifestation of the Holy Spirit of Promise upon the people of Israel, and this thinking involved much debate and processing of information that he didn't necessarily agree with, hence, his seventeen years total out in Arabia and the Middle East boonies.

James, Jesus's half-brother who headed up the Way in Jerusalem wasn't a trained rabbi. James was just a “country” boy who just happened to be the brother of Jesus. on the other hand, Saul taught like a rabbi because he was a formally trained rabbi at one of the two rabbinical schools in Israel. Saul didn't somehow give up all that he was and all he had learned as a Jewish rabbi to start a new Gentile based religion. Instead, he sought to assimilate these new revelations about Messiah Yeshua into all that he knew. Thus, when Saul makes a point in Romans as he does in his other letters he does so in the style and thought processes of a Jewish rabbi.
And that’s exactly what he did.

The Talmud is a large volume of Jewish writings containing the religious rulings and traditions and customs of Judaism. It operated in a unique way. Rabbis whose thoughts were included in the Talmud used certain standard phrases when commenting on certain matters of Halakah. One of Saul's favorite phrases is “What then shall we say?”
After this comes a discussion of the matter that is under discussion or examination. Evidence is produced usually in the form of Scripture verses. Discussion is engaged and eventually a ruling is made about the matter. Then, as part of the processing Halakah it's going to be discredited by another rabbi who will comment on it. The phrase that is used to indicate that this other rabbi disagrees with the conclusion of the former rabbi is “God Forbid!”

Romans 9:30 through Romans 11:11 is a complete rabbinic thought process. We have the issue presented and then the debate that follows beginning in Romans 9:30. However, Saul is having this debate with himself. He sets up the straw man
then he argues the point. The beginning of this issue at hand is indicated and identified with the phrase, “What then shall we say?” This standard rabbinical device signaled that there is at some point a conclusion or ruling going to be made. Then the person leading this discussion, Saul, is going to indicate he strongly disagrees with such conclusion, and he does it by saying “God forbid!”

The conclusion Saul is battling against within himself is that if Israel has indeed stumbled and now God is including Gentiles, does that mean that Israel has permanently fallen away from God and His Covenants? Does it mean that Gentiles are replacing Israel in the salvation bought by the Savior on the cross at Calvary? That is the matter, and the conclusion of the straw man Saul engages in.
Rabbi Saul's answer to this erroneous conclusion is, “God forbid!” Then in the next sentence he states what he considers to be the right ruling, which is, that by means of Israel stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles and that all of Israel will be saved. So, for him that's the right rule or conclusion.

Most Gentile New Testament commentators who have no idea of Second Temple Judaism or Jewish culture and certainly have no working knowledge of the Talmud look at this erroneous conclusion in Romans 11 about Israel having permanently fallen away and say, “Saul has just admitted Israel's falling away from God forever and Saul is so dismayed by this terrible outcome that he cries out in agony for his fellow Jews, 'Oh God forbid!'” Nothing could be further from the truth. If one is ignorant of how Jewish society, culture, and religion operated in New Covenant beginning, how could one come to the correct conclusions about what these Jewish writers meant by what they said in their letters? My point is this, Gentile Christians need to read Saul's letters through the eyes of a rabbi in the first century AD and that is no easy task. When Saul wrote he realized he was restricted by the fact that many who will read his letters along with Jewish Christians are Gentiles who have little means to understand what he's telling them because they have no understanding of Jewish culture or Judaism or the Hebrew Scriptures of Law, Psalms, and Prophets. He tries his best to use terms that Gentiles might understand, terms that may not be an exact fit to what he's trying to communicate but terms that Gentiles with a low level or, more likely, no level of biblical knowledge can better understand.

This also brings up another important matter - Who but a Jew in Saul's day can explain to Gentiles with the Hebrew Scriptures what the Hebrew Scriptures meant. Who but a Jew could expound upon what Saul meant in his letters and then explain it to Gentiles? This is why Saul was so firmly synagogue based in his evangelism. He was a practicing Jew and he needed Jewish Christians in the synagogues in Israel and in Gentile lands where the majority of Diaspora Hebrews/Jews lived to be representatives of the faith. He needed believing Jews who had a heart for Gentiles. I’d even say that Saul counted on and depended upon his Jewish brethren to interpret his letters to born-again or even seeking Gentiles. By the end of Saul's century Gentiles began to dominate the “Jesus Movement” and then quickly moved to sever all Jewishness from it to make it a new Gentile religion called Christianity, the message of all the Jewish writers of the New Covenant suffered from distortion. Some were accidental, some were intentional. It would not be until early in the 3rd century AD that the New Covenant canon was ordained into existence. By then antisemitism was a basic foundational doctrine of the emerging Gentile church and there was little hope that these New Covenant writings by other Jewish Christians would be properly interpreted and applied by Gentiles.

Today, we are living in the era in which the Holy Spirit is moving across the face of this planet and upon Jewish and Gentile believers alike to bring better understanding of the Word of God to God’s people. Since Gentile Christians rely so heavily on the "book" of Romans, it's extremely important that we get it right. It is clear to me that anti-Jewish prejudices which have for centuries tainted the teachings of Gentile Bible students that the good news in our era and the time of Israel’s Messiah’s return, we are seeing a movement of Gentile believers towards an openness to rediscovering the Scripture in its Hebrew context.

The Constantinian Gentile Church may not accept what I say, but more and more believers will see the truth of it and grab hold of it as the days go by. Why do I think this? Because it was prophesied 2500 years ago, and I see it happening with my own eyes:

In Zechariah 8 it says that when that time comes ten men speaking all languages of the nations will take hold and will grab the cloak of one Jew and say we want to go with you because we've heard that God is with you!

23 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, Even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.
Zechariah 8:23.

 

[Eleanor]

The Apostle Saul's theology revolved around what’s called the Halakah of the Pharisees.
Saul thinks, speaks, and writes and instructs using the Halakah he learned at the feet of Gamaliel.
Since meeting his Messiah on the road to Damascus, Saul somewhere and somehow began assimilating a new Halakah, the Halakah taught by Yeshua of Nazareth.

Saul's dilemma was this: Yeshua told him he was to be the emissary of this new Halakah learned from Christ. The problem was there was no school to teach. This because Jesus was now in heaven and Messianic Judaism knew nothing of this new thing God was doing in the earth and the Promised New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34) was now upon the House of Israel. Beside this, there was no precedent in Jewish history for offering salvation to Gentiles on faith in God. So, Saul had to think it through and come to some conclusions and establish solutions and make rulings to go by. In other words, from Saul's perspective as a rabbi he was establishing Messianic Halakah, a Halakah that included the advent of Messiah Yeshua and everything it entailed, as well as the manifestation of the Holy Spirit of Promise upon the people of Israel, and this thinking involved much debate and processing of information that he didn't necessarily agree with, hence, his seventeen years total out in Arabia and the Middle East boonies.

James, Jesus's half-brother who headed up the Way in Jerusalem wasn't a trained rabbi. James was just a “country” boy who just happened to be the brother of Jesus. on the other hand, Saul taught like a rabbi because he was a formally trained rabbi at one of the two rabbinical schools in Israel. Saul didn't somehow give up all that he was and all he had learned as a Jewish rabbi to start a new Gentile based religion. Instead, he sought to assimilate these new revelations about Messiah Yeshua into all that he knew. Thus, when Saul makes a point in Romans as he does in his other letters he does so in the style and thought processes of a Jewish rabbi.
And that’s exactly what he did.

The Talmud is a large volume of Jewish writings containing the religious rulings and traditions and customs of Judaism. It operated in a unique way. Rabbis whose thoughts were included in the Talmud used certain standard phrases when commenting on certain matters of Halakah. One of Saul's favorite phrases is “What then shall we say?”
After this comes a discussion of the matter that is under discussion or examination. Evidence is produced usually in the form of Scripture verses. Discussion is engaged and eventually a ruling is made about the matter. Then, as part of the processing Halakah it's going to be discredited by another rabbi who will comment on it. The phrase that is used to indicate that this other rabbi disagrees with the conclusion of the former rabbi is “God Forbid!”

Romans 9:30 through Romans 11:11 is a complete rabbinic thought process. We have the issue presented and then the debate that follows beginning in Romans 9:30. However, Saul is having this debate with himself. He sets up the straw man
then he argues the point. The beginning of this issue at hand is indicated and identified with the phrase, “What then shall we say?” This standard rabbinical device signaled that there is at some point a conclusion or ruling going to be made. Then the person leading this discussion, Saul, is going to indicate he strongly disagrees with such conclusion, and he does it by saying “God forbid!”

The conclusion Saul is battling against within himself is that if Israel has indeed stumbled and now God is including Gentiles, does that mean that Israel has permanently fallen away from God and His Covenants? Does it mean that Gentiles are replacing Israel in the salvation bought by the Savior on the cross at Calvary? That is the matter, and the conclusion of the straw man Saul engages in.
Rabbi Saul's answer to this erroneous conclusion is, “God forbid!” Then in the next sentence he states what he considers to be the right ruling, which is, that by means of Israel stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles and that all of Israel will be saved. So, for him that's the right rule or conclusion.

Most Gentile New Testament commentators who have no idea of Second Temple Judaism or Jewish culture and certainly have no working knowledge of the Talmud look at this erroneous conclusion in Romans 11 about Israel having permanently fallen away and say, “Saul has just admitted Israel's falling away from God forever and Saul is so dismayed by this terrible outcome that he cries out in agony for his fellow Jews, 'Oh God forbid!'” Nothing could be further from the truth. If one is ignorant of how Jewish society, culture, and religion operated in New Covenant beginning, how could one come to the correct conclusions about what these Jewish writers meant by what they said in their letters? My point is this, Gentile Christians need to read Saul's letters through the eyes of a rabbi in the first century AD and that is no easy task. When Saul wrote he realized he was restricted by the fact that many who will read his letters along with Jewish Christians are Gentiles who have little means to understand what he's telling them because they have no understanding of Jewish culture or Judaism or the Hebrew Scriptures of Law, Psalms, and Prophets. He tries his best to use terms that Gentiles might understand, terms that may not be an exact fit to what he's trying to communicate but terms that Gentiles with a low level or, more likely, no level of biblical knowledge can better understand.

This also brings up another important matter - Who but a Jew in Saul's day can explain to Gentiles with the Hebrew Scriptures what the Hebrew Scriptures meant. Who but a Jew could expound upon what Saul meant in his letters and then explain it to Gentiles? This is why Saul was so firmly synagogue based in his evangelism. He was a practicing Jew and he needed Jewish Christians in the synagogues in Israel and in Gentile lands where the majority of Diaspora Hebrews/Jews lived to be representatives of the faith. He needed believing Jews who had a heart for Gentiles. I’d even say that Saul counted on and depended upon his Jewish brethren to interpret his letters to born-again or even seeking Gentiles. By the end of Saul's century Gentiles began to dominate the “Jesus Movement” and then quickly moved to sever all Jewishness from it to make it a new Gentile religion called Christianity, the message of all the Jewish writers of the New Covenant suffered from distortion. Some were accidental, some were intentional. It would not be until early in the 3rd century AD that the New Covenant canon was ordained into existence. By then antisemitism was a basic foundational doctrine of the emerging Gentile church and there was little hope that these New Covenant writings by other Jewish Christians would be properly interpreted and applied by Gentiles.

Today, we are living in the era in which the Holy Spirit is moving across the face of this planet and upon Jewish and Gentile believers alike to bring better understanding of the Word of God to God’s people. Since Gentile Christians rely so heavily on the "book" of Romans, it's extremely important that we get it right. It is clear to me that anti-Jewish prejudices which have for centuries tainted the teachings of Gentile Bible students that the good news in our era and the time of Israel’s Messiah’s return, we are seeing a movement of Gentile believers towards an openness to rediscovering the Scripture in its Hebrew context.

The Constantinian Gentile Church may not accept what I say, but more and more believers will see the truth of it and grab hold of it as the days go by. Why do I think this? Because it was prophesied 2500 years ago, and I see it happening with my own eyes:

In Zechariah 8 it says that when that time comes ten men speaking all languages of the nations will take hold and will grab the cloak of one Jew and say we want to go with you because we've heard that God is with you!

23 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, Even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.
Zechariah 8:23.

Not all Israel is true Israel.
All true Israel will be saved.