Identity Theft Page 6

  “His name was salvation because He would bring salvation.”

  “The name Yeshua was also a shortened form of the name Joshua, which in Hebrew is pronounced Yehoshua. In later books of the Hebrew Bible we find the Hebrew name Yeshua and it is translated as Joshua. (See Zechariah 3.) Joshua means ‘the Lord is salvation,’ or ‘the Lord saves.’ Tell me David, what sounds more Jewish to you, the name Jesus or Joshua?”

  “Well Joshua, of course,” I answered.

  “In the Greek, both Joshua and Jesus are exactly the same: Iesous. But when referring to the Messiah, they translated His name as Jesus. When Joshua is mentioned in the New Covenant, they do not translate His name as Jesus, even though in the Greek it is the same, but use the Hebrew transliteration—Joshua—leaving us to think they are two different names. As a result, we lose the Jewish character of Jesus’s name. While Joshua is seen as Jewish, the Jewish Messiah has been portrayed throughout history as being something other than Jewish.”

  “So Joshua and Jesus are the same name?”

  “Don’t be so amazed, David. There is more.

  “All your life you were probably told that the mother of Yeshua was a woman named Mary. In fact, millions of people actually call her Maria. Why is this significant? It’s important because these names make the mother of Yeshua sound English as in Mary or Italian as in Maria, when of course she was neither. She was not the lead role in West Side Story or Jimmy Stewart’s wife in It’s a Wonderful Life.”

  “How do you know about movies, Ariel?”

  “Stay focused, David.”

  “I always viewed Mary as a Roman Catholic teenager,” I offered.

  Ariel chuckled and said, “That would have been difficult, as she was born in Israel several hundred years before there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church.”

  “Well, what about this mother of God business? They worship her and pray to her in some cultures.”

  On the larger tablet appeared a woman, a precious woman. She began to talk to me. “David, this breaks God’s heart and mine as well. I am just a woman, a very blessed one, but nothing more. The Father never intended that people would pray to me or worship me. While it is difficult to be sad when you are constantly in the presence of the Almighty, what people have made of me disturbs me greatly. And what is worse is that the very people who claim to adore me have oppressed my people. They pray that I will intercede for them, and at the same time they persecute and kill my descendants. I am an Israelite, and my name, by the way, is Miriam, a Jewish name—the same name as the sister of Moses.”

  “So why is your name printed as Mary in the New Testament, but the sister of Moses is Miriam?” I asked her.

  “Oh, I’ll let Ariel explain that. He’s the expert. I shared what I needed to share. Bless you David,” and the board was empty again.

  “The answer is simple,” said my eager angelic teacher, “and it is not as sinister as you may think, although it still confuses the identity of Yeshua’s earthly mother. The New Covenant was written in Greek so her name had already been Hellenized—that is, conformed to Greek culture. Even in the original text, they wrote the Greek equivalent of her name rather than her actual name. And the English translation of the Greek form of Miriam is Mary or Maria. Whereas when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into English, there was no Greek influence. Thus, Moses’s sister remained Miriam.

  “One more thing, David—while Miriam was correct in saying that she was not divine, I don’t want to sell her short. She was chosen for a reason. She was a humble, loving, Godfearing servant of the Lord. She has taken her place next to Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel in the kingdom. She is a very special woman and should have been an example to young Jewish girls throughout the centuries, but like Yeshua, her identity was greatly altered, even hijacked.”

  “This is really new to me,” I responded. “But, I have a question.”

  “Shoot,” said Ariel.

  “Okay, this John the Baptist character; if you are saying that the New Covenant is Jewish, who is this guy? I mean, he is a Baptist, for crying out loud. How could there be anything Jewish about him?”

  The massive tablet came to life again and a fellow wearing some sort of caveman outfit appeared. He was laughing at me.

  “Tell me something, Dave,” he chuckled. “If I mentioned the name Ezekiel would you think Jewish or Christian?”

  “Ezekiel was a Jewish prophet, so Jewish, of course.”

  “How about Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaiah, or Haggai?” the man asked.

  “Well they were all prophets from the Hebrew Scriptures, so once again, Jewish.”

  “Right, Dave.”

  I didn’t appreciate this caveman character calling me Dave. My name is David.

  “Okay, I’ll call you David,” he laughed again.

  “But how—I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but you thought it and I’m a prophet, which is not a mind reader, of course, but if the Lord allows it, I sometimes see things, and I saw that you didn’t want to be called Dave, okay David?”

  “O…kay,” I uttered uneasily.

  “David, getting back on point,” the prophet continued, “if I mention the name John the Baptist, what do you think of?”

  “Well Christian, right?”

  Then he yelled out, “Booooom! Gotcha!”

  I was startled. This guy was a hoot.

  “My name is John, actually Yochanan in Hebrew, and I was not a Baptist. And here is another shocking revelation for you: There were no Baptists at that time—although they seem like fine folk,” he said jokingly in a southern accent. In his normal voice, he continued, “The truth is, David, I was a Jewish prophet and I died, actually I had my head handed to me on a silver platter—literally!—years before anyone had ever used the word Christian.

  “In the manner of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah,” he became serious, “I was honored to be the last and greatest of the Jewish prophets who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah in fulfillment of prophecy.”

  A sound signaled new activity and Isaiah 40:3-5 appeared on my tablet.

  “Sadly, I died prior to the New Covenant, but it was important for me to get out of the way,” he added with feigned annoyance, “although it would have been nicer to simply die in my sleep—and keep my head!

  “David, the only difference between me and my predecessors was that my ministry was recorded in the New Covenant. They called me the Baptizer because when my 100 percent Jewish followers would repent, I would immerse them in water, symbolizing spiritual cleansing. Funnily enough, the practice did not begin with the New Covenant or as a Christian tradition; immersion in water had been common practice in Judaism as a form of ritual cleansing for centuries before I implemented it in my ministry.

  “In fact, outside the Temple in Jerusalem were nearly fifty mikvot—immersion tanks—for Jews wishing to make a sacrifice at the Temple. The ministry of immersion with which the Lord entrusted me preceded and prepared the people for Yeshua’s coming. It was not something new to the people of Israel. They understood its significance. The fact that thousands of Jews ‘from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan,’ went out to be immersed by me attests to this fact.”

  Matthew 3:5 appeared on my tablet. “The fact that people now associate me and my signature with a denomination that began only five hundred years ago and that they don’t see me as a Jew is truly sad, because it takes the Jewish context away from the Gospel narrative. God called me, a Jewish man, to call the Jewish people to prepare themselves for the Jewish Messiah.”

  The screen on the larger tablet went blank.

  “I liked him, Ariel.”

  “I should let you know that the people you are meeting do not look as they appear to you. It was decided that for the purposes of our investigation each of these figures would appear to you as they would have appeared on earth during their lifetime,” Ariel explained.

  “Good to know. I was hoping people didn’t dress like caveme
n in Heaven!”

  We had a good laugh. Ariel and I were becoming friends.

  Chapter Ten

  PETER THE POPE?

  “Have you heard of Peter?” Ariel asked.

  “Eh, yeah, he was one of the first followers of Je—I mean Yeshua, right? Wasn’t he the first pope?”

  I thought Ariel was smiling because I began to refer to Jesus by His Hebrew name, but he was chuckling at my assertion that Peter was the first pope.

  “Okay, D’vid” he used the Hebrew pronunciation of my name, “there are two issues with Peter—his name, and his function. Let’s start with his name. First of all, it wasn’t Peter. The word Peter, or Petros in Greek, simply means rock. Peter’s real name was Simon, or Shimon in Hebrew. However, on the occasion he received the revelation and declared that Yeshua was ‘the Messiah, the Son of the living God…’” Matthew 16:16 appeared at the top of all the previous passages that had been sent me on my tablet. “Yeshua announced that henceforth…”

  “Henceforth? Who talks like that?” A strong, well-muscled individual with a big bushy beard now occupied the screen. He was confident and clearly had a sense of humor. “Angel, just let me tell my story. David,” he turned to me, “I really think you would rather hear it from me. I don’t use any of those three-dollar words like Professor Ariel over there.”

  “Oh yes, you are a brilliant communicator. The problem is, you don’t know when not to talk!” Ariel then mimicked, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for You, one for Moses and one for Elijah,” reminding the man of his ill-timed words on the Mount of Transfiguration (see Matt. 17:4).

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can remind us of that or you could tell him about my sermon on Shavuot…or before the Sanhedrin when they told us to stop preaching the Gospel! I remember it like it was yesterday, ‘Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Yeshua, the Messiah, that this man stands before you healed…salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under Heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved’ (see Acts 4:8-12).

  “In truth it wasn’t that difficult. Even though He had gone, He was still with us. We couldn’t see Him, but man, we could feel Him. Yeshua’s presence was almost tangible. The miracle of healing we’d just witnessed—a paraplegic jumping up and down, praising God—and the fact that we were now doing what we’d watched Him do so many times, empowered us. We felt as bold as lions—not afraid of any man!”

  “Okay, Fisherman, you got it right more than you got it wrong so I guess we could let you share for a bit.” They both laughed.

  “Where were we…oh yes, when I had the revelation that Yeshua was the Messiah, the Son of God, He gave me a new name—Kefa!

  “Kefa means “rock” in Aramaic, the commonly used language of the time. It’s very close to Hebrew. However, when the New Testament was written in Greek, in most places they did not transliterate my name. Do you know what that means?”

  “Sure, that’s when you take a word from another language and spell it with the letters of your own language to enable you to pronounce it, even though you may not know what it means,” I offered.

  “Exactly,” said Simon Peter. “My name was rarely transliterated to Greek which would be Cephas. In most places, they translated it to Petros—the Greek word for “rock,” which in English is Peter. Yeshua, however, never called me Petros, but only Kefa or Shimon Kefa.”

  Scripture references appeared on my tablet: John 1:42; First Corinthians 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5; Galatians 2:9,11,14.

  Ariel interrupted, “The problem with using the name Peter is the same as with John or Mary. They are fine names; they just take away from the Jewishness of the narrative. Your average Jewish person has no idea that the man Christians call Peter is actually Jewish.

  “This brings us to the second issue, regarding his function. When Yeshua told Shimon that He would build His Church on this rock, He was referring, not to Peter the man, but to the revelation Shimon had been given, that He, Yeshua, was ‘the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ This revelation would be foundational to receiving salvation—and to the nature of the Kehilah.”

  “Kehi-what?”

  “Kehilah. It’s a Hebrew word that means community. I want you to use it when referring to the community of followers of Yeshua. Many people use the word church. Church comes from the Greek word kyriakon, which is not in the New Covenant. The word that is translated church is ekklesia, which means, ‘called out ones’ or ‘those called to assemble’ and comes from the Hebrew word kahal, which means, “audience” or “assembly.” Kehila also comes from kahal and means ‘community.’ Ekklesia is a great word, because those who follow Yeshua are called out from the rest of the world and are grafted into the Commonwealth of Faith, the Father’s household. No matter what you think of the word church, a word is only as powerful as its meaning to its hearer, and most people hearing the word church today think of buildings, not people.

  “For instance, if someone said to you ‘David, look at that church,’ what would you be looking at?”

  “A building, I guess?”

  “That’s correct; at least in the way the word is most commonly used today. But if someone said, ‘I belong to a community,’ you would think of people, not a building, right?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Okay, back on topic—the Roman Catholics misinterpreted Yeshua’s words to mean that He was bestowing special authority on Kefa. From this distorted interpretation, a doctrine later emerged that taught that Kefa or Peter himself was the rock upon which Yeshua would build his Church.

  “Centuries later, this misinterpretation extended to the Roman Catholics’ claiming that Shimon Kefa was the first pope.”

  Shimon began to laugh, “I don’t know what’s crazier, that there was a pope in the first century or that he was Jewish! Can you imagine me, Shimon, wearing that outfit the popes wear, or letting people kiss my ring? And how about that hat?” We were all laughing now.

  “It’s called a mitre, Shimon, and we need to move on now,” Ariel gently chided the fisherman. Still laughing, Shimon disappeared from the screen.

  “Romans Catholics maintain,” Ariel continued, “that Peter was the primary leader of the early believing community, and that he eventually moved to Rome and became the first bishop of Rome. Through apostolic succession, every bishop of Rome after Peter would be the head of Christianity.”

  “Apostolic what?” I asked.

  “Apostolic succession. It is the belief in the uninterrupted transmission of spiritual authority from the apostles through successive popes and bishops. Roman Catholics mistakenly maintain that Peter passed his authority down to the next pope and so on and so forth. Many denominations believe in the idea that there has been unbroken transfer of apostolic authority from the apostles to the present, but the Roman Catholic Church additionally believes the Pope’s authority on matters of faith and morals is divinely inspired and sanctioned.”

  “So you are saying that Peter’s authority was passed down to the second pope, and then he gave it to the next one, all the way down to today’s pope…and that they are therefore incapable of making mistakes?”

  “No, I am not saying that, Roman Catholics say that. This bishop of Rome, or the Pope, was regarded as authoritative when it came to issues of doctrine and morality for the Church. It was maintained that, without its leaders, the Church would move into deception. Later on, they would declare that the Pope’s dogmatic teachings on faith and morality were infallible.1

  “It is true that the Father raises up leaders to guide His people…” The text message sound prompted me to look down:

  So [Messiah] himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of [Messiah] may
be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of [Messiah]. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming (Ephesians 4:11-14).

  “…But they are always subject to the authority of His Word. God never expects us to blindly follow a man, especially one who claims he is incapable of making mistakes. As the passage says, leaders are given to His followers to bring them to maturity, so they can think for themselves—not to keep them enslaved to one man’s dogma.”

  I remembered again how I allowed my rabbi to make me feel guilty over my interest in Yeshua. I know he meant well, but he was basically asking me to trust him and not seek truth on my own.

  “Either it is ridiculous,” Shimon was back, “or Yeshua changes His mind a lot, because Roman Catholic doctrine has changed quite a bit over the centuries, with a number of popes contradicting the edicts of other popes. There are even examples of violence and intrigue between popes and would-be popes.

  “Believe it or not, David, many of the popes were far more political than pious. The first bishop to adopt the title of pope was a guy named Saint Damasus. He was accused of adultery and led murderous raids against his enemies, killing over one hundred and sixty people! He was anything but a genuine believer.

  “Another pope, Symmachus, around the year 500 CE conducted what can only be described as a holy war against his enemies. As the two groups fought in the streets, killing scores of men, one of the pope’s ardent followers declared that the pope was ‘judge in the place of the Most High, pure from all sin, and exempt from all punishment.’ All who fell fighting in his cause, he declared, enrolled on the register of heavens.’”2 The quote appeared on my tablet.