Christian Women vs. Former Christian Women (Who Converted to Judaism)

And then regarding the Davidic lineage of Jesus, Jesus is related to David on both sides. So yes, it's a virgin birth as in he's not directly related to Joseph, but Joseph is the son of Solomon and so is Mary. So they're both related to Solomon's sons through their lines. And we actually have an account of this in Matthew and in Luke.

How do you feel about the differences in genealogies in Luke versus Matthew? But aside from that, tribal lineage only goes through the father. And if Jesus was born of a virgin, he doesn't have a human father. And the Messiah, as it's written, is supposed to be a human leader from the line of King David. So where would that leave Jesus?

We spoke previously and you said that you converted to Judaism. And so you are by all intents and purposes a Jewish woman. In this episode, Christian women sit down with women who once shared their faith, but have since embraced Judaism. Together, they will explore what drew them towards or away from Christianity, how scripture and tradition shaped their choices, and what it truly means to find biblical truth. Through candid dialogue and respectful questioning, they will uncover both the contrast and the shared reverence for God that connect their stories. Join us as we listen to two perspectives on belief, identity, and the search for a faith that feels like home. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Da. Welcome to the bridge.

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Hi, I'm Kalia and I am a Christian. My name is Shanasa and I'm a Christian. My name is Tacia and I'm Jewish. My name is Jessica and I'm Jewish and practice Judaism in the merit of Israel. Thank you. So we'll go ahead and start with our discussion. The first prompt is Christians and Jews are talking about two very different messiahs. Hey, we can all agree on that. Anyone can share.

Well, I think that in the Tanakh the criteria for a messiah is laid out. Um, well, first of all, the word Messiah means anointed one. So, it's somebody who's anointed with oil for a very specific purpose. There are many Messiahs in the Hebrew Bible, but specifically regarding this Messiah that's going to rule over Israel when the messianic age comes in. They have to be um a descendant of the line of King David through Solomon's body. And in Judaism, tribal lineage goes through the father and not the mother. Jewish identity goes through the mother. And they have to uh usher in world peace. All of the Jews will move back to the land of Israel. Um, the third temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Um, everybody will come to know the one true God. It says that 10 people of all of the nations around the world will grab hold of a Jew's garments and say, "I want to come with you because God is with you." And I don't believe that any of those things have happened. So I would say that the Jews today and Christians are talking about two very different messiahs.

But I would say in the text in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, there is a picture that's painted that points to Jesus being the Messiah. Um, I know in Judaism there's this concept of Messiah Ben David and Messiah Ben Joseph. This idea of a suffering servant and a reigning servant and somebody who meets both of those standards regards. And so I would say even though there isn't world peace today, that would be the Jesus who's coming back as the reigning king. But the Jesus we saw in the Old Testament is the suffering servant, the suffering king um who died on our behalf.

Yeah. And I just had a question because I know you mentioned world peace and I'm just curious to know how you propose world peace will be established if not for a divine figure. Um, because my perspective would be in order to love people and to have world peace, we first have to be reconciled to God and we first have to know how to love God. And I'm not sure if you guys regard the New Testament at all, but um, one story that um comes to mind that can buttress my point is in John 21, Peter is talking to Jesus and he's affirming uh Peter because Peter had just previously denied him and he says, "Peter, do you love me?" He said, "You know I love you, Lord." He said, "Well, feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? You know I love you. Well, feed my lambs." This goes on three times. And the significance of that to me is until Peter knows how to love God, then he will not know how to love God's sheep. So when I hear people say that um, you know, the Messiah is going to come back and establish peace and I'm assuming it's like a political figure, my question would be how would that be possible without some type of divine um, I guess entity if you will.

Um, so I think I'll take the the first thing that um comes to mind about the the concept of of Messiah bin Ysef versus Messiah bin Davidid according to Judaism. Um, I'm not sure where the suffering servant title comes into that or applied to that. But from a Jewish perspective, um, Messiach bin Yosef is from the tribe of Ephraim and he comes and fights a war on Israel's behalf before Mashiach ben Davided comes and takes his throne. So it's it's not at all um likened to Yeshua Hanutri, which I'll refer to him as. Um, the first century um Jew that everyone knows universally as Jesus. I I call him Yeshua Hanotri or the historical Yeshua and that's probably what I'll reference in this conversation by his name that his mother would have given him. Um, so it's a different type of person altogether. Um, according to Judaism Yeshua is known as from the line of David from the Christian standpoint and in Judaism he's from the line of Ephraim. So that's a big difference and he fights a war physical actual war. Um, as far as ushering in world peace that's a really good question. And that's a really smart question. Um, I don't know that I can fully answer that because again, the ways of God are sometimes beyond me. Um, but I do think that, and we'll get into this more, but the Torah is the foundation of goodness. It's God's breathed word into the earth. And I think the more that people are drawn to the Torah in its truth and in its essence, out of you just comes rivers of living water. And so it comes down to really a choice then as you walk this life to do the to do the right thing because you want to please him and you want to live according to his word. So that's how I would say it's an individual and then a collective thing that you come to world peace because you make the right decisions and do good.

So do you think the other sides are mistaken about the Messiah? Yes. Yeah. I would say so. Do you think that these differences are based on scripture, tradition or interpretation? I can say that my interpretation of the Messiah is based on scripture. It's based on what is written. Yeah, I would say our interpretation of the Messiah is based on what is written too. Um, I don't think that you can read the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, frankly, without seeing a physical Messiah, a person who's coming. Even Daniel 7 talks about how the Ancient of Days would give to the son of man dominion over the earth. And so, I think that you guys would have to account for who that Messiah is.

And then, regarding the Davidic lineage of Jesus, Jesus is related to David on both sides. So yes, it's a virgin birth as in he's not directly related to Joseph, but Joseph is the son of Solomon and so is Mary. So they're both related to Solomon's sons through their lines. And we actually have an account of this in Matthew and in Luke. Matthew describes the genealogy of Joseph and then Luke describes the genealogy of Mary. And so to me it would seem that really the fact that both of them are related to King Solomon is kind of God's cherry on the top of saying this is my son who I'm affirming um who is related to the Davidic line. And then as far as the uh Messiah Ben Joseph and Messiah Ben David thing yes this they're referring to literal figures in the Old Testament but as as I was researching I was seeing that it was kind of a typology to describe what Jews believe to be the coming Messiah to be. So I just wanted to clarify. Anyone want to speak speak on that or respond to that?

Um, how do you feel about the differences in genealogies in Luke versus Matthew? Um, I think that the differences are intentional to describe that they're coming from two different parents. No, but I mean like when they're tracing it back, there's differences. I think Matthew has like 20 like several more than Luke. Yeah, but they're describing two separate parents. So the distinction doesn't necessarily butineal in in my um interpretation of that from my understanding they're very different the genealogies but aside from that tribal lineage only goes through the father and if Jesus was born of a virgin he doesn't have a human father and the Messiah as it's written is supposed to be a human leader from the line of King David. So where would that leave Jesus?

I would think it still leave him at the messiahship because he is a human leader. He's fully God and he's fully man. And I know that we spoke previously and you said that you converted to Judaism and so you are by all intents and purposes a Jewish woman and um Joseph being a Jewish man adopted Jesus Christ as his son making that lineage established through Joseph. I think there's a passage in Ezra where they say that um children were excluded from priestly services because they couldn't prove their patrinal lineage. They couldn't prove their father. So they were excluded from activities because you can't tribal lineage doesn't go through adoption. Yeah. So again, I would say the fact that he's related to David through both Mary and Joseph is enough to affirm him as the Messiah. I would also say this is kind of the distinction between the Old and New Testament is that God goes from this very um I don't want to say legalistic, but the Torah has 613 laws that people have to abide by. There's all these purity practices, rituals that people have to do to be in right standing with the Lord. And then when you come into the new covenant, Jesus says he didn't come to abolish the law, but he came to fulfill it. And so we see this overarching narrative of adoption and sunship. That word is actually used in Ephesians and all throughout um some of the teachings of Paul and in the New Testament, the Gospels even, where God is saying, "No, I'm actually going to graft in this people group, the Gentiles. I'm going to adopt them." So this picture of adoption, even if you were to argue that Jesus isn't physically related to David, that is in line with the character of God because he's adopting and grafting people into the family of God.

So it sounds like you believe that God changed his mind. No, I don't believe God changed his mind. I believe that Jesus fulfilled the role of the old covenant in his bodily. So you believe the covenant has come to an end. It's no longer We don't need to follow it. It was fulfilled in Christ. That's what I would say. So, okay. But in Deuteronomy, God says that the covenant is eternal and that you cannot add or subtract from the Torah. How do you feel about that?

So, again, I would just say through the person of Jesus, that covenant is kept. So, he changed his mind. No, Jesus is the bodily manifestation of God. He's God in the flesh, and he is the covenant that we're keeping. So, the laws point to a person. That person is Jesus. So if I'm in relationship with Jesus, the law is being fulfilled through my relationship with Jesus. Hebrews talks about this. Romans talks about this. But you're referring to all these New Testament texts that don't apply to us. Well, Jeremiah 31:es 31-36 literally says, "I'm going to give you Israel a new covenant. Not the same covenant that you had when you left Egypt because you guys betrayed me and I was a husband to you is the word that God uses. And he says that this covenant is going to be so that everyone is going to have this knowledge of God. The neighbors are not going to have to teach people about God. This is this is something that I'm going to do newly. And of course, we understand that to be the new covenant as in the New Testament. He's making for me. I don't put God in a box because obviously as a Christian, I believe in a concept that I'm sure y'all are familiar with, progressive revelation. And it's the same concept that I think we use even with parenting. Even though I'm not a parent, when you have a child, you don't just talk to them about everything when they're a little kid. You wait until they mature and get older. And I believe when you read scripture, you see certain nuggets and certain things that demonstrate God's character hasn't changed. He's been saying the same thing from the Tanakh and the Torah throughout the New Testament. So when I read scriptures that literally say he's going to bring about a new covenant, um, it makes me to know that God hasn't changed his mind.

Okay, let me just speak to Jeremiah 31:31. Um, it's the language is the renewed covenant. So, it's not something new. And what it says is that I'm going to write my Torah on their hearts. It doesn't say that I'm going to everyone's going to know God. It does say that, but I'm going to write my Torah on their house hearts. It begins with to the house of Israel and to the into Judah. Yeah. That's very specific in the Torah in the Tanakh because it's consistently over and over a particular people group. And so that text according to the Torah and the Tanakh is saying I'm going to write my Torah on the hearts of my people, my chosen people. Now, we can talk about grafting in later, but that that scripture specifically to the house of Judah and to the house of Israel. Thank you.

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And the next prompt is the Hebrew Bible alone contains all the guidance that we need from God. Okay. All right. Anyone can elaborate on on their thoughts on this. I think it's foundational, but I don't think it's final because when you read the Torah and the Tanakh, you see um certain nuggets, as I stated, pointing to something that's coming. I've been meditating a lot on Isaiah chapter 11 and it's a very very interesting passage. It literally talks about um it says that there's going to be a branch that comes up from the root of Jesse. So I think it's foundational and not final. And I get that from the Torah and the Tanakh.

I've been meditating on Isaiah 11 recently and I essentially see in that chapter a description of a new Moses because towards the end of the chapter it it references like seas, specifically Egyptian seas that are going to be split. It says that this figure is going to have a rod like Moses that comes out of his mouth. And so you're seeing this this theme being repeated throughout that chapter about a new Moses leading people into the promised land. In fact, Isaiah 11:10 talks about the fact that Gentiles like myself are going to be drawn to this figure. So, when I read things like that and I see that those things have not been fulfilled in the Old Testament, I know that this is pointing to something else. And I know that God is consistent in that it's not that he's changing what he's trying to say, but he's giving us clues. And it's up to us if we're going to receive those clues or if we're going to, you know, think that we know it, if you will.

Have you ever read the Tanakh? And I ask because the Old Testament and the Tanakh are different and specifically in the way that when the Hebrew is translated into Greek and then translated into English, it changes. The passages are different, the order is different, the words are different. For example, the Virgin birth non-existent doesn't happen. It's a misappropriation of the text. So, I'm just wondering if either of you have ever read read the Hebrew translation to English or if you're going based on the Hebrew to Greek to English in the Old Testament.

So, I took biblical Hebrew in college, so we went through some of the Hebrew Bible in that class. Um, and I would say too, the Old Testament is not being translated from Greek. It's being translated from the Hebrew manuscript. So, the Old Testament isn't in Greek. The New Testament is in Greek and in some Aramaic, but the Old Testament is not.

So, can I speak to that just a little bit? Is that So, the the Torah and the Tanakh um Tammy II actually was summoned um summon 72 elders to come and take the Aramaic and Hebrew scripture and translate them in Greek to fill his library in Alexandria. Very dark day for the Jewish people because their sacred text was now helanized in a sense, translated into Greek. My understanding is that the New Testament Greek and then English comes from the Septuagent which is a Greek translation of the Toronto Tanakh. Because what happens is with Hebrew is is it's it's a it's a nuanced language. Greek has to pull something from this nuanced language and make it very specific. And so that's problematic. Yeah. Because something that could mean two things in Hebrew, the Greek then translated to mean exactly this. But what about the other thing that it could mean? So that's where we get translation issues. And that's where from a Jewish perspective, the New Testament is the New the Christian Bible. Um, because it's literally fully translated in Greek. We have no original Hebrew, anything in of the New Testament to even try to compare is some of these things. So So I would say that that that's a really big um issue when we're talking about the text and wrestling what does this really mean?

Do you think that's part of why the question here is why do Christians and Jews read the same Hebrew scriptures but understand them completely different? You think that's one of the reasons or do you think there's other reasons why? I don't think we do read the same scriptures. And I think that that is a huge reason why we're not on the same page because if you read the Tanakh as it's written, you would not come to the same conclusions that are drawn in the New Testament. For example, when Matthew quotes and says, "Behold, a virgin will conceive," that is not what it says in the Hebrew at all. It says, "A young woman is already pregnant. She's going to give birth to a son, and by the time he knows the difference between right and wrong, the your dynasty will not fall apart." essentially, I'm paraphrasing, but the word that's used is alma. Alma in Hebrew means young woman of marriageable age. But when it was translated from Hebrew into the Greek parthonos, it can sometimes mean virgin and then translated into the English, they translated it to virgin. And then when Matthew references it in the New Testament, he's referencing the Greek.

So I wanted to say something to that cuz you spoke on the word being amma in Isaiah 7:14 and it is amma and it doesn't mean young woman of marriageable age. And when I understand when I read that, I understand that a young woman in ancient Israel of marriageable age would have been a virgin. Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy to Ahaz. Isaiah is talking to Ahaz and he's saying, "Don't be afraid. This alliance that's coming against you." I believe it was um Syria and it was northern Israel. They tried to bring him into this alliance and he didn't want to participate. And so he's like, "Don't be afraid. Ask for a sign." Ahaz says, "I ain't going to ask for a sign." And he said, "Okay, well the Lord himself is going to give you a sign for the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Alma shall conceive and bear a son. Young woman of marriageable age as I said at that time would have been a virgin because it's not like today where a young woman of marriageable age is probably promiscuous. The culture is completely different. Secondly, when you look at, you know, that being a sign, you we all understand that at that time Israelite women were extremely fertile. a woman having a baby just because she's already married, it would not have been a sign. It wouldn't have been anything significant. And I know that God is a God of miracles. And then lastly, I've heard it said that that child um that is being referenced as a sign was Isaiah's son. I'm very familiar with the text of Isaiah. Isaiah had two sons, Shar Jacob and Mahar Shalow Hashbaz. Shar Jacob, which means a remnant will return. It was a prophetic child. Mahar shal Hashbaz, which is my favorite name in all of the Bible, means plundered quickly. There's no evidence that he had a child named Emanuel. There's no evidence that that king had a child named Emanuel. The logical conclusion when reading this is yes, it's Amma, but it's a young woman of varable marriageable age that would have been a virgin. And this child that they're speaking of is Emmanuel, who is the Christ. The word for virgin in Hebrew is patula. And it is used in the next passage. Everywhere in the Hebrew Bible that uses the word albba, it's translated as young woman except for this passage. Why is that?

I don't agree with that. When you read um Genesis 24, you're going to see Rebecca and she's referred to as a an alma a young woman of marriageable age. In the very same chapter at the very top, she's referred to as Batula. So, they use both of those things in in a sense, no, she's she is described as a young woman and then she's described as a virgin. Those are two different things. Yes. But my perspective or what I'm trying to convey is at that time when chastity was a supreme virtue to the point that if you were found not being a virgin in ancient Israel, you could be stoned to death, a young woman of marriageable age would be a virgin. That's it's just as simple as that.

Christians on the side, why do you think God gave the 613 commandments to Jewish people specifically? And why do you think they no longer have to follow them? Um, so a few reasons come to mind. Well, one reason specifically, um, God gave the culture of holiness in a sense to the Israelites and he gave his word to the Israelites as kind of a guardian, a guardian that would essentially get those words to people like me. It's because of the nation of Israel, able to preserve the teachings of Moses and all the prophets that I'm able to read and have access. Though we disagree and you don't believe that I'm reading it in the proper language, I'm able to have access and understand these stories. And whenever I I've come across questions like that, for whatever reason, I always think of the book of Eli. I know y'all probably seen the movie, right? Yeah. The Book of Eli, Denzel Washington. So, he is in this postapoc apocalyptic world and he it's a very mysterious thing that he has and he's trying to preserve it. You don't really know what it is until the end. And there are people that are coming against him and trying to, you know, take it from him. Essentially, he they find out that he has the Bible. And so, his whole goal is to take this Bible and get it to the new world. And anytime I watch that movie, I always think of Israel. They are they are the ones who guarded the scriptures and got it to the new world. Um, it also demonstrates the fact that we can't keep the law. Like 613 laws, I don't know anyone on the face of the earth or even then that has ever been able to keep the law. And so it points to our weakness and our fallibility. And in all honesty, it points for our need um of a savior. So there's a multiaceted reasons, but those are the two that come to mind.

Um, the 613 laws apply to people differently. So there's priestly laws, Levitical laws, there's laws for women, there's laws for men. So they don't all apply to everybody. 613. So that's that's one point. The other point is that God himself says this Torah that I'm giving you is not too hard for you. Who in the heavens can go get it for us and bring it down? Who in the deepest earth ocean can bring it bring it up for us? He says it's not too hard for you. It's in your lips and in your heart. So yes, did they did they fully keep it? We see right what happened. But I'm going to put I'm going to point to the New Testament. Elishva and Zakaria John Yoken the Immerser's parents. What did it say about them? That they were blameless in all the law. It showed that you can keep the law. That means they were not transgressors. They were perfect according to the law. So it is possible. But from a Jewish perspective and a Gentile perspective, Gentiles were never commanded to keep the 613 laws. So I can understand where you would believe that.

Do you have kids? Yes, I have a son. Why do you give your kids rules, boundaries, things that they need to do to protect them? And what if your son deviates from those rules? What would you do? Teach him that it's not okay. And would you ever turn your back on him? No. So if he if he went against you and he did everything that he is not supposed to do, is there anything that he could do that would stop you from loving him or distance you from him? Distance me from him? Um, nothing to do that could stop me from loving him. But I do think distance is appropriate when certain boundaries are broken. So you think that your son or you feel that there's something that your son could do that you would turn your back on? So, I'm not going to talk about my son specifically cuz I don't think that's appropriate to the context, but I think for instance, and this is sensitive, but our country just lived through another mass shooting. And so, the parents of that son, there has to be distance, right? Because a boundary was broken, something was done that harmed other people. And so, I think that God is a God of boundaries, if that's what you're asking.

Just a question for for the group. How do you decide which interpretations of God's word are trustworthy? As we're talking about the different things that we agree and disagree on, how do you decide which interpretations of God's word are trustworthy? Well, I think we can all agree that the five books of Moses, the Torah was God's word given. And I would say that those are the trustworthy words. And for me, for the or for the Christian rather, it's simple. Um, we have God's Holy Spirit that lets us know what is true and what accords with his reality and his truth. So when I'm reading the Bible or when I'm reading extra biblical sources, I can look at it through that lens and reach the same conclusion. And what if someone doesn't have the Holy Spirit? Then they're going that's the that's the issue. There in lies the problem because I believe that the entire Bible is spiritually discerned. It's not a book that you can just read like a textbook. And if you do not have God's spirit, then you're not going to arrive at the right conclusions. you're going to probably lean heavily on, I guess, and I don't mean this disrespectfully, but maybe like rabbitic teachings and sources and and basically man, you're going to lean heavily on that when we're called um as that verse I just quoted, Jeremiah 31, we're going to have the law on our heart. That's God's goal for us, not to be taught, as the verse says, by man or this person or your neighbor is to have that personal relationship. And I think we have that in the New Testament through the Holy Spirit and through Jesus Christ.

Yeah. And I think the Hebrew text is reliable alongside the progressive revelation that Janasa talked about with the New Testament. So, um, having been a former Christian and fully understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, how it's understood from a New Testament perspective, it's making the assumption that people who are not baptized in the Holy Spirit don't have a spirit of holiness. Ru Kakodesesh is a spirit of holiness. the the two men that were um destined to build the temple, they had literally a holy spirit given to them and then they created these things, a holy ab and I don't remember the other guy's name. um you see through consistently throughout the the the Tanakh that people had a spirit of holiness and where we translate it in or where it's translated in the New Testament as like an entity or a separate thing the a holy spirit it's different than a person having a spirit of holiness. So people all throughout the Tanakh had a spirit of holiness. It's not that they was it a spirit of holiness or was it um a certain spirit that was a gifting to be able to complete a task? It well so if we're talking about ruakodesesh it comes from God and there's manifest multiple attributes of that holiness. So it could be creativity right there. There's a lot of different ways, but you consistently see that it doesn't just come upon the scene in in in the New Testament. People throughout the whole Tanakh had the Holy Spirit, so to speak. It's not a new thing.

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The next prompt is the Hebrew Bible points to a Messiah who has not yet come. Okay. And we kind of talked about this already a little bit. Um, so I can maybe go in a little more detail since we've already kind of talked about this. Which prophecies do Christians point to as fulfilled in Jesus and which do Jews view as awaiting fulfillment? Can talk about that?

Well, Isaiah 7:14 like Chanasa talked about. Also Isaiah 53, this picture of a suffering servant who would be rejected, who would be despised, who people would turn their face from because of the suffering that he would endure in his body. Um, also Zechariah, the Zechariah passage that talks about hosana arriving on a donkey. We see that fulfilled in the New Testament, the week of Passover. Um, Daniel 7 that talks about the son of man, I mentioned earlier, being given dominion over all the nations, over all the earth, and he's given that dominion from the ancient of days, which we would interpret as God the Father. So, I think there's typology littered all throughout the Old Testament, even with the sacrifices, Abraham sacrificing Isaac or going to sacrifice Isaac and God providing a lamb in the bush or um a goat in the thicket. Um, yeah. I think there's pictures, the lamb's blood being smeared across the doors during the Passover to protect the the Hebrews and their firstborn sons. I think there's a picture that points to someone. So, who is that someone?

So, it sounds like you're pulling passages that weren't prophecies and saying that they're prophecies. So, I guess my question to you would be, what is a prophecy and how do you know that it's a prophecy? No. So, I'm quoting the prophets and I'm also quoting historical narrative because I think that narrative points to something being fulfilled or someone coming. Okay. Well, speaking to Isaiah 53, what does it say in Isaiah 44? You can look. It identifies it identifies who the servant is. Who's the servant? Israel. Okay. So, I don't believe that it's Israel because the language that's used is singular and usually and it's also masculine. It says I he is a suffering servant. in Ezekiel and really in a lot of the prophets when Israel is addressed, she is addressed as a woman, as a lamb, um, as promiscuous. And that's not the same character that's being identified in Isaiah. And I I just want to say in Isaiah, it it says very specific things that make me know that it couldn't be about a nation. Um, one, it says that they're going to be numbered with the transgressors. It says that they are going to um intercede and pray for the transgressors. Verse 6, Isaiah 53:6, it says, "All all ye like sheep have gone astray, and we have all turned aside to our own way, and the Lord laid upon him the sins and the iniquities for us all." It doesn't say that though in the Hebrew. That's the problem. I think that I I so it's convenient that everything that would be a prophecy would not be it in the Hebrew. That's my perspective because these things are very very clear. Even in Isaiah 52, I mentioned it on the last episode, verses 13-15. It talks about a prudent servant that's going to be extolled, exalted. It said he's going to be marred beyond the vis vizage of any men and his form more than the sons of men. So, he's going to be disfigured bodily and facially beyond the sons of any men. And then it goes on to say, "And he's going to sprinkle many nations." We both know that sprinkling refers to the Old Testament practice of sprinkling blood on the altar. And so to say that this is something that it's either what I hear is either it doesn't say that in the Hebrew or this is about Israel and to me that doesn't make any sense because Israel cannot die for my sins and that's what that's saying in that text. That is the problem is Hebrew. It does not say Israel dies for the sins. It says because of and that is a huge difference. Because of what part? I'm sorry. So um so let let me let me um it's it's it's hard to I would say filter the Old Testament um properly when you know that these prophecies are speaking about Yeshua Hanutri you you you you look to that. So again, biblical hermeneutics, right? That would be isog Jesus, right? You're taking something that you believe is and you're putting it in to the old the Tanakh, the Old Testament text. Um, one of the revelations I came to is the people who wrote that book, they have an interpretation of that text and it would behoove me to understand what their interpretation is before I insert what I think is that interpretation. So that's just a um a a way to approach it from a for me a respectful way to say how did they understand it before I say that that speaks to Yeshua because that really is of Jesus. It really is.

Question for you ladies on this side about about this. Hopefully it'll answer your question. Which specific prophecies make you believe the Messiah has not yet come? Well, all the Jews do not live in the end the land of Israel. We don't have world peace. We don't have a third temple in Jerusalem. We don't have a ruler that's ruling over Israel. Uh, all of the Jews are not Torah observant. Um, all of the nations have not grabbed hold of a Jew and said, "I want to come with you because God is with you." We have so much anti-semitism more than we have in forever. Um, it's clearly it has not happened. So, I think we're we're what we can agree on is that we're both looking for a Messiah to come, right? From a Christian perspective, it's his second coming. And from a Jewish perspective, it's his first coming. And our our the expectation is a king, his own talmade, his disciples said, when are you setting up this kingdom? they had the also the same interpretation as the Jewish people that this m me m me m me m me m me m me m me m me m me msiach that's coming is going to set up his kingdom. So I think that um understanding that the Torah and the Tanakh explicitly talks about a coming reigning king and implicitly talks about a suffering servant and things like that. It it's just in that right there, explicit versus implicit, which can lead to isogesus versus ex Jesus. I think your point about is Jesus is fair as far as if you grow up Christian, you could be reading the Old Testament through uh through the lens of trying to see Jesus in it. I think that's a fair point. Um I would say, you know, as someone who grew up more culturally Christian, I didn't know about any of the typology in the Old Testament until I had a personal faith walk with God. So, that kind of goes back to this point of like the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us that enlightens us to see Yeshua in the text. Um, and also the fact that I didn't see Jesus in the text and then was able to as I studied I feel like points to the fact that no, this isn't something I'm reading into the text. It's the fact that the text points to someone and we have to ask the question, who is that someone? the common ground is, yeah, you guys are looking for a Messiah, but we believe that Messiah has already come and he's going to he's going to come back and um execute that judgment and righteousness so that the world can be at peace. Um, but we just don't believe that that had to happen all at the first time.

So, can I just speak going back a little bit about the Alma and Batula and how it's translated? So when you read in Matthew about that that Alma or specifically explicitly in the Greek, it's it makes that a virgin. It's not one or the other. And in Hebrew, there's two words. There's alma which could be virgin or and then there's batula that's explicitly a virgin. The the to your point of I I don't read that into the text and I'm not saying you specifically, but I think Christianity, let me make this point really really quickly. When I'm talking about Christianity, I think this is so important. When I'm talking about Christianity in this whole conversation, I am not talking about the people and I'll get emotional. I'm talking about the system that was changed from Yeshua Hanutri connected to his people and then weaponized against his people to this day that we sit in this studio. And so I'm not talking about the people because there's people in my life that are like so intimately attached to me that are Christian. So I just want to be I just want to make that disclaimer when I talk about Christians. I'm not talking about the people. When Christianity reads Matthew and and and has it um as a virgin birth divine narrative from the Hebrew perspective, forget the word. The point of the of that passage was not about a virgin birth. So, you see how you take the virgin birth narrative and make it about a virgin birth. But in the Hebrew, it wasn't about a virgin birth at all. That was just a sign. But it wasn't about the virgin birth. It was about a war is coming. A series coming to destroy you. I'm going to let you know it was just a sign. It was the child. The child was a child sign, right? And those two names, we can talk about that later because he didn't have two sons. That name was actually written to the Assyrians in their language to let them know you're about to be plundered.

What is your take on Jesus's statements on future events? Do they affect his messianic claims at all? I think so because one statement that stands out to me is Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple. Um he predicted the destruction of the temple and then in 70 AD the temple was destroyed. That you may say I'm reading this through the lens but I I agree with what she said. I just a little bit about my background. I was raised in a Christian household. I guess maybe more closer to prosperity gospel. May God rest my dad's soul. Um, but I didn't have anyone that taught me scripture. I literally read the Bible. I had a voracious appetite and I would read it on my own. I had no disciper, none of that. Like every conclusion that I've reached is just now people like, "Oh, read commentary to read this." I'm like, "Sure, but because I have God's Holy Spirit, things make sense." But I say that because he predicted that. But then you go back to Daniel chapter 9 verse 26 and it says and after 62 weeks or something like that the Messiah will be cut off killed but not for himself before um and this will happen I'm paraphrasing again before the prince of the city um that is to come will be destroyed and most everyone understands that to be the destruction of the temple. So it gives you a timeline as to when the Messiah is going to come. Before this temple is destroyed, which we know was in 70 AD, there's going to be a Messiah that's going to be cut off, but not for himself. So I do believe, and I don't remember the exact question, that the Jesus Christ's words establishes his his kingship. It establishes ah establishes his understanding of future events, making him God because who lays a claim to the future except for God.

Okay. So the Daniel prophecy is very interesting and we can talk about this offline more where we can really break this down. So again from a from a Tanakh perspective, Messiah just means anointed one. It doesn't mean capital M messiah. It just means an anointed one. To this conversation and to Daniel 9, what's really important is to look at the history between when the decree went out. What does that mean? um what happened in Jewish history if we know who Zerubbabel if his story if we know who Onias III was right a high priest that was actually killed right before Antiochus Epiphanies comes and takes over and destroys the temple so there's a lot of there's a lot of um I would say extra things that we need to pull into that conversation and not just make it a black or white that this speaks to this because there's so much history there's also a question that

We can probably take offline because it might take a while. Why the Christian Christianity pauses between the 69th and 70th week, and we're still in that pause for 2,000 years, when from a Jewish perspective, it just keeps going. So there's a literal counting in Christianity until that week, and then we stop and we're waiting. But in Judaism, it was fulfilled with Antiochus Epiphanes, but also it was written after the fact. What was written after the fact? The book where Jesus prophesies the destruction of the temple. It was written after the fact. How do you know that? Because it is a scholarly consensus that none of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts. The dating for, like, the Gospels is not based on anything that's like so significant and concrete. We don't have original manuscripts. So we have copies.

Moreover, one of the biggest ways to find out when these things are dated is the context within it. So when you read things like John chapter 5, it said John is speaking and he says, "There is in Jerusalem a pool with five porches called Bethesda." He's not saying there was in Jerusalem. He's saying there is, describing it as present tense. The destruction of the temple was in 70 AD. So when I read that, there's no way that John would have wrote it in that tense if he was writing this after the fact. So scholars can say things, that doesn't make it concrete. When you read the text and you pay attention to certain details like that, you can make sense of the fact that these are not later books or written after the fact. So I disagree with that. John was the last Gospel that was written. The first one was Mark, written around 70 AD. Actually, Paul's letters were written in the '50s, 20 years after Jesus's death, and he never actually met Jesus at all in person.

And the next prompt is, "Hey guys, I'm Tacia, aka Jew, Greek, and Mama. If you're enjoying this conversation, you'll love my new podcast by the book Christ or Messiah. The podcast where we examine Christian interpretations of Jewish teachings side by side. Was the virgin birth ever really in the Hebrew Bible? Who's the suffering servant in Isaiah 53? You've heard the Christian version. Now, hear the Jewish response. The first two episodes are available right now. Search buy the book Christ or Messiah wherever you get your podcasts. Because if we're going to talk about the Jewish Messiah, we've got to go buy the book."

The idea of a second coming is just an explanation Christians use for unfulfilled prophecies. Okay, can go ahead and share. I believe that when Jesus came the first time, he came to reconcile the lost to himself. I don't think that you can have a world full of peace when people are broken spiritually. And so what Jesus does when he comes is he reconciles people spiritually. He heals them spiritually, internally. And then when he comes the second time, he's going to establish that physical kingdom. Um, so I don't think that the messianic prophecies point to him not, the ones about the future point to him not being the Messiah. I think it points to a God of covenant and character who has continuously throughout the entire scriptural text made sure he addresses character first. Even with the 613 laws of the Torah, he's addressing character first. He's purifying people first. He's, he's making sure that these rituals are in line so that people's character can be right, and then the Messiah is promised. And then I think too, if none of these are messianic prophecies for Jesus, then what are the messianic prophecies? If these are so conveniently not them. And then who is the Messiah?

Are you asking? Okay. Well, I already told you what the messianic prophecies are. They are rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. A leader that's going to rule over Israel at a time of world peace. All of the Jewish people will be back in the land of Israel following the Torah. I've, I've said all of these before. So, when do you anticipate that happening? Well, that's not, not for us to decide. Those are the messianic prophecies, and it's not a matter of being convenient. When I say to you, the Hebrew doesn't say that, it's not a convenient statement. It's a fact. And you can pick up any Tanakh and compare it with your Old Testament and see the differences for yourself. It's not a matter of me just saying this for the sake of the discussion. It's actually part of what led me out of Christianity because seeing the differences right in front of my eyes was shocking.

Yeah. I mean, we would be open to doing that, but I will continue to say the Old Testament is Hebrew. It's not. It's not. It, it is Hebrew. That's a verified. I have an interlinear Bible with the Hebrew Old Testament. Great. I would love to look at it with you. But even the fact that Matthew says misinformation. No. Even the fact that Matthew says, "Behold a virgin." If you look at the Hebrew, it doesn't say virgin anywhere. Okay. But again, culturally, a married woman at that time would be a virgin. And if she was a virgin, she would be, then why not say *batula*? Why, why wouldn't the prophet say, why not, why can't they be interchangeable? Because they're two totally different things. A young woman and a virgin. Because a young woman implies virginity. A young unmarried woman implies virginity. You're, you're, you're right. They could be either. So the question is, why did the Gospel writer, who was a Greek speaker, make it a virgin? That's a good question. But you could say, since we keep questioning the validity of our Old Testament, why wouldn't they change the word *alma* to be aligned with the Greek word *parthenos* if they had an agenda? I don't understand your question. If there was an agenda to make it seem like Mary was a virgin, why was the word *alma* maintained, retained in the Hebrew Bible versus being changed to *parthenos* if they wanted it to make it seem like she was a virgin? So, the fact that there are two different words, I think, disproves the fact that they were trying to paint something different. I'm not saying they were trying to paint something different in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Hebrew scriptures, it says young woman. However, when it was translated into the Greek and it was rendered *parthenos* and then rendered virgin, that is a change of the wording. Then when Matthew says that Mary was a virgin and Jesus didn't have, there's a whole story around it as you know in, in your Bible, right? So it's taking that translation and it is tying it to this virgin story. Yeah, that's what I'm, I understand what you're saying, but I'm saying because you guys are questioning the validity of the Old Testament. I think it is interesting that if they were trying to paint a narrative, why would they maintain that word *alma* when describing Mary, what we believe to be describing Mary, instead of changing that to fit the narrative of the New Testament?

How do you respond to Christians who say that the second coming was always part of God's plan? Well, again, and this again is probably too long for this discussion, but the 69th to 70th week, I'd really love to have that make sense for me when it was a literal counting for a certain amount of years that actually, so the, so the, the Christian narrative starts it with the decree with King Cyrus and then if you count those years, it leads to Yeshua in the first century. And then in the third week, right, the seven years he was cut off. It's a very specific linear counting. But then when that happens, there's no more counting. And we're still in that counting. So the 69th to 70th week to me is a, is a, it's a mystery to me. I, I'd like to know more from a Christian perspective how that's explained when from a Jewish perspective, it literally kept the count, just kept going because it was prophesied 490 years from the angel. And I'd love for you guys to explain it to me because I don't, I don't know.

So you're saying that Daniel prophesied that a Messiah would be cut off. That's what you're saying. Like, yeah, it says that a Messiah will be cut off, but not for himself, and this will be done before the prince of the city to come destroys the sanctuary. So, um, and you're saying that that is the second temple, the destruction that would, that happened in 70 AD. Mhm. That is saying that the Messiah is going to come before this temple is destroyed. So that temple was destroyed in 70 AD. So the only Messiah-like figure that came before 70 AD would be Christ, that was cut off, not for himself. But that's, I see what you're saying. So the, the distinction for us would be an anointed one. You said Jesus was anointed. So what do you do with the resurrection? But, but can I say something? If it's because that again, that's convenient. Who was cut off? Not for himself. Like, no other prophet, like when, um, Elijah was taken up to heaven or, um, Jeremiah was put, you know, all these prophets, they were cut off because for themselves, they didn't die for anyone else. So that line, "they are going to be cut off not for themselves," makes it a distinction that points to the Messiah, not just a, like, not just a person that's anointed, but Messiah in the Tanakh is defined as an anointed one, right? So again, so if we make it a capital M Messiah, it's, it's, it's kind of deviating from the definition of the Tanakh of what a Messiah actually is, an anointed, a high priest. I believe the, the Tanakh's definition of a Messiah applies to high priests, which we again, we're talking about Onias III, Zerubbabel, there's a Joshua in that time frame in the Daniel time frame, and this is in the book of Maccabees. So there's extra-biblical books that you'd have to read to kind of pull all this together. But, um, the, the Tanakh definition of Messiah means an anointed one. It could apply to a king. It could apply to a priest. It could apply to a capital M, but it's not explicit. But it doesn't answer my question because that Messiah, whether it's lowercase for all intents and purposes, was cut off, but not for himself. I thought it was Cyrus. I thought it was Cyrus. My understanding. Yeah. And maybe I'm, maybe I'm not even quoting it right. Maybe I'm completely getting it mixed up, but I thought that it was Cyrus and I thought that it was talking about the destruction of the first temple to the time of the destruction of the second. So, I have to go back. I'm not an expert, okay? But that was what I understood it to be. So, a Messiah being cut off before the second temple is destroyed and not for themselves. That's the key line there. So, okay, so we should look at that again for me because I, I, if I read it in the English and I make it hyperliteral, that could be a problem. And that's what I learned in, in when I walked through Christianity is that the, the whole Bible literally was a hyperliteral. I took pretty much everything hyperliterally. If this is what it says, this is what it means. Yeah. Right. And then of course, you, you know better. So you try to pull, like, okay, maybe it's allegorical, maybe it's, you know, other, other, other ways to interpret the text, and we can talk about Christian hermeneutics versus Jewish hermeneutics.

When I study scripture, I don't see anything that lends credence to any numbered coming. So on your view, um, you can't say necessarily that the Messiah is going to come just one time and accomplish all these things because that's not in the Bible. And then on our view, we can't definitively say Messiah is going to come two times and blah, blah, blah. Where we get that from is the prophecies that are clear about Christ. The closest thing that I've ever seen, and I've really been looking into this again, I've been meditating on Isaiah 11. And this is a stretch. I will tell you that Isaiah 11, um, verse 11, and it says that he's going to stretch out his hand. This, this Messiah-like figure is going to stretch out his hand a second time and gather, um, Israel in. So that's the closest thing I, I studied that and I was meditating on that, and I'm not going to lie, like, could this be the thing so that I can present it to them? But in all honesty, there's nothing that, so the confidence that you guys have, I'm curious to know why it has to be done in the first time. I'm of the belief that God can always be God. And if he wants to come two times, if he wants to have a bifurcated coming where he comes the first time to bring peace, because again, I cannot ever understand how we're just going to magically have this peaceful bliss on earth and everybody's going to have the Torah on their hearts without a heart change. And so that's my position is that the scripture is very clear that there's going to be a Messiah-like figure that comes. It doesn't necessarily say how many times, but it says he's going to accomplish certain things. So for all we know, it can be those bifurcated comings. It's really good. No, that's that, that's really good. And it's a, it's a really, um, uh, smart way to approach the text and to, and to be curious about what is this, what does this really mean? Um, yeah, I, I think it's beautiful and I, beyond the elucidation, so much of this particular conversation, I would love to continue to have these conversations so we can really dig into the text.

And the next prompt is, Christianity is shaped more by Paul than by Jesus. Okay, that's quick. Okay, anyone can. Paul never met Jesus. He had a vision, right? And, um, his vision was probably, I would imagine, like your vision or your, like, experience when you came to know Jesus. And that's just an interpretation. So I'm not saying that. All I can say is that Paul had a vision of Jesus. He never met him in person. Happened 20 years after Jesus was killed. Um, he never, didn't see anything, and then he wrote all of these letters and preached them. And I would say that the main points of Christianity come from Paul's teachings, teachings that deviate from what Jesus taught in his actual ministry. So if you read Paul's letters, you see that he is often referencing the Gospels, even the Old Testament. So the teachings that he's teaching are not brand new teachings. They're often in alignment with what has been taught to him by the, in 1 Corinthians, it talks about him talking to some of the apostles at the time, so talking to the people who were walking with Jesus. So it's not like he's pulling information out of thin air. Um, he's actually utilizing what is accessible to him. And then we know that he was a devout Jew who was actually persecuting Christians. So he would have had the information in the Torah to, um, what should I say, shade his ideologies. Um, yeah. So I don't, I don't think they're shaped by Paul. I think Paul contributed to the biblical canon. But I think what he contributed was with, was in alignment with what was already being taught.

So here's a question. I know in 1 Corinthians 15:3, I think it is, Paul says that, um, the Christ came to die for the sins. Is that what he says? That Christ came to die for the sins of the world as according to the scripture, but there's no scripture that says that. It's not found anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. What do you guys think about that? Well, Christ also means Messiah. No, I know it means Messiah, but I'm saying it doesn't say that the Messiah is supposed to die for the sins of the world. So, Isaiah 53 literally says, verse 6, it says, "All we like all we like sheep have gone astray and turned to our own way. And this person is going to, the Lord is going to be pleased to punish him for the iniquities of the world or for everyone because of the iniquities of the world." Well, I don't think that that's a distinction without a difference to me because if you are, if someone is being punished because of, which I don't, I have to look into that because I don't think that's there. That's not the only verse that says that. The entire chapter, the chapter starts off by saying like he's going to be bruised for the sins of the world or sins of man. So, you're saying all of all is because it's like three references. We'll look at it. Okay. But, okay, I'll give you an analogy that I heard and I thought, okay, this is kind of smart. Um, if you lived in a very cold climate, Minnesota, let's say, and you were in a living room and someone threw a baseball through your window and you had no heat. So, are you cold for that baseball or are you cold from that baseball? Um, from that baseball. So, see how it's a little bit different where it says "for the sins of the world" or "because of the sins of the world"? Because of the baseball that came through my window, I'm freezing. Not for the sake of the baseball. So, that, that, that's the interpretation of that passage. They mean two different things. Yeah. But how does that, how does that diminish the message? So, if Jesus, if Jesus came to die for the sins of the world, the iniquities of the world, or because of the iniquities of the world, tell me how those two. First of all, it doesn't say Jesus came to die, the Messiah, the anointed one. It says Israel is suffering for, and that's a disagreement and interpretation. It sounds like you fundamentally you're disagreeing on on things that wouldn't make it make sense.

Okay, so let me, can I say this that here's what's, here's what's really neat. I mean, really, this is, this is such a beautiful thing. The conversation that we're having and the things that we're going to disagree upon literally have been made for thousands of years, right? With two people sitting on the Jewish side, two sitting on the Christian side, thousands of years, we have this, the same thing. But here's what's different about us four. I don't think I think we're literally making history this day. Well, I'm going to include Dr. Daff. Five black women having this conversation is a first. I'm just going to say it. Thank you. I do have a question. Um, do you think that Christianity as we know it today can exist without Paul's letters and interpretations? Yes, absolutely. Uh, Paul's letters were to Gentile people expounding on the words of Christ. And so when you look at the Sermon on the Mount, uh, Matthew 5 through 7, we get all the teachings that we need to live this earth. He says, um, "You heard of old, do not commit adultery, but I say that if you even look with lust, you've committed adultery with that person in your heart." These are the teachings of Jesus Christ. These are teachings that shape who I am and shape what I believe. Paul had a specific mission and I, I'm, I'm, this is a side note. I don't understand how or why he would even be motivated to, I guess, hijack Christianity after all the things that he's endured. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar because I know that you guys are not, you don't regard the New Testament, I believe, but, um, in the New Testament, we see that, you know, he was beaten, received 39 times, last year is 39 times, times three. He was shipwrecked. He was almost fed to the lions. He was betrayed by, uh, Demas and Alexander the coppersmith. He was bitten by a snake. He was stoned in Lystra. I would not be a Christian. Like, I'm, no, I'm joking, I'm joking. Like, but I'm just saying, like, doing all that and then like still preaching this message that points to Christ, it doesn't add up. I can't understand the motive. But, um, so I want, if you guys could speak to that, I'd be curious to know your thoughts.

To answer your question, the Bible, um, the New Testament is very clear. Even with just the four Gospels, if that's all that I had, I would still be a Christian. I would still know how to live my life in a way that honors God. Do you think it would look differently? Christianity would look differently if it relied only on Jesus's teachings and not Paul's teachings? Paul's false teachings to some degree, but not to a degree that is, um, I'm not even going to say to some degree because I know that if you leave, if you leave it at the Gospels, you have people still getting circumcised. You have still, you have people still getting circumcised, but when you, um, come into, uh, Paul's teachings, Paul is teaching to Gentile people that have no Israelite, I mean, um, historical knowledge of the Israelite culture or anything like that. So to put a burden on a man and say, "Hey, in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you have to go cut off your foreskins at 45," that's not practical. And I know that God is also a God of practicality. I don't think, and because we have to understand our foundation is that Jesus Christ fulfills these, the foundational, um, I guess he fulfills the law, excuse me. And so as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm not going to have to keep these laws necessarily. I'm not saying that all laws are suspended, but I'm not going to have to go slaughter bulls and do this and have my son circumcised unless I want to because that's not the basis of my salvation. So again, to some degree, it could look different, but it's not a significant difference that would make it to where I wouldn't still be following Christ, if that makes sense. And I think very slightly different because Jesus offends the Pharisees all the time and the Sadducees because he's not following the law, like healing on the Sabbath. So I think even some of those things we would start to see be subtracted whereas people aren't following them anymore because of Jesus because Jesus was offensive and controversial to the Jews, even.

So in Christianity, and I've always been taught this, is that it's the law. I wish I had a deeper voice. The law from a Tanakh perspective, it's God's instructions. Very big difference in just the connotation of the word. And so if you're saying Jesus fulfilled the instructions of his Father, then yay, because that means he lived a very obedient Jewish life. He fulfilled it. He didn't fulfill it to stop it. Okay? But a question, cuz someone asked me this and it stopped me in my tracks. If you were alive at the time of Yeshua HaNotzri, would he allow you to follow him? Yes. Is there many records or even in all four of the Gospels where Gentiles followed him? We have enough. Um, we have the centurion man who was praised for his faith. He said, "Of all the people in Israel, I've never seen someone with a faith like this." And this is a Gentile man. The same thing of the Syrophoenician woman. He exclaimed her faith highly. She's a Greek woman. We have, um, those are the main two that come to mind, and I don't need a plethora of examples. If I see one example, if I see two examples, it's sufficient for me to know that this is an inclusive doctrine. It's an inclusive teaching. And I think even in the Great Commission, before Jesus leaves, some of his last words are, "Go to the end of the nation to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." So I think he paints this canvas that we are going to go into the world and we are going to graft Gentiles in.

That's beautiful. Um, and I love those, those examples. I will speak to the Syrophoenician woman. What does he call her? He calls her a *kynarion*, which is a little dog. A dog. So in, in antiquities, dogs, Gentiles were referred to as dogs. So he first, which is a, used to bother me, like, I, you know, I call a spade a dog, but the, the context of Jewish and Gentile relations in first-century Judea were, they were extremely schismed. And Yeshua being an obedient Jew, even though he did go beyond some of, you know, he, he touched people and he made himself unclean for certain things. Um, and, you know, and we can talk about that again, that there's a lot of details there. But the point is, is that I believe if I was a first-century Gentile and I wanted to be his *talmid*, his disciple, he would not allow me to, to, for him to follow because no Gentiles really followed him. The demonic of the Gadarenes, what did he tell him? He's like, "I want to go with you." He's like, "You can't go with me. Go back and tell your people what I did, what God did for you, not what I did." He said, "What God did for you," but you can't come with me. So really, there's, he was a Jewish man. He had Jewish *talmidim*. And when he said, "Go to the nations and teach them everything I taught you," what was Yeshua teaching his *talmidim*? Torah. And what has gone to the uttermost parts of the earth? The death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua, not the Torah. What was Yeshua teaching his, his first thing he starts saying is, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." It's turning people's hearts back to God. It's not, I, I would disagree with you when you say like teaching the Torah because that would mean when the disciples were plucking the grain on the Sabbath that he would have, he would have said, "Hey, don't pluck that grain. It's the Sabbath." But he stood up for them and he said, "Man was made for the Sabbath, and not Sabbath for man." So I disagree. He was, that's why he was crucified. That's the whole, the whole premise. So, um, that example that you gave is called a *machloket*. And what that means is it's a disagreement amongst amongst rabbis, which the Pharisees were. They were teachers of the common people. They weren't anybody special. Sadducees, different story. He was doing a *machloket* with them. Your interpretation of this law. My interpretation is this. Your interpretation is this. That was really the, it's really kind of a dispute between rabbis. It doesn't mean that he counseled the law or did something different. It was a *machloket* of how you *halakha*, how you walk it out. Jesus's inner circle was Jewish, but Jesus, that didn't stop him from freeing people who weren't Jewish. And again, I think that reveals the intention of the heart. Maybe they weren't some of his close friends because again, he was a first-century Jewish man. But the fact that he would go out of his way to heal people who were not Jewish to engraft people into a faith that are not Jewish, I think proves that his heart wasn't one only for the Jews. 1,000%. Agreed. Agreed. Okay.

And the next prompt is, "Even if we disagree on the Messiah, we can respect each other's faith journey." That's okay. Okay. So, yeah, let's just hear from you. Um, why do you, I strongly believe that there's one truth, and it's for me to say, like, respecting someone's faith journey. I can respect the process and the journey if the journey is genuine, cuz some people have their minds made up and it's just like, you know, there was a previous episode was like, "Oh, don't try to convert me," and it's just like, that's not respectable. But the reason I say no is because I really do believe that if you are not following truth, then you're following a lie. So I can't say that if, if, let's say, for all intents and purposes, what you're following may be the lie, then I can't honestly say with good conscience, I respect that. I can respect you as a woman and and as a very intellectual, knowledgeable, beautiful, all the things I love it. But if the faith journey is, is not necessarily a journey, if this makes sense, if you've arrived, and I know I've arrived, and you're not truly seeking or searching, because I believe if you're seeking and searching, you're going to arrive at one truth, then I can't respect it. What if, what if you were following the lie? Then I wouldn't want you to respect, respect it for me either. I'm not saying that that you are or that you aren't. I'm just asking, like, what if you were following the lie? Like, because I'm seeking truth, I'm going to arrive at truth. I don't believe that there's anyone on this earth that's truly seeking with an open heart that would not arrive at truth. Okay, that's beautiful. And I do want to know why ladies on this side converted from Christianity to where you are right now. I would love to hear if you can just concisely let us know how you arrived at where you are.

I was raised Christian. Um, my grandma was a Sunday school teacher. I considered myself, um, to have a relationship with Jesus. When I would say my prayers, I would say them in Jesus's name. I would go to church on Sundays. Uh, maybe not all the time, but I, I would go to church. I wouldn't say that I was extremely devout, but my family was extremely devout. I was taught that Jesus was the Messiah. Um, and I didn't know, honestly, what the Messiah was. My grandfather told me that the only difference between Jews and Christians is that we, that Christians believe the Messiah has come and Jews believe that he hasn't and that they're still waiting. I had no idea that it was a completely, it's so much more than that. There's so many differences. So when my best friend became of, became a born-again Christian in my 20s, um, it kind of sent me spiraling because she went through a huge transformation, which thank God, it saved her. No pun in, or actually, pun intended, saved her. She was saved. Um, but it caused me to have a lot of fear because with Christianity, for me, came a lot of fear. There was a lot of threat that if you don't believe this, if you don't, um, subscribe to this, then you're going to be eternally abandoned and cut off from God and burn in hell forever. So that threat was very real and very, very scary for me, and it caused me to develop, um, uh, sorry, it caused me to develop, um, a condition called scrupulosity, which is religious OCD. So the way that it looked for me was, I would say my prayers, "Please God, forgive me for my sins as I forgive those who trespass against me." And then I'd have this thought, "But you're going to hell." And then it would start again. "Please God, forgive me for my sins." And I would loop like this. And so I thought that I was going to go crazy. It was like I was in the living hell. And my boyfriend, now husband, told me, Tacia, knowledge is power. If something scares you, learn everything you can about it. So for me, I basically made a list of all of the things that I didn't understand, that I didn't know, the hell doctrine, the Satan stuff, like all of that scared me. And as I began to learn, it started to completely unravel. And before I knew it, I was debunking Christianity. And the aha moment for me came when I opened up my Old Testament and I looked at my husband's Tanakh. The same verses were completely different, and I was like, "What is this?" And so it was very jarring for me. Um, I reached out to elders in the Christian community to seek help and to help me understand certain things, and there were a lot of non-answers. There was a lot of, "You just got to have faith. You're not faithful." Um, "Why do you care about this when you're living with a non-believer?" All of these things. Long story short, I continued to learn everything that I possibly could. And that ultimately led me to accept Judaism and develop a relationship with God as a Jew. And so 10 years ago, I converted and I was reborn Ariel Aliyah. And now I'm part of their world. I love that. That's part of their, I'm sorry. It just made me laugh. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yes.

Yeah. What about you? Um, there's a belief in, in, in Judaism that, um, people who go through a conversion, that they're not like converting from something to the other, that they always had a Jewish *neshama* and that they're coming back home. For me, I, so I'm sitting on the Jewish side. I haven't gone through the conversion process, but my story started in the 1940s. Um, my grandfather fought in Hitler's army on my mother's side. Um, she was born in 1948. I'm just saying all these little highlights just because you can maybe tie some things together of why I'm, why I'm sitting here. She was born in 1948. I was born on Pesach, Passover. And she gave me a Hebrew name. This little German girl at 22 years old gave me a Hebrew name. She had no idea. She had no idea. My name is Yeshua Naomi, which is in the Torah. And so, um, raised Lutheran. And I always saw Jesus, Lutheran and Catholic, and again, not the people, just the system. They always had Jesus on the cross, and I was like, as a little girl, this impression right in my psyche was that I put him there. My sin put him there, like the guilt. So I always had this, like, guilty feeling that I put him there. So, as I grew older, again, I'm skipping a lot of stuff, but, um, I had a basement moment when my nine-day-old, um, was, um, on his deathbed for four days. And I literally on a floor like this, in an empty hospital room, cried out to God. Snot, tears, spit, all of it to God. I didn't pray it to Jesus. I never connected. Okay? And I said, "If you save my baby, I will follow you all the days of my life." He made me make good on that promise, on that vow that I made, which is in the Torah. If you read about vows, it's important. Eight years later, when I went through a crisis, and he brought people in my life that introduced me to the Jewish Jesus, different Jesus than the one I knew on the cross and the one that I had been raised with. And from there, it just launched me on a journey to understand it from the Hebrew perspective. What do they say about it? They are the ones that brought the concept of Messiah into the world. What's their idea? They're the ones that brought the knowledge of God into this world. What's their understanding? So then it, it led me to on a journey to this point. And I'll, I'll end with this, that, um, Yeshua HaNotzri of the first century, I believe God has used for billions to come to the knowledge of him. Yes, that is a beautiful thing. Islam, I would say the same thing. They came to the knowledge of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I feel Yeshua came, found me, presented me to my Father, and said, "I've done my job." And so, I cling to him. I love God. I love him with all my heart. Like, he's my best friend. So, I cling to him. I don't feel like I'm going to hell because I don't believe in Yeshua. I believe Yeshua Ha served a purpose in my life. Absolutely, 10,000%. Nobody could take it away. But I'm connected to the Father, which I think is the culmination of this whole thing. The ultimate reality in *odil vado* in Hebrew, there's only one reality. It's Him. Amen. And I connected to Him. Yeah. Thank you.

So you got connected to the Father by yourself, by Yeshua, because he introduced you to God. So you feel like that, that's what that was the whole point? Yes. Thank you for sharing. Now, ladies on this side, what makes you connected to Christianity in terms of your choice to remain in the faith?

So I shared a little bit before we started, but, um, I also went through a crisis and questioned my faith when I was a teenager. I went into foster care and I grew up in a culturally Christian house. Um, and that process made me begin to question everything because, I mean, even some of the foster homes I was in, people were practicing different things. So I was exposed to a lot of religion. Um, my grandmother's actually pretty new-agey, so I've been exposed to a lot of the things that she believes. And so I had these questions very young, at 16 years old, trying to figure out what is the truth, because like you said, there is one reality. And so trying to find out what is objectively true in all of this. And so I kind of found my way back to Christ through apologetics. Um, but spiritually, the Lord really wrapped his arms around me in a super traumatic time of my life. He used the church community, he used himself. He appeared to me when I was suicidal. And I just feel like the Holy Spirit always, that's how it happens. He always enlightens us by getting in the middle of our mess and redeeming us through his presence. And so, I, I want to make this clear, too, because we talked about the Holy Spirit a little bit earlier. The Holy Spirit is a person. It's not just a spirit, but it's the person of God who resides on the inside of us. And so through intellect, yes, I've, I've come to be strong in my faith. But spiritually, because God saved a depressed 16-year-old in her grandmother's bedroom, I know that he's real. Oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you for sharing that. Amen.

Um, so I remain in my faith because God is true. I encountered, um, God in my bedroom. I was raised in a Christian household, but it was never forced upon me. It was very chill, like, to be honest. Like, it, you know, um, there was never this pressure or, "You're going to hell." None of that. It was just, it was, I think it was a good environment for me to find Christ on my own because I went to church one Friday and I always thought, "I'm a good person" because I'm comparing myself to my friends who were smoking weed and doing all the things, and I was, um, the 21-year-old, 22-year-old keeping myself for marriage because I have these, like, things. But I was self-righteous and I didn't have a personal relationship with Christ. And so, uh, a prophet comes up to me, he was a false prophet, by the way, but he tells me all these things. He's like, "You're going to be rich and you're going to be all these things." And like that was 15 years ago. And I, I'm not that person anymore. I'm not a materialistic person. I don't care about any of those things. But at the time, I was. So he, he overplayed his hand. I think the enemy overplayed his hand because he said, "You're going to be all this through knowledge. So go home and, you know, go to school and also read your Bible." So I was like, "Okay, cool. I can read this dusty book and I can, you know, become rich and successful. I'll do it." I went home in my bedroom, opened the Bible, essentially, like for the first time. I, I've read it before, but in, in passages, but I opened it. I was like, "I'm going to do this." And I felt like I tried to read the Bible, and then God began to read me. I literally just started crying because I, I came to understand like, I'm not a good person. I know they smoke weed, I don't smoke weed, or they do this and I don't do this, but I'm literally not a good person in the sense that I disrespect my parents and I do these things. And I just started to understand. I didn't feel shame. I didn't feel these, these really negative things, but I had an awareness, and it just made me cry because I know that that was disconnecting me from my relationship with God. And so I repented, and it's like I came out and the world was new. And so I've been here ever since. It's been, it's going to be 15 years November 5th of this year. Um, and I've had rough patches, you know, but nothing has ever quenched or satisfied me apart from Christ. Thank you. That's beautiful. Amen.

Do you still struggle with the, what is it called? Scrupulosity? No. Okay. Judaism cured me, which is incredible because I thought that I was going to be stuck in that loop. Like, I once walked to a hospital, an emergency room, and I was like, "Somebody needs to help me because this is not okay." Like, it was painful. And I, I thought I was going to be stuck there forever. But really, knowledge is power, and God is good, and we are all part of him. He created us, and he created us for a purpose. And I think that this is a very important conversation that we're having, and this is going to speak to somebody, you know, on either side, on both sides. But I respect you ladies so much, and I thank you for sharing with me your, your personal experiences. It's really touching, very moving. Absolutely.

So I would love to hear from each of you what you learned or something that you gained from this conversation, what you learned from one another on a personal level, on a spiritual level. I would just like to hear. Anyone can share. Well, I would say I appreciate the fact that, um, you guys are just well-studied. You know, we've been to conversations like this before, and sometimes we come and we're expecting to have conversations where we can just dig into things, and we don't necessarily get that, and it's not anything bad, but this is, you know, one of the first times I feel like, okay, well, you're challenging me on this, or you're making me think, and, you know, and I appreciate that. So, yeah. And I appreciate it was really refreshing. Sorry. Oh, no. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was just saying this was really refreshing. Yeah, cuz I second what she said. It was really incredible to have a conversation with people who are religious and even you, like, you haven't arrived, but you're still devoted and exploring, and I just think that's beautiful because it's not something that we've necessarily experienced in these conversations before. So, yeah, thank you for being well-learned and so open to.

I do want to say one thing that I think is really important, and it is an important distinction, cuz I know you said that she hasn't arrived, which is, is true. She has not converted to Judaism. But the difference between Judaism and other religions is that Jews don't, um, try to convert. And the reason that Jews don't try to convert, in fact, it's often discouraged by rabbis if you say, "I want to convert." There is a tradition, and not every rabbi does this, but they'll turn you down because they want to make sure that you're really, really committed to it. But also more importantly, we don't believe that you have to be Jewish to be righteous with God, to have a relationship with God, or to be forgiven for sins. We are sinners. And God says in the Tanakh, you can repent when you turn back to me. You make *teshuva*, you give charity, you correct your behavior, I will forgive you. Mhm. So it seems like the distinction is that Judaism doesn't make an allowance for like shame or guilt, and there's a freedom in that because you have relationship with God. Whereas for us, it's like we are so aware of our human depravity that we need a savior, and that's the picture of the Gospel. There's still shame and guilt, but, yeah, especially. Okay, never mind.

Is there anything you would like to share about the discussion? Um, it, it was just, it's beautiful. I love these discussions. Um, people back home know that I sit, I could talk about, we could sit here for five days and talk about this. Um, what I love about you all, and again, I confessed it to you, um, that I've trolled y'all on all the Dr. Daff show that you guys were on, and, um, of all the lineup, your, your grace, your elegance, your eloquence, um, the way that you present and believe in what you believe in, it's just a beautiful thing, and it's infectious, right? And so I think, you know, as I, you know, may you both have just beautiful, prosperous lives in what you believe in, everything that you do, with everybody that you touch. Um, ultimately, you love God, you love Him, it's obvious this. And so, um, I don't know that I've taken anything, but I just want to give something, right, some encouragement that I just, I, I, I, I love that that we were paired with you two. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, ladies, for being here and discussing this. I'm sure you will probably continue. And thank you at home for listening to this conversation. Let us know in the comments your thoughts, what you thought about this discussion, anything that you think is important to add to it. And until next time, bye-bye.

[Applause] [Music]

Hey guys, I'm Tacia, aka Jew Greek and Mama. If you're enjoying this conversation, you'll love my new podcast by the book Christ or Mashiach. The podcast where we examine Christian interpretations of Jewish teachings side by side. Was the virgin birth ever really in the Hebrew Bible? Who's the suffering servant in Isaiah 53? You've heard the Christian version. Now, hear the Jewish response. The first two episodes are available right now. Search buy the book Christ or Mashiach wherever you get your podcasts. Because if we're going to talk about the Jewish Messiah, we've got to go buy the