Problems with Messianic Judaism on the Fringe

I know today is Thanksgiving and we’re all thinking about turkeys and football and family. But I have just a little suspicion some folks are going to be on their usual computer reading lists today at some point, eager to keep up those blog-reading rituals and keep the ideas and information flowing.

Anyway, if not, maybe you’ll be reading this after Thanksgiving and either one works for me.

My thoughts this morning are on a few troubling stories that I have run across. One is about a group forming online support for the “Messianic” community worldwide. Yet as I look into the group there seems to be no definition of “Messianic” that relates in any way to actual Jewish life. The other is a bitter email I received from someone who explained to me they left the Messianic Jewish movement because they viewed it as a Christ-less religion.

In various ways, these stories which sadden me all relate to Messianic Judaism at the fringes.

Unfortunately, the fringes have a lot more people involved in them than the core.

You see “Messianic Judaism” is a catch-all for a vague and general idea that attracts millions: the Jewish cultural context of the Bible virtually ignored in Christendom for millennia. Millions of Christians of all stripes and persuasions, from the Catholic and Orthodox Christian world to the Protestant, Evangelical, and Charismatic world are hungry to know more about Jesus the Rabbi.

You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to realize that Jesus is Jewish and that Christianity has been sweeping that under the rug for far too long. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not jumping on the anti-Christianity bandwagon. Far from it. I enjoy worship in and with Christians of most varieties. I can lay aside my Siddur and daven with the Baptists, moderate Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and so on. I can also hang with the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and maybe even Reconstructionist synagogues.

Nonetheless, the Christian history of neglect for the Jewishness of Jesus has left a massive void. Even people with little Bible knowledge realize this in some way and think looking at Jesus as a rabbi is cool. I don’t blame anyone for having a hunger to discover Passover and the tallit because of their Jesus-faith. It is a good thing.

But many “Messianic Jewish” groups are simply Christians confused about who they are, who Israel is, and what God is doing in these times with his people Israel.

Messianic Judaism at the core is about Jews and Gentiles who come alongside these Jews to be part of God’s work in the remnant of Israel. We believe that God is calling Jewish people to faith in Messiah within Judaism. We believe the idea of Jewish conversion to Christianity is a sad distortion based on a poor reading of the New Testament. God says in the New Testament that Gentiles need not become Jews to have Jesus-faith. Yet, sadly, people are convinced that Jews must become Gentiles to have Jesus-faith. Messianic Judaism at the core is a Judaism for Yeshua (Jesus).

Messianic Judaism at the fringes is filled with great people deluded by a variety of ideas. I will list a few of the most popular ones:

1. (Myth #1) Christianity is a false Greek and Roman perversion of the true faith which must be brought back to its Hebraic roots. (The kernel of truth here is that Christians need to get in touch with Jewish origins, but not in the sense of becoming Jewish in lifestyle.)

2. (Myth #2) The early Church was Jewish and we need to abandon modern churches to return to a purer form of Jesus-faith which is Jewish in expression. (Truth: The early Church in Jerusalem was Jewish, but Gentile expressions grew up through the mission of Paul and the apostles.)

3. (Myth #3) Since the Church has virtually ignored the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), we need an expression of faith that speaks less about Yeshua (Jesus) and more about the Old Testament. (Truth: Thus, out of some misguided loyalty to the Old Testament, some Messianic Jewish fringe groups try to talk about Yeshua less and the Old Testament more.)

4. (Myth #4) Since I, as a Gentile, have been grafted in to Israel (or since I am a child of Abraham now), I must relate to God as part of Israel. (Truth: The New Testament is careful to distinguish Jews and Gentiles while giving Gentiles the good news they have been brought into the promises without taking over the identity.)

5. (Myth #5) My love for Jewish things is likely evidence I am from one of the Ten Lost Tribes. (Truth: The tribes were not exactly lost and even if you had Israelite blood from thousands of years ago mixed with many generations since, how would that make you Israelite?)

6. (Myth #6) I cannot worship in a place with pagan practices such as Christmas, so the Messianic Jewish movement is all I have. (Truth: The so-called pagan roots of Christmas are exaggerated by teachers who have a vested interest in getting you to follow them.)

I could probably sit here all morning thinking of more and more myths driving the masses away from churches and into so-called Messianic Jewish groups and synagogues.

To paraphrase a friend’s great line: silly, self-defined Messianic Judaism is not worth having.

In the email I received from a person who said his seven years in Messianic Judaism was a Christ-less time, I thought about several things. First, did the synagogue he attended de-emphasize Yeshua in order to appear to be more Jewish? If so, how sad. I prefer to think of our relationship to Yeshua as comparable to Chabad’s exuberant passion for Messiah. We do not need to hide Yeshua to appear more Jewish. We need to be more passionate about Yeshua to be more MESSIANIC Jewish. Second, was this person in the Messianic movement for the wrong reason? If they had been in Messianic Judaism because of a real love for Jewish people and a desire to be part of what God is doing in Israel in the last days, then maybe they would have stuck it out or tried to find a place that better represented Yeshua.

And that all leads me to a few pieces of advice for Gentiles who realize they are part of fringe Messianic Judaism and not the real thing.

1. Are you in this for the right reasons?

2. If you bought into one of the myths above, please re-evaluate your commitment. It is likely that a good, Bible-teaching, people-serving church is the best place for you. If Christmas bothers you so much, skip out on that. You may have a great place helping people in the churches understand the Jewishness of Jesus.

3. If you are in this for the wrong reasons, but you have found yourself growing in love for Israel and Jewish people, maybe you need to find a Messianic synagogue that is actually about Judaism and Messiah. It helps if you live in a place with Jewish people. I get emails all the time from people in Timbuktu wondering how they can be Messianic Jewish. A big tip is this: be in the Jewish community. If you are not in the Jewish community, you are not really Messianic Jewish. Don’t be satisfied with a fringe group because at least they avoid some of the things you don’t like about churches. Find the real thing.

Messianic Judaism is not an alternative to the Church. Messianic Judaism is a movement within Judaism formed by God and expressing in word and deed a Jewish faith in Yeshua. There is a place for Gentiles in Messianic Judaism. I believe God said that many Gentiles would be attracted to Israel and to be part of God’s work within Israel. Some want to be involved from within and some Christians from their churches will want to be supportive from without. It is all good. But identity confusion and the strange belief that Christianity is somehow pagan have nothing to do with real Messianic Judaism.

Peter Rollins and Coffeehouse Philosophy

I went downtown last night and tonight to hear Christian philosopher Peter Rollins speak. He is the author of How (Not) to Speak About God and The Fidelity of Betrayal, a book which he originally wanted to call What Would Judas Do? Tonight’s event happened at a cool coffeehouse in Castleberry Hills in Atlanta. Hence the title of this post.

Rollins is brilliant and witty and his Irish brogue is the best schtick I could imagine for a philosopher in his vein. I’m glad I heard him before reading his books so I will read them in an Irish brogue and hear his quick wit in action.

Lest you think I am enrolling new members in the Peter Rollins fan club, something he would think misses the point anyway, I learned from him and took some things away while radically disagreeing.

His thought is very much about deconstruction, critiquing every idea and seeing the self-undermining quality of all our language about everything, including and especially God. Knowing God, says Rollins, is like looking at the sun. There is too much of the sun for the eyes to handle and ditto with God and the mind. In another analogy, he said knowing God is like being two inches from a giant screen television. There is too much there to take in. So the Bible gives us too much to comprehend about God, sometimes giving us contradictory images (God the warrior and yet peacemaker, for example), because our mind is inadequate to comprehend.

Rollins is excellent at critiquing anything and everything. He has a mind that sees the flaw and self-undermining quality in every idea. Christianity is self-undermining he says because it is about including the excluded. Thus, every time any Christian community builds it must reach out to the excluded ones and thus define itself out of existence.

He deconstructed common acts of charity by calling them fetishes (idols). Giving a gift to a Christmas charity, for example, is a way many Christians can feel better about living every day in support of various injustices (cheap food and clothing won off the backs of poor workers). Charitable gifts and charitable volunteerism can prevent change in the social self by making us content.

It’s all heady stuff. I’m not doing well at communicating here a thousand things he said that added to my understanding of life. He really did and I appreciate what I have gained so far.

But the deconstructing cannot go on forever. I noticed and commented on it at the group. I wish I could have had a one on one conversation for an hour with him. I asked him, if he doubts everything, why then does he cling to certain ideas as though they are fundamental truths. I noted in his talk that some ideas about God, such as incarnation, seemed like bedrock principles in his speech. And most of all, his commitment to ideas like lovingkindness, blessing, and goodness seemed absolute. I’d like to know how he would respond to what I am going to say below.

You can’t doubt everything even if you try. Deconstruction can be deconstructed.

Try deconstructing the idea of lovingkindness or mutual blessing.

You can’t really do it. I mean you could mouth some empty words about love being an illusion and we tend to define love in self-serving ways and yadda yadda. But try living as though lovingkindness is not an axiomatic value. Try valuing meanness and spite equally with lovingkindness. Find a poor person and take money from them. Make a kid cry. Pour a Coke in the red kettle of the local Salvation Army worker ringing his or her bell outside your local store.

Go ahead. Pretend you can question everything and doubt all things equally. I don’t buy it.

In fact, though C.S. Lewis might be regarded by some as an outmoded philosopher, I think there is something to his argument in Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man that there are some absolute and universal values that we cannot deny. Those who deny them, at least in appearance, by being hideous and cruel, prove the point by being loathsome to all who evaluate them.

There is good in the world and we can’t escape our attachment to it. It may be a leap from that point to the next one, but it seems to me a good reason to believe in God. The idea that God made us and built certain values into us is the best story I know to explain how we got this way. And Yeshua is the best story I know to explain God’s goodness concretely in our own history.

Book Review: Up, Up, and Oy Vey

Up, Up, and Oy Vey by Simcha Weinstein is both theological and fun, and how often does that happen?

You might not think a book about the Jewish cultural connection to the comic book world could be theological, but think again. Didn’t you notice theological themes in Superman and Batman, for instance? Weinstein could possibly open your eyes to a depth you never expected to find in comic books.

The subtitle is How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero. The opening paragraph is an ironic reflection on the Clark Kent existence of many Jews:

For most of my life, I lived a Clark Kent existence: that of a Jew living in Machester, England, intent on blending into the modern, secular world. I kept my Hebrew name a closely guarded secret. My desire to assimilate required no less.

Weinstein describes the Jewish immigrant experience in America in the 1930’s. Jewish memory of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Bible, which Weinstein calls the first superheroes, led to imaginative escapes from the difficulties of the time. Weinstein’s analysis revealed a texture to comic book history I had been unaware of:

As Eastern European Jewish Immigrants poured into New York’s Lower East Side in the 1900’s, they too viewed the stories of the Bible through the prism of their hard lives in a sometimes baffling new land and passed them on to their children. And those children in turn retold those Jewish tales using dots of colored ink on pulp paper, beginning in the 1930’s. (Actually, Superman was first drawn on cheap brown wrapping paper, but more on that later.) In those days the shadow of persecution was descending upon European Jews once more, and no one seemed willing to come to their rescue. The world needed heroes.

Weinstein explains the personalities behind the comic book industry, including a host of Jewish names such as:
–Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman.
–Bob Kane (born Kahn) and Bill Finger, creators of Batman.
–Jerry Robinson, creator of the Joker.
–Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber), creator of Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.

I particularly enjoyed a chart correlating comic books to Jewish values:
–Superman–integrity.
–Batman and the Spirit–justice.
–Captain America–patriotism.
–Justice League–teamwork.
–Fantastic Four–family values.
–Hulk–anger.
–Spider-man–responsibility and redemption.
–X-men–anti-Semitism and reconciliation.

Later chapters explore the mythos and Jewish connection of these various comic lines, with a chapter for each. The final chapter is called “Spiritual Metaphors in Spandex.”

Weinstein has written an easy and fun book that just might get us all reading comic books again, and feeling spiritual about it. Oy vey and read away.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I love blogging. You have no idea how much it means to me to have readers to keep me busy and thus to have a reason to write about a thousand different topics (all related to Messianic Jewish theology and practice).

I have no plans to stop blogging.

On the contrary, I am sort of rededicating myself to blogging.

I’ve been through some ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (David Bowie tune in background). Being a rabbi isn’t enough any more to keep food on the Leman table. I’ve taken on two other part-time writing jobs within the Messianic movement to thrive and stay alive. I will announce the projects I am working on at some point, when the time is right.

Finding new work has been a drain on my time for a while now and something of a preoccupation. I have been spinning so many plates to fight for the ability to keep spinning plates (as opposed to washing them at the local Chili’s or Houston’s restaurants).

My blogging has suffered a little from my preoccupation. I admit it.

But I am rededicating myself. I am going to be even busier than before with these new jobs (which I think you will find interesting when I share them with you). Yet, I know more than ever that Messianic Jewish blogging serves a valuable purpose for Christians, Jews, and all those willing to ponder themes touching on God and religion.

One change I am planning to implement post-haste is to start reviewing books regularly on this site. I have reviewed or at least summarized parts of many great books over the two years of this blog’s existence. But I am talking about giving you book reviews that are more an overview and evaluation of the entire book (not 10-part series getting into every detail).

There are so many worthy books out there and I read as many as I can. I want to read even more, a steady stream of books.

I’d like to start by giving you a list of books I’m planning to review in the weeks/months ahead. In an upcoming post I will include a wish list of books I’d like to review and don’t own yet. I also would love some comments with suggestions of books you’d like to see reviewed.

The books I would like to review include Jewish and Christian titles, some heavy reading and some lighter.

As for the wish list, I think I may set up a donation button or ask if anyone would like to buy books off the list for me and ask me to review them. Crazy? I’m not so sure. I think one or two of you just might find that small investment something you’d be willing to undertake. It’s a mitzvah to support scholarship, right?

UPCOMING BOOK REVIEWS
1. Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight, a Christian book designed to help us think differently about the Bible and escape some less-than-helpful patterns. Pretty light reading, but stimulating.

2. Jewish Living: A Guide to Contemporary Reform Practice by Mark Washofsky. I’m interested in understanding more how the more liberal side of Judaism handles issues of Torah. I’ve read some good stuff in the past, especially Niles Goldstein and Peter Knobel’s Duties of the Soul.

3. My People’s Passover Haggadah edited by Lawrence Hoffman and David Arnow. This is more than an order of service for Passover. It is a well-researched commentary on the Haggadah with history, significance, and insight. This qualifies as heavier reading, but useful for Passover lovers.

PLEASE COMMENT AND SEND IN SUGGESTIONS FOR BOOKS YOU’D LIKE TO SEE REVIEWED OR TO TELL ME ABOUT A GREAT NEW BOOK I MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT.

. . . coming soon . . . my wish list (I’m closing my eyes and making a wish and even hoping some of you will spring for a book on your amazon account).

A Reader Comments on Calvinism

Triston sent this comment by email and I thought I would pass it on. It brings back memories of days past when I would spend hours day after day debating theological issues such as determinism and free will (usually framed as Calvinism and Arminianism in Christian circles).

Say, if anybody wants to throw out a comment about determinism (predestination, Calvinism, unconditional election, etc.) and/or free will (does God limit his control?), feel free. I’d be glad to throw in my thoughts at points and respond to comments.

Triston’s comment is in reference to a post from a few days ago: http://derek4messiah.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/limits-of-knowledge-brilliant-ben-witherington-comments/
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Dear Derek:

I wanted to comment to your recent comments on Calvinism, but since I’m not a member of wordpress, it seemed easier just to email.

As a staunch Calvinist I have yet to find any other Christian belief system which gives more glory to God for our salvation than Calvinism. That is it’s attraction to me and, I would think, to most all Calvinists. Is it a flawless system? I would not go that far. Is it the best Christians have come up with in a faithful attempt at understanding God and His Word? I would say “Yes.”

PS: I’ve enjoyed some of your posts on Jewish theology.

Thanks.

Triston Dyer

http://litl-luther.blogspot.com/

Virgins, Prophets, Angels, and Matthew

This post is part of a series, the most recent two installments to be found at “Read All About It: Ancient Prophet’s Precise Prognostication!” and “The Non-Story Approach to Matthew Five Fulfillments.“
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Of the five fulfillments in Matthew 1-2, the first one is often the hardest to explain to people. This is because people have such a strong idea beforehand that they know what this fulfillment text means. To suggest a different reading almost seems sacrilegious.

If I said to you that Isaiah 7:14 was not about Yeshua, would you tar and feather me? If I said that the woman in Isaiah 7:14 is not necessarily a virgin, would you relegate me to the woodpile doused in oil waiting for me to be tied to it and burned alive?

Well, Mary was a virgin and she did conceive by the Holy Spirit. But the thing is, neither the word that Matthew uses nor the word that Isaiah used in 7:14 means virgin. The word means a maiden or a young woman. It usually signifies an unmarried young woman.

So, if it is true that Isaiah 7:14 is not a prediction of the virgin birth, what is it about and what does it tell us about Yeshua?

Well, most people don’t look carefully at Matthew 1:18-25. They have it in their head that this is a prophecy prediction coming to pass. But look at it again. Does Matthew say that the virgin birth of Yeshua happened in order to fulfill what Isaiah said?

No, not if you are paying attention. Matthew says that an angel appearing to Joseph and announcing the special birth of the special child, Yeshua, FILLS UP the story of Isaiah 7:14.

To understand this, you need to know the story in Isaiah 7. Isaiah, the prophet, is standing in front of the king of Judah, named Ahaz. Ahaz is afraid that Judah is about to be destroyed by neighboring Syria. So God sends the prophet Isaiah with a message: a young woman will have a child whose birth will be a sign. This child will be a sign that Judah will be saved and Syria will come to nothing.

So, did you get that? At a scary time in Israel’s history, a special messenger made an announcement about a special child whose birth would signify salvation for Israel.

And what happens in Yeshua’s birth story? A special messenger, this time an angel, gives a message that a special child, this time the Messiah, will be born and save Israel.

Yeshua’s story is a sort of replay and even an enlargement of one of the stories of Israel’s past. In Yeshua’s story the messenger and the child are even greater than in Isaiah’s. Yeshua’s story fills up the earlier Isaiah story.

And the other four are like it.

Micah, a prophet from the same time and place as Isaiah, wrote a great prophecy about a king whose origins were of old but who was born in the sleepy Judean town of Bethlehem.

Matthew, in his account, cannot help but notice the irony. Magi from Persia come to the little town of Bethlehem looking for the king of the Jews.

It’s the story from Micah happening. And it is happening in the life of Yeshua.

Hosea, a prophet from the generations before Isaiah and in the northern kingdom of Israel, wrote a beautiful poem about God’s love for Israel. Hosea called Israel God’s son. Hosea talked about God teaching his son to walk and the son rebelling against the father.

Well, Matthew couldn’t help but notice. Yeshua was like all of the good things in Hosea’s story with none of the bad things. Yeshua was like the Son Israel was supposed to be. And so that part of the story where God called Israel out of Egypt, it happened in Yeshua’s life too. Yeshua is the good Son.

Jeremiah, the tragic prophet who lived when Judah was destroyed by Babylon, saw a lot of children die. It’s not for nothing that people call Jeremiah the weeping prophet.
And Jeremiah lamented the Babylonians slaughtering the people of Bethlehem, a city close to Jerusalem. Bethlehem is the place where Rachel was buried. So Jeremiah wrote a prophetic poem about Rachel’s children being slaughtered.

And Matthew thought of the similar pain that came in Yeshua’s time. Another king, Herod, also slaughtered the children of Bethlehem. The suffering of Israel’s past, it was there too in Yeshua’s story.

And finally, Matthew found one last story from Israel’s past in the story of Messiah’s birth and childhood. Messiah came to live in the city of Nazareth.

Nazareth is Natzeret in Hebrew, coming from the word BRANCH. And Matthew saw a pattern in that too. Nazareth is Branch-Town and any lover of the scriptures knows that Messiah is called the Branch.

He is the long lost branch of David’s line, the returning Davidic king who will finally restore Israel. And isn’t it fitting, then, that he grew up in Branch-Town, an unimportant little place called Nazareth.

The five fulfillments in Matthew 1-2 are not a list of predictions proven successful. They are not a statistical argument for the Messiahship of Yeshua. They are echoes of Israel’s story in the story of Yeshua. They say something about who Yeshua is, clueing us in to the fact he is living out the calling of Israel, being what Israel is supposed to be. Noting these echoes is not necessarily intended to give us mathematical exactitude, but rather doxological wonder.

Limits of Knowledge, Brilliant Ben Witherington Comments

On his blog, Ben Witherington, a very helpful New Testament scholar (though weak on Israel issues, IMO), is commenting on an interview with John Piper. John Piper is pretty much THE voice of Calvinism in America today. Calvinism is a Christian theology strong on predestination, damnation, and depravity.

I have been blessed by some beautiful things Piper has written about the supremacy of God and desire as a spiritual path. And I have to say some of my Christian friends are Calvinists. But I find this theology to be not only sterile, but bleakly over-pessimistic.

The point of my including Ben Witherington’s comments below is not merely to critique Calvinism, but to critique a lot of Christian (especially evangelical) assumptions about knowledge and theological systems. We all need to be reminded of exactly what Witherington so eloquently describes here:

EXCERPT FROM http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/
John Piper explains Why Calvinists are so Negative

What he does not add, that could have been added, is that, for whatever reason, Calvinism seems to feed a deep seated need in many persons for a kind of intellectual certainty about why the world is as it is, and what God is exactly like, and how his will is worked out in the world, and most particularly how salvation works and whether or not one is a saved person.

And all too often, the apparent intellectual coherency of a theological system is taken as absolute and compelling proof that this view of God, salvation,the world must be true and all others be heresy, to one degree or another. But it is perfectly possible to argue logically and coherency in a hermeneutical or theological circle with all parts connected, and unfortunately be dead wrong– because one drew the circle much too small and left out all the inconvenient contrary evidence. This sort of fault is inevitable with theological systems constructed by finite human beings.

A minutes reflection will show that intellectual coherency, as judged by finite fallen or even redeemed minds, is not a very good guide to what is true. The truth of God and even of the Bible is much larger than anyone’s ability (or any collection of human being’s abilities) to get their mental calipers so firmly around it that one could form it into a ‘coherent theological system’ without flaws, gaps, or lacunae. That includes Calvin’s very fine mind as reflected in his Theological Institutes. The real paradox about the God of Calvin is while Calvin does all in his power to stress the enormity and consequent sovereignty of a great God over all things, sadly but inevitably even his God is too small to encompass everything that is said about God in the Scriptures, even just everything that is said about soteriology in the Scriptures.

While I certainly believe that God’s own worldview is coherent, and that some of it is revealed in the Bible, the facts are that the Bible does not reveal everything we always wanted to know about God so we could be certain God exists and form that body of knowledge into a self-sustaining fully coherent theological system with one idea leading to another idea, and so on (and now we can all sing a chorus of ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken’). . .

Ben Witherington

The Non-Story Approach to Matthew’s Five Fulfillments

There are five fulfillment sayings in Matthew 1 and 2. In four of the five Matthew says these things happened to “fill up” [usual translation “fulfill”] some aspect of Israel’s story:

#1, Matt 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel”

#2, Matt 2:4-6 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.’”

#3, Matt 2:14-15 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

#4, Matt 2:16-18 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.”

#5, Matt 2:23 And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

There is a common but insufficient way of reading these. It is a sort of “just-the-facts” approach or, as I called it in my last post, the prophets’ precise prognostication approach. It views these five fulfillments as non-story

THE NON-STORY APPROACH
The first one is about an angel talking to Joseph and saying: your wife is a virgin and she will bear a son who will save Israel. This is all something that Isaiah foretold. Isaiah said, “A virgin will get pregnant and will give birth to Messiah.” So it happened just as Isaiah foretold when Messiah was born.

The second one is about the place Messiah was born. Micah foretold where Messiah would be born. And, keeping prophecy intact, Yeshua was born there.

The third one is about Yeshua’s journey into Egypt. Hosea the prophet foretold that God’s son would go into Egypt and be called out. In keeping with prophecy, Yeshua went into Egypt as a baby and was called back out as a child.

The fourth one is about when Herod killed the babies around Bethlehem. The prophet Jeremiah foretold that there would be a slaughter of Rachel’s children near where Rachel is buried in Bethlehem. In keeping with prophecy, Herod did what Jeremiah foretold.

The fifth one is about Yeshua coming to live in Nazareth. Isaiah foretold that Messiah would live in Nazareth. In keeping with prophecy, Yeshua lived where Isaiah foretold.

ANALYSIS
What is insufficient with this way of looking at the five fulfillments in Matthew’s story?

A lot is wrong with it. For one thing, there are only two out of five of these fulfillments that you could even argue are really what the prophet was talking about.

Depending on how you interpret the first one, Isaiah 7:14, you might think Isaiah was predicting the whole Mary, virginity, and birth of Messiah thing. In the second one, we can say with some certainty that Micah 5:2 really was about Messiah being born in Bethlehem.

But what about the other three? For the third one, if you go back and check, you’ll see that Hosea wasn’t talking about Messiah at all. Hosea 11:2 is talking about Israel as God’s son being called out of Egypt at the Exodus. For the fourth one, you can check and see that Jeremiah 31:15 is not talking about the days of Messiah either. Jeremiah is talking about the children who died in mass numbers when the Babylonians attacked Israel in his time. For the fifth one, you will especially have a problem. You can search your Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi and not find anywhere that says, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

So what is really going on?

What’s really going on is Matthew finding the patterns of Israel’s story in the story of Yeshua. Matthew is not using these to prove anything. He is using them to help those who already believe see the incredible way that God works in history and in the life of his Son.

There is a better way to read the five fulfillments of Matthew 1 and 2. It is a reading that sees the echoes, the recurring patterns of Israel’s story.

Next Time: Virgins, Prophets, Angels, and Matthew.

Read All About It: Ancient Prophet’s Precise Prognostication!

The following is an introduction to a short series on the five fulfillments of Matthew 1 and 2.
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Everything we know in life comes to us through story. We grew up on stories we witnessed about family, childhood, the world around us. We learned how and when to laugh, how and when to love, and how and when to cry from watching and making the stories of what we saw into guiding narratives for our lives. Even mundane things we know, like when to change the oil in our car, we learned as stories, such as the dreaded story of the burned-up engine.

Sometimes people get confused and think that what they want in life is just the facts. We imagine that life could just be boiled down to lists and table and bullet points. We imagine ourselves scientific beings simply following the known data about life.

But then we pay large sums of money to be entertained with stories. Vulcan starship officers we are not.

Our love for stories ought to clue us in to a fuller view of life and meaning. Imagine a great romantic comedy reduced to bullet points:
Man, woman, no love
Man, woman, growing interest
Man, woman, unspoken love
Man, woman, crisis to growing love
Man, woman, overcome crisis
Man, woman, kissing and very happy

Not only would non one pay to rent that from Blockbuster, it wouldn’t even be worth the gas if it was a free rental.

Stories are how we learn and experience and grow. And we have had our share of mundane but useful yarns, like the oil change horror story, and more significant epic sagas like our first kiss. We’ve had farcical disappointment stories and senseless tragedy stories along with glimpses of the divine romantic epic.

And among all the stories of the world, at some point there have been some uber-stories, the most important ones of all: God creating us, loving us, reaching out to us. Some stories make sense of all the others.

The adventure of Messiah’s birth is one such guiding narrative. It evokes such life-giving elements as the saga of death and salvation and life after death. It is a story about God becoming like us so we can become like him.

And, we could do to this story what we did experimentally with that romantic comedy. We could stick just to the facts:
A child born in Judea about 5 B.C.E.
The child was believed by some to be a prophesied deliverer.
The child is believed by some to be divine as well as human.
The child is the subject of the world’s largest religious movement.

But the story is so much richer than a mere list of facts. It is not enough to know that Yeshua was born. The story waits for us filled with meaning and hope.

But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (which means, God with us). –Matthew 1:20-23

And as we get into the depths of Matthew’s version, we find that he looks at Yeshua’s life in terms of echoes of Israel’s story. But too often readers miss the joyous interplay of story and insist on a tabloid prophecy approach:

ANCIENT PROPHET ACCURATELY DESCRIBES LIFE OF BETHLEHEM BOY

If we are tempted to reduce Messiah’s birth story to facile headlines, we may as well give up great books and great movies. From some of the preaching and teaching Matthew 1 and 2 have been subjected to, we might as well reduce all great stories to a bullet point outline.

The idea that some Israelite prophets saw advance headlines about the life and career of Messiah is not wrong for the reason some people think. This is not a matter of denying the miraculous.

It’s more like the prophecy-fulfillment reading is insufficient. It’s a bad movie critic’s complaint that the romantic tension of a good romantic comedy is a waste of time. Just give us the kiss at the end and quit making us uncomfortable with waiting and tension and conflict.

The prophecy-fulfillment reading of Matthew’s birth story is like a montage of kiss scenes being called a romantic movie. There is so much more going on here than headlines or big screen smooches. And as we delve into meaning, we’ll find the actual romance of the five fulfillments of Matthew 1 and 2 much more satisfying than precise prognostication.

Exploring Israel in LaGrange, Georgia?

It is a Sunday evening and my friends and I are exploring Israelite tombs of varying periods. In one first temple period tomb, we find two complete skeletons and a vault with bones from generations unknown. Our connection to the past is something we feel here more than almost anywhere I have been. Whose bones are these? What sort of Israelite families do they represent? Will I find evidence of idolatry in this tomb or Torah-faithfulness?

Perhaps the strangest thing is that this tomb is in LaGrange, Georgia, a small town about an hour and half from Atlanta.

No, I am not crazy. I was not abducted by aliens. The tomb I am exploring is a reproduction.

I am not in a real tomb, but in a fabulous archaeology of Israel experience brought to Georgia by the Callaway family, known around here for the famous Callaway Gardens resort. I am at Explorations in Antiquity (explorationsinantiquity.net).

If you are near Atlanta or ever have travel plans including Atlanta, try and make time to come down to LaGrange and see this museum. The director is Dr. Jim Fleming, a well-known archaeologist who has some great stories and has been in some places and situations in archaeology that many of us armchair archaeologists dream about.

I brought a group from the congregation to experience a biblical period meal. We learned about the triclinium, or reclining couch style meals of the Roman period. For our comfort, we sat on benches modern style, but we had modeled for us the reclining style of eating which is the background of the Passover Seder and which is the true scene for the Last Supper.

Our guide, an Israeli believer in Yeshua, regaled us with midrashic stories and theories about the disciples and the banquets they shared with Yeshua. He also explained to us the many features of the life in Bible times exhibit outdoors.

We saw the desert lifestyle and learned a bit of Bedouin culture. We experienced biblical period farming techniques, especially the olive press and the wine press. We walked through a typical Israelite four-part house and also a city gate from the period. We herded the children into a sheepfold as our guide spoke to us about shepherds and their customs.

The highlight of the evening for many was a midrashic homily on the olive press and its relation to Yeshua in the Garden of Gethsemane (Gethsemane means olive press and it was an olive grove). Our guide demonstrated the technique for pressing olives and showed us the typical four pressings.

The first pressing brings the extra virgin oil, perhaps reserved for holy purposes and anointing oil. The second pressing brings the flavorful oil used in food. The third pressing brings oil for common lamps. The fourth pressing brings bitter, acidic residue, good for making soap.

Our guide had an obvious passion for his topic. He spoke about Yeshua being under pressure in Gethsemane (the olive press) and having blood mingle with his sweat in the trauma of the moment. He related the four pressings to Yeshua’s person and work:
1. The pure oil for anointing brings to mind Yeshua as Messiah (Anointed One).
2. The luscious oil for eating with bread brings to mind the Bread of Life.
3. The useful oil for lighting brings to mind the Light of the World.
4. The bitter residue used for soap brings to mind cleansing in Messiah.

Who knew that in a small town in Georgia we could draw water from a well and discuss the life and times of Yeshua the Messiah?

The Strange Logic of Half-Jewish.net

I introduced a rather troubling letter to Messianic Jews found on half-jewish.net in a post earlier this week. As promised, I am going to say more about a few of the issues in the letter. For starters, I want to consider the stance of half-jewish.net towards Messianic Jews in light of its stance toward the many other decisions and identities that adult children of intermarriage choose for themselves.

Half-Jewish.net on the surface suggests that the choice to be a Muslim is equally valid to the choice to be a Jew. Thus, adult children of intermarriage who choose any religious affiliation, including Christian, Buddhist, or no affiliation at all are welcomed in the community. For example, the home page expressly “welcomes adult children and other descendants of intermarriage from all religious, secular and cultural backgrounds.” Regarding adult children of intermarriage who choose to follow Christianity, half-jewish.net says:

We welcome with great warmth the Christian-identified adult children and other descendants of intermarriage who have found the Half-Jewish Network.

The welcome is made very broad indeed for adult children of intermarriage who decide to become Muslim, Hindu, or anything else:

You may be Muslim, you may be Hindu, you may be Buddhist, you may be Wiccan, you may belong to some faith we haven’t listed here, you may be self-defined as “belong to two faiths,” “secular,” “both,” “nothing,” or “undecided,” but we’re glad to see you!

The sole exception to the welcome, it seems, is for Messianic Jews. I should say that the official policy claims to be one of welcome for Messianic Jews:

We don’t have a problem with you personally. You are cordially welcomed to our organization.

Yet this official policy is undermined rather severely by the fact that of all the choices adult children of intermarriage might make, the only religious affiliation that is subjected to critique, and even denunciation, is Messianic Judaism.

Half-Jewish.net does not express any critique of Hinduism or even Islam as a valid choice for children of a Jewish mother or father. It is apparently a fine choice for children of intermarriage to choose Christianity and to leave behind the Jewish heritage of one parent. But the great error, according to half-jewish.net, is for a child of intermarriage to choose both Judaism and Christianity in a unified fashion by choosing Messianic Judaism.

And that choice is critiqued and denounced. The letter says of Messianic Judaism:

Messianic Jewish organizations are teaching are Christianity dressed up to look like Judaism . . . Deception is strictly forbidden by both Judaism and Christianity . . . Any Jew acknowledging Christ as their Saviour automatically becomes a meshumad, an apostate from Judaism . . . Messianic Jews do attract some descendants of intermarriage, by offering them a synthesis of Jewish and Christian beliefs, the Half-Jewish Network is very uncomfortable with that . . . We are not interested in harming either Judaism or Christianity by helping revive a modern version of the Ebionite heresy . . . We would be glad to talk with you about ways to stay connected to both of your two “halves,” that don’t involve joining organizations engaged in spiritual deception . . .

It’s not at all the warm, sympathetic welcome you get on half-jewish.net if, say, you are the child of a Jewish mother and Muslim father and you decide to take up Islam, including the firm denial in Islam that the Jewish people are God’s Chosen People. It is better to reject the Jewish people’s place in God’s plan completely by becoming a Muslim than to be a Jew who believes Jesus is the Messiah while remaining a Jew.

That is strange logic. It is so strange in fact, it makes one wonder. What is the real reason half-jewish.net is against Messianic Judaism as an option?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s because Messianic Judaism is just so attractive, such a compelling option for adult children of intermarriage. Messianic Judaism, a Judaism that believes in Jesus, is not what the editor(s) of half-jewish.net would choose for themselves. That is clear. But why single it out among the many options deemed acceptable, as the only “deceptive” choice?

Here is where I believe we see hints that half-jewish.net do not really believe that all choices are equally valid. In fact, it is apparent to me, as I will show below, that the editors of this site actually have a commitment to a liberal form of Judaism. They have a commitment to Judaism that is rather weak and which must be defended. That is, what makes the editors of half-jewish.net feel Jewish is anything but a robust commitment to Judaism.

Rather, their Judaism is based on a negative: not believing in Jesus. Why do I say this? I say it because the only option which seems to threaten the precarious balance of their seemingly tolerant system is the one which upholds Judaism and Jesus at the same time.

And Messianic Jews give the lie to that weak definition of Judaism. We Messianic Jews have a different definition of Judaism: following the commandments and traditions of the covenant people of Israel. We claim that faith in Jesus is compatible with following the commandments and traditions. We claim Judaism stands for something positive and not something negative.

Perhaps the strange logic of half-jewish.net owes itself to a sense of inadequacy. Perhaps the Judaism of the site’s editors is too weak to be defined by anything more than the rejection of a possible Messiah.

New Book on Islam and Christianity in the Middle East

Phillip Jenkins is an author who has written on the exploding Christianity of the non-Western world. Christianity is growing, not shrinking, outside of the West, even though it is shrinking drastically here in America.

He has now written a book on the history of Middle Eastern Christianity and its extermination over time by Muslims. I am including here an excerpt from Mark Noll’s review of Jenkins’ new book as it appears in Books and Culture, a publication of Christianity Today. I highly recommend Books and Culture as an easy way to keep up with some of the best information affecting religion and culture.

Say, does anybody want to volunteer to buy Jenkins’ book for me for Hanukkah? :-) So many books, so little money . . .
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EXCERPT FROM MARK NOLL’S ARTICLE ON christianitytoday.com

After three noteworthy books that shook up perceptions of the Christian present, Philip Jenkins is now proposing to shake up the Christian past. Where his much-noticed The Next Christendom (2002) and The New Faces of Christianity (2006) charted the recent emergence of Christian movements in the non-West and introduced their dynamic engagement with Scripture, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis (2007) suggested that much conventional wisdom about religion in contemporary Europe needed serious re-thinking. Now in The Lost History of Christianity, Jenkins turns his attention to the experience of Christians in the greater Middle East—which, he argues, has been systematically neglected in the general accounts of standard church history.

The success of Jenkins’ latest effort is indicted by how effectively his narrative ties contemporary incidents into long-existing historical realities. In the cascade of news on Iraq, it has been easy to dismiss intelligence from Turkey as a mere sideshow. Only regional experts, for instance, might have noticed that the city of Urfa in far southeastern Turkey had become a center of Islamic piety and a headquarters for the Muslim political movement that in 2003 defeated Turkey’s secular parties and formed a government that rules to this day. American evangelicals are more likely to recall the horrific murders of three Protestants in Malatya in eastern Turkey that occurred in April 2007. The five assassins immediately confessed that they had slain German missionary Tilmann Geske and two Turkish converts (Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel) because they saw Christian profession, especially by converts, as destroying the Turkish nation.

With Philip Jenkins’ new book in hand, it is immediately obvious that such accounts, with no apparent connection to anything but the fervid antagonisms of the moment, in fact represent the latest incidents in a very long history for the part of the world that was known as “Asia Minor” to the Apostle Paul and then as “Byzantium” during more than a thousand years of full-orbed Christian settlement. In Turkey’s case, much is interwoven with the history of Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christianity, when Urfa was known as Edessa and Malatya as Melitene. Each was a center of majority Christian settlement for a very long period, each contained thousands of Christians as late as the early 20th century, and each experienced intermittent attacks of which recent violence is only the last in a long series. Edessa’s history is especially poignant. As early as AD 200 its king had accepted the new religion and ruled his kingdom as the first formally Christian state. Much, much later, in a savage attack perpetrated as the once-great Ottoman Empire neared collapse, angry Muslims massacred 8,000 Armenian Christians in this same city (1894). That same year, one thousand more fell at Melitene; in the great slaughter at the time of the World War I, Greek and Armenian Orthodox were mostly wiped out in Melitene. Yet as late as 1924, 2,500 Syrian Orthodox believers remained in Edessa, when they were then forced into exile. Today there are no known Christians in Urfa (Edessa) and only a hard-pressed few in Malatya (once Melitene). Following Jenkins, we know it was not always so.

The Lost History of Christianity casts similar light on events in Iraq itself. After Pope Benedict XVI delivered his controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, which quoted a medieval text about the senseless violence of Islam, Muslim reprisals took place in many parts of the world, including the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is situated north of Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River, very close to the ancient biblical city of Nineveh. Almost immediately after the pope’s speech, angry Muslims sought out and beheaded Paulos Iskander, a priest in the Syrian Orthodox Church. At about the same time, Father Ragheed Ganni began to send messages abroad about his hard-pressed community in this same city: “priests celebrate mass amidst the bombed out ruins; mothers worry as they see their children face danger to attend catechism with enthusiasm; the elderly come to entrust their fleeing families to God’s protection.” On Trinity Sunday, 2007, Father Ganni and three of his sub-deacons were kidnapped and killed. He was a priest in the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Synagogues, Church Buildings, Early Christianity

Here is a great article by Ben Witherington, one of my favorite New Testament scholars.

If you don’t mind a long article and you like to know about historical and cultural backgrounds of the Bible, you will like this one. Even for those who already know a lot, Ben’s arguments here are cutting edge.

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2008/11/gamla-synagogue.html

Half-Truth on HalfJewish.net?

I was recently made aware of a website known as half-jewish.net, the home page for the Half-Jewish Network.

I like the idea of the site and I expected to find some useful material. I’m sure it is a site that helps many people. But I was disturbed by two things I found there: one on the part of the Half-Jewish Network and the other on the part of so-called “Messianic Jews” who have used the site.
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The Half-Jewish Network is a social networking hub for adult children of a Jewish mother or father regardless of whether they identify as Christians, Jews, secular, members of other faiths, “both,” or even “undecided.” It would appear that the Half-Jewish Network is welcoming to any and all.

Yet there are tarnish marks on the shiny silver of the Half-Jewish Network’s policy of inclusion. There is one group that is all but unwelcome. That group is Messianic Jews.

Sources tell me the problem began when people calling themselves “Messianic Jews” and/or “Jews for Jesus” came on to the site and were rude and patronizing toward others. From the information I received it sounds like some of these so-called Messianic Jews had theologies quite unfriendly to Judaism.

Those of us who have been in the Messianic Jewish movement know exactly how embarrassing it can be to have people out there calling themselves “Messianic Jews” and to have them represent us in public venues. There are a lot of scary beliefs, a lot of anti-rabbinic and anti-Judaic beliefs among these groups. The fact is the majority of people who might label themselves as Messianic Jews on the internet are either Christians with a love for Torah (but not necessarily love for Jews) or Jewish Christians with no love for or knowledge about Judaism. The mature voices among us are few in comparison.

So it occurs to alarmingly few people to let someone know they are not “Messianic Jewish” if they reject Judaism. We could only wish such people would change their moniker to something else, maybe Jewish Christian, for example.

I gave all of that background to preface some serious problems I have with the way the Half-Jewish Network has decided to respond to Messianic Judaism. The half-jewish.net site has a letter to and description of Messianic Judaism that I believe is half-truth and a bit less than tolerant. I have contacted the organization and asked for some balance and have been refused.

You can see the letter to Messianic Jews on half-jewish.net at: http://half-jewish.net/messianicjews.html

Half-Jewish.net Uses Guilt by Association
There are several troubling generalizations and out-dated ideas in the letter to Messianic Jews. For example, they include together groups and movements that are very diverse (Jews for Jesus based in San Francisco and the Messianic Jewish congregational movement, for example).

More specifically, they find something outrageous on a Messianic Jewish website somewhere and give the impression that such elements are commonplace. The example chosen in the article is a Messianic website which posts the Hebrew text of the Apostles’ Creed. This is allegedly an example of how we Messianic Jews are trying to fool people by disguising Christian teachings as Jewish teachings and possibly misleading unwary Jews.

Half-Jewish.net Does Not Acknowledge Mature Messianic Judaism
You will find no mention of Messianic Jews who understand and practice Judaism on half-jewish.net. There is no reference to the dozens of websites which are faithful exponents of Jewish life and tradition. The letter about Messianic Jews makes no reference to several recent trends in Messianic Judaism. We now have a serious seminaries forming such as the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (mjti.org). We now have a rabbinical council (ourrabbis.org) and a denomination in Messianic Judaism that is characterized by a serious approach to Judaism (umjc.net), as opposed to Christianity dressed up Jewish-style.

The omission of mature Messianic Jewish institutions on half-jewish.net is all the more troubling because the site goes out of its way to mention and be welcoming to virtually all other groups.

For example, the Half-Jewish Network welcomes those who choose to follow the Christian side of their heritage. Yet the idea that a Jewish person might remain Jewish and follow Jesus is regarded as “spiritual deception.”

On the one hand, the Half-Jewish Network is friendly to Jews who convert to Christianity. On the other, they say:

Any Jew acknowledging Christ as their Saviour automatically becomes a meshumad, an apostate from Judaism, and must do teshuvah (repentance) to return to Judaism, including giving up all Christian beliefs.

As a statement of what some Jewish denominations believe and practice, this statement is perfectly true. Yet the irony of a site open to Jewish converts to Christianity excluding Messianic Jews as apostates is readily apparent.

The Half-Jewish Network is a place for adult children of a Jewish mother or father. It would be a good idea for Messianic Jews who actually understand Judaism and who fit those criteria to get involved. Perhaps over time mature Messianic Half-Jews can erase the misperceptions that color us due to the aggressive proselytizing and rude, patronizing speech exhibited in the past by some individuals who give our movement a bad name.

In the meantime, I plan to offer some correctives in future posts to some of the half-truths on half-jewish.net

Messiah’s Birth Story, Part 3

We’ve been taking a closer look at the birth story of Messiah. We may end up with twenty parts to this series, because I have a lot to say. It may take a dozen posts just to get through Matthew’s version.

At the moment, we are going through the four parts of Matthew’s story (1:1-17; 1:18-25; 2:1-12; 2:13-23) and looking at the big picture. What pattern is Matthew communicating to us in each of these sections. In “Messiah’s Birth Story, Part 3,” I explained some of the meaning of the genealogy. Now, we are looking at 1:18-25.
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Matthew 1:18-25 as a Type Scene
We have here a variation on a TYPE SCENE, a concept I was introduced to by Robert Alter in his immensely useful book, The Art of Biblical Narrative. Let me first explain to you what a type scene is.

Say you turn on a television and you see a scene before you. In far less than a second you are able to take in this scene and know exactly what is on the screen.

You see before you two men standing on a street in a setting that looks to be from the 1800’s with buildings lining each side of the dirt street. The men have their hands near their hips and are facing each other, each staring the other down in grim silence. They have on their hips leather belts with revolvers.

Do you have any trouble knowing in one second what this scene is all about? Of course you recognize a Western when you see one. And the gunfight scene is a type scene, a familiar and repeated scene which occurs with many variations in Westerns. Others might include an angry gunfighter bursting through the swinging doors of the saloon or the gunfighter and the saloon girl falling in love.

So, let me talk to you about one of the Bible’s common type scenes. You have a woman who is childless. She is in distress about her situation. An angel comes and speaks to her or to her husband. A promise is made of a coming birth of a special child. This child will be a savior to his people, or in some way very important to God’s plan. Sound familiar? One of the places where just such a story happens is with Samson. And now we see such a story in the account of Messiah’s birth.

There are plenty of other type scenes in the Bible, such as a man coming to the aid of a woman at a well. But Matthew 1:18-25 is a variation on the type scene of a special birth announcement.

Matthew 1:18-19
Here is how the birth of Yeshua the Messiah took place. When his mother Miryam was engaged to Yosef, before they were married, she was found to be pregnant from the Ruach Hakodesh. 19 Her husband-to-be, Yosef, was a man who did what was right; so he made plans to break the engagement quietly, rather than put her to public shame.

Exploring the Meaning in the Variations
Mary is childless, like Samson’s mother and other women who have appeared in such scenes. Only in this story, she is supposed to be childless. In fact, here is a great variation on the usual story: Mary’s distress is not that she is childless but that she becomes pregnant prior to marriage.

The women in these stories often face some type of shame in their childbearing or lack of it. In Mary’s case, she could be stoned to death. But Joseph is going to give her a certificate breaking their betrothal.

Into that story comes an angel. The angel appears to Joseph and reassures him, “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” It is a special conception. Rachel and Samson’s mother and Hannah, mother of Samuel, and others in the Bible, they had special conceptions too. Isaiah the prophet, in Isaiah 7 and 8, he also had a special conception of a special child.

But the conception that has taken place here tops them all. This is not just a BARREN mother receiving a miracle child. This is a VIRGIN mother receiving the most miraculous child of all.

And the children of Rachel were special. Samson was a savior to his people. Samuel was a great prophet.
And Isaiah’s child was a sign of coming peace. But Yeshua? What would he do? Would he save people from the famine like Joseph or from the Philistines like Samson?

No, the angel said something greater.

Matthew 1:21
She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Yeshua, [which means ‘ADONAI saves,’] because he will save his people from their sins.”

And so we see something here: a pattern of Israel’s history, a type scene, repeated in the life of Yeshua. It is meaningful to Matthew and his assumed audience that the patterns of Israel keep showing up in Yeshua’s life. Perhaps we can become more like Matthew’s assumed readers and catch the wonder of the pattern ourselves.