8.5 main topic posts vs. 10.5 tangential posts.
Anyone care to guess where it began to wander dramatically?

I have been taking a look around Joseph Viel's website (not had the time until now) and reading some of his articles and as far as I can see he calles the Messiah either 'Y'shua' or 'Yeshua'. At the conclusion of one articles he writes:

"Now I prefer to use "Y'shua", not "Jesus", without condemning those who use "Jesus". G-d looks at the heart and the intent behind what people are meaning when they say what they say. "Y'shua" is how the Name is said in the Holy Language, and it's also more internationally recognized than "Jesus". So while there's many reasons to prefer the use of "Y'shua" over "Jesus", condemning people for a mis-pronunciation is ridiculous." ( http://www.messiahalive.net/ )

I agree with him, more or less.

The Ebionites were an ancient sect that observed Torah but rejected the writings of Paul - they don't exist as an organised unit today (that I know of). Those who reject Torah are known as antinomians (anti-law people) even though all antnomians accept some Torah or Law. Similarly, those who reject Paul are commonly known as Ebionites even if they do not adhere to the crede of the ancient sect known as Ebionites. Thus I use the label 'Ebionite' of those who accept Torah but exclude Paul from the NT canon, which in your case I believe in no way misrepresents your position (unless of course you reject more than Paul in the NT - you have never stated your position on Peter or Luke, incidentally, so I may have to redefine 'Ebionite' in your case after you have made it clear what your position on these two writers are.

So I ask now: DO YOU REJECT THE WRITINGS OF PETER AND/OR LUKE IN WHOLE OR IN PART?

With a clear answer from you I will be able to credit you correctly as well as represent you honourably here.

We do not appear to be in disagreement over the Macabbean period and the two festivals that evolved from it but I consider this to be a side-issue to the more important one of whether Yah'shua atopned for our sins or not (those who say He didn't are not, in my book, true Christians or Messianics but serious heretics) and whether the Protestant Canon is accepted or not. In many ways the two are connected. As far as these two items of faith are concerned, there is nothing to debate as far as this ministry is concerned, nor will we do so. I wish only at this juncture for myself, and this network, to establish whether you hold the writings of Peter and/or Luke to be inspired or not.


Thomas Cossette said:

Lev I real don't even know what an Ebonite is, I do not even know their creed, maybe I resemble one to you, in some of my thinking, but I am not an Ebonite. The reason I bring it up is that labeling people forms prejustices and prejustices prevert jugdement, tilting opinions of a person rather than looking at the facts and contents of their words.
I am glad we do agree about Purim, and problebly Hanukkah too. I wonder how much research have you done in that time frame when the Maccabbees installled these two feast days, and usurped the priesthood from the sons of Zadok and the crown from the sons of David. Have you done much study of the surviving sons of Onies III, the high priest murder by Anichosus Epiphanes? Or the birth of the Qumran Community in light to what is written in Numbers chapter three?

My position on Paul is very simple: the Council of Jerusalem endorsed him, Peter endorsed him, Luke endorsed him, and the entire faithful messianic community endorsed him, except for one little sect who also rejected Messiah's divinity.

As for Peter being taken to a place he did not want to go, this is universally accepted to refer to his death by crucifixion.

Your passionate hatred of Paul and your inability to keep him out of discussions that have nothing to do with him (like this thread on the Messiah's Name) convince me that we do indeed worship different deities. The soul's passion reveals its centre. Our passion here is Yah'shua the Messiah, revealing the heart of the Father, His atoning death and the life-giving Ruach which is given to all who trust in His blood.

I am sorry, but I cannot allow further attacks on Paul, Luke, Peter or any of the servants of Yahweh, or on the Protestant Canon of Scripture. I have tried to tell you this numerous times. This Network does not exist to debate these things but to build Messiah- and Torah-faith from all these writings. If this lack of respect for our rules continues then, having already given you two admonitions to cease, and having given you considerable grace, then on the third occasion this happens (in other words, next time) I am going to have to ask you to leave. We consider Yah's elohim to be honoured and esteemed guests at our table, our teachers and the judges of the tribes of Israel, and any attack on them to be attacks both on our house, our persons, and on our hospitality.

I recommend you start your own Ning group, as previously suggested, and see if you can hawk your spiritual wares there. If what you preach is true, then there must be more than just a handful of adherents out there who would happily gather around you. And then, having assembled a troop of anti-Paulinists, see if you can propagate the Good News in a spirit of love without resorting to a hate-campaign on the man who endured much for his love of the Messiah, even to death. I should be most interested to see what kind of spiritual mantle they carry and how they conduct themselves. Invite me along so that I can see.

Finally, please stop spamming posts in this Network with links to your anti-Paul webpage at yehoshvabeitmidrash. This Network is not an advertising blog for persons or groups hostile to our teachings. Either restrict your link to your personal page or leave the group.

The discussion on Paul and the Canon is therefore at an end on this thread (and any others) which shall now revert back to its designated theme.

I regret I have had to ban Thomas Cossette from this Network. He constantly defied house rules, despite repeated warnings to respect them, ignored requests to stop spamming members pages and posts with anti-Pauline material, was unable to stay on topic without deviating into anti-Paul rant, and started name-calling. Please pray for him. If there is one thing I have constantly noticed it is that attacks on Paul and the New Testament canon produce no good fruits: like all "anti" movements (like atheism), they derive their life from attacking others instead of from the living Messiah.

I hope we can now return to an even keel.

Yaacov said:

here's my notes, can't guaranty their accuracy. (If anyone notices any errors on my part, please say so)

Grammar and tense dictates what vowels are used!
Yeh = present tense third person for He
hoAY’= to be/ is (the long O and long AYsound is due to the grammar) . i left out the w because the w is supposed to be short, so if the o is pronounced long, a short w sound will naturally be produced, wheras if the w is seen by the reader, the error could be to pronounce it too long which could completely change the meaning.
haWAH’ = was
haWAY = will be
YEhoAY= He who is.-- all encompassing pronunciation of all three tenses. This is the correct one to use
HUwah = archaic (pu-al) form of has become
YeHUwah = He who has become
Yah = future tense of he
YahUwah= he will be the one who has become.
Yahweh/Yahway = Samaratain pronunciation, apparently OK
don’t do this: yehawWAH = he who is evil-- haw-WAH= evil
YehoAY=(using a long O sound) He who is-- Name of the Father.
yeshuah= salvation, feminine
Yeshua = Salvation, He Salvation, the heh was dropped to make His name masculine.
Yehoshua = (using long O sound) long form of He who is salvation-- has two of the three syllables of His Father’s Name.
shua= archaic for “cries for help”
Yahushua= He will be the one who cries for help
Yahshua = he will cry for help.

I noticed in another article by Yoseph Viel, he concluded from history, that Powers would be a more accurate translation of Elohim. So when evangelizing, would a more accurate approach be to use the term Powers?
Areas that I didn’t quite catch:
With the AY sound, does an heh follow it as in AYh?
If Yeshua has become our salvation, then would YeHUshua be an OK pronunciation or not?

I have also felt that "powers" seems like a more correct translation.

The implication of "Powers" is that we, as the ancient Israelites, believe that there is One behind all the powers of the world, One who is ultimately in charge and responsible for everything; all the powers of the world, from gravity and magnetism to love and wrath are all counted, measured and accounted for by One. We are not as the polytheists, who believe that there are many competing powers in the world who are either at conflict or in imbalance. We are not as those who believe that there is a god that is less than omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and omni-benevolent, a kind of god that allows chance and luck to fill lack of his interference, essencially abandoning man, leaving him suspended in the imbalanced part of his existence. We are not as those who believe that there is no controlling force behind the universe, the atheists, who basically say that the universe is chaos and that it is barely standing on its legs despite zero probability of complex life arising out of basically nothing.
We believe that there is a Power who controls all the Powers; Eloah behind all the Elohim. He manifests the world through His Ruach, and He is available to us, in fact, through the indwelling of His Ruach we become Echad with Him; we become spiritually and thus truly alive. He is the constantly animating and controlling power behind all life and thought and existence. The world is parted in two, the part that is filled with Ruach, light and life as YHWH defines it through the example in Eden (Adam died spiritually when he ate of the fruit, not physically), and the part that is emptiness; the absence of light may be called shadow, but Our God/Power Eloheinu is currently, as He has since the beginning of His work, been preparing, planning and working to fill it with His Light.
This phase of our existence may seem unfair, and as Shaul puts it, the world has been subject to distress, and as genesis puts it, the world is cursed for our sake; truly YHWH is, as Yesayahu puts it:

Isaiah 45:7 (Young's Literal Translation)

'Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] YHWH, doing all these things.'

There is One behind everything - one Power behind all the Powers. YHWH, I believe, sees the world as a balance with two scales. First the scales were in total balance; then He put pressure on one side, adding to it for six days. So things are balanced only one way in this seemingly unfair universe. Therefore, it must be balanced equally the other way in the next seventh day, which is the Shabbat part of the universe. All our rituals are foreshadowings and remembrances of things that are yet to come, and all our rituals, especially the weekly Shabbat, prefigures the Millennium, the Shabbat part of existence, when the scales of the balance, which have been carefully counted and measured, are suddenly shifted, and balance is restored it will seem. But indeed the work will not be fully accomplished before the Shabbat is at an end, when all His creation has been purified gradually during the Millennium, when all the limbs of His body have been healed. Then the scales will be fully at balance when the pressure is taken off the 2nd scale, and all His creation will gloriously return to be in Him. For He is the Power behind all Powers, He is ultimately accountable, and as a good God, takes responsibility for everything that He does, everything He creates, manifests or causes to happen. He is the ultimate power of the universe, and since our world is both light and absence of light (always in degrees of absence and presence of light, not just the two alternatives) He must also be where there is apparent absence of Him. This is possible because this imbalanced part of existence is a manifestation of His spiritual principles, His laws and statutes and will put into motion, as an artist who cannot keep it in himself any longer, and must express himself and create. He may have chosen to take His time to finish some of His work, and chosen to finish some work early (Israel, the firstfruit) and also chosen to, for six days, to use only black and white and no colors, He will definitely on the seventh day bring out His color palette and finish all the work.

Although His metaphysical (I am hard pressed to find a better word) Ruach presence may be absent, and not active in the shadowy parts of the world not filled with His Light, He is still ultimately present, because this world is just a manifestation of Him. His will, His principles, His thoughts on what would be right or wrong in certain situations, etc. It is almost like a fantasy a person is having, that takes physical shapes as he will it; except Our Lord Adonai has even more control and obviously more care for the world than that. He is present in the darkness, He just does not let the light shine there yet. There is no chance, luck, fortune, serendipity, competing power, possible challenger or equal. All is controlled by One. Hear, oh Yisrael - YHWH Our God, Power - YHWH Echad
Truly.

The Nazarenes were/are henotheists, not monotheists
YHWH is super-ordinate of the Elohim with Yehoshua and the Ruach HaQodesh subordinate to YHWH.

Re: the sacred names:
i cannot help but think that all the different past/present/future tense variations that are within messianicism are actually collectively affirming the eternality of Elohim.

I wonder if using the designation "henotheism" is the wisest choice of words given the many different usages of the term. See, for example the Wiki article on the same. What bothers me is we might possibly be accused of being "serial monotheists" given that καθ' ἕνα θεόν (kath' hena theon) means "one god (power) at a time" which sounds a bit like the monarchical modalism of oneness Pentecostals. So I have to admit I do balk somewhat at the term. As the Wiki article observes:

"Henotheism is similar but less exclusive than monolatry because a monolator worships only one god, while the henotheist may worship any within the pantheon, depending on circumstances."

That to me sounds like a variation of polytheism.

We always worship only YHWH the Father through Yah'shua the Son in the sevenfold Ruach haQodesh and do not rotate between different members of the Elohimhead/Godhead at whim.

I think, quite honestly, in the absence of any term to describe the first century belief in the Elohim-head, we are forced to invent our own in order to avoid misunderstanding. Using "henotheist" is going to open us up to all all sorts of easily avoidable false accusations. Why can't we just invent our own, like Echadtheist (admittedly an odd mix of Hebrew and Greek) and then explain what we mean by the term? Or maybe we can find an all-Greek term like Prototheist, indicating that we only worship the first member of the Elohim-head? At any rate, I think we should avoid Greek terms that have multiple implications not in harmony with our actual belief structure.

What do you think?



Yaacov said:

The Nazarenes were/are henotheists, not monotheists
YHWH is super-ordinate of the Elohim with Yehoshua and the Ruach HaQodesh subordinate to YHWH. Re: the sacred names: i cannot help but think that all the different past/present/future tense variations that are within messianicism are actually collectively affirming the eternality of Elohim.

Since, the discussion about the term henotheism is it's own topic, I've moved the question about the term henotheism to this page.

The early church/Elect Ones referred to themselves, and were called by others as 'The Way'.
Instead of trying to find a single word to describe the intricacies of YHWH, why not use a name such as The Way. As for a definition, I think (Messianic) Yahwism is good enough.

To see an more in-depth analysis of these particular topics, please see these threads:
on the term henotheism
Patriarchinity chapter 11: Verifying Witnesses