Post by Cindy on Sept 15, 2015 10:20:40 GMT -5
What: A diverse, global religious movement, with many variations and gradations of teachings and practices, but with one common emphasis: to restore what it considers to be the 'Jewishness of Christianity.'
Alternative Names: Hebraic Roots, Jewish Roots, HRM (Abbreviation)
Messianic Christianity: The majority of Hebrew Roots adherents are Gentiles. Many (certainly not all) of them prefer to be known as "Messianic Christians."
Note the difference between Messianic Christians and Messianic Jews: The latter are Jewish people who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah, Savior and Lord. The former are Gentiles who believe that God has called them to be Jewish and/or to live a Torah-observant life.
Organizational Structure: None. This is a diverse, decentralized movement that consists of many factions and spin-offs (including organizations, individual churches and independent, autonomous individuals).
Many of them are -- to one extent or another -- not necessarily in doctrinal agreement, but all of them have the common goal of returning (or restoring) Christianity to its Jewish roots.
Doctrines: The Hebrew Roots movement is so varied that many entities within it promote mutually contradictory teachings and practices.
Doctrines run the gamut from orthodox to aberrant and even heretical.
What Hebrew Roots adherents have in common is that they claim Christianity has moved too far away from its Jewish roots, that the Christian faith has been indoctrinated with the culture and beliefs of Greek and Roman philosophy, and that the Christian Church as a result has been corrupted with pagan concepts and practices (e.g. observing pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter, while ignoring the Jewish feasts and festivals).
They teach that Jesus' death on the cross renewed the Mosaic Covenant (Old Testament), and that an understanding of the New Testament can only come through a Hebrew perspective. According to this movement, Christians must keep the Torah (be Torah-observant), including its dietary laws, keeping the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week (Saturday), and observing the Jewish feast and festivals.
Hebrew Roots, then, is arguably the first non-Jewish movement to approach Torah the way contemporary Jews do -- or, at least, to view that mode as the most legitimate, as the sort of religious lifestyle to strive for. [...]
The way the followers see it, Hebrew Roots is not about being Jewish; it’s about obeying the Torah. [...]
Many followers of Hebrew Roots consider themselves to be Children of Israel or members of the 10 lost tribes, but they do not consider themselves to be Jewish.
- Source: Menachem Kaiser, For Some Believers Trying To Connect With Jesus, the Answer Is To Live Like a Jew
Many in the Hebrew Roots movement teach that there exist original Hebrew versions of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and that these versions are superior to the Greek texts -- a) because they include Hebrew idioms that are said to provide deeper insight, and b) because of claims that the Greek texts have been corrupted.
Combined with its emphasis on the Torah as the foundational, fundamental teaching for the Christian Church, and the insistence that the New Testament can only be understood in light of the Old Testament, this belief directly attacks the reliability of the Bible as the standard of truth used by the Church.
It therefore comes as no surprise that some factions within this movement go as far as to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, one of the essential teachings of the Christian faith.
Interestingly, many doctrines in the Hebrew Roots movement are rooted in the teachings of the late Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God -- which was theologically a cult of Christianity, until (after Armstrong's death) it made a dramatic turn-around and embraced orthodox Christianity instead.
Criticism: The Christian faith does, of course, have Jewish/Hebrew roots. But even a cursory reading of the New Testament, particularly of Paul's letter to the Galatians, reveals that there are right ways and wrong ways to go about acknowledging those roots.
It is no wonder that the most aberrant and heretical elements among adherents of the Hebrew Roots Movement attack the reliability of the New Testament, because the New Testament reveals their doctrines and practices to be false and un-biblical. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. -- Romans 7:6,
posted with permission:
www.apologeticsindex.org/3633-hebrew-roots-movement
Alternative Names: Hebraic Roots, Jewish Roots, HRM (Abbreviation)
Messianic Christianity: The majority of Hebrew Roots adherents are Gentiles. Many (certainly not all) of them prefer to be known as "Messianic Christians."
Note the difference between Messianic Christians and Messianic Jews: The latter are Jewish people who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah, Savior and Lord. The former are Gentiles who believe that God has called them to be Jewish and/or to live a Torah-observant life.
Organizational Structure: None. This is a diverse, decentralized movement that consists of many factions and spin-offs (including organizations, individual churches and independent, autonomous individuals).
Many of them are -- to one extent or another -- not necessarily in doctrinal agreement, but all of them have the common goal of returning (or restoring) Christianity to its Jewish roots.
Doctrines: The Hebrew Roots movement is so varied that many entities within it promote mutually contradictory teachings and practices.
Doctrines run the gamut from orthodox to aberrant and even heretical.
What Hebrew Roots adherents have in common is that they claim Christianity has moved too far away from its Jewish roots, that the Christian faith has been indoctrinated with the culture and beliefs of Greek and Roman philosophy, and that the Christian Church as a result has been corrupted with pagan concepts and practices (e.g. observing pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter, while ignoring the Jewish feasts and festivals).
They teach that Jesus' death on the cross renewed the Mosaic Covenant (Old Testament), and that an understanding of the New Testament can only come through a Hebrew perspective. According to this movement, Christians must keep the Torah (be Torah-observant), including its dietary laws, keeping the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week (Saturday), and observing the Jewish feast and festivals.
Hebrew Roots, then, is arguably the first non-Jewish movement to approach Torah the way contemporary Jews do -- or, at least, to view that mode as the most legitimate, as the sort of religious lifestyle to strive for. [...]
The way the followers see it, Hebrew Roots is not about being Jewish; it’s about obeying the Torah. [...]
Many followers of Hebrew Roots consider themselves to be Children of Israel or members of the 10 lost tribes, but they do not consider themselves to be Jewish.
- Source: Menachem Kaiser, For Some Believers Trying To Connect With Jesus, the Answer Is To Live Like a Jew
Many in the Hebrew Roots movement teach that there exist original Hebrew versions of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and that these versions are superior to the Greek texts -- a) because they include Hebrew idioms that are said to provide deeper insight, and b) because of claims that the Greek texts have been corrupted.
Combined with its emphasis on the Torah as the foundational, fundamental teaching for the Christian Church, and the insistence that the New Testament can only be understood in light of the Old Testament, this belief directly attacks the reliability of the Bible as the standard of truth used by the Church.
It therefore comes as no surprise that some factions within this movement go as far as to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, one of the essential teachings of the Christian faith.
Interestingly, many doctrines in the Hebrew Roots movement are rooted in the teachings of the late Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God -- which was theologically a cult of Christianity, until (after Armstrong's death) it made a dramatic turn-around and embraced orthodox Christianity instead.
Criticism: The Christian faith does, of course, have Jewish/Hebrew roots. But even a cursory reading of the New Testament, particularly of Paul's letter to the Galatians, reveals that there are right ways and wrong ways to go about acknowledging those roots.
It is no wonder that the most aberrant and heretical elements among adherents of the Hebrew Roots Movement attack the reliability of the New Testament, because the New Testament reveals their doctrines and practices to be false and un-biblical. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. -- Romans 7:6,
posted with permission:
www.apologeticsindex.org/3633-hebrew-roots-movement
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