REDISCOVERING OUR HEBRAIC ROOTS
Code breaking and the Gospel
By Dan Cathcart
During
WWII there was a relatively unknown place called Bletchley Park located
in northern England. Something extraordinary took place there that
arguably contributed most to the allied victory in the war. "The park”
as it was known, was the center of the most secret operation of the war
effort, the breaking of the German Enigma code. It is a fascinating
story involving mathematics and intuition and much has been written
about it.
What does this have to do with the Gospel of Jesus and God’s word?
Nothing directly, but much has also been written about so called bible
codes. A recent popular documentary style book and movie called The Da
Vinci Code purporting to reveal the "historic Jesus” was purely a work
of fiction using many of the extra-biblical texts as a basis for the
story. For those not well grounded in the word of God, the deception is
both intriguing and convincing.
This has played into the hands of many critics and scholars who propose
disturbing questions about what they call the "historic Jesus.” Their
implication is that Jesus is someone vastly different than the Jesus of
the Bible. A recent History Channel presentation on the Extra Biblical
texts called Banned from the Bible is a case in point. Only viewpoints
of secular scholars and the most liberal of Pastors and Rabbis were
consulted or interviewed for the program. As a result of these types of
books and programs, people are asking questions about the "real Jesus”.
Questions about the veracity and accuracy of the scripture. In many
ways, I say bring it on. If the Bible as we have it today is the true
Word of God, then it will be able to stand the scrutiny.
How do we really know that the church canonized the correct gospels?
Why is Matthew, Mark, Luke and John acceptable where Thomas, Judas and
Mary Magdalene not? The premise behind Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is
that the Roman Catholic Church suppressed the "authentic” gospels for
some sinister and hidden purpose. This, of course, comes across looking
like an organized conspiracy, but I don’t think that is the case here.
If the church was really bent on hiding the real historic Jesus from
the world, then perhaps they would have been better off to have
canonized the Gnostic gospels and built a "superhero” type of character
out of Jesus. The only conspiracy here is one of ignorance, prejudice,
theological confusion and outright anti-Semitism.
So what is the real secret code hidden in the scripture? What is the
"Enigma” of the Gospels? When we develop the tools of understanding and
prepare ourselves to read the scriptures from its original cultural and
historic perspective, the answer becomes clear: Jesus was a Jew. Most
everyone knows that Jesus was a Jew as a point of fact, but do we
really understand this simple concept and all that it implies?
For centuries, the church tried to hide this embarrassing secret. From
the early second century on through the middle ages and the
reformation, the church has ignored or outright denied the Jewishness
of the Messiah. If it were possible to erase this fact from the Bible,
Christianity would have done so long ago.
The Christian culture of historic Europe is steeped in anti-Semitism.
From the popes and reformers, to the art and architecture, the clues
are everywhere. Take the famous painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo
Da Vinci for example. Several things are quickly evident to the
educated eye. The bread on the table is not the unleavened bread of the
Passover Seder as it should be. All the disciples are dressed and look
like Europeans with the exception of Judas, the lone Jew in the
painting. This is a classic example of the centuries old denial by the
church as to the Jewishness of Jesus.
All the first so-called Christians were Jews! Read the accounts in the
book of acts where thousands were saved. They were all Jews and many
were the priests from the Temple! They believed that Jesus was the
promised Messiah, the rightful heir to David’s throne. His death and
resurrection were the primary evidence along with His genealogy
(Matthew chapter 1). The next
time you read the accounts in the Book of Acts, consider this: those
first Christians did not consider themselves Christians. The word
"Christian” had not yet been coined and they did not even imagine a
religion called Christianity. They were all Jews practicing Judaism
just as they had been taught their entire lives. They went to the
Temple with their offerings and sacrifices, they attended the synagogue
and studied the Torah (law in the NT Greek text). They were Jews before
recognizing Jesus as their Messiah and remained Jews after recognizing
Jesus as their Messiah.
It was only in the second century that Christianity emerged as a
distinct religion separate from Judaism. The path to this distinction
is complex and steeped in the culture and politics of the day and I am
not going to examine it here. Suffice to say that as more and more
gentiles came to faith in Jesus and through systematic persecutions and
Jewish revolts against Rome, Jewish believers disappeared into
obscurity and a gentile Greek/Roman cultural Christianity emerged and
grew more and more dominant. Finally in the early fourth century this
new religion became the "official” religion of the Roman Empire under
Emperor Constantine.
The one thing preserved throughout this  turbulent history are the many
sacred writings of the early church, the Gospels and Epistles left
behind by the early Jewish believers. These testify to the Jewishness
of Jesus and the original faith. But the evidence of this is in a kind
of hidden code. Not because the early believers intended to write in
code, but we, in our modern world, are two thousand years removed
culturally, linguistically, and historically from them. Today we read
those very same ancient writings without suspecting or recognizing any
"hidden” code.
If we fail to aknowledge the "code”, we loose the capacity to
understand the Gospels as the writers intended them to be understood.
We read the words without real comprehension. We tend to make up
meanings to fit our culture and our place in today’s world. The real
historical teachings of Jesus are lost.
When a code is deciphered, such as those done at Bletchley Park, a
"crib” is used. A crib is a kind of guide or cheat sheet. It, in simple
terms, eliminates the improbable or impossible solutions to the cipher
allowing one to dramatically reduce the work needed to solve it
correctly. There were actually two cribs used for a given cipher: one
was mathematically based on the known parameters of the cipher process,
(the Enigma machine itself, captured and analyzed.) The other was more
intuitive and focused on the human elements of communication. For
example, you may have a favorite author. This author has their own
unique style of writing that you would recognize even if you only had a
page or two from a book of theirs that you have never read before. The
same is true of reading a cipher. The German Enigma operators and
Commanders made a serious mistake in that they allowed the same people
to create and send the coded messages day after day from the same
location. The cryptanalysts at The Park began to recognize these same
patterns of style in the encrypted messages they were tasked to decode.
In other words, they began to give themselves away by becoming
predictable.
In the same way, there is an under laying "human element” code embedded
in Gospels and Epistles of the Bible. In order to decipher this code,
it requires a change in our paradigm of thought. We must put ourselves
in the mindset of the Jew in the late second-Temple era. We need to
find the "crib” that fits the "code” embedded in the scriptures. The
best way to do this is to gather more data. Our data source is the vast
amount of Jewish literature and scholarly works done in this same
period or before.
In the late second century, the Jewish people found themselves
scattered to the far corners of the Roman Empire. They were literally
forced out of Jerusalem and much of the homeland they had occupied for
centuries. The Jewish sages, knowing that their culture and religion
could be lost, began to compile the traditional oral teachings that had
been handed down to them from their teachers for generations. The first
of these was called the Mishnah. This written form of the oral
teachings could then be "transmitted” throughout the world wherever
Jews were and maintain their tradition, culture, and identity. Later
came the Gamara, a commentary on the works in the Mishnah. Together
these formed the large volume of writings called the Talmud. There is
also a collection of oral teachings and interpretations of the Bible
known as the Midrash. The Midrash is a source of many parables very
similar in nature and topic to those recorded in the Gospels and
attributed to Jesus. The use of parables as a teaching and
interpretation tool was a common practice in the second Temple era.
If we examine these rabbinic works and compare them with the Gospels,
we will notice the patterns of similarity. In many cases, one will find
the identical parables that Jesus used in His teaching in the Midrash.
Many of the maxims, parables and sayings recorded by the rabbis are in
the same linguistic style as the Gospels. In other words, they contain
the same cultural clues giving us the human element "crib” we need to
"decode” the scripture. This lifts the veil of obscurity from the text
of the Bible and allows us to look at it from its intended historic and
cultural perspective.
The gospel code is real and can be broken. The original communication
can be recovered with the right tools and the right process. There is
an abundance of rabbinic literature in the Jewish world from which to
draw our code-breaking skills from. We can not only examine the
scripture in a new and exciting light, but we will quickly understand
that works of pure fiction like The Da Vinci Code are just that,
fiction. We can discover the intrinsic Jewishness of the Gospels thanks
to the veracity and determination of the early Jewish sages who
preserved the traditions and teachings. No second, third or fourth
century church fathers could have manufactured such intrinsically
Jewish documents as the Gospels. The early church founders were Greeks
and Romans and given the politics of the second, third and fourth
centuries, would have no motivation to keep anything Jewish in the
Church. The fact that the Jewishness of the New Testament scriptures
remains intact, is a testament to the power of God working through
ignorant and even hostile and violently anti-Semitic gentile leaders of
the period.
We can use our new found "crib” to test the authenticity of the Gnostic
Gospels and other apocryphal writings of early Christianity. When we do
so, we quickly find that these writings just don’t hold up to the test.
Under the light of Judaism, they are exposed for the counterfeits that
they are.
שלום ברוך
Shalom and Be Blessed
Brenda and I are going to Israel next
June 19th to 29th. Join us in the land promised to Abraham for a
special tour where you will see the promised Messiah of Israel like you
have never seen Him before! We will visit places off the beaten path
and follow in the foot steps of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Come with us
as we also explore the people, culture, politics and conflict that is
today’s Israel and for a special Sabbath day in Jerusalem. For details
on the tour visit www.theheartofisrael.com .
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