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What Kind of Jew was Yeshua?

Today, almost everyone agrees that Jesus was a Jew and an increasing number of people understand that his name was actually “Yeshua.” People often describe him as an “observant Jew.” When asked what that means, people usually reply by describing what it means to be an observant Jew today as a member of Rabbinic Judaism in American democracy. There are three very big problems with that understanding of Yeshua.

(1) Rabbinic Judaism didn’t exist at that time.

(2) America did not exist.

(3) Judea wasn’t a democracy.

Yeshua lived during the final decades of the Israelite Temple Period, which began with the portable Tabernacle of Moses and ended with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem about forty years after he was crucified. There was no separation of church and state. Jerusalem wasn’t viewed as a religious center. Yeshua was a member of an Israelite Temple nation that was occupied and controlled by the Roman Empire.

The best example I can think of that reflects how Yeshua and his fellow Judeans would have understood their world is by viewing Jerusalem this way.

Picture Washington D.C. with a complex that houses the equivalent of the Vatican, Congress, Supreme Court and Federal Reserve System under the occupation and control of a foreign nation.

It is a grave mistake to view the role of the Temple as simply a religious center, Judea as an independent state or Yeshua’s movement as a religious movement like American Rabbinic Judaism. Yeshua’s teachings focused on areas that we would call religious, political and economic.

The primary goal of his movement was to create SHALOM on earth – totality, health, wholesomeness, harmony, success, the completeness and richness of living in an integrated social milieu. He taught that as a result of doing acts of that created SHALOM on earth, people would enter eternal life at the final judgment. His mission and message is summed up in this line from the prayer he taught his disciples –

“Your will shall be done in heaven and on earth.”


This would be a good motto for Christians and churches today. It would definitely transform their understanding of their mission and make lives much more SHALOM. This is what Yeshua would not only want -- he would expect it of his followers.

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