The Real Yeshua

  In my last email I told you the story about the prayer I prayed forty years ago – and the answer that made absolutely no sense to me . My first impression, after thinking about it later, was “obviously I know how words work I used them every day.” But that answer doesn’t hold water because I use a car, computer, smartphone, refrigerator, etc. every day and have no idea of how they actually work!   Nineteen years after praying that prayer, I co-founded the Biblical Heritage Center (BHC) with Dr. Ike Tennison (University of Texas at Arlington professor that taught courses I took in Classical Greek ). This year BHC celebrates its 21 st birthday. Below are the facts that have guided BHC since 1999 .   1. BHC is an educational institution that teaches people How Words Work and How to Work with Words by applying that knowledge to the words of the Bible by Exploring Biblical Heritages.   2. BHC teaches people how to use the BHC Guideline below to Transfor...

  My emails The Only Salvation Message Jesus Taught and The Salvation Message was a Parable not a Commandment! challenged members of his audience’s beliefs about salvation . That was his goal! It is important to always anchor words you read or hear to reality by linking them to the time and place they were communicated . Jesus taught salvation parable in Matthew 25 around 27 CE at the Mount of Olives .   At that time Christianity did not exist and Jesus was not speaking to Gentiles . The people he challenged were all Jewish .   One other point modern readers must clearly understand is that no one in the Jewish audiences hearing him viewed Jesus as being “ the God ” or “ a god. ” Members of his audience were trying to figure out if he was “ The Anointed One, ” an apocalyptic messianic figure. They believed that the arrival of the Anointed One signaled that the Great Day of Judgment was very near.   His words were not viewed as new divine comman...

Jesus was “ Jesus Christ ” to me, and I was a “ Christ + ian .” My identity was linked to his identity through the word “ Christ . ” I viewed “ Christ ” like a “ last name ” – he was Jesus Christ . Back then, I didn’t know the New Testament was written in Greek . Bible translators have four options for working with those ancient Greek or Hebrew words:     1. translate – bring the meanings of the Greek word over into English .   2. transliterate – replace letters of the Greek word with equivalent English letters .   3. omit – ignore the Greek word and write nothing in their translation. 4. insert – insert a word into the translation for which there is no Greek word . Bible translators chose option #2, they transliterated the Greek word above instead of translating it. The arrows connect English letters that are equivalent to the Greek letters. The last two letters of the Greek word are dropped, thereby creating the transliteration -- “ Christ .” The translati...