YAHUAH

[Grip Docility]

This is an interesting argument, although we do see that there were still some good Jews alive even when Christ was born, for example, St. Symeon, and we also see a desire, which motivated people to be baptized in the Jordan by St. John the Baptist and Forerunner, and which also drove the later conversion of the majority of the Jews to those churches which are now Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the Church of the East, and sui juris Eastern Catholic, so that only a minority of the Pharisees continued practicing what had become Rabbinical Judaism, after the conversion of most of the Ethiopians to Christianity in the early fourth century,.*

I'm going to simply interact with each aspect of this post to assist in my digestion of it. Deepest Gratitude!

Rabbinical Judaism in turn changed dramatically, first with the codification of the Oral Torah into the Mishnah following the dissolution of the Sanhedrin brought about by the devastation inflicted on Jerusalem following the failed Bar Kochba rebellion, and the forced removal of the Jews from its precincts and from much of the Holy Land.

Diaspora is something that the Jews are all too familiar with.

Further changes would follow the compilation of the Mishnah commentaries into the Talmud (there are actually two Talmuds, but the one compiled in Seleucia-Cstesiphon is the only complete Talmud and is much more influential than the other Talmud compiled in Jerusalem, which by the time of the Talmudic sages once more had a Jewish population.

I didn't realize that there were now two! Gratitude.

And still more change would follow the publication of the Zohar and the emergence of Kabbalah, a form of mysticism which became extremely pervasive throughout Judaism, except among the Karaite Jews, who had broken away from the Rabbinical Jews in the sixth century AD, rejecting the authority of the Rabbis and the Mishnah in favor of the interpretation of the Torah and the other books of the Tanakh, which we call the Old Testament, according to a logical method known as the Kalaam.

Would this be the beginning of what we now call "orthodox Judaism"?

Some people call the Karaites the inventors of Sola Scripture, but this is not really the case, since while there is a certain freedom of thought in Karaite Judaism, particularly when it comes to observing the Torah, where a more rational approach is used (versus the highly restrictive approach favored by Rabinnical Jews of the Orthodox, and to a lesser extent, Masorti, Conservative and Neolog Jews, and to a still lesser extent by Reform Jews and Reconstructionist Jews), Karaite Jews still have a traditional, prevailing interpretation of the Old Testament, and make use of a Siddur, a liturgical prayer book, similar in content to the orthodox Rabbinical Siddur, and also the Defter, which is the equivalent used by the Samaritans (I am blessed to have an exceedingly rare English language translation of the Defter).

Aha! So, that initial break from the authority of the Rabbis and the Mishnah led to many flavors of Judaism, including multiple forms of orthodoxy.

The Siddurim predate Christianity at least in terms of their content - the modern form of Jewish prayer appears to have begun to emerge with St. Ezra the Priest and St. Nehemiah the prophet, and developed into a system of three daily prayers, which developed into the Christian prayers of Matins, Vespers and Compline; and with lessons from the Torah conducted with great solemnity, followed by a related lesson from elsewhere in the Old Testament, called the haftarah.

Wow, this is getting into the mechanics of the OT practices! This is exciting.

Some of these Torah/haftarah pairings were preserved in the ancient East Syriac liturgical tradition of Christianity, which follows them with what became the norm, an epistle lesson and a corresponding lesson from the Gospel Book, which is treated with reverence analogous to that shown by the Jews for the Torah scrolls.

There is beauty in that.

The Old Testament lessons are retained, and depending on the liturgical rite, are either read at the main service (which has a Jewish analogue in an additional prayer said on Sabbath and on certain feast days), which usually involves the celebration of the Eucharist in traditional churches, which is in turn a successor to the animal sacrifices of Second Temple Judaism and Ethiopian Judaism (indeed the Beta Israel continue these sacrifices to this day), or at Vespers the night before, and serve to show how the Old Testament is in fact Christological prophecy.

This is severely hands on experience! They are amplifying the shadows, to more fully understand the Substance of Jesus Christ.

Aside from the basic thrice daily pattern, which we see in early Christian books of church order such as the Didache, which commended as a minimum prayer rule saying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, and fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays (which Eastern Christians still do, and John Wesley tried to revive this practice in the West, by encouraging Methodists to fast and to pray the Anglican office known as the Litany on those days, ideally in church), additional hours were also added, not so much intentionally, but as a result of the reconciliation of the practices of Christian hermits and monks with the laity, and the different schedules kept from when Christianity was illegal, which required saying Vespers after dusk, and Compline at midnight, and Matins before dawn, and from the hypothetical ideal times, so the result being we also have the Midnight Office, with three Nocturns, which displaced Compline to earlier at night, and offices of Lauds after sunrise, and Prime at the first hour after Sunrise, and Terce (roughly 9 AM), Sext (noon) and Noone (3 PM), which correspond to the arrest, crucifixion and death of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ respectively. In practice, these are usually grouped together in various ways, and are sometimes said at times other than what one might expect, for example, on Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday, the Eastern Orthodox serve a Vesperal Divine Liturgy in the morning, which combines Vespers with the Divine Liturgy, and Matins happens in the evening, so the Orthodox equivalent of the Tenebrae Service on Maundy Thursday, known as the Twelve Gospels Service, is Matins for Great and Holy Friday.

There is so much tradition here that clearly points to Christ. Each facet of every discussed matter above could be the substance of exegesis and sermon.

This liturgical excursus, I have posted largely for the benefit of my friend @tampasteve , who recently talked about the Didache with me in another thread, and my new friend @Grip Docility ; for the benefit of his edification I have included much more additional detail in this reply than was strictly speaking necessary, as he is discerning a vocation and one area of formation is learning about ecclesiastical history, and a crucial part of that was touched on by the interesting replies of my friends @Yeshua HaDerekh and @FredVB. I will also perhaps add this to my ChristianForums blog at some point (someone ought to suggest to the XenFora developers whose software powers this and other forums that they add some integration so that members can directly export forum posts into their personal blogs).

I'm beyond gratitude and am so very ready to learn these matters. I will go back through the discussion, carefully.

Footnotes:

*This blessed event happened around the same time as the blessed conversion of the Georgians (in 301 AD, the city state of Edessa converted to Christianity, followed in 306 by the Kingdom of Armenia, followed in 314 by the Baptism of St. Constantine (which would eventually lead, during the reign of Emperor St. Theodosius I, to Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire, around the time he smashed the altar of the goddess Victory in the Senate and banned paganism, but not before a long period of Arian** tyranny beginning with St. Constantine’s son Constantius), and this was followed a few years later by the conversion of the Kingdom of Kart’velli, the largest and most powerful of the tribes that comprised the nation that would become known as Georgia after its patron saint, St. George the Martyr, who was a soldier in the Roman Army who openly converted to Christianity and received the crown of martyrdom, and who thus figuratively slew the dragon of Paganism (the word dragon actually means devil in several languages including Romanian, which is why I find the recent enthusiasm for dragons in fantasy such as The Game of Thrones to be … disturbing).

I didn't realize that Constantine's son brought Arianism back into the forefront for a time! Thank God that the matter was grown beyond.

And at the same time that happened, most of the Ethiopians became Christian after King Enzana, the Negus of the Kingdom of Axum, the largest and most powerful of the Abyssinian kingdoms, whose subjects had practiced Judaism since the conversion of the Queen of Sheba, whose son was the result of her affair with King Solomon, but some Ethiopians had been Christian since the first century as is recorded in the Book of Acts. And like with Georgia, this mass conversion started with the conversion of the rulers of the most powerful kingdom - in the case of Georgia, the evangelism was the work of the Armenian princess St. Nino (in Georgian; in Armenian and other more conventional languages her name is Nina, but Georgian has a vowel shift affecting feminine words). So in the case of Georgia, their conversion resulted from the prior conversion of the Kingdom of Armenia, and a member of the Armenian nobility having the courage to evangelize to the rulers of her country’s powerful and dangerous northern neighbor. A similiar pattern would occur with the spread of Christianity among the Slavs culiminating in the conversion of St. Vladimir and the baptism of the Kievan Rus people, who are the major ancestors of the modern day Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians.

To see the historical spread of the Gospel is humbling!

** Arianism is the denial of the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, by insisting that our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ was not God, of one essence with the Father, by whom all things are made, who became man for our salvation, as the Gospel of John ch. 1 v. 1-18 explain, and which is reiterated elsewhere in the New Testament and the Creed, but instead by declaring that He was a creature, and that there was a time when He was not, which is inherently heretical - indeed Arianism is the common thread linking a number of heretical cults that have splintered off Christianity over the years, some forming their own distinct religions, such as Islam, and others lingering on the fringes, for example, Mormonism, the J/Ws, and the Unitarian Universalists, to name just three of the more notorious offenders. At any rate, the Arian tyranny resulted when St. Constantine’s son Constantius was corrupted by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, by the latter heretic persuading him to accede to the Arian cult as he acceded to the curule chair hitherto occupied by his father Emperor St. Constantine I, and so it was that upon the death of his father, Emperor Constantius initiated a massive persecution of Christian hierarchs who refused to deny the deity of Christ, a persecution on a scale not seen since the reign of Diocletian, which ended only with Julian “the Apostate”, who persecuted Arians and Christians equally in favor of his Neo-Platonist Paganism; his successor Valens largely stopped the persecutions, but was still an Arian and Arianism remained the closest thing to a state religion of Rome until Emperor Theodosius came to power, reigning primarily from Constantinople, and also formally dividing the Eastern and Western empires, an event which precipitated the rapid decline of the Western Empire during the lifetime of St. Augustine of Hippo, prompting him to write The City of God, but which probably saved the Byzantine Empire. And unfortunately Arius had evangelized the Gothic tribes who subsequently invaded and oppressed the Christians of the Western Empire, and many of the Visigoths in North Africa later converted to Islam, and conducted a genocide which exterminated all the Christians of the countries now known as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

Arianism cripples the power of the Gospel. Christ truly is the centerpiece of the good news. It's no wonder that the Dragon strives so intently on corrupting the truth about the One True Living Truth.

 

[The Liturgist]

Edit: added more paragraph spacing to my footnotes, so as to make them less formidable, since I had inadvertently made them downright frightening, the sort of massive footnote that gives college students nightmares. All it needed was some equations and references to ibid and it would have been a veritable world-ending Death Star of footnotes, from the original Star Wars films and not the stupid boring Disney films, complete with a charming performance by Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. “By the way, I have often wondered what a grand moff is,” he once mused, “it sounds like something that came out of the closet, a moff!”

Speaking of which, curiously there are no butterflies or moths in the Emoji nature collection; there is a caterpillar, but what at first glance appeared to be a butterfly turned out in the first instance to be a poodle and in the second instance, a whale.

 

[Grip Docility]

Edit: added more paragraph spacing to my footnotes, so as to make them less formidable, since I had inadvertently made them downright frightening, the sort of massive footnote that gives college students nightmares. All it needed was some equations and references to ibid and it would have been a veritable world-ending Death Star of footnotes, from the original Star Wars films and not the stupid boring Disney films, complete with a charming performance by Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. “By the way, I have often wondered what a grand moff is,” he once mused, “it sounds like something that came out of the closet, a moff!”

Speaking of which, curiously there are no butterflies or moths in the Emoji nature collection; there is a caterpillar, but what at first glance appeared to be a butterfly turned out in the first instance to be a poodle and in the second instance, a whale.

Oh no! What does it mean if I read your initial post accordingly and enjoyed reading it! What has God done to me?!? I, by no means, have it committed to heart, and will need to re-read your post several times to fully gather the framework, but I confess, I am interested in these matters!

Also, so it's not just me. The originals are amazing and rewatchable beyond measure, while the new Star Wars productions are lucky if they get watched all the way through a single time.

Grand Moff Tarkin quote that an entire sermon could be penned in reference to; "Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." Key verse; 1 John 4:18

 

[The Liturgist]

Would this be the beginning of what we now call "orthodox Judaism"?

No, Karaite Judaism is a reaction to what we now call “Orthodox Judaism.” Orthodox Judaism is basically the religion of the Pharisees, but with the Oral Torah written down in the Mishnah, and commented upon in the Talmud, along with some very entertaining and historically fascinating sections, for example, Tractate Baba Bathra contains, towards the end of Chapter V in Volume I, what I am convinced is the world’s best collection of tall tales about fish and sea monsters and so forth: YAHUAH

Then, the Kabbalists took the Talmud and other material and created a mystical system based on it, explained in books such as the Zohar, and further refined by mystics such as Isaac Luria. And although there exists a supposedly Christian adaptation of the system, in my view, the Kabbalah is entirely incompatible with Christianity due to its embrace of emanationist mysticism and aspects reminiscent of Valentinism and Manichaenism. And some claims of Kabbalists, such as the legend of the Golem of Prague, are not credible.

The Karaites reject all of that and practice something much closer to ancient Judaism. They differ from the Sadducees in that they embrace the same canon as the Orthodox Jews, and believe in the Resurrection, but they completely reject the idea of Rabbis, or the Oral Torah, or the Talmud, or Kabbalah, and their understanding of the Torah is much closer to what you would think is meant by the text, since Orthodox Judaism tries to create a sort of fence around the Torah that would make any violation of it theoretically impossible, but which in practice does so at the expense of the plain meaning of the text. So for example, because the exact formula for the blue dye used when making the fringes of Jewish garments has been lost, these are white in Rabinnical and Orthodox tradition, rather than the white and blue fringes actually specified in the Old Testament. Karaites were at one time a very large sect, but now only 50,000 survive, mostly from Egypt and Syria, from which they had no choice but to emigrate to Israel or the United States; there is one Karaite synagogue, in Daly City, California (a suburb just south of San Francisco), and a few live on the East Coast as well and if I recall were trying to organize a synagogue, and there is one Karaite writer who is popular among Christians … Gordon is part of his name, I can’t recall.

In Israel, Karaite and Ethiopian Jews have faced discrimination not from the civil government or the rather secular majority of Israelis, but from the Chief Rabbinate, which is controlled by Orthodox rabbis, who attempted even to require the Ethiopian Jews, also known as the Beta Israel (which is Ge’ez for “House of Israel”, Beta being in this case derived from the same Semitic triconsonantal root as the Hebrew Beth and the Aramaic Bet and the Arabic Bayt) to undergo “re-circumcision” but this was blocked by the Israeli government, which wisely wanted no impediments that would discourage the Beta Israel from emigrating from the anti-Semitic communist regime known as the Derg as quickly as possible (the Derg also martyred Emperor Haile Selassie, who could have saved his life by renouncing Christianity and embracing Marxist-Leninism, which makes him a martyr analogous to Czar Nicholas II and, in a slightly different way, King Charles I of England (who was martyred as much for his staunch Anglicanism and his tolerance for Roman Catholicism as anything else, and who could have saved himself I expect by embracing the Puritanism of Cromwell; my friend @tampasteve might have something interesting to say on this as he is a member of a society set up in honor of King Charles I the Martyr).

Practically, the discrimination against Karaite Jews and the Beta Israel mainly comes down to them not being able to call the delis, butcher shops and grocery stores that serve their community “Kosher” despite the fact that they adhere to Kosher as it is understood by the Karaites and Beta Israel - this might sound reasonable considering their majority status until one realizes that there are slight differences in how Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi (Yemenese), Romaniote (Greek) and other Jewish communities interpret the Kashrut dietary laws, and the same processes used to resolve these (for example, the Sulchan Aruch, or “Set Table” a code of Jewish law by Joseph Caro, a Sephardic rabbi known as the Mekhaber, Hebrew for author, is published with glosses by an Ashkenazi rabbi, Moses Isserlees, known by his Hebrew acronym the Rema), which makes it usable by both, whereas the Mizrahi Jews of Yemen use a code of Jewish law compiled by the celebrated Orthodox Jewish rabbi and philosopher known in the West as Maimonides, who is known among Jews by his Hebrew acronym the Rambam,* not to be confused with the Ramban, a Catalan Sephardic rabbi, philosopher and Kabbalist mystic known in the West as Nachmanides.

At any rate, my point in mentioning the above is that I feel that the Chief Rabbinate could have partnered with the Karaite and Beta Israel authorities to develop a guide to Kashrut that would allow all three groups to use the word Kosher with regards to their butchers, delis, grocery stores, and eateries, and to serve each other, but unfortunately the Chief Rabbinate controls the use of the word Kosher in Israel, despite the majority of Israelites not caring about it that much, the Orthodox lobby remains influential and even now plans to conscript Charedi and Chassidic Jews is extremely controversial and problematic (I myself think the solution is to avoid conscription, since most Israelis are patriots, and there is no shortage of volunteers given the extreme danger the country finds itself in at present following the terrorist attacks last year and the continued attacks since by Hamas and Hezbollah).

This is also a cautionary note, if we do ever make Christianity the official religion in the US, which I would be inclined to support in order to stop the continuing attacks by atheists against our religion and the increasing domestic persecution, while avoiding a single established church, and protecting the rights of Jews, we must be careful to avoid creating an authority which could effectively enforce the policies of one denomination on the others and thus create an established church by the backdoor, so to speak.

*Maimonides wrote a famous work entitled “The Guide for the Perplexed”, which I fear someone will have to eventually rewrite, only this time as an aid to comprehending my CF.com posts, with multiple glosses for use depending on which forum I am posting in.

 

[tampasteve]

there is one Karaite synagogue, in Daly City, California (a suburb just south of San Francisco), and a few live on the East Coast as well and if I recall were trying to organize a synagogue, and there is one Karaite writer who is popular among Christians … Gordon is part of his name, I can’t recall.

Nehemiah Gordon, he puts out some interesting information that a lot of Messianic believers like to read or listen to. He was Orthodox Jewish but changed to Karaite at some point. There is a fair under current in Messianic communities of people that lean towards Karaite understandings, and even some conversions from Messianic to Karaite, but being as they are so limited in distribution this is not as large as it probably would be otherwise.

 

[The Liturgist]

Oh no! What does it mean if I read your initial post accordingly and enjoyed reading it! What has God done to me?!? I, by no means, have it committed to heart, and will need to re-read your post several times to fully gather the framework, but I confess, I am interested in these matters!

Also, so it's not just me. The originals are amazing and rewatchable beyond measure, while the new Star Wars productions are lucky if they get watched all the way through a single time.

Grand Moff Tarkin quote that an entire sermon could be penned in reference to; "Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." Key verse; 1 John 4:18

A UMC minister once did a three part sermon series based on Star Wars back in 2007 during the summer, but the results were a bit lame I fear. The only fun part was during the second sermon, about the dangers of the Dark Side, when the organist, who was very talented, did a respectable job playing the Imperial March on the lovely fully acoustic* pipe organ which the small church is blessed with.

* I have been inside it and can testify that all of its stops use real pipes, in contrast to an increasing number of overpriced and buggy organs sold by a large organ builder which are marketed as “hybrid organs”, which feature a visible set of pipes on the outside to play certain lower notes, but for most stops, they rely on a glorified digital synthesizer. The manufacturer sponsored a Bach Walk that featured concerts at two churches in Westlake Village, CA, that i attended in 2014, by the very talented German organist John Bull, who is the organist at First Congregational Church in Los Angeles**, the first organ at Westminster Presbyterian Church played the classic Bach fugues without a hitch, but the second one, installed at the beautiful St. Jude’s Roman Catholic Church***, malfunctioned with a stuck pipe, where the valve to one of the analog pipes, which is electronically controlled through the same computer that also controls the synthesizer, if I understand the architecture of these machines correctly, malfunctioned in a bad way, causing it to get stuck playing the same note at an uncomfortable volume, and attempts by the organist to clear it failed, and the problem had to be resolved by the representative from this “hybrid” organ builder literally pulling the power and resetting the machine.

** First Congregational Church is the oldest Protestant church in Los Angeles, dating to 1867, and has the second largest church organ in the world, or I should say organs, because the church has five of them, controlled from two consoles, allowing duets to be performed across the five distinctive organs. The congregation was already left-leaning in 2014, with the slogan “Traditional worship, contemporary theology,” but since that time, their old pastor, who was left-wing but in a lovable manner, retired, and the church left the somewhat apolitical National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and joined the far-left United Church of Christ. This was depressing to me, both as someone who at one time had been involved in efforts to restore orthodoxy to the UCC, and also as someone whose interest in Congregationalism was stimulated by First Congregational in the 1990s when it was less specifically political and more liturgical-evangelical. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend the various excellent albums recorded by the church choir and by John Bull and other organists who have played there; one of the best of these is an album of the choir and organ performing hymns and church music by the celebrated English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

*** This church has a tranquil atmosphere and is one of the few recently built Roman Catholic churches the architecture of which I like (had Pope Benedict XVI remained Pope, and had Summorum Pontificum not been rescinded, and had I become a Roman Catholic priest as I was considering, I would have loved to celebrate the Tridentine Mass there, but I would also have advocated for replacing the “hybrid” organ with a real one. I particularly like the confessionals at this church, the baptismal font, and the chapel for the adoration of the blessed sacrament, which has a lovely gilded tabernacle.

 

[The Liturgist]

Nehemiah Gordon, he puts out some interesting information that a lot of Messianic believers like to read or listen to. He was Orthodox Jewish but changed to Karaite at some point. There is a fair under current in Messianic communities of people that lean towards Karaite understandings, and even some conversions from Messianic to Karaite, but being as they are so limited in distribution this is not as large as it probably would be otherwise.

Indeed, it would be difficult converting to Karaite Judaism unless one happened to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, preferrably close to a BART station (since BART serves Daly City; I can’t recall if CalTrain stops there on its way to San Francisco from San Jose, but it probably does as well, however, the BART service is very high frequency, one of the best-served stations on the entire Bay Area transit network, with only the major stations on Market Street such as Embarcadero getting better service, and that’s only because the Muni Metro trains run above the BART trains on the upper level of the massive Market Street Subway, and above that, the PCC streetcars of the F Market and Wharves and various trolleybus lines run at street level (the Muni Metro originally was intended to carry all streetcars below market street so the surface level tracks could be removed, but two of the four tracks were kept and became a major tourist attraction, along with the E Embarcadero streetcar, relieving overcrowding on the three surviving cable car lines, all three of which serve two terminals on Market Street, one of which, the Powell Street terminal, always has ridiculously long lines as it serves the two most popular cable cars, and it uses a turntable to turn the cars around, which takes forever, so one can wait in line for an hour or more, but I digress. At any rate, once in Daly City, one still has to get from BART and/or CalTrain to the synagogue. Interestingly, the Karaites generally allow their members to drive to the synagogue on the Sabbath as this is considered restful; rest is evaluated in a more subjective manner than in Orthodox Rabbinical Judaism.

As an amusing further segue into San Francisco’s transit system, in 2008, before the city deteriorated into its current condition, I made actual productive use of the cable car for the only time in my life: I was staying at the Marriott near Union Square (or is it the Hilton? I can’t remember), and I desired a late night Chinese meal, and thus took a taxi to practically the last Chinese restaurant that was still open (in contrast, in New York City there are some delicious Chinese restaurants open 24/7; in 2011 I dined on a Pineapple Bowl of Calamari prepared in a traditional Chinese manner, with an incredibly delicious sauce, at about 3 AM. At any rate, after dinner, I made my way to the nearby cable car line, I think it was the Powell and Hyde, which is normally the busiest line on the system, checked the schedule, and waited to catch what was either the last or the second to the last cable car of the night, and while I was waiting for the, there was an SFPD car patrolling the area, which made me feel particularly safe. The cable car arrived on time, and as it was cold outside, and the car was nearly empty, I sat inside, which is something I’ve never done before on a cable car, and I enjoyed a very good chat with the conductor (the gripman stands in between the two front benches, which face outward, and works the lever which grabs the cable, controlling the speed in part by controlling the tightness of the grip, and also works the brakes, all of which are manual - it takes immense strength to be a gripman and they stand outside for a reason. At the back of the single ended cars on the Powell and Hyde and Powell and Mason lines, the conductor assists the gripman with braking at certain points by rotating a lever, but his main job is to collect the fares from passengers and call out the stops, which back then I think was either $4 or $8 - expensive for transit, but not as outrageous as it is today. At any rate, since the car was empty, and when reaching the terminal was going out of service, we were able to enjoy an in-depth conversation about the joys and challenges of running a heritage railway.

I love the cable cars, but that is the only time in my life I have used them to actually get from point A to point B as there was no better or more economical option that late at night, in the era before Uber, to get from Chinatown, where at that time of day there are no taxis circulating, back to my hotel just off Union Square. Since that time, the new Central Subway has opened, an extension of the Muni Metro featuring a station in China Town, so now there would be no practical need to use the cable car at all, which is good, because of how expensive they are, but also sad, because they are so much fun to ride, and the network was so much larger, even before the current cutbacks in 1957-58, and a part of me would really like to see some of it put back in, for example, more of the underrated California Street line, which is the least busy cable car line and the one which uses the beautiful red and gold double-ended cars (which as added plus do not require turntables to reverse direction at the end of the line, so even on a busy day, the queue for this line is always much shorter).

So that’s more than you’ve ever wanted to know about public transit in the Bay Area, cable cars more generally (although the system in San Francisco is the only surviving system in the world, although in Lisbon, Portugal and a small town in Wales there are street-running funiculars (which are functionally similar to cable cars albeit usually with a fixed grip and a limit of two counter-balanced cars per cable; they are used to ascend hills and most run on their own reserved track, like the famous Angel’s Flight in Los Angeles, and various funiculars in Pittsburgh, Des Moines, Paris, Bergen, Innsbruck, Dresden, Prague, Budapest, and all across Switzerland; cable cars on the other hand can handle multiple cars on the same cable, which pick up and drop the cable whenever they stop, and which were historically used to replace horse-drawn tramways both in flat cities like New York and Washington DC, as well as hilly cities like San Francisco, where they were invented, and Seattle, where they ran until 1940), and also hybrid organs, various forms of Judaism, and the relationship between Jewish and Christian liturgy, all derived from an interesting question about the original pronunciation of the name of our Lord in Hebrew and Aramaic.

God bless all of you, my friends.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Just my opinion and nothing more. Our Awesome Creator gave us THE NAME by which He wanted to be known. So man decides THE NAME is too holy to be spoken, even though His Creator graciously provided that glorious NAME to be spoken freely and enjoyed with no restrictions … not a single one. I see this as nothing more and nothing less than man rejecting an intimate gift from His Awesome Creator in favor of exalting his own self-righteous false humility!

No restrictions...not a single one? Exodus 20:7

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

Thanks, long video, interesting but doesn't answer my question really.

I wonder if anyone is so certain that Yeshua didn't have a silent S in pronunciation... so it would sound like Ya-huuu-aa .. drawn out 'hua'.

I've heard some are talking about this but I can't seem to find the information online and tbh was thinking this site with professing Christians, there may be at least one person who would know.

I try to stay away from the subject matter because some legalists fall into a trap over it and condemn other people to hell for not pronouncing or spelling Jesus' name correctly.

I consider that kind of mindset a religious mental illness

 

[Free2bHeretical4Him!]

No restrictions...not a single one? Exodus 20:7

I stand corrected my friend … but I was only speaking within the context of the lost pronunciation of His Glorious Name! I figured it was understood in my communication I would be referring to things like: how often, at which occasions, gender, time of day, position of authority etc …

My point still stands. “I believe” it was false piety and their desire to be perceived as being righteous, that robbed us of properly speaking His Name with all the freedom and joy that comes from personally knowing and growing in a relationship with our Creator.

blessings,

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

My point still stands. “I believe” it was false piety and their desire to be perceived as being righteous, that robbed us of properly speaking His Name with all the freedom and joy that comes from personally knowing and growing in a relationship with our Creator.

blessings,

The Name was pronounced at certain times. However, it was and is so sacred and holy that a "fence" (gezeirah in the Talmud) was kept around it as are other "fences" so as to protect against using it incorrectly, within Judaism. It has nothing to do with "false piety".

"Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples and make a fence for the Torah." Avot 1:1

Yeshua also used these "fences" such as "do not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of judgment, But I tell you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of judgment"...and “You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”

 

[Free2bHeretical4Him!]

The Name was pronounced at certain times. However, it was and is so sacred and holy that a "fence" (gezeirah in the Talmud) was kept around it as are other "fences" so as to protect against using it incorrectly, within Judaism. It has nothing to do with "false piety".

"Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples and make a fence for the Torah." Avot 1:1

Yeshua also used these "fences" such as "do not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of judgment, But I tell you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of judgment"...and “You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”

Appreciate the informative and interesting reply brother, yet, with all that “fencing” we still do not know the proper pronunciation. Sorry, but I still find no instruction from the LORD Himself, within the Scriptures, defining its usage, other than taking His Name in vain. Nevertheless, He knows our hearts and I’m sure He delights in those who call upon Him. Regardless of how we pronounce His Name.

blessings

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

we still do not know the proper pronunciation.

The name YeHoshua should give you a hint ;-)

 

[AbbaLove]

The name YeHoshua should give you a hint ;-)

Whether Yeshua or Yeshuah the pronunciation is still the same

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Whether Yeshua or Yeshuah the pronunciation is still the same

Who said they weren't??

 

[Grip Docility]

When Moses passed away, he was succeeded by Joshua. These words aren't just about the book of Deuteronomy. There was a deep Prophecy in this matter that is revealed through the simple observation of the biblical narrative.

The name Joshua is most closely spelled Yeshua or any acceptable variant. Before the Main Jewish Diaspora, the name used to be spelled with an H and an O added within the name. The very H and O symbolized praise to the Tetragrammaton of God. Some people suggest that it simultaneously binds to the praise "Hosanna". Though, this is not as critical as the Tetragrammaton of the matter.

The very name YeHoshua literally translates to "

is Salvation".

When scripture states that Jesus was given the Name above all names, it is very literal to understand this. The very Sacred name of God is within the correct Pre-Diaspora spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua. Jesus is the Greek transliteration of this name. The Hebrew name Yeshua is given "post Diaspora" to protect the original Paleo Hebrew name for "The Living, Breathing I Am that I Am".

Philippians 2:9,10,11 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus ( YeHOshua, "

is Salvation") every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Lord = Kyrios, which in this usage is again a refrence to the Yud Hey Vav Hey of the matter), to the glory of God the Father.

The phrase "glory of God the Father" is a reference to God the Son being the Pre-Incarnate Theophanic Shakina Glory, become Flesh (Sarx).

The "Glory of God the Father" is explained in Hebrews.

Hebrews 1:2,3 hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds; who being the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; ​

 

[AbbaLove]

Who said they weren't??

Just in case someone might decide to pronounce Yeshua with a hard 'a' instead of soft 'a'... so the preferred spelling should end in 'ah'

You wouldn't spell Yahuah as 'Yahua'. YaHaVaH (seven letters is better than six and three 'a' is better than just two)