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It never ceases to amaze me. Paul, a touted "Pharisee of Pharisees," and he butchered the Jewish Scriptures and takes them so much out of context and gets them so backwards that I wonder if he could be Jewish at all. Well I have found my answer to that on both fronts:
We ended the last articles on Paul’s misuse of the Hebrew Scripture with something unusual….an example where Paul quoted something correctly! I wish I could continue to build up Paul, but such is not the case. From this momentary lapse into accuracy Paul quickly returned to deception with his exegesis of a sentence in Deuteronomy which he mistranslated in order to try to prove his theory about the meaning of Yeshua's death. In Gal. 3:13 Paul claimed…Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'" (Dt. 21:23). As indicated Paul again quotes from Deut. 21:23.
Answer for yourself: Does Paul again take the above quote from Deuteronomy and misapply it to a totally different situation whereby we are led to a conclusion that does not exist in the original context or the original quote? Take a guess?
The quote from Paul from Deut. becomes much more understandable when it is correctly rendered and is read within the entire original context along with the verses before and after it. Paul is, as many unlearned and unstudied Christian pastors are today, guilty of taking a Scripture out of its original context and giving it a completely different meaning than what God intended without telling the listeners that what they are saying is an allegory. Too often we take things we hear to be literalisms when they are not to be such.
Here is Dt. 21:22-24:
If a man committed a sin worthy of death and is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for he that is hanged is a reproach to God; and do not defile the land which the Lord your God gave you for an inheritance.
Answer for yourself: Do you believe that Yeshua sinned, and if so, do you know where in the record of his life in the New Testament?
Answer for yourself: Then if Yeshua was without sin, how can his innocent and undeserving death, since he never incurred the wages of sin which was death, ever warrant he be cursed in the first place?
Answer for yourself: Is Paul guilty again of taking a Scripture our of its original context and forcing a new and foreign meaning to it by misquoting it and misleading his Gentile readers who were, for the most part, not familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures?
Answer for yourself: Could this be one reason why the Jews, who were well versed in their Bibles and the correct interpretation there of, reject again Paul’s new ideas surrounding the death of Yeshua?
Answer for yourself: Could miss-application of this passage from Deuteronomy cause Jews to reject Paul’s new teachings on atonement which is also seen in his doctrine of “faith alone” without “works” for atonement which the whole of the Bible from Genesis through Malachi teaches?
Answer for yourself: Understanding that Paul is teaching against the Torah by substituting a new form of atonement foreign to the Hebrew Bible upon which the “church was to be founded,” [Apostles and Prophets and not Paul], can you begin to see how Paul’s teachings were in reality ironically “another gospel?”
Answer for yourself: Having proved beyond a doubt so far in just these 3 previous articles that Paul miss-used Hebrew Scripture for his personal agenda, can you now see why he had to resort to threats as he does in Galatians where he warns his readers that if they don’t accept his “new and different” teaching they will themselves be cursed?
Answer for yourself: Can you begin to see why he would teach the unsuspecting Gentiles that any other message than his “new revelation” straight from Yeshua, (or so we are told to believe), was to be considered “another gospel,” and who wants “another” anything when you can have the original?
Now for the hardest question I can ask fellow Christians.
Answer for yourself: If, by any chance, we have been misled, accidentally or unknowingly, to misunderstand atonement and forgiveness of sin and its relationship to the death of Yeshua, would you not want to know the real truth from rightly interpreting the whole of the Bible and not just by reading Paul’s miss-quotations before you die and meet Yeshua and the Father face-to-face on Yom Kippur? Because I answered the above question affirmatively, I propelled myself to further study to make sure I truly understood what the Rabbi from Galilee really said. In doing so I found that much had been added to the New Testament and changed as successive church councils met over the early centuries. The doctrines of the Gentile Christian Church literally were in a state of flux, ever changing and being altered by the latest doctrinal creations. New meanings were derived foreign to the original meanings of the Scriptures which do great harm to what God intended we understand, but without a Hebraic perspective we have little chance of arriving at the original meanings of the text. That means if we try to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures by taking them out of their Jewish context and try to interpret them with the mind-set of Rome or Constantinople, then we can be assured we will not arrive at the correct meanings for such things as atonement, repentance, baptism, forgiveness of sin, faith, works, etc. In summary, unless we have a Hebraic perspective upon the doctrines of the Messiah of Hebrews chapter 6 for example, then your opinion is just as good as Irenaeus’, Augustine’s, Luther’s, Calvin’s, Edwards’, Moody’s, Sturgeon’s, Graham’s, etc.
Back on the curse and Paul’s interpretation of Deuteronomy. The main point here that is overlooked by the vast majority of Christianity because they lack the Hebraic interpretation that goes with the context of the verse is that even a criminal is entitled to dignity of a decent burial. Even the criminal has a body made in the image of God and within even such a sinful wretch as a murderer and pedophile is a divine “spark” from God. Leaving his corpse hanging overnight is affront to God in whose image man was created. Contrary to what you have been told by Christian Pastors who failed to know the Hebrew behind the English of their Bibles the criminal atoned for his sin by his death and is no longer under a curse.
Answer for yourself: What is the last thing you and I will ever do? Die.
Yeshua, being a Jew, never replaced his faith with a new faith as most of have been taught to do. In the faith of Yeshua are teachings connected with atonement, and such teachings concern what a man must do and not do to atone for his own sin (sins of the Second Tablet of the Law only).
Answer for yourself: Do you possess all religious knowledge in the world? Then, just because you have not heard of something before does not make it wrong when you do.
Answer for yourself: Did your lack of understanding of algebra in High School mean it was not true when you were first introduced to it?
If you desire to know how atonement works in with the death of Yeshua, and understand it correctly, ask for our research papers on atonement, and learn how you can start laying away treasure in Heaven before you die, for God only knows that most of us have laid away little in thinking we have done a lot based upon what we have been taught so far in our lives by an anti-Semitic and anti-Judaic Contemporary Christian Church.
Now back to Paul.
Answer for yourself: If a sinner is cursed to be killed in such an undignified manner whereby he shames the body he was given by God and desecrated the Temple of the Spirit of God that energized his life, how much less so is an innocent victim like Yeshua (or any of his fellow Jews) who was unjustly crucified? This is the original interpretation from which Paul will make a far-reaching assumption that Yeshua carries all the curses of mankind upon his back.
Answer for yourself: Have you ever read Genesis carefully and seen what was really cursed in the events surrounding Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden fruit?
Gen 3:14-17
Gen 8:21
Answer for yourself: Do you see anywhere in these passages where man was “cursed” or “carries a curse” because he sinned?
Answer for yourself: “Exegesis” is where we draw out of the text what is said and “Eisegesis” is were we read into the text what we thing and concern not ourselves with what the text really says. Do you think Paul used “Exegesis” or “Eisegesis” in quoting Genesis in Galatians now that I have caused you to think about it?
Answer for yourself: Having already seen that Paul miss-quotes the verse in Deuteronomy about why a man is cursed and applied it incorrectly to Yeshua, then don’t you think that you should concern yourself immediately about the issues of atonement and forgiveness as taught by the Bible and not by men who quote Paul who misquoted the Hebraic Scriptures? The "curse" was upon the land and this affected the "living" for desecrating the body and the image of God by allowing it to remain upon the cross for longer than God commanded; the curse was upon the living by means of the land being cursed and not the "dead."
We have a real problem following Paul’s thoughts if we try to parallel them to the Torah and Moses. Paul's perception of the Law turned this verse from Deuteronomy into a monstrous travesty. To accept his view of Torah is to conceive of the Lord Who gave it as unfair, capricious, and unintelligent. By contrast, Jews do not perceive of the Source of their Law as displaying such gross injustice as to call down curses on “everyone who is hanged” regardless of reasons.
Answer for yourself: How could the innocent incur such a curse?
Now for a real eye-opener. Any disapproval, regarding the hanged body, attached to the living, for allowing the corpse to remain overnight on the tree, cross, or gallows. Paul’s thesis is that Yeshua redeemed mankind by taking a curse on himself through hanging on the cross, but as you can now see this conclusion is without foundation in the Pentateuch from which he quoted since no curse accrued to Yeshua for being hanged on a cross as an innocent victim and since no curse was put upon man because of sin. This however, does not negate the role of Yeshua as the Lamb of God as he served in type as both lambs of Yom Kippur; one of which died for atonement for sins connected to the First Tablet of the Law and the other lamb carried the guilt of sin away (but not the consequences….[Adam had to work by the sweat of his brow, etc.].
Answer for yourself: This little tidbit of information regarding atonement of the First Tablet of the Law and the role Yeshua played in it should make you curious as to how atonement for the Second Tablet of the Law is obtained. Does it? Get our articles on atonement from Bet Emet.
But to say that Yeshua became a curse for us in that he was cursed is a complete violation of the Scriptures from which he quotes.
Answer for yourself: Again this is hard for you to hear, but how could a Jew, versed in the Torah since a child, who had memorized the complete Old Testament by the age of 12 make such glaring errors in quoting the Hebrew Scriptures out of context such as the one I have shown you, unless the inescapable fact confronts us to acknowledge as other scholars attest…that Paul was a Gentile who converted to Judaism as an adult, thus explaining his lack of expertise in using and quoting Hebrew Scriptures as well as both his taking them continually out of context and his lack of acceptance as an Apostle of “equal standing” by the Jerusalem church and his successes among Gentiles in Asia Minor?
Answer for yourself: Is not the evidence presented overwhelming?