Well, here we are with our last PG-13 teaching for a long time, thank goodness. I much prefer teaching for a general audience but it’s in the Bible so it would also be irresponsible to just pretend like this doesn’t exist. Bathsheba has an undeserved bad reputation, alongside Jezebel and Delilah as temptresses – but in Bathsheba’s case, that reputation is undeserved and I will prove it entirely from the original Hebrew and archaeology.

So this week we will be talking about one of the most admirable women in Scripture – a pagan-born Moabitess named Ruth. But we have a problem because of the Scriptural prohibition against Moabites and their descendants being allowed to join the congregation of Israel! How does Ruth break that curse against her and become the great-great grandmother of King David?

This teaching will be PG-13 for obvious reasons! How many of us would brag about one of our great great great…. grandmas being a pagan prostitute? Probably not many and even fewer people would want it on their genetic resume broadcast to the world but that’s exactly what we see in the Matthew 1 genealogy of Yeshua (Jesus)! In ancient times, a man’s genealogy was a sign of his honor and status – and so you would think that the Bible writers would never have told us about King David’s questionable lineage, but then they boldly proclaim it in Matthew too!

What are we missing? Well, maybe what we see as scandalous was looked at in an entirely different way by the Jews. So this week I will share why Rahab, like Tamar before her, was honorable and not shameful. This week we are going to explore the power of repentance and the absolute forgiveness of God – and what that means for us when we come into the Covenant through the blood of Yeshua.

This is our first PG-13 teaching so I must caution parents to either preview this or watch it with your kids. I give a warning at the beginning telling kids not to watch it without your permission. There is just no way to thoroughly discuss why Messiah’s genealogy was an honorable one without talking about the four women mentioned in it – and this week that means discussing Levirate marriage, sex, and cult prostitution. Tamar was a vindicated woman, but to the modern eye she appears a bit scandalous – it is important that our kids know how people in Messiah’s day would have looked at the women included.

This also ties in with Torah Portion Vayeshev.

Colorful Ceremonies of the Beis HaMikdash

Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary

Mishnah Torah translated by Touger

Here is the video!

Okay, so here we have all seven parts of my teaching series on Hannukah and why it is so important to understand. We start with the significance of the Temple, and the offerings that were given on feast days. Then we cover the events leading up to the Maccabean revolt and end up with the story of the first Hannukah. In the final video, I read from numerous accounts of Hannukah from I and II Maccabees, Josephus, and i even talk about the famous Hannukah argument between Hillel and Shammai in the first century BCE. If you want to just get the whole playlist on YouTube, here it is

Okay, here are the links to some of the resources:

I Maccabees (starting with Chap 1)

II Maccabees

Josephus

The Hannukah Anthology by Philip Goodman

and here are some of my favorite fun videos from the Maccabeats, a Jewish acapella group (I love acapella)

So here is part 2 and 3 of my Maccabean Revolt series. There will be one more installment before the beginning of Hannukah where we will talk about the very first Hannukah and what we know about the celebration in the following years. 

And here are some online versions of the resources I mentioned in the video – I am using different sites to let you know what is out there:

I Maccabees (starting with Chap 1)

II Maccabees

Josephus

The Hannukah Anthology by Philip Goodman

Did you know that when Christians talk about the Maccabean Revolt, they focus entirely on the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes who defiled the Temple, but when the Jews talk about it they often focus on the Hellenized Jews? Why is that? Well, the historical accounts make it clear that without the meddling of the Jews who wanted to be Greeks, even at the expense of the rest of the nation, Antiochus most certainly would have left Jerusalem and the laws of God alone! Antiochus was a pawn in local political wranglings that had been going on for some time – he still gets a lot of the blame, but he was instigated by traitors who had little or no love for God and so they are considered to be the true villains.

For fun, I am going to include a Hannukah song video that I enjoy. It is based on a Midrashic legend (meaning it isn’t true but is a story people tell to convey a concept of God’s miraculous provision) written hundreds of years later. The candelabra you see in the video is called a hanukkiah and is entirely different than a menorah. In the time before Yeshua (Jesus), the heads of the Pharisaic schools of thought, Hillel and Shammai, had an argument over how the lamp should be lit. Hillel argued that each night, a new candle should be lit, working up to eight on the last night. Shammai insisted that they should start with eight and work their way down to one on the last night. As in most things, Hillel won out in the end!

And here are some online versions of the resources I mentioned in the video – I am using different sites to let you know what is out there:

I Maccabees (starting with Chap 1)

II Maccabees

Josephus

The Hannukah Anthology by Philip Goodman

So this week is our fourth installment in the Backgrounds of the New Testament series but it is also the second installment in our series on Hannukah and the Maccabeean Revolt. We are going to talk about the pilgrimage olah, which is an important piece of Bible context from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and we are also going to explore what exactly is meant by the phrase “coming before the Lord empty-handed.” It is a much misunderstood and abused verse because, like most laws in the Bible, no specific instructions are given as to how to fulfill that. So where do we find our answers? Well, interestingly enough, Paul gives us the exact definition in the Book of Acts – once we see that, you will be able to spot it hiding in plain sight throughout the Bible.

For those of you who never caught it last year, please take the time to watch my teaching on Vayikra last year – “What were the sacrifices really about?” Understanding how the ancient Israelites viewed the sacrifices is crucial to understanding the reasons for the Temple, and why it is being rebuilt – it is not for the reasons that most people think because they do not understand the purpose of the sacrifices!

This week I am so excited, as I love to teach about the Temple in Jerusalem. I have been studying the Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple for almost two years now – and I have just scratched the surface. I put the links to the site where I am learning from at the end of the video and I will include links here as well. It is very important for all of us to know why the Temple was so important in the Bible – important to the Israelites, important to God – and so important to Yeshua (Jesus) that he violently reacted when people disrespected it! Paul was almost killed just because some people thought he defiled it! So, we are going to find out why David was called a man after God’s own heart, what David and Moses had in common, and what God had to say about his Temple being in ruins after the exile when everyone else was living in houses.

If you are interested, this is the place where I learn about the Temple – not only is there a formal curriculum for gold-level subscribers, but there are also years worth of teachings and download about all sorts of very in depth topics such as the Feasts, eschatology, the writings of Paul, and one of my favorites is “The Heavens Rejoiced” – which proves from the Temple liturgies when Mary conceived our Messiah and when she gave birth to Him as well. My teacher is Joseph Good, and he is a Messianic believer who is well respected by the leaders at the Temple Institute in Jerusalem.

www.jerusalemtemplestudy.com

hatikva.org