Roots of Faith

In 1995 I was given a copy of an interesting article written by Mark Allan Powell of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus Ohio. This article, (Do and Keep What Moses Says) was published in the prestigious Journal of Biblical Literature [JBL 114/3 (1995) 419-435]. It proposed an alternate interpretation of Matthew 23:2-3.

By the fall of 1996, I had almost forgotten about Mark Powell’s article, and perhaps would have never looked at it again if I had not studied the Hebrew Matthew contained in the polemical treatise of a Spanish Jew named Shem Tob ben Isaac ben Shaprut. This treatise was composed in 1380 and had become the latest work of New Testament scholar George Howard of the University of Georgia. In 1987, Dr. Howard had published this Hebrew Matthew text in The Gospel of Matthew According to a Primitive Hebrew Text, Mercer University Press. Eight years later, Dr. Howard revised and re-published this text under the title,
Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, Mercer University Press. This later edition is the one that I had obtained, and the one that led me to discover a variant text that could shed some light on the subject at hand.

I wrote an article on this particular reading and submitted it to the presiding editor over the Journal of Biblical Literature at the time. At the time I was told that the article was “Not really suitable for publication in JBL.” The editor wished me well and said that she hoped that my rejection did not diminish my interest in the Journal of Biblical Literature. It certainly did not. This journal is a very fine publication, and frankly my article was not as “academic” as the term is strictly defined. I posted the article on the web and it was discovered by Nehemia Gordon, who was doing research on this subject for a book that he was writing. The article was referenced in a couple of footnotes in his work – The Hebrew Yeshua Vs the Greek Jesus, Hilkiah Press 2005.

This article was recently accepted by and published on the prestigious website, The Bible&Interpretation.

This single text is becoming more relevant in our day as a result of a growing number of Christians are being “drawn” to the Jewish/Hebraic roots of the Faith. Check it out here.

The “Seat of Moses” Image is used by courtesy of www.HolyLandPhotos.org.

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