Rediscovering Our Jewish Roots

It’s too bad the Church has lost so much of her Jewish roots, the very roots from which she sprang. I suppose we can blame it on Emperor Constantine for legalizing Christianity with his Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., and setting the stage for Christianity to become the official state religion of the Roman Empire. This in turn caused paganism (Easter eggs, Christmas trees, etc) rather than Judaism to color Church traditions. And this should not be, because in its simplest form, the Old Testament (the basis of Jewish faith) lays out God’s promise, while the New Testament lays out the fulfillment of that promised. And as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, Jesus and all his disciples were Jews. So by not knowing the Jewish roots of our faith, we often rob ourselves of both its richness and depth.

Take for example the menorah, a seven-branch candle stick and one of the sacred objects in Herod’s temple. The fourth or middle branch was called the Servant Lamp from which all the other branches were lit. It is a perfect picture of Jesus, who proclaimed Himself to be the “light of the world” (John 8:12); the very source from which true light comes (John 1:9). In Revelation 1:12-17 the apostle John, on the Isles of Patmos, sees and describes Jesus standing in the midst of “seven golden candlesticks”; in other words, a menorah. Jesus’ position in “the midst” or middle designates Him as the Servant Lamp.  

It’s interesting to note that the Jerusalem Talmud, Yoma 43:3 talks about how the “Servant Lamp” stopped burning about 40 years before the destruction of Herod’s Temple by Titus, which occurred in 70 A.D. on the Gregorian Calendar. That would put it around 30 A.D., the time Jesus began his ministry or around His death, depending on when you calculate His birth. It would be easy to make a case that the Servant Lamp didn’t need to burn anymore for the “light of the world” had already come and now continues to burn in all true believers.

In a book by Gary Stearman and the late J.R. Church entitled, The Mystery of the Menorah, they talk about how the Bible is full of word menorahs, and how even some of its chapters form menorahs.  All very interesting, but none blew me away like their discussion about the very first sentence in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In the Hebrew, that sentence is made up of only seven words. And what do you suppose is in the center? Would you believe that in the very position of the Servant Lamp are only two letters, the Hebrew aleph and tahv, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Translate that into Greek and you have Alpha and Omega. Three times in Revelation Jesus calls Himself the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last”! (Revelation 1:8; 1:11, 1:17).

Thus in Genesis 1:1, the first sentence of the Bible, we see Jesus, the Servant Lamp, the Alpha and Omega, in the very center of creation! And this substantiates what John says in John 1:3, that all things were created by Jesus and that “without him was not anything made that was made.”  Wow!

Oh, the profound wonder of Scripture! And the profound wonder of our Jewish roots!

Until next time,

Sylvia