During my last years as a Christian, I took up the challenge of discovering the foundation for language of the New Testament, I bought Greek and Hebrew resource books, concordances, lexicons, and consulted different versions of the Bible. I sensed that Greek could never have been the language of the disciples as it was not the language of Judea at the time of Christ. And I asked why there were no supporting documents recently uncovered to show the original Hebrew for the gospels if nothing more.

I heard from some of the Messianic preachers that there was a Hebrew Matthew, but when I researched it, the commentaries I found about it showed that it had been translated from the Greek back into the Hebrew some years ago in the Common Era. Why should this have happened? What would be the purpose of translating a book into Hebrew from its original Greek if there was no original supporting Hebrew text? I pondered about who the ones were who used Hebrew, and why they should want to reference it for proof of New Testament validity? And I wondered if was it written to deceive Jews? I pondered these questions and soon discarded the idea that any of the New Testament was written originally in Hebrew. I started learning Hebrew in earnest. I saw no use for the Greek since it was not, in my estimation, a Biblical language. I realized that IF I was going to understand truth, I had to know the language it was written in. I could no longer depend on intermediaries to tell me what things mean.

I found that the four gospels chosen were canonized many years after the early followers of Christ were dead. In fact, research shows evidence that they were accepted and embraced years later:

“…the exact list of New Testament documents was confirmed at the third
Synod of Carthage (397 AD), this was a relatively small regional council and by this time
the 27 New Testament documents had already been agreed upon by most of the church.” R.A. Baker, How the New Testament Canon was Formed, http://www.churchhistory101.com

Dr. Baker goes on to assert in this paper that the New Testament is mostly based on oral tradition.

However the Catholic Encyclopedia sets the date somewhat earlier for canonical recognition of the four books of the gospels,

Catholic Encyclopedia, Canon of the New Testament, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm says: “…even rationalistic scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the quadriform Gospel between the years 140-175.”

However, universal canonization of the 27 books of the New Testament was not established by the Church until the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

“Canon of Trent usually refers to the list of biblical books that were from then on to be considered canonical. This was a decree, the De Canonicis Scripturis, from the Council’s fourth session, of 4 April 1546, which passed by vote (24 yea, 15 nay, 16 abstain).[1] With its decision, the Council of Trent confirmed the identical list already locally approved in 1442 by the Council of Florence (Session 11, 4 February 1442),[2] and that had existed in the earliest canonical lists from the synods of Carthage and Rome in the fourth century.

The list confirmed that the deuterocanonical books were on a par with the other books of the canon (while Luther placed these books in the Apocrypha of his canon) and ended debate on the Antilegomena and coordinated church tradition with the Scriptures as a rule of faith. It also affirmed Jerome’s Latin translation, the Vulgate, to be authoritative for the text of Scripture…”

“…The Council of Trent on April 8, 1546, by vote (24 yea, 15 nay, 16 abstain)[105] approved the present Roman Catholic Bible Canon including the Deuterocanonical Books.”
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/

My questions loomed bigger when I took a look at other gospels written that were not included in the New Testament Canon. Gospels such as the Gospel of St. Peter, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Thomas. I asked, why? Whenever something is excluded there has to be a reason for it. And that reason may signify an elephant in the room. And who decides which books are Biblical truth and which are not? Since none of the gospels were written during the lives of any of the disciples of Jesus, it is pretty clear that they were written later from stories handed down sometime later, I decided that my best decision would be to take the Tanakh, what Christians call the Old Testament as the foundation for what I believe about the Bible.

I have imagined scenario after scenario. For example, what if back then, Rome would have appointed a group of hand-selected writers to create gospels as a tool to harness the scattered people of the early Christians? What if these gospels needed to reflect some of the things that were believed by oral tradition so that they would be believable? And what if when they gathered all the writings together and considered them for the new text of Scripture they were compiling, they realized that several of the new gospels were terribly far fetched and not believable, so they were discarded? Things like Jesus coming out of the tomb with walking and talking cross: (taken from the Gospel of Peter)

9. 34. “Early in the morning, when the Sabbath dawned, there came a crowd from Jerusalem and the country round about to see the sealed sepulchre. 35. Now in the night in which the Lord’s day dawned, when the soldiers were keeping guard, two by two in each watch, there was a loud voice in heaven, (36) and they saw the heavens open and two men come down from there in a great brightness and draw near to the sepulchre. 37. That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and move sidewards, and the sepulchre was opened and both young men entered. 10. 38. When those soldiers saw this, they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they also were there to mount guard. 39. And while they were narrating what they had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulchre, two of them supporting the other and a cross following them (40) and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was being led reached beyond the heavens. 41. And they heard a voice out of the heavens crying, ‘Have you preached to those who sleep?’, 42. and from the cross there was heard the answer, ‘Yes.’”

I have also pondered, what if Paul was actually not the one portrayed as St. Paul, but a Jewish scholar trying to save his own skin with Rome by helping them weave the prophecies together in a way that those disconnected with true Judaism would believe and accept the new religion that Rome wanted to use as a way to control the entire then known world? This Jew would not have worried about the Jews being deceived because they were solid in the Tanakh. His work would merely have been for the sake of helping the emperor to consolidate the radicals floating around out there.

Even after I saw the difference in the languages, I was still brainwashed by what Christianity had taught me about the prophecies that foreshadowed the Christian Messiah, Jesus. It was very hard for me to read passages in the prophets and keep my feet on the ground until I began to hear Jews for Judaism re-explain them. Some will say that I got a new brainwashing! However it was, the thing I have learned more than anything is not to patch parts of prophecies into New Testament theology. Not to gather a sentence here and a phrase there taking them completely out of context to create a proof for the messiahship of Jesus or any other biblical doctrine for that matter! What I learned was to read an entire chapter or section or book of the prophets to establish the background for that prophecy, if it was a prophecy. Some things that Christians claim are prophecies are not prophecies, they are merely current happenings at the time of the writing of the prophet.

As I have, with the help of Jews for Judaism, unraveled some of the solid meanings of these texts I have gotten a better foundation under my spiritual feet. I no longer look for a foreshadowing of things referring to Christ or that should happen in our day. And I have begun to rewrite my own take on what the prophets were saying and never leave out the foundation of the Torah which must underlie all interpretation.