Biblical Heritage Center Blog

Back in the early 1980s when we talked about Jesus being a Jew, a lot of people disagreed strongly. Some even became very angry. Today, when people say the same thing, most people completely agree. Over the past few decades so much information about the Jewish Jesus has appeared on television and in movies, as well as in numerous books, that most people would think not knowing that Jesus was Jesus sounds ridiculous. This is now something that most Christians and Jews are able to agree on. Read the complete newsletter at -- http://www.biblicalheritage.org/discovering-the-bible-newsletters.html

This is the second of a series of blogs about the meaning of the Kingdom of Heaven to Yeshua and his followers. The Kingdom of Heaven was a hot topic before and during the time of Yeshua. It was connected to two beliefs that had grown in popularity – the arrival of the Anointed One (Mashiach / Messiah) and the Son of Man. Read the complete blog at -- https://therealyesua.blogspot.com/2018/05/different-beliefs-about-kingdom-of.html

A primary difference between the Yeshua Movement and other Jewish sects was Yeshua’s Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the first of a series of blogs about what the Kingdom of Heaven meant to Yeshua and his followers. Understanding the principles and values embedded in Yeshua’s Kingdom of Heavenmessage has the power to transform lives today – without need of the tangled web of institutional theologies and Christology’s that have been attached to it over the past 2,000 years. Read the complete blog at -- https://therealyesua.blogspot.com/2018/05/what-kingdom-of-heaven-is-and-is-not.html

Jerusalem has existed for over 7,000 years: prehistoric stone houses and artifacts were discovered in the city's north in 2016. However, organized settlement in "Salem" dates to the Middle Bronze Age, 4,000 to 3,750 years ago. About 4,000 years ago, Canaan was thinly populated. Here and there were fortified cities amidst the ploughed fields. The people lived in a state of constant readiness for sudden attack by desert nomads: the settled farmers and the hordes who had no fixed home, living in goat-hair tents under the open desert skies, were in constant conflict. This was the restless land into which Abraham made his way with his family, kinsfolk and flocks, according to Jewish and Muslim traditions. One of the towns Abraham visited was "Salem," led by Melchizedek the priest-king (Genesis 14:18). A couple of hundred years later, by the 19th and 18th century B.C.E., official Egyptian records were describing Salem as a ruling city in the central hill country. See…

An Amazing Story of Survival Hope and Life By Jim Myers

Jim Myers & Edwin Black
I have heard Edwin Black tell the story of the unbelievable courage of his grandmother and mother in meetings and read it in his books. He has appeared in programs related to the organization my wife Susan works for – Southwest Jewish Congress. Below are comments from her obituary (note the nickname he called her by -- Edjya):
The thin 13-year-old girl nicknamed Edjya sat on the floor listening to the thudding rail ties, trying to understand the terrible events befalling her family. Her mother nudged her and whispered, “You’re a skinny one, Edjya, always a skinny one,” as she eyed the tiny vent at the top of the boxcar. “Quickly, up there,” she said. “Edjya, go through. Quickly, I said. We’ll let you down slowly. Hold onto the towel.” Edjya inched out of the vent and down the horizontal wooden slats of the boxcar’s exterior until her elbows and finally her wrists cleared. Hanging onto the towel against the…

Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest who now teaches at Georgetown University and his new book relies on interviews of Christians. When we think of the slaughter of Jews during World War II, we tend to think of extermination camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka. But more than a quarter of the Jews murdered during the Holocaust never entered a concentration camp, but rather were killed by gunfire in ditches a short distance from their homes. Most of the shooting was done by mobile killing squads that trailed the German army In describing the mass killings, Desbois notes that “very often all of the people around the grave were neighbors. The village Jews, their neighbors who had become police, and the neighbors conscripted to work, as well as those who came as spectators.”
Brown University professor Omer Bartov’s new book incorporates the testimonials of Jews, and the resulting picture of local residents’ involvement in the murder of their Jewish neighbors becomes even bleaker. Bartov e…