• The early leaders of the Christian Church were all Jewish
• The original Church was organized around the pattern of the Jewish synagogue
• Yeshua (Jesus) used numerous Jewish idioms in his teachings and was, perhaps, a Pharisee himself

[P]revious histories have generally left out the Jewish factor. By beginning their research with the later second- and third-century Church, after it became predominantly a Gentile organization, they have lost the history of the first hundred years and the necessary understanding of Jewish roots. Many difficult Hebraic phrases and theological dilemmas can be understood by investigating the original Jewish roots of the early Church.

Today, scholars agree, on the most basic level, that Jesus was a Jew who was born, lived, and died, within first-century Judaism. His teaching methods, parables, proverbs, and symbolic style was characteristic of the Judaism of that day. Since both the Old and New Testaments are highly Hebraic, with the background, writers, culture, religion, traditions, and concepts being Hebrew, any analysis should be done from this perspective.

This book will propose to show that the earliest Church and its first fifteen elders were Jewish and that the original organizational structure of the early Church came from the synagogical prototype. This investigation will examine major Jewish terms such as Torah, or Law, which, when communicated in the Greek mind-set, have been completely misunderstood. This study will show that the Pharisees of the first century were the orthodox fundamentalists who had within their camp both hypocrites and heroes. Finally, our study will suggest that the early Church was one of the many sects within first-century Judaism, which neither Jesus nor Paul ever tried to leave. Because the early Church remained within Judaism for the first hundred years, the proto-rabbi and the Hebrew culture are essential to understanding its organizational structure.

AUTHOR BIO:

Ron Moseley has studied the Jewish roots of Christianity at Princeton Theology Seminary and the Jerusalem and Hebrew Universities in Jerusalem. He holds a bechelor's degree in Religious Education and a Master of Arts in history from Luther Rice College, and a Ph.D. in education from Louisiana Baptist University. Ron is founder and president of the Arkansas Institute of Holy Land Studies and South Central Graduate College. For the past sixteen years, he has pastored Sherwood Bible Church in Sherwood, Arkansas.