by Glen Penton
One of the most debated issues among our People today is the Who is a Jew controversy. There are many opinions. I'll suggest mine and give my reasoning. You may not agree with my definition, but perhaps some part of my reasoning will help you to arrive at your own understanding. I'll suggest both a conceptual and a (more or less) operational definition.CONCEPTUAL: A Jew is a person whom God has eternally chosen to count as included in His People Israel.
So the question naturally arises, "How can we know if a person is Jewish or not?" That is an important question, since the Israeli Knesset and court system must decide who does or does not receive Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Likewise, for the Messianic Jew, there are numerous commands in Scripture to treat Jews differently than non-Jews. For example, "the Gospel....to the Jew first and foremost" in Romans 1:16, and "don't charge interest to a fellow-Jew" in Leviticus 25:35-38.
As a first step toward an operational definition, I should point out that the concept of Jewishness in Scripture is used to single people out for good. Jewishness is viewed as positive. Therefore justice requires that our operational definition be as broad as we can reasonably make it, including as many people in it as feasible. We should be very careful not to exclude anyone from this wonderful identity if there is evidence that they in fact belong. If Jewishness were something unpleasant or burdensome, justice would demand a strict, narrow definition along the lines of "innocent until proven guilty". So those who make a narrow definition of Jewishness are, by their definition, either announcing their own wickedness or their low opinion of Jewishness. Now for the operational definition itself:
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION: A person may confidently be classified as Jewish if he or she clearly fits at least one of the following seven criteria:
(I include Scriptural backup for my criteria, where I believe I have some, in the footnotes.)
A full citizen of ancient Israel is Jewish. I mention this one merely for purposes of completeness. Nobody today qualifies, of course. Simply living in the Land does not count. (Deuteronomy 23:3-4) That is why I do not include modern Israeli citizenship as a criterion.
- CITIZENSHIP:
ETHNIC: A person brought up Jewish is Jewish and cannot become non-Jewish, even in such cases as amnesia, brainwashing, severe retardation, repudiation of one's Jewishness, etc. FAITH: A person whose sins are forgiven by the Blood of Israel's Messiah is fully included in the Family by the Father (Ephesians 2:11-19 and many other Scriptures). That includes people like Noah and Abraham who lived before the Family was founded (Romans 9:4), people who are not yet believers in Israel's Messiah but will be before they die (Ephesians 2:11), and even sincere but misguided followers of Yeshua who may have a bad attitude towards the Torah and/or the Jewish People. A person who is not Jewish by faith has missed the essence, the main point of his or her Jewishness (Romans 2:28-29). Knowing God and being a part of His People is really what Jewishness is all about.GENEALOGY: A person whose genealogy goes through the father line directly back to the man Israel. That can be known today only in the case of Levites and cohens, I think, since most or all of the genealogical records have disappeared over time. But perhaps soon, with the current advances in DNA research, this criterion will be easily testable for anyone. HOUSEHOLD: All members of a Jewish household are Jewish. A Jewish household is a household in which at least one member is Jewish. This criterion is contra-intuitive for moderns, but is clearly taught in such Scriptures as Genesis 17:11-12 and I Corinthians 7:14. Naturally, this kind of Jewishness can be gained or lost simply by changing households.IDENTITY: A person who knows himself or herself to be Jewish is Jewish. This kind of Jewishness can also be fairly easily gained or lost. RELIGION: Any member of the Jewish religion (including, of course, a Messianic Jew) is Jewish. This criterion also can be gained or lost. Excluded are the para-Jewish religions, such as Samaritanism (John 4:22), black Hebrewism, Islam, and most forms of Christianity. I include Reformed and Humanist Jews, drawing the line of demarcation to exclude the religions that have cut themselves off from the Jewish People as a whole.In ancient times, a male who
was Jewish by any of these seven criteria was ordinarily required to symbolize it by abris, a ritual circumcision . But there were special circumstances under which a bris was not required. Two examples are the generation of Jews who were born in the Sinai Desert in the time of Moses (Joshua 5:4-5) and the men who converted to Judaism from a Greco-Roman cultural context. So circumcision became a sign of individual participation in the covenant, but was not in itself the criterion of that participation. If it were, of course, there would not have been any Jewish women, since Judaism never circumcised females.
Deuteronomy 23:3-4, "No Ammonite or Moabite may come into the Lord's Community. Even [if they live among you] for ten generations, none of them may ever come into the Lord's Community [automatically]. Because they allowed you no bread or water on your way, when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam, the son of Beor, from Pethor in Upper Mesopotamia to curse you."I take it that the point of this command is that no Ammonite or Moabite individual or family could become Jewish or a citizen of ancient Israel automatically, just by living in the Land or among the Jewish People, but that it was necessary for these people to make a deliberate, formal, public choice to be Jewish and to no longer be Ammonite or Moabite.
return to article Ephesians 2:11-19, "For this reason keep it in mind that in the past you, who were not Jewish by physical birth, were called "uncircumcised" and "gentiles" by those who defined their Jewishness merely in terms of physical circumcision by human hands. 12 You were
- without the Messiah,
- cut off from citizenship in the People of Israel,
- having no part in God's covenant promises,
- hopeless,
- and without God in the world.
13 But in Messiah Yeshua, you who were then far off from His People are now brought near by Messiah's blood. 14 For He is our shalom. He has made the two into one, and broken down the wall that kept you away. 15 He physically ended God's hostilities against you, His written declaration of war on you, based on the commands in His Torah. In that way, He re-created us in Himself into one renewed corporate Person, so making shalom. 16 He brought both you and us into agreement with God as one Body, by dying that horrible death for us, so putting an end to that enmity. 17 Then He came and announced shalom to you who were far off, and to us who were near to Him. 18 So through Him we both are able to come near by one Spirit to the Father.
19 So then you are no longer foreigners or outsiders. On the contrary you are God's family-members, fellow-citizens of Israel, along with all those whom God has separated to Himself.
"return In Romans 9:4, God provides a list of advantages that Jews have and non-Jews do not have. In the list, He writes, "Theirs are the covenants. " It seems clear from that statement that God does not make a covenant with non-Jews. Historically the first two people with whom He made covenants were Noah and Abraham, two ancestors of the Jewish People. Yet for God to have made a covenant with them, He obviously counted them as part of the People of Israel, even though the man Israel was not yet born and the family of Israel not yet in historical existence.
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Ephesians 2:11, "For this reason keep it in mind that in the past you, who were not Jewish by physical birth, were called 'uncircumcised' and 'gentiles' by those who defined their Jewishness merely in terms of physical circumcision by human hands."
The wording of this verse implies clearly that the recently-converted Greco-Roman pagans who were the addressees of this letter had been in fact Jewish even before their conversion from paganism, and that their turning from paganism to Israel's Messiah was the sign that God had considered them Jewish all along.
We are, of course, well beyond the limits of an operational definition here. For practical purposes, when a non-Jew becomes a sincere follower of the Jewish Messiah, we have to say something like, "Well, well, I guess that ol' pagan was really Jewish all along, and none of us knew it."
return to article Romans 2:28-29,
" The true Jew is not the one who is only Jewish publicly,
and the real circumcision is not the one which may be seen physically.
But real Jewishness is a heart attitude,
a hidden circumcision of the spirit,
not just an external observance.
It is an identity that comes from God, not from people."Genesis 17:11-12 "You must circumcise the skin of your prepuce. It will be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Every male throughout your generations that is born into [your] household must be circumcised at eight days old, and also those who are not of your offspring who are bought with money from any outsider."
return Someone once asked Rav Sha'ul if pagans turning to the Lord by faith in Messiah should divorce their still-pagan spouses. In that culture, pagan husbands were nearly always unfaithful and frequently abusive. Rav Sha'ul's recommendation was that divorce was usually not a good idea, even in that kind of marriage. Part of his reasoning, perhaps based on Genesis 17:11-12, is as follows (I Corinthians 7:14): "Because the unbelieving husband is counted as holy because of [his] wife, and the unbelieving wife [is counted as holy] because of [her] husband. Otherwise, then, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy." He thus indicates that the pagan spouse and children of a believer have a membership in God's Holy People which they would loose if a divorce occurred. (He is assuming, naturally, that a pagan court would not ordinarily grant custody to the Messianic partner in a divorce case.)
return John 4:22 reports that in conversation with a Samaritan, Yeshua said, "You worship what you do not know. We worship Someone we know, for salvation is from the Jews."
return Joshua 5:4-5, "This is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. All the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, died in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised."
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