Reflection

Its been over a year now that I've been studying some of the tenets of Judaism.  My study has been largely self directed so it may not be as scholarly or theologically sound compared to a formal study.  I've learned some things that have caused me to grow in ways that I hadn't expected.

• Jews tend to view the Torah (first five books OT) as literally the word of God.  They view these writings as if God himself drew the very letters on the page.  They study everything about these passages.  They count letters, words, and search for meaning on more levels than a western mind would even conceive of.  They even believe that there is meaning to be discovered within the spaces of the letters themselves.
• This has caused me to reexamine a basic tenet of Christian thought processes.  I was taught to view and discern scripture as: literal, or figurative, or historical or spiritual in meaning.  You could properly understand a text only by putting it in its proper context.  A text may have limited personal application, but it definitely had a specific universal purpose.  I now reject that methodology.  I haven't figured out how to quantify and express the position I'm now favoring but its much more literal and I hold a deeper reverence for scripture.
• The Jews have a collection of commentary, debates, points of view, and clarification of scripture that goes back 4,000 years.  This is sometimes referred to as the Oral Law, Talmud, Mishnah.  The modern Christian community is largely ignorant of the contents of this material. (I am too, but I'm working towards correcting that deficiency) The role and acceptance of the Oral Teachings plays a tremendous role in Judeo/Christian thinking even if gentile Christians are unfamiliar with it.
• The Pharisees of Jesus day were believers in the oral traditions.
• The Sadducees rejected the oral teachings. 
• Jesus sided with the Pharisees against the Sadducees.
• Jesus affirmed/confirmed the oral law.
• The teachings of Jesus in the Gospels are in similar to the teachings of the Pharisees, however Jesus teachings were more stringent than His contemporaries.
• There are several passages in the Gospels that are best understood within the frame work of interpretation of Oral Law, among them:
• Baptism
• Sexuality
• Divorce
• The Sermon on the mount
• Cleansing the temple
• Judgment
• The Sadducees were a minority party during the first century and they were not as well respected as the Pharisees.
• The Sadducees were what we'd call more secular in their thinking.
• Surprisingly many priests were Sadducees.
• Jesus taught against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, interestingly that was one of the topics the Pharisees were also teaching against.
• Jesus was not put to death by the full Sanhedrin, rather it was an illegal gathering of priests most of whom belonged to the sect of the Sadducees.
• Had the full Sanhedrin met to hear Jesus's case, it is unlikely that the Pharisees would have been as politically motivated to execute or even punish Him. 
• In the book of Acts, several years latter, Saul/Paul would be acquitted by the full Sanhedrin due in large part to the Pharisees.
•  Many Pharisees accepted Jesus as Messiah.
• The Pharisees who rejected Jesus became the fore runners of the modern Rabbis.
• They were happy to "borrow" Jesus's teachings and add them to their own understanding of the law.

The main thing is that has been changing is my fundamental understanding of the thought process behind Scripture.  As I change my thinking on the TANAK it is forcing me to change or challenge my thinking on the New Testament. This process is also causing me to consider a different hermeneutic for harmonizing the two bodies of writing.

I have also been rethinking eschatology.  I haven't been able to sort Jewish belief on this topic, but I have looked at some tenets of Islam.  I'm interested to learn more about the Jewish perspective on this largely because the Islamic one is very interesting academically.  It seems the Islamic POV is a near match for what some Christians accept in terms of prophetic imagery, time tables and events.  The main difference is that the Islamic perspective is like looking at a photographic negative to one of the major Christian POVs.