Yesterday, while working on my WIP, tentatively titled A WOMAN OF WORDS, I had a breakthrough. I have said this, in ignorance, many times but I will never say it again. What is the incorrect statement? God became a man . . . (pertaining to Jesus).
Oh, no He didn’t. The idea is repugnant to Jews, especially of the Jews of the first century because they had heard the stories of the Roman gods, who became men, sired children, and engaged in all sorts of ungodly behavior while in human form. The idea is still repugnant to Jews because the Bible flatly says that HaShem (“the name,” because G-d is too holy to write or speak) 1) has no form. 2) Is Spirit, and 3) is One.
How then could He become a man? Truth is, He didn’t. Jesus did not begin to exist when He was born of Mary. He exists eternally, with no beginning and no end. While in flesh He was fully human and fully God, but He was not a human man.
So yesterday I wrote a scene in which my character, the disciple Matthew, begins to put all the pieces together. Remember–in the early first century, the believers didn’t have a New Testament, they didn’t have the word “Trinity,” and what we would consider theological orthodoxy had not been verbalized, must less codified. What did they have? The words of Jesus. The writings of the Torah, the prophets, and the poetry. And they had scores of other books written by religious thinkers.
So here’s my scene. It’s a first draft, so it’s rough, but the key concepts are there. I’d love to know if it’s clear to you.
Oh! And what would I say about how Christ came? I would say that the Christ, who existed long before Creation, put on flesh and concentrated his being in it for about thirty-three years, then returned to His previous state of existence. :-).
Here’s the scene:
Chapter
Matthew
Oddly enough, I found it difficult to work when Mary was away. I had expected to turn pages of notes into polished prose during her absence, but instead my thoughts kept returning to how she had chastised me, how her chin quivered when I told her of the night Yeshua was arrested, and how earnestly she had entreated me to help her write these stories.
I had already written the story of how Gabriel appeared to announce Yeshua’s upcoming birth and had planned to make it the first story in the collection. But a thought kept niggling at my brain, something Yeshua had said . . .
He had been teaching in the Temple, and a group of Pharisees came over to confront Him. They exchanged words, and Yeshua ended the conversation by saying, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; he saw it and was thrilled.”
Then the Judeans—who had always looked down on Galileans—said to Him, “You’re not even fifty years old and you’ve seen Abraham?”
Yeshua answered, “Amen, amen, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am!”
The other disciples and I were as taken aback as the Pharisees, but as they picked up rocks to stone our teacher, the twelve of us led Yeshua away from the Temple. So much was happening at that time, we barely had time to consider what Yeshua had said—
But I had time now.
Before Abraham was, I am.
HaShem was the great I am. He had identified himself with those words when He spoke to Moses out of the burning bush.
I left Peter’s guest chamber and went downstairs, where I found Dina shelling nuts. “Do you have a copy of the Tanakh?” I asked. “I need to refresh my memory about certain writings.”
She smiled and pointed to a carved wooden trunk in the room. “You will find it there, along with the other books.”
I thanked her, opened the trunk, and found several scrolls inside. The five books of Torah, thirteen books of the prophets, four books of hymns and wisdom, as well as the books of the Maccabees and Enoch.
I opened the scrolls and began to read. Before an hour had passed, I realized that both Mary and I were wrong. The story of Yeshua did not begin at His conception.
The scriptures clearly revealed His presence throughout all the writings. But if I had asked any man in Jerusalem if HaShem could come down from heaven in the form of a man, the answer would be a resounding no. Our God was not like the supposed gods of the Romans, who were forever coming to earth to sire children and create trouble. The scriptures clearly stated that HaShem was not a man, He was Spirit. When Moses spoke to the children of Israel, he reminded them that they saw no form, no temunah of any kind the day the Lord spoke to them at Horeb, so they should be careful never to make an image and call it their God.
Yet when Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel went up on the mountain of God, they saw the God of Israel. They saw pavement under His feet, and they ate and drank in His presence.
The Torah also spoke of a time when Abraham was visited by two angels and a third being who ate and drank and had His dusty feet washed. The angels went on to Sodom, but Abraham remained “standing before the Lord.” For years Torah teachers spoke of this being as Malach panav, the Angel of His Face, and acknowledged that He was God. How could anyone deny it, since Abraham called him Adonai?
Jacob wrestled with a man one night, a man who wrenched Jacob’s hip from the socket and then blessed him. Jacob saw God face to face. He saw the temunah, the form of HaShem.
David yearned to see the temunah of HaShem after death, writing, “I in righteousness will behold Your face! When I awake, I will be satisfied with Your likeness.” Job expressed the same desire: “Even after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God.”
The prophet Micah, who declared the place where the Messiah would be born, also declared that Yeshua had existed before His birth: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah—least among the clans of Judah—from you will come out to Me One to be ruler in Israel, One whose goings forth are from of old, from days of eternity.”
And who could forget the mysterious Melchizedek, King of Salem, the city now called Jerusalem, built on Zion, the place where HaShem chose to dwell? Abraham met this King of Peace, a priest for the King of Righteousness, and paid him tithes. And later David prophesied, “Adonai has sworn, and will not change His mind: ‘You are a Kohen forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Yeshua was from the tribe of Judah, not Levi. But He could be the priestly Messiah we expected, an eternal priest from the order of Melchizedek.
But how could these things be? How could HaShem be One and yet appear to men in the form of flesh?
Every Jew I knew uttered the Shema upon waking: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The Hebrew word for one was echad, the same word used to describe a night and day as one day, a husband and wife as one flesh. Echad was a unity of parts. If HaShem were Yachid, on the other hand, His being would hold no plurality.
But HaShem was echad. One with plurality.
A rock of truth was somewhere beneath this sea of confusing thoughts, and I struggled to plant my feet on it.
How did the Torah teachers reconcile the Shema with reports of HaShem appearing to Moses, Abraham, and Jacob? They said that though the entire earth was not large enough to contain HaShem’s glory, He could concentrate His being to fill one small space—the Tabernacle, for instance, or the Temple.
Or a body made of flesh.
Cold, clear reality swept over me in a powerful wave, a realization so stunning I sat motionless for several moments. Yeshua was the Malach panav, the Angel of HaShem’s face, the temunah David and Job longed to see, the Divine Word made flesh. My pen scratched over the papyrus, filling page after page with thoughts and realizations, and I could not wait to share what I had learned with Mary.
Yeshua’s story did not begin with His conception—His story had no beginning at all.
I love awe moments when God shines light on a truth that we have read dozens of times.
The truth comes alive with a deeper understanding of His Word. Thanks for sharing.
Look forward to reading this book.