For many years now, as a Jewish believer in Jesus with an academic background in Hebrew and Jewish studies, I have often been approached by Christians with all kinds of “Jewish” questions. Over the last few years, with the launching of an improved ministry website (www.icnministries.org), along with a website devoted to Jewish outreach alone (www.realmessiah.org), the volume of questions has increased dramatically.
Some have asked, “Should Christians observe the Sabbath?” Others have inquired, “Was the New Testament originally written in Hebrew?” Still others have asked if I could explain the background and significance of a particular traditional Jewish practice, while others have wondered out loud about the latest “Jewish” fad in the Church today.
Unfortunately, as the questions increased, the time necessary to answer these many questions did not increase, and so the idea was birthed of answering them all in a book. In fact, seeking to be proactive, I thought it wise to answer many other questions that would inevitably be asked, thereby allowing me (I hope!) to say in the future, “I already answered that in my book.”
To be sure, I have now written more than 1,500 pages of material responding to Jewish objections to Jesus (published by Baker in the multivolume series Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus). The questions I address here are primarily Christian questions about Jewish-related issues. So the overlap between these studies is minimal, and the vast majority of the questions treated here are not treated in my apologetics series at all.
There has been, however, an additional motivation in writing this book, and that is my concern over the ever-growing number of bizarre and sometimes heretical teachings coming from the fringes of the Jewish roots movement. As readers of this present book will recognize at once, I am deeply committed to the Church’s recovering her severed and often forgotten Jewish roots. But I am even more committed to seeing all believers, Jewish and Gentile alike, maintain a Jesus-focused lifestyle, one that is free from many of the secondary and (to repeat) at times heretical emphases put forth by these fringe groups.
This book, then, intends to be both informative and practical; and, with regard to the doctrinal and practical issues discussed, I have done my best to condense more than 35 years of careful study of the Scriptures into the pages of this book.
On a final, personal note (which is what a preface is for), I confess that I initially underestimated the amount of work that would be involved in writing this book, thinking that it would be a “fun” project not requiring much research. (In the unique parlance of an American political figure, I “misunderestimated.”) Once I began to write, however, I was constantly prodded by my scholarly side, reminding me that some documentation was needed here and an additional endnote was needed there. The end result, then, is a nontechnical book written for a popular audience, but with nearly three hundred endnotes, and one that summarizes many years of study and reflection. It is my prayer that readers will find the pages that follow both enjoyable and edifying.
My appreciation to Jane Campbell and the terrific editorial team at Chosen Books, along with Timothy Beals, who also assisted greatly in the final editing of the material.
May Yeshua-Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world, be greatly exalted in the earth today!
Michael L. Brown
April 2007