Our Guest Bob Fischer

Sid: I’ve been interviewing this week Dr. Bob Fischer at his home in Tiberias, Israel. And Dr. Fischer has just come out with a DVD series called the Jewish origins of Christianity. It’s actually being taught in a college level course. This has never been taught before; this has never been put together in such a marvelous fashion with artwork and the antiquities and the pictures of Israel. It’s for such a time as this because believers worldwide are saying “I don’t understand it but I must understand the Jew in Israel and my own roots and the context of what the New Covenant was written under” because there is a dimension and a depth that the first church had that we don’t have today. Perhaps if I go back to where we went astray I can go back to the power that we had before; the vibrancy we had before; the evangelism that we had before; the signs and wonders that we had before. So that’s why I’m so excited about this teaching. Now Bob on yesterday’s broadcast we’re covering so many fascinating areas there’s no way that we can cover anything remotely close the course but we can just touch the surface. However, we were talking about 3 major groups with in Judaism. The Pharisees and the Sadducees which most people know about, but then there was a group called the Essenes. Which very few Christians ever heard of yet they’re throughout the entire New Covenant. The first believer’s in the Messiah were these Essenes. Perhaps if we can understand them a little better we can understand the vibrancy that the First Church had that we lost today. Now these Essenes were looking forward to a Messiah that was exactly like Yeshua. Tell me what the records of the Dead Sea Scrolls and all the studies you gone through to accumulate this. What do they show that the Essenes were looking for in the form of a Messiah?

Bob: Yes Sid, well first that He would be from the line of David, this is a generally understood Jewish idea throughout all of the Jewish sects. He would come to atone for the sins of men; this was a uniquely Essenic understanding that would later became obviously that later became obviously our Christian understanding. And that He would appear imminently among them as a man. And that He would appear a second time at the end of days. And of course they elaborated on who He was in more detail to the point that when He showed up among them they embraced Him; they weren’t… they didn’t have to be evangelized; they didn’t need a Sid Roth right then. They understood who He was…

Sid: What about such complex things as even today we have the ideas of the trinity or the triune nature of God, what was their understanding?

Bob: They had a very clear understanding of the Triune nature of God and it came to them as a oral tradition, according to tradition, that may have begun as early as 1850 BC when God according to this tradition Yahweh handed down this understanding to Abraham. And it was passed along generation to generation of sages, rabbi’s until it was actually we know for a fact that it’s documented being taught by the Jewish sages as early as 515 BC.

Sid: Well why don’t we hear anything about the triune nature of God or the trinity within the traditional Judaism today?

Bob: Because traditional Judaism today is the fulfillment of Pharisaic Judaism not Essene Judaism and the trinity; the whole Triune nature was stamped out by Rambaum in the middle ages.

Sid: Now who was Rambaum?

Bob: Rambaum was a very important Sage, Maimonides Rambaum, who wrote the 13 articles of the faith; or principals of the faith I think they are. Two of which address Christianity kind of head on. One of them says that “There will not be a possibility that God can be in the flesh, He cannot appear among us in the flesh. And the other describes Him as a perfect unity. You know we hear in the Sh’ma “Hear of Israel; the Lord our God; the Lord is One.” But the English word here…

Sid: That’s Deuteronomy 6:4 is the Sh’ma. But go ahead.

Bob: It is 6:4 right. The Hebrew word for one here is “echad.” Echad is a word used throughout the Torah in other places. For example a husband and wife shall become one flesh echad.   It allows plurality in a unity. But Rambaum came along and he decided unilaterally to change this; he used a word yachid to describe God. It’s very seldom used any place else. I think there’s only 12 usages of it in the entire Tanach. It’s a word that means absolutely indivisible. So Rambaum kind of solidified the Pharisaic idea that there couldn’t be a triune God.

Sid: Yes but in Deuteronomy 6:4 they used a multiple unity echad. How come he hijacked?

Bob: This was a Pharisaic thing. I don’t know where it had to be some satanic spiritual thing that Pharisaic Judaism even today in its Rabbinical form it’s militantly opposed to the trinity.

Sid: But what about this basic issue of the deity of the Messiah? What did the Essenes believe on that?

Bob: Oh the Essenes believed that He is God Incarnate because they expected Him; this was written all over the Dead Sea Scrolls. There was an expectation that He would be God.

Sid: Now would you say that the majority of the Jewish people at the first coming of the Messiah were more Essene than say the Pharisees, or the Sadducees?

Bob:   During the 1^st century; at the height of the 1^st century there is one estimate that there was as many of 1 million Essene Nazarene Essene believers in Yeshua. That is to say the first Christians if you will. Now there was a population in Israel at the time of something like 3 million. So if 1million were believers 1/3^rd of the Body of Jews in Israel were believers. Now today if you look at this there is something like at the highest estimate there’s something like 100,000 believing Jews in the world out of a population of 15 million. That’s less than 1 percent; so today we have less than 1 percent believers. At the lst century we had as many as 33% believers.

Sid: Of the Jewish people were believers that is amazing! Now he wrote a book but that’s the title that’s coming to me. It’s really a full circle that’s going on right now.

Bob: That’s why I wrote “Full Circle.” I think to basically that point that the Church; that the faith is coming back to its 1^st Century Jewish roots. We’re coming back to an understanding to embrace, to understand “What did these people believe?” You know we see written all over the Dead Sea Scrolls Pauline theology for example. Paul’s basic ideas are recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls before Paul was ever alive.

Sid: Give me an example Bob of some of this Essene teaching before Jesus came to earth that is so similar to what we read in the New Covenant.

Bob: Yes Sid there are all manner of interesting things. They taught salvation by faith through grace for example. Here’s a quote “Only by Your grace is man justified and by the abundance of Your compassion is He purified.”

Sid: They must have been so excited when they heard Jesus teaching this.

Bob: Now they were expecting it now; they were expecting Yeshua.

Sid: So they had prophetic understanding of His teaching before He even came.

Bob: How about circumcision of the heart for example; “In the abundance of His mercy He has favored the needy and has opened their eyes so that they see His paths and their ears so that they hear his teaching; He has circumcised their hearts.”

Sid: And you know I noticed in your DVD course you even talked about they believed in the laying on of hands for people to be healed.

Bob: Absolutely here’s a quote for you that deals with this “He came to me and asked me to come and pray for the king and to lay my hands upon him so that He would live; I prayed for him and laid my hands upon his head; the disease was removed from him.”

Sid: So when John the Baptist started preaching about Him; and when Yeshua came on the scene it’s no wonder all of these 100’s of 1000’s of Essenes flocked to Him.

Bob:   Amen.

Sid: Now one of the other things we don’t have time to go into the detail but just a little bit. Some of the Essene teaching before Yeshua came to earth that are found in the gospels called the Beatitudes.

Bob: Oh, that’s a fascinating one; there’s a form of the Beatitudes not the exact words but in form, let me read it to you real quickly:

Blessed is the one who speaks the truth with a pure heart and does not slander with his tongue.

Blessed is the one who adheres to the laws and do not adhere to perfected paths.

Blessed are those who rejoice in her and do not explore insane paths.

Blessed are those who search for her with pure hands and do not attempt to inpune her with a treacherous heart.

Blessed is the man who attains wisdom and walks in the law of the most high and dedicates her heart to His ways. And is constrained by her discipline; and always takes pleasure in her punishments and does not forsake her in the hardships of his wrongs. And in the time of anguish does not discard her and does not forget her in the days of terror and in the distress of his soul does not loath her.

That’s the end it but you know something fascinating about this this was written in Aramaic to start with and it rhymes in Aramaic.

Sid: I’ll tell you the revelations that have come from the Dead Sea Scrolls especially about the precursor of Christianity the Essenes so fascinating. But you have so many other things in this course called the “The Jewish Origins of Christianity.”