Author: David I Rudel
Format: Paperback, 204 pages
Publisher: Biblical Heresy Press (February 15, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0981826601
ISBN-13: 978-0981826608
I first heard about this book on the blog of a fellow named Aaron called Honest Uncertainty. Well, actually I started following Aaron on twitter, but that’s beside the point right now. After reading Aaron’s review, it seemed like the book really needed a deeper going over and, long story short, I requested and received a review copy from the author David Rudel (thanks, David). Here’s what I found out.
Although there are a few websites and a blog that support the book, I wanted the text to speak for itself first, and so bookmarking the relevant URLs, I pressed on. The first thing about the book that I (and practically anyone, I imagine) noticed was that it has the world’s longest title: “Who Really Goes to Hell? The Gospel You’ve Never Heard: What a Protestant Bible written by Jews says about God’s work through Christ (A book for those in the church and those offended by it)”. Egad. Why not just put the entire text of the book (it’s only 204 pages) on the cover and be done with it? I can only guess that the author and the publisher felt that the long title was needed to “hook” the reader, but then I’m guessing.
Speaking of the publisher, they have a rather unusual name: Biblical Heresy Press. Usually the word heresy isn’t taken in a very positive light in Christian circles, so I thought the explanation from the publisher as to how they made such a name choice would be interesting, but that wasn’t the focus of my review or this blog post. Under the publisher’s logo were the words, “The Bible is best read with your own eyes…preferably open”. I couldn’t agree more, but in what spirit were those words written? I continued turning pages.
Speaking of URLs I decided not to visit until after reading the book, the footer on each page of the book contained a URL not listed elsewhere. I’ll talk about it more at the end of this article. I really wanted the book to be my first presentation to the author’s and publisher’s content.
Stuff I Liked
As a Messianic believer, my theology or frame of reference for viewing the Bible, is somewhat different than the traditional church interpretation, and I was pleased to see the author taking a fresh and personal approach to looking at the Bible. We all have biases or points of view in how we look at the world or any aspect of it, and that includes the Word of God. Tim Hegg in his book (and presentation series) The Letter Writer refers to the “lenses” through which we look at the Bible. Rudel’s book proposes to try and remove those lenses from our eyes and to see the Bible for what it is, or at least for what it seems to be.
I liked the idea of reading the Bible and letting it tell us what our theology or faith and worship practice should be, rather than using our particular theology (whether Evangelical, Messianic, or anything else) to interpret the Word and making the Word fit our theology. We tend to take a lot for granted about what the Bible is saying and believe that it always agrees with our specific theological bent. Attempting to read the Bible without assumptions, while a noble goal, isn’t always easy for human beings. We tend to “marry” our opinions, traditions, and perspectives and these things aren’t easily “divorced”.
Rudel made a good running start out of tackling some of the original Greek and Hebrew involved, and even occasionally referenced one of the traditional Jewish commentators Rabbi Moses ben Maimon or Rambam, as he’s more commonly known. My personal opinion is that it’s difficult to understand how Yeshua (Jesus) and Paul taught if you don’t know a lot about the context of rabbinical teaching and thought. Studying the classic rabbinical commentaries has opened my eyes to a few things and I think this is the right direction to go. Trying to understand the Bible without understanding the authors or their context is a heavy handicap to bear. Certainly applying 21st century American perspectives and attitudes to the Bible won’t offer a complete picture of the message provided.
I absolutely agree with Rudel that you cannot understand the writings of the Apostolic scriptures unless you study all of the writings that came before. Traditional Christianity refers to that part of the Bible as the Old Testament, but Messianics tend to chafe at the “Old” part, since there’s at least the implication that “Old” means “done away with”. Rudel seems to think that understanding the writings of Moses and the Prophets is essential for understanding what Jesus is saying, as well as the letters of Paul. If we are to take Paul seriously in terms of 2 Timothy 3:16 then “all scripture” must include all scripture, from Genesis to Revelation.
Stuff That Could Have Been Better
This is probably just me, but I don’t think the book went far enough in certain areas. It may have gone “too far” in terms of an Evangelical readership, but it seemed like Rudel took certain ideas up to a particular point and then just dropped them. For instance, Rudel recognizes that Peter’s vision in Acts 11 is telling Peter that he is not to consider Gentiles as “unclean”. God isn’t telling Peter about food, He’s talking about people. Peter and the rest of the Apostles had been “ignoring” the Gentiles for the first 15 years after the Ascension; ignoring Yeshua’s directive at the end of the Book of Matthew to go and “make disciples of all nations (all the non-Jewish people)”. The Acts 11 vision serves to move Peter “off the dime” and get him going so that he could fulfill this mission. While Peter was still trying to figure out what the vision meant (he didn’t assume it was about food), the messengers from Cornelius arrived, asking that Peter accompany them to the home of their master and to present the message of the Messiah. Rudel however, ignored the implication of this interpretation relative to the Kosher or dietary laws and how they are applied to the believing community. Of course the emphasis of the book is on the topics of redemption and judgment, so that point may have been irrelevant…at least for now.
Another point though, seemed like it was relevant, but just not addressed. One of Rudel’s arguments (stop reading now if you don’t want too much of the book’s content revealed. In other words, “spoilers be ahead”) is, can people be held accountable for “rejecting Christ” if the Gospel they’ve heard “preached” has been too inaccurate? That is, can people be faulted by God if they haven’t been given a particularly accurate message? I’m sure that suggestion is bound to be insulting to a lot of believers who have very sincerely been presenting the Good News of Christ to everyone, doing their very best to obey God and help the world around them become reconciled to Him, but that’s not the intent. It’s important to consider even the possibility that our own human attachment to some very man-made theologies may have resulted in our not understanding everything Yeshua and his disciples were saying and, if we find error in our interpretations, to allow ourselves to be led into a more Bible-consistent understanding.
The part of all this that I didn’t think Rudel took as far as he could has to do with post-Biblical Judaism. Christianity tends to be pretty critical of Judaism post-ascension of Jesus, for not converting to Christianity and not recognizing Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. In the 1st century believing community, most commonly referred to as “The Way”, the leaders of the community were Jewish…at least in the beginning. Jews didn’t “convert to Christianity” to worship the Jewish Messiah. Messianic worship was a natural extension of Judaism. Sure, not all Jews believed, but it didn’t make them any more Jewish. Believing in the Messiah didn’t make those Jewish believers less Jewish. It was the Gentile believers, coming out of pagan idol worship that needed to “convert” to “The Way” and they (we) were the group that was the most difficult to assimilate into a Jewish worship structure.
For the majority of the history of the church, Gentiles have taken possession of the faith of “The Way” and Yeshua became “transformed” into the more Gentile-appearing “Jesus”. This is fairly palatable to Gentiles but Jews stopped seeing the Jewish Messiah. If the consequences of all this (and I’m glossing over nearly 2000 years of complex history in a few sentences) is a theology and “preaching of the Word” that is not accurately representing what was originally taught, and if that inaccuracy and that theological “rose colored” lens obscured the truer message as Rudel suggests, then can we hold any Jewish person in the last 2000 years accountable for “rejecting Christ” if, based on a “gentilized” presentation of the Messiah, they never recognized him?
After all, Jews were harassed, tortured, maimed, and even murdered for refusing to convert. How many Jews went to their deaths singing the Shema, refusing to convert to Christ because they felt it would be a direct betrayal of God? I really would have liked to see this author address this point. As I said, he comes right up to it in his writings but stops short.
Other Observations
I could be being too hard of Rudel, though. After all, the primary audience of his book is the Evangelical church, not the Messianics and not the traditional Jewish community. He’s trying, in my opinion, to share his insights into a small subset of the overall Biblical narrative; the concepts of salvation, redemption, judgment and generally “who goes to hell”. There are larger (I know it’s hard to believe) issues presented in the Bible than those, and Rudel tries to point out that the central message (going to heaven or hell) of the church might not be the central message of the Bible. He makes a good case of it too, and I recommend that you read this book to find out all about that case.
I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but that’s to be expected. I do have my own perspectives on the Bible to consider; my “lenses” if you will. Despite what Rudel says, we all have our lenses. Even the author has his lenses on viewing the Bible. As nice as it sounds, there really is not such a thing as a person completely without bias. Bias provides a context from which we try to understand the world around us. Why do you think people “pigeon hole” or categorize just about everything around them? It’s a matter of applying a context so we can have a frame of reference by which to understand our environment.
I say all that to explain that we all apply our biases to the Bible in an attempt to understand the message of God. The Word may stand naked before the Creator of the Universe, but it will always be, at least to some degree, veiled before us. I am not saying that God left us with an ambiguous Bible or a Word that is impossible to understand, just that we need to work on it harder than we tend to. The message of Rudel’s book that I like, is that we need to go back and really read the Bible for ourselves, comparing the text to our understanding and seeing if there’s a match. Where there seems to be a “mismatch”, we need to study and pursue knowledge and understanding. I’m (and Rudel isn’t) not talking about doubting God, Jesus, or the Bible, just our own human assumptions and our own human-created theologies.
There are a number of websites and blogs associated with the book, but at the footer of each page of this book is the URL to John173.net. This is the “extension” of the author’s intent in writing the book…the “grassroots effort” to gather as many like-minded people as are willing and to continue the discussion started by the book. I also like this idea. I’m all in favor of a frank conversation relative to the Biblical message involving different points of view, however there is a pitfall. Every revolution starts out as an attempt to overthrow the old regime and to institute the will of the people. Every revolution (at least the human created ones) ends up becoming “the establishment” (look at the history of Castro’s Cuba if you don’t believe me). Rudel has the right idea, but it can go in this direction unless he and everyone who takes on this discussion, continues to question his and her assumptions on an ongoing basis.
I don’t see Rudel’s and my viewpoints as being too far apart. We have dialogued periodically while I was writing this review (I collected 13 pages of notes based on my observations…most of which will probably never be published) and I hope we can continue our exchange of ideas.
Whether you agree with Rudel’s perspectives and conclusions or not, I recommend that any honest person of faith read this book. It asks questions that need to be asked and will get your blood pumping and your thoughts surging around the Bible in a way I don’t think most people ever experience. Reading “The Gospel You’ve Never Heard” is like reading the Bible again for the first time. It’ll open your eyes.