According to tradition we mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of Shabtai Tzvi, שַׁבְּתַי צְבִי, the most famous Jewish messianic claimant of the early modern period. Born in Smyrna, modern Izmir, in 1626, he became the centre of a movement that stirred Jewish communities across the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany and beyond. His rise in 1665-66, encouraged and interpreted by Nathan of Gaza, generated extraordinary expectation. His forced conversion to Islam in September 1666 brought confusion, grief and disillusionment, though not the immediate end of the Sabbatean movement, which continues with the Donmeh, outwardly converts to Islam who continued to belief in his messiahship, up to the present day.

Shabtai Tzvi is not only an example of a “false messiah.” He is also a figure through whom we can understand the depth of Jewish longing for redemption, the pressures of diaspora life, the power of mystical imagination, and the social transformations of early modernity. His story belongs to a world of travel, trade, printing, correspondence, communal networks, rabbinic authority, kabbalistic interpretation, political uncertainty and eschatological hope.

David Ruderman’s approach to early modern Jewish history is helpful here. Ruderman does not treat early modern Jewry as merely a pause between medieval tradition and modern emancipation. He sees it as a period of intense movement and creativity: Jews were travelling more widely, books and ideas circulated more quickly, communal boundaries were being tested, and Jewish thinkers were increasingly aware of the wider intellectual, religious and political worlds around them. Sabbateanism fits this setting. It spread through existing Jewish networks, drew strength from Lurianic Kabbalah, unsettled rabbinic leadership, and showed how quickly messianic expectation could become a transregional movement.

From a Messianic Jewish perspective, Shabtai Tzvi matters because he helps us reflect more carefully on Jewish messianism itself. Israel’s hope for redemption is not an abstract doctrine but a deep historical and spiritual longing. Jewish communities had prayed for the coming of Messiah for centuries. They had lived through exile, persecution, displacement, poverty, polemic and often humiliation under Christian and Muslim rule. The longing for geulah, גְּאֻלָּה, redemption, was woven into the siddur, the festivals, the prophets, rabbinic imagination and daily Jewish life.

This makes the Sabbatean movement both understandable and tragic. It is understandable because many Jews were longing for consolation, restoration and divine intervention. It is tragic because that longing became attached to a figure who could not bear the weight placed upon him. Shabtai Tzvi’s career shows how messianic hope can inspire courage, repentance, joy and renewed identity, but also how it can become vulnerable to delusion, manipulation, disappointment and denial.

Messianic Jews should approach this history with humility. We do not need to claim Shabtai Tzvi as a direct anticipation of Messianic Judaism, nor should we treat Sabbateanism as though it were theologically similar to faith in Yeshua. The differences are substantial. Sabbateanism was shaped by Kabbalah, prophetic enthusiasm, antinomian tendencies and, after Shabtai’s apostasy, complex strategies for explaining apparent failure. Messianic Jewish faith is grounded in the apostolic testimony to Yeshua’s life, death, resurrection, exaltation and promised return, and in the continuing covenantal election of Israel.

David Pileggi has rightly pointed out that one essential contrast still needs to be named: the question of Torah. Yeshua was not antinomian but lived as a Torah-observant Jew honouring the Scriptures and calling his Israel to repentance. Shabtai Tzvi, by contrast, became associated with transgressive and antinomian readings of messianic fulfilment, especially in the later development of Sabbateanism. “Redemption through sin” was a radical theological doctrine central to later Sabbateanism and Frankism. It posits that in the Messianic Age, the Torah’s laws are overturned; therefore, committing deliberate sins—acting against moral and religious boundaries—is necessary to actively conquer and extract divine sparks trapped in evil.

Messianic speculation about Tzvi was not confined to Jewish communities. Reports of a messianic figure arising “from the East” stirred interest among some Protestant Christians, especially those already reading current events through apocalyptic expectation and hopes for Jewish restoration. Reports of Shabtai Tzvi’s movement also reached Protestant Europe, where some English and Dutch millenarians interpreted the news of a messianic figure arising “from the East” as fulfilling apocalyptic expectations about 1666, the restoration and conversion of the Jews, and the coming kingdom of God. Others treated the story more cautiously or polemically, as a warning against religious enthusiasm. Samuel Pepys’ diary records that wagers made in London about whether this was truly the Messiah.

Larry Norman’s apocalyptic song “Six Sixty Six,” later covered by Frank Black, imagines a deceptive figure coming “from out of the East.” It is not a song about Shabtai Tzvi, but its imagery of peace, charisma and hidden danger captures the unease that often surrounds messianic claims when hope becomes separated from truth.

The comparison with Lubavitch messianism is also important, though it must be made carefully and respectfully. Chabad-Lubavitch is a halakhically observant, disciplined and extraordinarily effective Jewish movement. Its global outreach, educational work and commitment to Jewish practice are very different from the antinomian and sectarian directions associated with later Sabbateanism. Nevertheless, the messianic interpretation of the late Rebbe among some Lubavitchers raises questions that overlap with wider Jewish messianic history: charismatic leadership, imminent redemption, apparent disappointment, and the continuing presence of an absent leader in the life of a community.

For Messianic Jews, this is significant because it shows that Jewish categories of Messiah, hiddenness, expectation and even return are more complex than many Christian accounts have recognised. At the same time, it reminds us that messianic claims are never self-validating. They require theological coherence, historical honesty, moral seriousness and spiritual accountability.

A Messianic Jewish historiography should therefore neither mock nor romanticise Shabtai Tzvi. It should remember him as part of the painful history of Jewish longing for redemption. It should pay attention to those who believed, those who resisted, those who were wounded, and those who tried to make sense of what had happened. It should also recognise why the memory of false messianism has made many Jewish communities cautious, even fearful, about messianic claims.

The contrast with Yeshua should therefore be made carefully, but it should not be avoided. Shabtai Tzvi’s story is marked by instability, secrecy, coercion, apostasy and the painful reinterpretation of failure. Yeshua’s life and ministry, by contrast, were marked by public teaching, healing, table fellowship, prophetic compassion, Torah-shaped obedience, suffering love and the call to repentance. His disciples did not proclaim him Messiah because he fulfilled their expectations easily, but because they believed that the Holy One had raised him from the dead and vindicated him as Israel’s Messiah and the hope of the nations. Readers who know the sadness of false messianism are therefore invited to consider Yeshua afresh: not as another claimant in a long series of disappointed hopes, but as the one whose life, death and resurrection reshape the meaning of messianic hope itself.

Prayer

אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב,

שָׁמְרֵנוּ מִתִּקְוָה שֶׁל שָׁוְא

וּמִיֵּאוּשׁ שֶׁאֵינוֹ מַאֲמִין בְּגְאֻלָּתֶךָ.

לַמְּדֵנוּ לְצַפּוֹת לַמָּשִׁיחַ

בֶּאֱמוּנָה, בַּעֲנָוָה וּבְאַחֲרָיוּת.

חַזֵּק אֶת עַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּבְרִיתֶךָ,

וְהַדְרִיכֵנוּ לְהָעִיד עַל יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ

בֶּאֱמֶת, בְּחֶסֶד וּבְאַהֲבָה.

הֲפֹךְ אֶת אֵבֶל צִיּוֹן לְשָׂשׂוֹן,

וְקָרֵב אֶת הַיּוֹם

שֶׁבּוֹ יִהְיֶה יְיָ אֶחָד וּשְׁמוֹ אֶחָד.

אָמֵן.

Elohei Avraham, Yitzchak ve-Ya‘akov,

shomrenu mi-tikvah shel shav

u-mi-ye’ush she-eino ma’amin be-ge’ulatekha.

Lammedenu le-tzapot la-Mashiach

be-emunah, ba-anavah u-ve-acharayut.

Chazek et ammekha Yisrael bivritekha,

ve-hadrikhenu le-ha‘id al Yeshua ha-Mashiach

be-emet, be-chesed u-ve-ahavah.

Hafoch et evel Tziyon le-sason,

ve-karev et ha-yom

she-bo yihyeh Adonai echad u-shemo echad.

Amen.

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, guard us from empty hope and from despair that no longer believes in your redemption. Teach us to wait for the Messiah in faith, humility and responsibility. Strengthen your people Israel in your covenant, and guide us to bear witness to Yeshua the Messiah in truth, grace and love. Turn Zion’s mourning into joy, and hasten the day when the Lord shall be one and his name one. Amen.

Further Reading

• Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676.
• Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality.
• Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
• David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History.
• David J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah.
• David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference.
• https://firstthings.com/the-rebbe-the-messiah-and-the-heresy-hunter/
• Richard Harvey, Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology: A Constructive Approach.
• https://www.kesherjournal.com/article/elliot-wolfsons-open-secret-postmessianic-messianism-and-the-mystical-revision-of-menahem-mendel-schneerson/
• Richard H. Popkin, “Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi,” in Matt D. Goldish and Richard H. Popkin, eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, Volume I: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World (Dordrecht: Kluwer/Springer, 2001), 91–106.
• Samuel Pepys, Diary, 19 February 1665/66; Michael McKeon, “Sabbatai Sevi in England,” AJS Review 2 (1977): 131–169;
• D. P. Walker, “Mystery in History,” review of Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, New York Review of Books, 4 October 1973.
• https://jewinthepew.org/2016/07/16/16-july-1759-rabbi-nahman-believes-in-yeshua-otdimjh/
• Read “Six-Sixty-Six” by Frank Black and the Catholics on Genius

During my recent visit to Helsinki, I spent a couple of hours in the Ateneum Art Museum. As a visitor to Finland, I was deeply moved. What began as a cultural excursion became a reflection on identity, memory, belonging, and covenant. The Ateneum is more than an art museum; it is a visual narrative of Finland’s search for itself. Like many nations, Finland has had to answer the question, Who are we? The artists gathered here offer different responses through landscapes, portraits, village scenes, and modern explorations of the self. As I walked through the galleries, I found myself reflecting not only on the construction of modern Finnish identity but also on my own identity as a Jewish disciple of Yeshua.

I was particularly struck by the exhibition devoted to Eero Nelimarkka (1891–1977). Born into poverty as the son of a washerwoman in Vaasa, Nelimarkka rose to become one of Finland’s most beloved painters. He is best known for his depictions of the wide plains of South Ostrobothnia, landscapes that many Finns came to regard as expressing something essential about their national character. Yet he was also a sensitive portraitist and observer of everyday life. His paintings combine realism with a contemplative quality, drawing the viewer into a world where ordinary places and people reveal unexpected depth and significance, hidden mysteries, strangeness and uncertainty.

Unlike the dramatic nationalism of some earlier Finnish artists, Nelimarkka’s work often invites quiet reflection. He paints not heroes but neighbours, not myths but communities, not political ideals but the texture of everyday existence. His paintings seem to ask not only, “What is Finland?” but also, “What does it mean to belong?” That question resonated deeply with me as a Messianic Jew, someone whose own identity is rooted in a long history of belonging, memory, and covenant.

One painting in particular spoke to me. It depicted a small snow-covered village surrounded by tall pine trees. A handful of figures moved through the snow between modest buildings, while in the centre stood a simple structure marked by a cross. The people appeared tiny in comparison with the surrounding forest and winter landscape. Yet despite the vastness of nature and the apparent fragility of human life, the painting radiated warmth and security. The figures were not isolated. They belonged. They knew where they were going. The paths through the snow connected homes, neighbours, and places of worship, creating a visual testimony to the power of community.

Standing before this painting, I found myself thinking about the Jewish experience. For nearly two thousand years, the Jewish people have often lived as a small minority within larger societies and cultures. Like the figures in Nelimarkka’s village, we have carried memory, tradition, and faith through long winters of history. We have survived not only because of remarkable leaders and dramatic events but because ordinary families faithfully passed on stories, prayers, and practices from one generation to the next. Identity is preserved not merely through institutions but through daily acts of remembrance and belonging.

The earlier galleries of the Ateneum contain the great masterpieces of Finland’s national awakening. Artists such as Eero Järnefelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela helped create a visual language for Finnish nationhood during the decades before independence in 1917. Their paintings of forests, lakes, labourers, and heroes gave artistic expression to a people seeking to understand themselves. These works ask a profound question: What is Finland? Their answer is found in land, labour, memory, endurance (Sisu), and community. Looking at these paintings, I was reminded of the role played by the Hebrew Bible, Jewish liturgy, and the Land of Israel in shaping Jewish self-understanding across the centuries.

The upper floors of the museum presented a striking contrast. Here the focus shifts from nation to individual, from shared narratives to personal exploration. Contemporary artists wrestle with questions of ambiguity, fragmentation, identity, and self-expression. The question is no longer primarily, What is Finland? but rather, Who am I? These works reflect the concerns of a modern world in which inherited identities can no longer be taken for granted. Yet they also reveal the human longing to find coherence and meaning amid complexity.

Both perspectives contain important truths. We are individuals, yet we are also members of communities. We shape our identities, yet we also inherit them. As a Messianic Jew, I often encounter descriptions of my identity as “hybrid” or even “fractured.” Some assume that Jewish identity and faith in Yeshua pull in opposite directions. Others imagine Messianic Jews as existing between Judaism and Christianity, belonging fully to neither. Yet my visit to the Ateneum suggested another possibility.

The Finnish artists were not inventing Finland from nothing. Rather, they were gathering together strands of language, landscape, memory, folklore, faith, and history into a coherent whole. Finland was not created by abandoning these strands but by weaving them together. Perhaps Messianic Jewish identity can be understood in a similar way. Rather than a fractured self, it is a braided self, one in which Jewish peoplehood, covenantal memory, faith in Yeshua, participation in the wider Body of Messiah, and engagement with the modern world remain distinct yet inseparably intertwined.

My visit to Finland also prompted reflection on a post-supersessionist understanding of the Church. The Finnish artists celebrated a distinct national identity rooted in language, land, memory, and shared history. Yet Finnish identity is not abolished when Finns become Christians; rather, it finds new expression within the wider body of Messiah. In a similar way, post-supersessionist Messianic Jewish theology understands Jewish identity not as something overcome by faith in Yeshua but as a continuing covenantal vocation within the people of God. Mark Kinzer’s vision of bilateral ecclesiology suggests that the one Body of Messiah embraces both the continuing corporate identity of Israel and the calling of believers from the nations. Just as Finnish Christians remain authentically Finnish while participating in a universal Church, so Messianic Jews remain authentically Jewish while participating in the one ecclesia of Messiah. Difference is not erased but reconciled, and particular identities become gifts offered to the whole body rather than obstacles to unity.

Recent psychology speaks of the “dialogical self,” in which multiple aspects of identity exist in conversation with one another. Theology adds something further. Walter Brueggemann argues that biblical faith understands human identity not primarily as autonomous or self-created but as covenantally constituted. The self comes into being through God’s prior address and covenantal commitment. We are known before we know ourselves, called before we choose our vocation, and sustained by relationships that precede individual choice. In this sense, the paintings of Nelimarkka reminded me not only of the dialogical self but of what might be called the covenanted self—an identity rooted in belonging, memory, obligation, and promise. The figures moving through the snowy village are not isolated individuals constructing meaning for themselves; they are members of a community shaped by shared stories, practices, and loyalties. Similarly, Jewish identity, and Messianic Jewish identity in particular, is not merely a personal preference or spiritual option but participation in a covenantal narrative extending across generations.

Looking at Finland through the eyes of its artists, I found myself grateful for a people who have preserved their identity through memory, culture, resilience, and hope. Looking at the same paintings as a Messianic Jew, I was reminded of Israel’s own story. The Finns speak of sisu—the determination to persevere through adversity. The Jewish tradition speaks of emunah (faithfulness), tikvah (hope), and zikaron (memory). Both peoples know what it means to walk through winter while waiting for spring.

“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations.” (Deuteronomy 32:7)

Identity begins with memory. It is sustained by belonging. For the people of God, it is ultimately secured not by our achievements but by the faithfulness of the One who remembers his covenant forever.

Prayer

English

God of Israel and of all nations, thank you for the beauty of creation, the gift of memory, and the communities that shape our lives. Help us to cherish our inheritance without idolising it, to honour the past while embracing the future, and to find our deepest identity in your covenant faithfulness. Teach us to walk faithfully through every season, trusting in your promises. Through Yeshua the Messiah. Amen.

Suomi

Israelin ja kaikkien kansojen Jumala, kiitos luomakunnan kauneudesta, muistojen lahjasta ja yhteisöistä, jotka muovaavat elämäämme. Auta meitä vaalimaan perintöämme ilman että teemme siitä epäjumalaa, kunnioittamaan menneisyyttä ja samalla ottamaan tulevaisuuden vastaan. Anna identiteettimme juurtua sinun uskollisuuteesi. Jeshuan, Messiaan, kautta. Aamen.

עברית

אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְכָל־הָעַמִּים, תּוֹדָה עַל יֹפִי הַבְּרִיאָה, עַל מַתְּנַת הַזִּכָּרוֹן וְעַל הַקְּהִלּוֹת הַמְּעַצְּבוֹת אֶת חַיֵּינוּ. עֲזֹר לָנוּ לְכַבֵּד אֶת מוֹרַשְׁתֵּנוּ וּלְהַשְׁרִישׁ אֶת זֶהוּתֵנוּ בֶּאֱמוּנָתְךָ וּבִבְרִיתְךָ. בְּשֵׁם יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ. אָמֵן.

Transliteration

Elohei Yisrael v’chol ha-amim, todah al yofi habri’ah, al matnat hazikaron, v’al hakehillot hame’atzvot et chayeinu. Azor lanu lechabed et morashteinu ulehashrish et zehuteinu be’emunatecha uvivritecha. B’shem Yeshua HaMashiach. Amen.

Further Reading

• Walter Brueggemann, The Covenanted Self: Explorations in Law and Covenant (Fortress Press, 1999).
• Mark Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (Brazos Press, 2005).
• Ateneum Art Muse

https://ateneum.fi/en

• Eero Nelimarkka at the Ateneum: https://ateneum.fi/en/exhibitions/eero-nelimarkka/

On this day in 1564 John Calvin died in Geneva, aged fifty-four. Born in Noyon on 10 July 1509, he became one of the great architects of the Protestant Reformation: preacher, pastor, commentator, organiser of Geneva’s church life, and author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536.

From a Messianic Jewish perspective we give thanks for Calvin, appreciating one of the great Christian theologians alongside Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and Karl Barth. He taught the majesty of God, the seriousness of sin, the sufficiency of grace, and the need for disciplined attention to Scripture. He helped the church recover the God who acts, elects, judges, saves, and perseveres with his people. For Jewish disciples of Yeshua, however, Calvin’s doctrine of election raises a question he did not finally resolve: if God’s election is sovereign, gracious, and irrevocable, what then of Israel?

Calvin’s writings on Jews and Judaism are complex. Mary Potter Engel rightly warns against a simple verdict: Calvin could speak of the Jews as still privileged, still bearing a covenantal dignity, and yet also use “the Jews” polemically as a warning to Christians. He affirmed continuity between the one people of God in both Testaments, but often did so by folding Israel into the church rather than recognising Israel’s continuing corporate vocation.

Here R. Kendall Soulen’s analysis is illuminating. Supersessionism is not only the crude claim that God has rejected the Jews. It may be punitive, economic, or structural: Israel punished, Israel rendered obsolete, or Israel quietly omitted from the controlling Christian narrative. Calvin was not Luther. He did not write On the Jews and Their Lies. Yet his theology exhibits economic supersessionism: a hope for Jewish salvation, even for a remnant, but not a fully post-supersessionist doctrine of Israel’s ongoing covenantal identity, Torah-shaped vocation, or national solidarity. His comments on Romans 11 and Isaiah 59 show both the tension and the promise: “all Israel” can become the church of Jews and Gentiles, yet God remains mindful of covenant and there must be Jews who come to Messiah. Calvin’s heirs, such as N. T. Wright, expand this to see no further need for Israel (the Jewish people) now that the Messiah has come.

The later “five points of Calvinism” — total depravity, unconditional election, limited or definite atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints — ask how sinners are saved by sovereign grace. Kinzer’s five points of Postmissionary Messianic Judaism ask a different but related question: how does the ekklesia of the nations live faithfully alongside Israel? Kinzer’s answer is: Israel’s irrevocable election and covenant; the normative force of Jewish practice; the validity of rabbinic tradition; bilateral ecclesiology; and national solidarity with Israel.

This contrast does not require contempt for Calvin. It asks Calvinists to let Calvin’s best doctrine of grace judge Calvin’s weaker doctrine of Israel. If election is truly gracious, Israel cannot be reduced to a type, warning, failure, or prelude. Israel remains the beloved people whose Messiah has come and whose calling is not annulled.

There have been many Jewish Calvinists. Immanuel Tremellius, born a Jew in Ferrara around 1510, became one of the great Reformed Hebraists of the sixteenth century. In our own day Baruch Maoz represents a Jewish, Israeli, Reformed voice, who is critical of both rabbinic Judaism and Torah-positive streams of Messianic Jewish theology. Calvin’s own intellectual rigour, legal training, inspirational preaching and exegetical depth commend themselves to anyone acquainted with Torah study.

So today we remember Calvin with grateful appreciation and critical engagement: gratitude for his passion for the Glory of God – Kavod Adonai – Soli Deo Gloria. But also we are critical of his reading of Israel as past rather than present.

Prayer

English

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
we thank you for your servant John Calvin,
for his love of Scripture, his zeal for your glory,
and his witness to salvation by grace.
Purify us from pride, contempt, and supersessionism.
Teach us to honour your irrevocable covenant with Israel,
to welcome the nations into the mercy of Messiah,
and to seek truth with humility and love.
Through Yeshua the Messiah. Amen.

Latin

Deus Abraham, Isaac et Iacob,
gratias tibi agimus pro servo tuo Ioanne Calvino,
pro amore Scripturarum et zelo gloriae tuae.
Purifica nos a superbia, contemptu et supersessionismo.
Doce nos foedus tuum irrevocabile cum Israel honorare,
gentes in misericordia Messiae suscipere,
et veritatem cum humilitate et caritate quaerere.
Per Iesum Messiam. Amen.

Hebrew

אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב,
מוֹדִים אֲנַחְנוּ לְךָ עַל עַבְדְּךָ יוֹחָנָן קַלְוִין,
עַל אַהֲבָתוֹ לִכְתָבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ וְעַל קִנְאָתוֹ לִכְבוֹדֶךָ.
טַהֵר אֶת לִבּוֹתֵינוּ מִגַּאֲוָה, מִבּוּז וּמִסּוּפֶּרְסֶסְיוֹנִיזְם.
לַמֵּד אוֹתָנוּ לְכַבֵּד אֶת בְּרִיתְךָ הַבִּלְתִּי־חֲזוֹרָה עִם יִשְׂרָאֵל,
לְקַבֵּל אֶת הַגּוֹיִם בְּרַחֲמֵי הַמָּשִׁיחַ,
וְלִרְדֹּף אֱמֶת בַּעֲנָוָה וּבְאַהֲבָה.
בְּשֵׁם יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ. אָמֵן.

Transliteration

Elohei Avraham, Yitzḥak ve-Ya‘akov,
modim anaḥnu lekha ‘al ‘avdekha Yoḥanan Kalvin,
‘al ahavato le-khitvei ha-kodesh ve-‘al kin’ato likhvodekha.
Taher et liboteinu mi-ga’avah, mi-buz u-mi-supersessionizm.
Lammed otanu le-khabbed et beritekha ha-bilti-ḥazarah ‘im Yisrael,
le-kabbel et ha-goyim be-raḥamei ha-Mashiaḥ,
ve-lirdof emet ba-‘anavah u-ve-ahavah.
Be-shem Yeshua ha-Mashiaḥ. Amen.

References and online resources

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, CCEL. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
John Calvin, Commentary on Romans 11, CCEL. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
John Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah 59, CCEL. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Mary Potter Engel, “Calvin and the Jews: A Textual Puzzle,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin Supplementary Issue 1 (1990): 106–118. (commons.ptsem.edu)
R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996).
Michael J. Vlach, “Various Forms of Replacement Theology,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 20/1 (2009): 57–69. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bjidc1fwc7menzb69ihzj/supersessionism-vlach?rlkey=u5essrv3gvx2n0x0a7jdembld&dl=0
Richard Harvey, “Messianic Jewish Theology,” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (2025), especially on Kinzer and Maoz. (saet.ac.uk)

Jewish Calvinists / Reformed Jewish Christians

1. Immanuel Tremellius / Giovanni Emmanuele Tremellio (c. 1510–1580)
   Italian-born Jewish convert, major Reformed Hebraist, Bible translator, professor at Heidelberg, and probably the strongest sixteenth-century example. Kenneth Austin’s study is even titled From Judaism to Calvinism. Calvin knew and supported Tremellius in seeking teaching posts. (research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk)
2. Isaac da Costa / Isaäc da Costa (1798–1860)
   Dutch poet and thinker of Portuguese-Jewish descent; converted under Willem Bilderdijk’s influence and embraced orthodox Calvinism. He is important because he combined Jewish descent, Dutch Réveil Calvinism, anti-Enlightenment cultural critique, and interest in Jewish national conversion. (Encyclopedia.com)
3. Abraham Capadose / Capadoce (1795–1874)
   Dutch physician, writer, and Jewish convert associated with the Dutch Réveil; described in reference sources as a Calvinist writer and part of the same circle as Isaac da Costa. (Wikipedia)
4. Adolph Saphir (1831–1891)
   Hungarian Jewish convert through the Free Church of Scotland mission in Budapest; later a Presbyterian minister in Britain. He is better called Jewish Presbyterian / Reformed evangelical than narrowly “Calvinist,” but he belongs in the Reformed Hebrew Christian tradition. (Wikipedia)
5. Baruch Maoz (b. 1943)
   Israeli Jewish Christian pastor and writer, long associated with Grace and Truth Christian Congregation in Rishon LeTsion and with Christian Witness to Israel. Theologically he is Reformed/Reformed Baptist, strongly critical of much Messianic Jewish theology, and useful as a contemporary Jewish Calvinist counterpoint to Kinzer. (themaozweb.com)

Best books and articles on Calvin, Israel, Jews, and Judaism

1. Wulfert de Greef, Of One Tree: Calvin on Jews and Christians in the Context of the Late Middle Ages, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Refo500 Academic Studies 83, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021.
   Probably the most important recent monograph. It asks directly whether Christians replace Jews or are included in God’s relationship with Israel; chapters treat Calvin’s contacts with Jews, law and gospel, the future of Israel, Jewish exegesis, and positive/negative statements about Jews. (vr-elibrary.de)
2. Jack Hughes Robinson, John Calvin and the Jews, New York: Peter Lang, 1992.
   Older but still useful. It examines Calvin’s teaching on Hebrew Scripture, covenant, law, Romans 9–11, and Jewish-Christian relations after the Holocaust. (Google Books)
3. Mary Potter Engel, “Calvin and the Jews: A Textual Puzzle,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin Supplementary Issue 1 (1990): 106–123. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cqmfjvilv0v5ryga9jpiu/Potter-Engel-Calvin-and-the-Jews.pdf?rlkey=nb7dcp8ij0gz259ugekr4oofd&dl=0
   Very useful for a nuanced blog post. Engel argues that Calvin’s language about “the Jews” is unstable: sometimes biblical Israel, sometimes contemporary Jews, sometimes a polemical mirror for Christians. She sees both covenantal continuity and real supersessionist displacement in Calvin.
4. Achim Detmers, Reformation und Judentum: Israel-Lehren und Einstellungen zum Judentum von Luther bis zum frühen Calvin, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001.
   Important German study of Reformation doctrines of Israel and attitudes to Judaism from Luther to early Calvin. It is cited as a major source in recent Calvin scholarship. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
5. Achim Detmers, “Calvin, the Jews and Judaism,” in Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett, eds., Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Leiden: Brill, 2006, 197–217.
   A concise English-language version of Detmers’s work. Pak summarises Detmers as seeing Calvin’s positive biblical treatment of Jews as not amounting to affirmation of post-biblical Jews and Judaism. (MDPI)

6. Salo W. Baron, “John Calvin and the Jews,” in Jeremy Cohen, ed., Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, New York: NYU Press, 1991, 380–400.
   Classic Jewish historical treatment; good for situating Calvin in the longer history of Jewish-Christian conflict. (MDPI)
7. Hans Joachim Kraus, “Israel in the Theology of Calvin: Towards a New Approach to the Old Testament and Judaism,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 22 (1989): 75–86.
   Worth using for the specific question of “Israel” in Calvin rather than simply “the Jews.” (MDPI)
8. Calvin Augustus Pater, “Calvin, the Jews, and the Judaic Legacy,” in Edward Furcha, ed., In Honor of John Calvin: Papers from the 1986 International Calvin Symposium, Montreal: McGill University Press, 1987, 256–296.
   Useful for Calvin’s inherited Judaic/Hebraic legacy and his Christian Hebraism. (MDPI)
9. G. Sujin Pak, The Judaizing Calvin: Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
   Not only about Jews directly, but essential for Calvin’s exegesis of the Psalms, Christian Hebraism, and accusations that his historical reading was too “Jewish.” (MDPI)
10. G. Sujin Pak, “A Break with Anti-Judaic Exegesis: John Calvin and the Unity of the Testaments,” Calvin Theological Journal 46 (2011): 7–28.
    Useful for presenting Calvin more positively: Pak argues that Calvin’s Old Testament exegesis can break with aspects of inherited anti-Jewish reading, even though Calvin remains problematic. (MDPI)
11. G. Sujin Pak, “John Calvin and the Jews: His Exegetical Legacy.”
    Good open-access essay for Calvin’s treatment of difficult Old Testament texts and his distance from some earlier anti-Jewish exegesis. (reformedinstitute.org)
12. Stephen G. Burnett, “Calvin’s Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism and Anti-Judaism in Calvin’s Response to Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 84 (1993): 137–155.
    Important for Calvin’s direct engagement with Jewish objections and Christian Hebraist polemic. (JSTOR)
13. David C. Steinmetz, “John Calvin and the Jews: A Problem in Political Theology,” Political Theology 10/3 (2009): 391–405.
    Useful for the political-theological dimension: Calvin rejects Luther’s extreme invective but still shares assumptions about Christian interpretation and Jewish unbelief. (Taylor & Francis Online)

Frameworks for judging Calvin from a post-supersessionist angle

14. R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.
    Essential conceptual framework: punitive, economic, and structural supersessionism. Use this to say Calvin is not simply Luther, but still often works within economic/structural supersessionist assumptions.
15. Michael J. Vlach, “Various Forms of Replacement Theology,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 20/1 (2009): 57–69. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bjidc1fwc7menzb69ihzj/supersessionism-vlach?rlkey=u5essrv3gvx2n0x0a7jdembld&dl=0
    Conservative evangelical, not Messianic Jewish, but helpful as a taxonomy. It notes Calvin’s tension: he can identify “all Israel” with the Jew-Gentile church and “Israel of God” with all believers, yet also speak of remaining hope for Jews because God is mindful of covenant.
16. Richard Harvey, “Messianic Jewish Theology,” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (2025).
    Useful for contrasting Calvin/Reformed categories with Kinzer, Maoz, bilateral ecclesiology, and Messianic Jewish theological typologies. (saet.ac.uk)

Pip: On this day in Messianic Jewish history, a monk in Northumbria died having never left England — and somehow shaped how an entire nation understood itself through the story of Israel. No pressure, Bede.

Mara: richard harvey traces that paradox today, looking at how England’s Christian identity was built on Israel’s Scriptures — and what that inheritance cost when real Jewish communities finally arrived.

Pip: Let’s start with the monk himself.

25 May 735 — Bede, Israel’s Scriptures, and English Identity

Mara: The question this post sits with is a striking one: how did a scholar who almost certainly never met a Jewish person become one of the most Israel-saturated writers in early English Christianity?

Pip: The post draws on historian Andrew Scheil to frame the answer. There may have been few or no actual Jews in England during Bede’s lifetime, but Scheil’s point is that Jews were everywhere in the imagination of the Church — through Scripture, liturgy, theology, and inherited patristic tradition.

Mara: The post calls these “textual Jews.” And the consequence is real: without living Jewish communities to encounter, Christians in Anglo-Saxon England constructed their entire understanding of Israel through texts alone.

Pip: Which shaped what Bede built. His Historia Ecclesiastica — completed in 731 — did more than recount events. It gave England a sacred memory, a providential identity read through the lens of Israel’s own story: covenant, exile, mission, restoration.

Mara: And his biblical output was enormous. Commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah, the Tabernacle, the Temple, Luke, Acts, Revelation, Samuel, Genesis. His imagination, the post says, was formed by Jerusalem, Sinai, Zion, Temple worship, priesthood, exile, covenant, and restoration.

Pip: So England learned to see itself through Israel’s narrative — which is theologically rich and historically complicated in equal measure.

Mara: That’s exactly the tension the post names. Bede also inherited supersessionist assumptions from Augustine and Jerome. Israel’s Temple and priesthood became “types” fulfilled in the Church. The Jewish people appeared as witnesses to Scripture who nevertheless failed to recognise Messiah. Scheil’s analysis shows how the absence of real Jewish neighbors made that abstraction easier to sustain.

Pip: And the post doesn’t let that sit as ancient history. After 1066, Jewish communities arrived under Norman rule, and England stopped imagining Jews only through texts — it began legislating, taxing, converting, and eventually expelling them. The same Christian culture nourished by Israel’s Psalms built the institutions that expelled Israel’s people.

Mara: The post closes on Bede’s final act: dictating a translation of John’s Gospel until his last breath. His disciple Cuthbert recorded his final words as a doxology: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”

Pip: Scholarship and sanctity, right to the end. The post’s challenge for today is quieter but harder — to read Israel’s Scriptures again, this time with the living Jewish people actually in the room.

Mara: And that question — what it means to honour those roots honestly — is where we land.

---

Pip: Bede loved Israel’s Scriptures and never heard a living Jewish voice interpret them. That gap turns out to matter enormously.

Mara: It still does. Next time, more from the calendar of people and moments where that gap starts to close.

On this day, 25 May 735, the Venerable Bede died at the monastery of Jarrow in Northumbria. Scholar, monk, biblical commentator, historian, translator, teacher, and saint, Bede became the most influential intellectual figure in early English Christianity and the first great historian of the English people.

Born around 673, Bede spent almost his entire life within the monastic communities of Wearmouth and Jarrow. Yet through books, manuscripts, liturgy, correspondence, and prayer, he inhabited worlds far beyond Northumbria: Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and above all the world of the Scriptures of Israel.

His greatest work, the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), completed in 731, did more than recount events. It helped create the idea of “the English” as a people with a providential history under God. In many ways Bede helped shape the spiritual imagination of England itself.

For the Church of England, Bede remains one of the foundational fathers of English Christianity before the divisions of the Reformation. He united learning and holiness, biblical study and pastoral care, scholarship and prayer. Anglicans, Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike continue to honour him as a teacher of the Church. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church, the only native of Britain to receive that title.

Yet from a Messianic Jewish perspective, Bede is especially important because of his relationship to Israel, the Jewish people, and the Hebrew Scriptures.

Modern historian Andrew Scheil has made an important observation about Anglo-Saxon England: there may have been few or no actual Jews in England during Bede’s lifetime, but there were many “textual Jews.” In other words, Jews were constantly present in the imagination of the Church through Scripture, liturgy, theology, biblical commentary, canon law, preaching, and inherited patristic traditions.

This insight is crucial for understanding Bede.

There is no secure evidence for settled Jewish communities in England during the seventh and eighth centuries. Most historians date substantial Jewish settlement in England only after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Nineteenth-century Hebrew Christian historian Moses Margoliouth attempted to argue for a much earlier Jewish presence in Britain. He pointed to Bede’s references to Paschal controversies, medieval canons forbidding Christians from participating in Jewish feasts, and later traditions concerning Jewish merchants and converts.

However, most modern historians judge Margoliouth’s evidence too weak to demonstrate established Jewish communities in Anglo-Saxon England. What Bede knew was not living rabbinic Judaism, but the Jews of Scripture, theology, liturgy, and inherited Christian interpretation.

Yet this “textual Judaism” profoundly shaped English Christianity.

Bede’s world was saturated with Israel’s Scriptures. He wrote commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah, the Tabernacle, the Temple, Luke, Acts, Revelation, Samuel, Genesis, and many other biblical books. His imagination was formed by Jerusalem, Sinai, Zion, Temple worship, priesthood, exile, covenant, and restoration.

Scheil argues that Anglo-Saxon Christian identity was deeply constructed through engagement with biblical Israel. The English learned to imagine themselves through Israel’s story. In Bede’s writings, England itself becomes part of sacred history. The conversion of the English echoes biblical narratives of covenant, mission, repentance, kingship, pilgrimage, and divine providence.

This is one reason Bede matters so much for English identity.

Long before modern nationalism, Bede provided England with a sacred memory. The English were not simply tribes or kingdoms; they were a people under God, instructed by Scripture, gathered into worship, and called into mission. The Church in England understood itself through the language and imagery of Israel.

At the same time, this theological inheritance carried ambiguities and dangers.

Like most Christian theologians of his age, Bede inherited supersessionist assumptions from earlier Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Jerome. Israel’s institutions — Temple, sacrifices, priesthood, Jerusalem — were often interpreted as “types” fulfilled in the Church. The Jewish people frequently appeared as witnesses to Scripture who nevertheless failed to recognise Messiah.

Scheil’s analysis helps us see something important here: the absence of living Jewish communities made it easier for Christians to construct symbolic or theological “Jews” detached from real Jewish life and interpretation. Anglo-Saxon England knew Israel through texts, but rarely through encounter.

This observation has deep significance for the history of the Church of England and English Christianity more broadly.

England’s Christian identity was formed through the Scriptures of Israel, yet over centuries Christians often lost sight of the continuing covenantal life of the Jewish people themselves. The Church loved the Hebrew Bible while too often marginalising living Jews. The same traditions that preserved the Psalms, Prophets, and Torah also contributed, over time, to supersessionism and anti-Jewish attitudes.

The later history of England reveals this tension vividly.

After 1066, Jewish communities arrived in England under Norman rule. By the thirteenth century the Crown established the Domus Conversorum in Chancery Lane, a “House of Converts” for Jews who had become Christians. The institution later became connected with the Master of the Rolls and eventually the site of today’s Maughan Library at King’s College London. The Domus reminds us that by the medieval period England was no longer imagining Jews only through texts; it was now legislating, converting, taxing, protecting, segregating, and eventually expelling real Jewish communities.

For Messianic Jews and post-supersessionist Christians, Bede therefore stands both as inspiration and warning.

He reminds us that English Christianity was nourished at its roots by the Scriptures of Israel. The God worshipped by Bede was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Psalms he sang were the songs of Israel. The Temple he interpreted belonged to the Jewish people. The Messiah he proclaimed was a Jew.

Yet Bede also reminds us how easily Christians can speak about Jews without listening to Jewish voices.

The task facing the Christians today is not to abandon Bede, but to complete what was missing in his world: to read Israel’s Scriptures together with the living Jewish people, and to rediscover the Jewishness of Yeshua and the earliest ekklesia.

One of Bede’s last recorded acts was translating the Gospel of John into Old English for his students. As death approached, he reportedly continued dictating Scripture and prayers until his final breath. According to his disciple Cuthbert, his final words were a doxology:

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”

His life united scholarship and sanctity, memory and mission, learning and prayer.

Bede reminds us that the Church in England was born reading Israel’s Scriptures; our task today is to read them again with Israel’s continuing covenantal life in view.

Prayer

אָבִֽינוּ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַֽיִם,
תּוֹדָה לְךָ עַל חַיָּיו וּפָעֳלוֹ שֶׁל בֵּדָה הַנִּכְבָּד,
אֲשֶׁר אָהַב אֶת כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ וְלִמֵּד אֶת עַמְּךָ לְחַפֵּשׂ חָכְמָה וּקְדֻשָּׁה.
לַמֵּד אוֹתָֽנוּ לְכַבֵּד אֶת שָׁרְשֵׁי אֱמוּנָתֵֽנוּ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל,
וְלִשְׁמֹֽעַ מֵחָדָשׁ אֶת קוֹלָם שֶׁל עַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּתוֹךְ סִפּוּר גְּאֻלָּתֶֽךָ.
הָסֵר מֵאִתָּֽנוּ גַּאֲוָה וְעִוָּרוֹן,
וְתֵן לָֽנוּ אַהֲבַת אֱמֶת לַיְּהוּדִים וְלַנּוֹצְרִים כְּאֶחָד.
יְהִי רָצוֹן שֶׁנִּרְדֹּף צֶדֶק, שָׁלוֹם וּפִיּוּס בַּמָּשִׁיחַ יֵשׁוּעַ. אָמֵן.

Avinu shebashamayim,
Todah lecha al chayav u-po‘olo shel Bedeh ha-nikhbad,
asher ahav et Kitvei ha-Kodesh ve-limed et amcha lachapes chokhmah u-kedushah.
Lamed otanu lechabed et shoresh emunateinu be-Yisra’el,
ve-lishmoa מחדש et kolam shel amcha Yisra’el betokh sipur ge’ulatekha.
Haser me-itanu ga’avah ve-ivaron,
ve-ten lanu ahavat emet la-Yehudim ve-la-Notzrim ke-echad.
Yehi ratzon she-nirdof tzedek, shalom ve-fiyus be-Mashiach Yeshua. Amen.

Our Father in heaven,
we thank You for the life and work of the Venerable Bede,
who loved the Holy Scriptures and taught Your people to seek wisdom and holiness.
Teach us to honour the roots of our faith in Israel,
and to hear anew the voice of Your people Israel within the story of redemption.
Remove from us pride and blindness,
and grant us true love for Jews and Christians alike.
May we pursue justice, peace, and reconciliation in Messiah Yeshua. Amen.

Further Reading

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. R. E. Latham, ed. D. H. Farmer (London: Penguin, 1990).

Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah, trans. Scott DeGregorio (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006).

Brown, George Hardin, Bede the Venerable (Boston: Twayne, 1987).

Ward, Benedicta, The Venerable Bede (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1998).

Scheil, Andrew P., The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

Margoliouth, Moses, The Jews in Great Britain: Being a Series of Six Lectures (London: Richard Bentley, 1851).

Cohen, Jeremy, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

Nirenberg, David, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).

Soulen, R. Kendall, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).

Scheil, Andrew P., The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), reviewed by Lisa Lampert-Weissig, The Medieval Review, 06.01.07 (2006), available at The Medieval Review article

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/16067?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Gameson, Richard, ed., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume 1: c. 400–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Remembering Mattityahu

Today we remember Mattityahu, מַתִּתְיָהוּ, “gift of the LORD,” known in Christian tradition as Matthias the Apostle. In the Western calendar he is commonly commemorated on 14 May, although older Anglican and Roman calendars kept 24 February, while the Eastern Orthodox tradition commemorates him on 9 August. The calendar gives us the date, but Acts gives us the man: a Jewish disciple of Yeshua, a witness to the resurrection, and perhaps the patron apostle of everyone who has ever thought, “I did not volunteer for this role, but apparently heaven and the committee have other ideas.” His memory deserves not only a saint’s day, but a Jewish-style hesped, הֶסְפֵּד, a memorial reflection for a tzaddik, צַדִּיק, a righteous one, whose life still speaks to Jewish disciples of Yeshua in difficult times.

The Jewish art of hesped

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A hesped in Jewish tradition is not meant to be sentimental exaggeration, nor a recital of achievements, nor a polished obituary with a few spiritual decorations added at the end. It is a mitzvah of memory, truth, grief, and moral instruction. The Shulchan Arukh states that it is a great obligation to eulogise the dead fittingly, speaking of the person’s praise in a way that awakens sorrow and honours the truth of the life; later Jewish practice warns against excessive praise and encourages truthful, proportionate remembrance [Yoreh De’ah 344:1]. The classic Jewish models include Abraham’s mourning for Sarah, where Scripture says he came “to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her” [Genesis 23:2]; David’s kinah, קִינָה, lament for Saul and Jonathan, “How the mighty have fallen” [2 Samuel 1:17-27]; David’s brief but piercing lament over Abner [2 Samuel 3:33-34]; the rabbinic eulogies in the Talmud, where the death of a sage becomes an occasion for poetic memory and communal self-examination [BT, Moed Katan 25b]; and the account of the death of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, where grief, prayer, honour, and release are woven together [BT, Ketubot 104a]. A hesped therefore asks: What was entrusted to this person? What virtues did they embody? What wound does their death reveal? What calling do they leave to the living?

Jewish tradition offers several practical principles for giving a hesped. It should speak truthfully, without flattery or invention, because the dead are honoured by emet, אֱמֶת, truth. It should name the virtues that can be learned from the person, because memory becomes ethical instruction. It should awaken grief without manipulation, because mourning is a communal act of love. It should place the death within the larger story of God, Israel, Torah, covenant, and hope, because no righteous life is self-contained. It should comfort the mourners while also summoning the living to greater faithfulness. These principles help us approach Mattityahu not as a remote ecclesiastical figure, but as a Jewish disciple whose hiddenness, readiness, and courage can still instruct us.

The hidden disciple who had been there

Mattityahu enters the B’rit Hadashah almost silently. He is not known for speeches, miracles, arguments, letters, journeys, or drama. There is no canonical “Iggeret of Matthias,” no scene in the Besorot where he steps forward, no moment where he asks an awkward question and thereby gives future commentators something to do. He is almost invisible, and that is precisely why he is so important. Acts tells us that he had accompanied the circle of the shaliachim “during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the mikvaot of John until the day when he was taken up,” and that he was therefore qualified to become “a witness with us to his resurrection” [Acts 1:21-22]. He was not chosen because he was loud. He was chosen because he had been there. His authority was the authority of faithful presence. He is, in Jewish language, a tzaddik nistar, צַדִּיק נִסְתָּר, a hidden righteous one: formed in obscurity, tested by endurance, and ready when the hour came.

Lots to Know

The context of his appointment is painful. Judas has fallen. The Twelve are wounded. The community is gathered in Jerusalem between the ascension of Yeshua and the coming of the Ruach ha-Kodesh, רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ, the Holy Spirit, at Shavuot. Peter interprets the crisis through Scripture, the community proposes two men, Joseph called Barsabbas Justus and Mattityahu, and then prays: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen” [Acts 1:23-24]. The Greek expression is kardiognōsta, καρδιογνῶστα, “knower of hearts,” beautifully echoing the Hebrew sense of the God who knows the lev, לֵב, the heart. Then they cast lots, just as the Roman soldiers did over the garments of Yeshua. The lot falls on Mattityahu [Acts 1:26]. The decision is communal, scriptural, prayerful, and surrendered. This is not clerical politics. It is not apostolic bingo. It is not “we liked his CV.” It is discernment before the God who sees beneath the surface.

The goral, גּוֹרָל, the lot, is not mere chance in biblical Jewish thought. Proverbs says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” [Proverbs 16:33]. The goral appears in solemn moments of Israel’s life: the division of the land, the ordering of priestly service, and the Yom Kippur ritual, where Mishnah Yoma describes the High Priest placing lots upon the two goats, one for the LORD and one for Azazel [Mishnah Yoma 4:1]. In Acts 1, therefore, the casting of lots is not a quaint relic of primitive decision-making, but a Jewish act of humility. The community uses all the wisdom it has, and then confesses that only God truly knows the heart. Mattityahu receives not a career move, but a portion, a destiny, a yoke. His vocation is kabbalat ol, קַבָּלַת עֹל, the acceptance of the yoke.

A calling not chosen but received

This is where Mattityahu speaks with particular force to Jewish disciples of Yeshua. He did not create the crisis into which he was called. He did not betray Yeshua. He did not fracture the Twelve. He did not seek public prominence. Yet the wound in the community created a space, and the lot fell upon him. Much of Jewish Messianic vocation feels like this. We did not choose to be born into Israel. We did not choose the long and tragic history of Christian anti-Judaism. We did not choose the fact that the name of Yeshua is, for many Jews, associated not first with the Jewish Messiah but with coercion, humiliation, disputation, forced conversion, cultural erasure, and sometimes death. We did not choose the renewed pressures of the present moment, when Jewish identity is again contested and antisemitism has become more visible and more socially tolerated. In the UK, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the second-highest annual total it has ever reported, with levels remaining significantly higher than before 7 October 2023. [CST, Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025, 11 February 2026].

Yet Mattityahu teaches that a calling not chosen by us may still be faithfully received by us. To be a Jewish disciple of Yeshua is often to stand in a place of tension that one would not naturally have selected: between synagogue and church, between inherited Jewish memory and Christian confession, between love for one’s people and witness to the Messiah, between the pain of the past and the hope of the kingdom. Mattityahu did not step into a clean office. He stepped into the place left by betrayal. That required ometz lev, אֹמֶץ לֵב, courage of heart. His courage was not dramatic, noisy, or self-advertising. It was the courage to stand where the community needed him, to bear witness to the resurrection, and to allow his life to be numbered with the Twelve.

The Twelve and the hope of Israel

The number Twelve matters. Mattityahu is not merely replacing a committee member. The restored Twelve are an eschatological sign of Israel. They point to the shneim-asar shivtei Yisrael, שְׁנֵים־עָשָׂר שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, the twelve tribes of Israel. Before the mission to the nations expands in Acts, the apostolic witness is restored in Jerusalem in symbolic continuity with Israel’s story. Mattityahu therefore stands against every form of supersessionism that forgets the Jewish shape of the apostolic foundation. He is not a generic religious hero. He is not “formerly Jewish.” He is not Jewish by accident and Christian by essence. He is Mattityahu ha-Shaliaḥ, מַתִּתְיָהוּ הַשָּׁלִיחַ, Matthias the Emissary, a Jewish witness to the risen Yeshua, placed among the Twelve as a sign that the hope of Israel has not been cancelled but renewed.

Tradition, memory, and caution

Later Christian traditions remember Mattityahu in varied ways, and here academic caution is needed. The Orthodox Church in America summarises traditions that he preached in Jerusalem and Judea, travelled with other apostles, went to Antioch, Cappadocia, Sinope, Pontine Ethiopia, and Macedonia, suffered danger, and eventually received martyrdom; other traditions differ over whether he died in Jerusalem, Colchis, or elsewhere, and whether by stoning, crucifixion, or beheading. These traditions may preserve fragments of memory, but the secure historical Mattityahu is the Mattityahu of Acts: a long-standing Jewish disciple, present from the days of John’s baptism, a witness to Yeshua’s resurrection, chosen by lot, and numbered with the Eleven. That is enough for a hesped. Sometimes the holiest biographies are short because their lives were hidden in God.

A Messianic Jewish reclaiming

Rabbinic wisdom says, “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person” [Pirkei Avot 2:5: בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ, Bimkom she-ein anashim, hishtadel lihyot ish]. Mattityahu stood in just such a place. The community was incomplete. The wound was fresh. The future was unclear. Yeshua had ascended. The Spirit had not yet been poured out in the fullness of Shavuot. Someone had to stand, and Mattityahu stood. He does not teach us how to become famous. He teaches us how to be available. He does not teach us how to seek status. He teaches us how to receive responsibility. He does not teach us how to build a platform. He teaches us how to become an ed, עֵד, a witness.

To reclaim Mattityahu in Messianic Jewish history is not to reject Christian memory, but to re-Judaise it at its source. He belongs not first in a medieval calendar but in Jerusalem, among Jewish disciples of Yeshua, in the charged days between Ascension and Shavuot. He belongs among those who prayed in the language of Israel, read Israel’s Scriptures as the living word of God, awaited the consolation and restoration of Israel, and bore witness that Yeshua, crucified and risen, is Israel’s Messiah and the hope of the nations. He reminds Messianic Jews that our vocation is not an eccentric add-on to church history. It is bound up with the apostolic beginning itself. The first ekklesia was not a Gentile institution with Jewish roots added later for colour. It was a Jewish messianic movement into which the nations were graciously gathered.

A hesped also asks what the deceased leaves to the living. Mattityahu leaves us the discipline of hidden faithfulness, the courage to stand in a wounded place, the humility to accept a calling discerned by the community, and the willingness to be numbered for the sake of Israel and the nations. For Jewish disciples of Yeshua today, his life says: do not despise the hidden years; do not confuse obscurity with uselessness; do not assume that a calling is invalid because it was not self-selected; do not flee when the goral falls upon you. To be Jewish and to believe in Yeshua in these challenging times is to bear a role that is not always comfortable, often misunderstood, and sometimes lonely. But Mattityahu shows that the one who receives the yoke with humility may become a sign of resurrection precisely where betrayal, grief, and communal fracture have done their worst.

May the memory of Mattityahu ha-Shaliaḥ be for a blessing. Zekher tzaddik livrakhah, זֵכֶר צַדִּיק לִבְרָכָה.

Prayer

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God and Father of our Messiah Yeshua, we thank you for Mattityahu ha-Shaliaḥ, a faithful Jewish disciple, a witness to the resurrection, and a hidden tzaddik who stood when the community was wounded. Teach us his courage, humility, and readiness. When the goral falls upon us, help us not to flee. When our Jewish identity and our faith in Yeshua place us in difficult spaces, make us signs of your covenant faithfulness, servants of reconciliation, and witnesses to the hope of Israel and the nations. May the memory of Mattityahu the righteous be for a blessing. Zekher tzaddik livrakhah. Amen.

Hebrew prayer

אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב, אֱלֹהֵי וַאֲבִי אֲדוֹנֵנוּ יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ, מוֹדִים אֲנַחְנוּ לְפָנֶיךָ עַל מַתִּתְיָהוּ הַשָּׁלִיחַ, תַּלְמִיד נֶאֱמָן מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, עֵד לַתְּחִיָּה, וְצַדִּיק נִסְתָּר שֶׁעָמַד בְּעֵת שֶׁהַקְּהִלָּה הָיְתָה פְּצוּעָה. לַמְּדֵנוּ אֶת אֹמֶץ לִבּוֹ, עֲנָוָתוֹ וְנְכוֹנוּתוֹ. כְּשֶׁהַגּוֹרָל נוֹפֵל עָלֵינוּ, אַל נָנוּס. כְּשֶׁזֶהוּתֵנוּ הַיְּהוּדִית וֶאֱמוּנָתֵנוּ בְּיֵשׁוּעַ מַעֲמִידוֹת אוֹתָנוּ בִּמְקוֹמוֹת קָשִׁים, עֲשֵׂה אוֹתָנוּ לְאוֹתוֹת שֶׁל נֶאֱמָנוּת בְּרִיתֶךָ, לְמְשָׁרְתֵי פִּיּוּס, וּלְעֵדִים לְתִקְוַת יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהַגּוֹיִם. זֵכֶר מַתִּתְיָהוּ הַצַּדִּיק לִבְרָכָה. אָמֵן.

Transliteration

Elohei Avraham, Yitzḥak ve-Ya‘akov, Elohei va-Avi Adoneinu Yeshua ha-Mashiaḥ, modim anaḥnu lefanekha al Mattityahu ha-Shaliaḥ, talmid ne’eman mi-benei Yisrael, ed la-teḥiyyah, ve-tzaddik nistar she-amad be-et she-ha-kehillah hayetah petzu‘ah. Lamdeinu et ometz libbo, anavato ve-nekhonuto. Keshe-ha-goral nofel aleinu, al nanus. Keshe-zehuteinu ha-Yehudit ve-emunateinu be-Yeshua ma‘amidot otanu bimkomot kashim, aseh otanu le-otot shel ne’emanut beritekha, le-meshartei piyus, u-le-edim le-tikvat Yisrael ve-ha-goyim. Zekher Mattityahu ha-tzaddik livrakhah. Amen.

Key Hebrew terms

• Mattityahu, מַתִּתְיָהוּ: Matthias, “gift of the LORD.”
• Shaliaḥ, שָׁלִיחַ: emissary, apostle, sent one.
• Talmid, תַּלְמִיד: disciple.
• Tzaddik, צַדִּיק: righteous one.
• Tzaddik nistar, צַדִּיק נִסְתָּר: hidden righteous one.
• Hesped, הֶסְפֵּד: eulogy or memorial reflection.
• Kinah, קִינָה: lament.
• Goral, גּוֹרָל: lot, portion, destiny.
• Ed, עֵד: witness.
• Kehillah, קְהִלָּה: community or congregation.
• Ometz lev, אֹמֶץ לֵב: courage of heart.
• Kabbalat ol, קַבָּלַת עֹל: accepting the yoke.
• Ruach ha-Kodesh, רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ: Holy Spirit.
• Zekher tzaddik livrakhah, זֵכֶר צַדִּיק לִבְרָכָה: may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing.

Appendix: A hesped that might have been given for Mattityahu by a fellow disciple

Brothers and sisters, achim ve-achayot, אַחִים וְאַחָיוֹת, we stand today with torn hearts before the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who raised Yeshua our Master from the dead. We have lost our brother Mattityahu, a son of Israel, a disciple of the Messiah, a witness of the resurrection, and one numbered among the Twelve. We do not speak to enlarge him beyond the truth, for the God of truth needs no false praise, but we speak so that the living may remember what faithfulness looks like when it is not clothed in splendour.

Many knew the names of others before they knew his name. Some followed the voice that preached loudly. Some remembered the hands that healed publicly. Some remembered the faces closest to the Teacher at table. But the Holy One, blessed be he, remembers those who walk faithfully when few are watching. Mattityahu was with us from the days of Yoḥanan’s immersion until the day our Master was taken from our sight. He heard the words. He saw the works. He knew the sorrow. He bore the bewilderment of the cross and the trembling joy of the resurrection. When some drew near for the sake of signs and some withdrew because the way was hard, he remained.

When the wound of betrayal lay open among us, and the place of Yehudah stood empty like a broken stone in the wall of Israel, we prayed to the One who knows the hearts. We did not know whom to choose. We knew only that the number of the Twelve must not remain broken, for the promises to Israel are not broken, the hope of the tribes is not broken, and the mercy of God is not broken. We cast the goral, and the lot fell upon Mattityahu. He did not grasp at honour. He did not boast that he had been chosen. He received the yoke quietly, as one who knew that the calling of God is gift and burden together.

Our brother had ometz lev, courage of heart. Not the courage that seeks danger in order to be admired, but the courage that stands when standing is required. He stepped into a place marked by another man’s failure. He bore an office shaped by grief. He became a witness not only to the resurrection of Yeshua, but to the healing of a wounded community. He taught us that the Holy One can repair what betrayal has torn, that no fracture is beyond the mercy of the risen Messiah, and that a hidden disciple may be prepared for a public burden through years of unnoticed faithfulness.

Let no one say that Mattityahu was less because he came last among the Twelve. Does not the Holy One choose the younger as well as the elder, the hidden as well as the known, the one in the field as well as the one already seated? Was David not called from the sheep? Was Amos not taken from among the shepherds? Was our Master not known as the son of Yosef from Natzeret? The order of human honour is not the order of heaven. Blessed is the one who is found ready when called.

We therefore give thanks for Mattityahu, our brother and fellow servant. We thank God for his faithful feet, which followed Yeshua. We thank God for his eyes, which saw the risen Lord. We thank God for his mouth, which bore witness to the hope of Israel. We thank God for his heart, known to the Lord before it was known to us. May his memory strengthen the weak, humble the proud, steady the fearful, and teach the hidden ones not to despise their hiddenness.

Ribbono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, receive the memory of your servant Mattityahu among the righteous. Comfort this kehillah. Heal the wounds of betrayal. Restore the hope of Israel. Gather the nations to your light. And make us, like him, faithful witnesses of Yeshua the Messiah until the day when the dead are raised and all Israel’s hope is made full. Zekher Mattityahu ha-tzaddik livrakhah. Amen.

Jewish hesped models and practical references

• Genesis 23:2: Abraham mourns and weeps for Sarah, providing the first explicit biblical model of grief and honour for the dead.
• 2 Samuel 1:17-27: David’s kinah for Saul and Jonathan, “How the mighty have fallen,” models public lament, covenant loyalty, and moral memory.
• 2 Samuel 3:33-34: David’s lament for Abner shows how a brief eulogy can name injustice and communal loss.
• Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 25b: rabbinic eulogies for sages show the use of poetic image, communal grief, and ethical summons.
• Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 104a: the death of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi shows prayer, grief, reverence, and release held together.
• Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 344:1: the obligation to eulogise fittingly, honouring the dead through truthful praise and awakened mourning.

Selected bibliography and sources

Primary texts and Jewish sources

• Acts 1:15-26.
• Proverbs 16:33.
• Genesis 23:2.
• 2 Samuel 1:17-27.
• 2 Samuel 3:33-34.
• Mishnah Yoma 4:1.
• Pirkei Avot 2:5.
• Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 25b.
• Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 104a.
• Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 344:1.

Modern and scholarly references

• Barrett, C. K. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994-1998.
• Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017.
• Bock, Darrell L. Acts. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
• Bruce, F. F. The Book of the Acts. Revised ed. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988.
• Church of England. Common Worship: Festivals, “Matthias the Apostle, 14 May.” London: Church House Publishing.
• Community Security Trust. Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025. London: CST, 2026.
• Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Acts of the Apostles. Anchor Yale Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
• Jervell, Jacob. The Theology of the Acts of the Apostles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Acts of the Apostles. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992.
• Kinzer, Mark S. Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Apostle Matthias of the Seventy.” Lives of the Saints, commemorated August 9.
• Witherington III, Ben. The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

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Life and Work

Born in Tréguier, Brittany, on 28 February 1823, Ernest Renan trained for the priesthood but soon moved into philology, Oriental languages and the historical-critical study of religion. In 1863 he published his celebrated work Vie de Jésus (“The Life of Jesus”), the first volume of his larger series Histoire des origines du christianisme (“History of the Origins of Christianity”), which spanned multiple volumes until the early 1880s. His first volume appeared 24 June 1863. The term “Judaisme Messianique” occurs in the 1882 volume Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1882), the exact day/month is not stated in standard bibliographies, so we list it as 15 May 1882.

In this work, Renan treated Jesus principally as a remarkable human figure, and approached early Christianity as emerging from within the Jewish milieu, employing historical-critical methods and eschewing supernaturalism.

Renan’s use of “Messianistic Judaism”

In the seventh volume of the series (Book VII, Marcus-Aurelius), Renan uses the phrase “Messianistic Judaism” in English, in the translation of William G. Hutchison, This English translation slightly preceded the first full French edition (Calmann-Lévy, 1882) because it was prepared from advance proofs and earlier serial material that Renan had circulated to his English publisher to refer to a strand of Jewish hope:

“What better than Messianistic Judaism could point us to irrefragable hope and a blessed future — faith in a brilliant destiny for humanity under the government of an aristocracy of the righteous?” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
The original French edition uses the phrase:
« Quoi de mieux que le judaïsme messianique pouvait nous indiquer l’espérance irréfragable et un avenir béni ? la foi en un brillant destin de l’humanité sous la domination d’une aristocratie des justes ? »
(This is reconstructed from the English translation passage and the French original in the PDF. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library))
This shows how Renan conceptualised Judaism not merely as a historical religion, but as possessing a “messianic” aspiration which he thought Christianity inherited or universalised.

Views on Jews, Judaism and Jewish-Christianity

Continuity and indebtedness
Renan emphasised that Christianity begins within Judaism. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

“For him, the history of Jewish messianism bore witness to man’s capacity for faith when the odds are against him. Thus, it revived his own faith.”

In Vie de Jésus, for example, Renan writes:
French: « Les vraies paroles de Jésus se décèlent pour ainsi dire d’elles-mêmes ; dès qu’on les touche dans ce chaos de traditions d’authenticité inégale, on les sent vibrer… »

English: “The true words of Jesus reveal themselves, as it were, of themselves; the moment one touches them amid this chaos of traditions of unequal authenticity, one senses them vibrating…”
This shows his method and his respect for the Jewish context of Jesus.

Separation and reinterpretation
At the same time, Renan depicted early Christianity as a “Judaism made gentler for the Gentiles” — he saw the Jewish root but believed the Christian expansion involved transformation and universalisation. For example in Marcus-Aurelius, he writes of “the Judæo-Syrian principle” gaining the future.
Thus Renan’s view is that Judaism’s messianic hope served as seed-bed, Christianity universalised it.

Racial and religious ambivalence
Renan also engaged in the late-19th-century racial discourse about Semites and Aryans, despite some later distancing. As one scholar writes:

“Renan’s notion of Jesus as ‘destroyer of Judaism’ has been linked with German theological attempts …” (JSTOR)
Thus while he affirmed the Jewish origin of Christianity, he also adopted some problematic racial categories typical of his era.

Jewish-Christianity

Renan used the notion of “Jewish Christianity” (Jewish believers in Jesus) as a historical reality. His framing of the early Church emphasised how the first Christian movement was embedded in the Jewish matrix: the apostles, the genesis of Christian assemblies, the first century missions. However, his treatment often reflects the 19th-century lens of “supersessionism” (Christianity supplanting Judaism) rather than full parity.

In sum: Renan recognised the Jewish roots of Jesus and Christianity, identified a “messianistic Judaism” waiting for fulfilment, yet interpreted the Christian movement as both continuation and transformation of Judaism, in his typically elegant but contested way.

Why this matters

• Renan’s Vie de Jésus was a bestseller, dramatically influencing public perceptions of Jesus, Judaism and Christianity in Europe.
• His framing of Judaism as “messianistic” helped establish a popular version of the “Jewish roots of Christianity” narrative in the 19th century.
• His work remains important for historians of religion and Christian–Jewish relations even as its racial-theological assumptions are scrutinised.
• The “On This Day” date of 15 May invites reflection not only on a key publication date but also on how modern scholarship traces the overlap and divergence between Judaism and Christianity.

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Exemplar Quotations

Here are some key quotations in French and English with sources.

1. From Vie de Jésus (1863)
   • French: « Les vraies paroles de Jésus se décèlent pour ainsi dire d’elles-mêmes ; dès qu’on les touche dans ce chaos de traditions d’authenticité inégale, on les sent vibrer ; elles se traduisent comme spontanément… » (classiques.uqam.ca)
   • English (my translation): “The true words of Jesus reveal themselves, as it were, of themselves; the moment one touches them amid this chaos of traditions of unequal authenticity, one senses them vibrating; they translate themselves spontaneously…”
2. From Marcus-Aurelius / The History of the Origins of Christianity Vol. VII
   • English (translation): “What better than Messianistic Judaism could point us to irrefragable hope and a blessed future — faith in a brilliant destiny for humanity under the government of an aristocracy of the righteous?” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
   • French (approximate): « Quoi de mieux que le judaïsme messianique pouvait nous indiquer l’espérance irréfragable et un avenir béni ? la foi en un brillant destin de l’humanité sous la domination d’une aristocratie des justes ? »
     (Note: I have reconstructed the French from the English translation and the French full-text PDF. The PDF uses phrases like “le principe judé-syriaque” and “le judaïsme messianique” in context. (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Reflection

On this day, 24 June 1863, the publication of Vie de Jésus marked a watershed in the study of Christianity’s origins and the Jewish roots of the Jesus movement. Renan’s elegant but controversial work gave wide currency to the idea that Christianity emerged from a “messianistic Judaism” — a Judaism of promise, waiting for fulfilment — which Christianity then carried into the world.
For contemporary readers, his work invites both appreciation (for its historical ambition and literary quality) and critique (for its racial assumptions and supersessionist overtones).

Legacy

Renan’s writings shaped generations of European thought. His philological rigor and literary grace opened space for critical study of Jesus’ Jewish milieu; yet his contrasts between “Semitic” and “Aryan” spirits later fed troubling racial theories.
Modern historians such as Robert D. Priest (The Historical Journal, 2015) show how Renan moved from linguistic to racial essentialism, then partially retracted it in his 1883 lecture by insisting that Judaism was a religion rather than a race.

For scholars of Jewish-Christian relations, Renan stands as both pioneer and warning — illustrating how fascination with Israel’s prophetic and messianic genius can slide into cultural appropriation if detached from covenantal respect.

Prayer

English
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
You planted hope in Israel and gave it to the nations through Yeshua the Messiah.
Forgive our arrogance in judging one another, and heal the divisions of history.
Teach us to honour the faith of Israel, to cherish the redemption of all peoples,
and to await the day when Your kingdom is one and Your name one. Amen.

Hebrew
אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב,
נָטַעְתָּ תִקְוָה בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל וּנְתַתָּהּ לַגּוֹיִם בְּיֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ.
סְלַח לָנוּ עַל גַּאֲוָתֵנוּ וְרַפֵּא אֶת פִּצְעֵי הַהִסְטוֹרְיָה.
לַמְּדֵנוּ לְכַבֵּד אֶת אֱמוּנַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, לֶאֱהֹב אֶת גְּאוּלַת כָּל הָעַמִּים,
וְלְהַמְתִּין לַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה יְהוָה אֶחָד וּשְׁמוֹ אֶחָד. אָמֵן.

Transliteration
Elohei Avraham, Yitzḥak ve-Ya‘akov,
nata‘ta tiqvah be-Yisra’el u-netata la-goyim be-Yeshua ha-Mashiaḥ.
Selaḥ lanu ‘al ga’avateinu ve-rappe ’et pitsei ha-historiah.
Lamdenu lekhabbéd ’et emunat Yisra’el, le’ehov ’et ge’ulat kol ha-‘ammim,
ve-lehamtin la-yom ’asher YHWH eḥad u-shmo eḥad. Amen.

Further Reading

• Renan, Ernest, Vie de Jésus (Michel Lévy frères, 24 June 1863). Available online: [Classiques UQAM edition] (French) (classiques.uqam.ca)
• Renan, Ernest, The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VII: Marcus-Aurelius. (CCEL edition PDF) (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
• Priest, Robert D., “Ernest Renan’s Race Problem”, The Historical Journal (2015) — on Renan and race in his writing. (JSTOR)
• Britannica entry “Ernest Renan” for biographical overview. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

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Here are five additional quotations by Ernest Renan (in French with English translations) that relate to his views on Judaism, Jewish-Christianity, race, and religion—each checked for existence and sourced with a reference.

#	French quotation	English translation	Source/reference
1	« Que le judaïsme soit une religion et une grande religion, cela est clair comme le jour. Mais on va d’ordinaire plus loin. On considère le judaïsme comme un fait de race… » (Wikisource)	“That Judaism is a religion—and a great religion—is as clear as day. But ordinarily one goes further. One regards Judaism as a racial fact…”	Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion, conference (27 Jan 1883) (Wikisource)
2	« les σεβόμενοι, judœi improfessi, ne sont pas restés juifs ; ils n’ont fait que traverser le judaïsme pour devenir chrétiens. » (Wikisource)	“those ‘σεβόμενοι, Judœi improfessi’ did not remain Jews; they merely passed through Judaism in order to become Christians.”	Same conference text, p. 26 (Wikisource fac-simile)
3	« Le judaïsme sent qu’il a été trop loin, qu’il va se fondre, se dissoudre dans le christianisme. Alors il se resserre … » (Wikisource)	“Judaism senses that it has gone too far, that it is going to merge, dissolve into Christianity. Then it tightens itself…”	Same conference text, p. 33
4	“It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism…” (Lib Quotes)	English original: “It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism…”	Quotation attributed to Renan in secondary sources (though the precise French original is less certain)
5	« Arrivons à l’époque grecque et romaine. … c’est le moment aussi où le prosélytisme juif arrive à la plus complète expansion… » (Wikisource)	“Let us come to the Greek and Roman era … it is the moment also when Jewish proselytism reaches its fullest expansion…”	Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion, p. 24

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Ernest Renan — History of the Origins of Christianity

(English editions, London: Mathieson & Co., 25 Paternoster Square)

Vol.	French title	English title	Translator	English publication (year / probable month)	Notes
I	Vie de Jésus (1863)	The Life of Jesus	unknown (earliest Eng. anonymous)	1864 (March)	London: Trübner & Co. (1st ed.); later Mathieson reprints 1873 ff.
II	Les Apôtres (1866)	The Apostles	unknown / Mathieson series	1874 (March)	Mathieson English series begins with this vol.
III	Saint Paul (1869)	Saint Paul	William G. Hutchison	1874 (September)	Advertised autumn 1874; continuous pagination with Vol. II.
IV	L’Antéchrist (1873)	The Antichrist	William G. Hutchison	March 1875	Listed in Publishers’ Circular, No. 1849 (March 1875).
V	Les Évangiles et la seconde génération chrétienne (1877)	The Gospels and the Second Christian Generation	William G. Hutchison	1877 (November)	Advertised in London press late 1877.
VI	L’Église chrétienne (1879)	The Christian Church	William G. Hutchison	1879 (December)	Mathieson imprint; British Library catalogue gives 1879.
VII	Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique (1882 Fr.)	Marcus Aurelius and the End of the Ancient World	William G. Hutchison	1875 (May probable)	English ed. preceded French; title-page dated 1875.
Index	—	General Index to the History of the Origins of Christianity	—	1883 (?)	No evidence of English issue; French index Calmann-Lévy 1883.

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🗒 Notes

• The Mathieson & Company “Renan Series” appeared 1874–1879, with Hutchison as principal translator.
• English editions were not issued in the same order as the French originals: Marcus Aurelius (Vol. VII) was translated early (1875) from Renan’s proofs and lecture drafts.
• Only Vie de Jésus initially appeared from another publisher (Trübner & Co., 1864); Mathieson later unified the series under its own imprint.
• Exact day/month data are not recorded in standard bibliographies (British Library, WorldCat, COPAC); estimates derive from trade notices in The Publishers’ Circular and contemporary advertisements.

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References

• British Library Catalogue entries for Renan, Ernest, “History of the Origins of Christianity,” shelfmarks 012206 d. 1–13.
• Archive.org scanned copies of The Apostles (1874), Saint Paul (1874), The Antichrist (1875), and Marcus Aurelius (1875).
• Publishers’ Circular (London, 1874–1879) advertisements for Mathieson’s Renan translations.

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Jewish Roots, Christian Worship, and the Shape of the Liturgy

Today we remember the life and work of Gregory Dix, one of the most influential liturgical scholars of the twentieth century, whose work continues to shape the study of Christian worship, the recovery of its Jewish roots, and the development of Messianic Jewish liturgy.

Born in 1901 as George Eglinton Alston Dix, Gregory Dix became a Benedictine monk of Nashdom Abbey in Buckinghamshire and one of the leading figures of the twentieth-century liturgical movement. He is best known for his monumental work The Shape of the Liturgy, first published in 1945, which sought to trace the historical development and theological meaning of Christian worship from its earliest centuries.

Dix died on this day in 1952, leaving behind a body of scholarship that remains both inspiring and controversial.

What made Dix so important was not simply his historical learning, though that was immense. It was his insistence that Christian worship could not be understood apart from its Jewish origins. At a time when much Christian theology still treated Judaism merely as background or preparation, Dix insisted that the Eucharist emerged from the world of Jewish blessing, thanksgiving, Scripture, prayer, covenant meal, and communal worship.

For Dix, the Eucharist was not primarily an abstract doctrine but an action inherited from Yeshua and his first disciples: taking bread, blessing God, breaking the bread, and sharing it together. He argued that this “fourfold action” preserved the memory and pattern of the Last Supper within the life of the Church. He also saw the Christian “liturgy of the Word” — readings, prayers, exposition, psalmody — as deeply indebted to synagogue worship.

Much of his historical reconstruction has since been revised. Scholars today are more cautious about assuming a single universal form of early Christian worship or a direct one-to-one derivation from synagogue liturgy. Research by figures such as Paul Bradshaw, Andrew McGowan, and others has shown that the earliest forms of Christian worship were more diverse, fluid, and regionally varied than Dix imagined.

Yet the central intuition of Dix has endured and in many ways has been confirmed: Christian worship is unintelligible without Israel.

The prayers of the Church arose from Jewish prayer. The reading of Scripture arose from Jewish patterns of communal study and worship. The Eucharist emerged from Jewish meals of blessing and thanksgiving. The language of covenant, remembrance, sacrifice, redemption, and sanctification is rooted in the Scriptures and worship of Israel.

Demonstrated Eucharist, by Dom Gregory Dix (undated, c. 1955)

For Messianic Jews, Dix’s work has been a great blessing. I remember studying The Shape of the Liturgy when I first became a disciple of Yeshua in the 1970s and being amazed at how Jewish the Anglican liturgy I was encountering really was, although neither my Jewish nor my Christian friends seemed to be aware of this. Though writing long before the contemporary Messianic Jewish movement emerged in its present form, Dix helped open the way for us to rediscover the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewish matrix of worship. His work helped create theological and liturgical space in which Jewish disciples of Yeshua could ask anew:

What would worship look like if the Jewish origins of the ekklesia were not forgotten?

How might synagogue and Eucharist, Torah and Gospel, Israel and the nations, blessing and table fellowship be held together once more?

Many strands of contemporary Messianic Jewish liturgy — the recovery of Hebrew prayer, the use of Jewish blessings, the integration of synagogue forms with New Covenant worship, the celebration of the festivals of Israel in the light of Messiah — have emerged in part within the wider rediscovery of Jewish roots to which Dix significantly contributed.

Dix was not without limitations. Like many scholars of his generation, he sometimes idealised liturgical development and overstated the uniformity of early Christian practice. His work reflected the assumptions and blind spots of mid-twentieth-century scholarship. Yet he remains one of the great witnesses to the truth that the worship of the Church cannot be severed from the worship of Israel without losing something essential to its identity.

In an age when Jewish-Christian relations continue to be marked by both reconciliation and tension, Dix’s work still reminds us that the Church does not float free from history. Its prayers were born among the people of Israel. Its Messiah was and remains Jewish. Its Scriptures are Israel’s Scriptures. Its worship carries echoes of synagogue, Temple, Passover, psalm, blessing, and covenant memory.

For this, we give thanks.

Prayer (in Dix’s liturgical style)

Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
we thank you for the life and work of Gregory Dix,
for his love of worship,
for his search for the ancient paths,
and for his witness to the Jewish roots of the faith once delivered to the saints.

Grant to your ekklesia humility, wisdom, and gratitude,
that Israel and the ethnoi together may worship you in spirit and in truth,
through Yeshua the Messiah,
who took bread, blessed you, broke it, and gave thanks.

May the worship of your people become a sign of reconciliation,
a foretaste of the banquet of the Kingdom,
and a testimony to your covenant faithfulness to Israel and to all nations.

Amen.

תפילה

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
הַנּוֹתֵן חָכְמָה וּבִינָה לְדוֹרֵשׁ אֲמִתֶּךָ.

תּוֹדָה לְךָ עַל חַיָּיו וַעֲבוֹדָתוֹ שֶׁל גְּרֶגוֹרִי דִּיקְס,
שֶׁבִּקֵּשׁ לְהַשִּׁיב אֶת זִכְרוֹן יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּתוֹךְ עֲבוֹדַת הַקְּהִלָּה.

חַבֵּר יַחַד אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת הָעַמִּים בַּמָּשִׁיחַ יֵשׁוּעַ,
וְלַמְּדֵנוּ לַעֲבָדְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם.

אָמֵן.

Transliteration

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam,
hanoten chokhmah uvinah ledoresh amitecha.

Todah lekha al chayav va’avodato shel Gregory Dix,
shebikesh lehashiv et zikhron Yisrael betokh avodat ha-kehillah.

Habber yachad et Yisrael ve’et ha-amim baMashiach Yeshua,
velammedenu la’avdekha belevav shalem.

Amen.

Appendix

Did Dix interact with Paul Levertoff, compiler of the Anglican-Hasidic Communion “The Meal of the Holy King”?

Dix and Levertoff moved in overlapping Anglican-liturgical worlds. Paul Levertoff, a major Hebrew Christian scholar and pioneer contributed “Synagogue Worship in the First Century” to Liturgy and Worship in 1932, a work later cited in studies of ancient Jewish and Christian worship.  

Dix’s own work was deeply concerned with the Jewish background of Christian worship, but he approached it mainly through patristics, early liturgical texts, synagogue/meal theory, and the history of the primitive Church, rather than through the living Hebrew Christian movement. His archive listings include Jew and Greek, The Christian “Shaliach”, The Shape of the Liturgy, and related liturgical material, but nothing obvious on Levertoff or Hebrew Catholics.  

Dix does not appear to have engaged directly with Levertoff or the Hebrew Christian liturgical movement, but his work belongs to the same wider Anglican rediscovery of the Jewish matrix of Christian worship. Levertoff represents the Hebrew Christian, rabbinically informed side of that recovery; Dix represents the Anglo-Catholic, patristic-liturgical side. Bringing them together is a promising Messianic Jewish retrieval project, but it is probably our synthesis rather than theirs.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/9-may/faith/faith-features/gregory-dix-lasting-legacy-of-a-liturgist

Today we celebrate the 160^th anniversary of Carl Schwarz’s letter inviting Jewish disciples of Yeshua in the United Kingdom to meet together for the purpose of forming the first Hebrew Christian Alliance. It was a modest beginning, yet one that would lead to a significant development in the history of our movement, with the International Alliance formed in 1925, and continuing to the present with some twenty national alliances around the world. The Alliance grew, prospered and served Jewish disciples of Yeshua throughout the turbulent times of the twentieth century, and up to the present day.

https://bmja.net

The letter (full text here) read:

“It has occurred to us that it would be desirable and profitable that as many Israelites who believe in Jesus as can be brought together should meet in London…”

Its aim was simple but profound:

“Our object is to become acquainted with one another, and to be built up in our holy faith… we believe that this conference for prayer and consultation might issue in a permanent union of Jewish Christian brethren in this land.”

Those who signed this letter were not merely organisers of a meeting. They were among the earliest to recognise the theological and communal significance of Jewish disciples of Yeshua gathering as Jews within the body of Messiah.

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The Signatories

Adolphus Frederick Herschell

Herschell was a Polish-born Jewish disciple of Yeshua who became a missionary and pastor among Jewish communities in Britain. He laboured especially in London, combining evangelistic work with pastoral care.
Gidney notes the importance of such figures:

“Men of Jewish birth and training were increasingly employed in work among their own people.”
(W. T. Gidney, History of the London Society, 1908)

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Hyman Liebstein

Liebstein represents the many lesser-known Jewish disciples of Yeshua active in London.

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Moses Margoliouth (more details see here)

Margoliouth, a learned scholar and clergyman, strongly advocated for Jewish disciples of Yeshua to be recognised as a distinct body.
Gidney writes:

“Dr. Margoliouth was a man of considerable learning and controversial ability.”
(History, 1908)

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Tobias E. Neuman

Neuman was among those engaged in ministry among Jewish communities in Britain, part of the emerging network of Jewish workers.

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A. Pitowsky

Pitowsky remains obscure, but his inclusion reflects the wider base of Jewish disciples of Yeshua active in mission and fellowship.

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Steinhardt

Little is known of Steinhardt, yet he stands among those committed to fostering unity among Jewish believers.

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Adolph Saphir (more details see here)

Saphir, a Hungarian-born Jewish disciple of Yeshua, became a respected preacher and theologian.
He wrote:

“There is one people of God, gathered out of Jews and Gentiles.”
(The Divine Unity of Scripture, 1877)

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Carl Schwartz (more details see here)

Schwartz was the central organiser of the gathering.
After the meeting he wrote:

“We may boldly say that such a gathering … had not been witnessed since the early days of the Christian Church.”
(Jewish Missionary Intelligence, 1866)

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The Gathering and Its Legacy

On May 23, 1866, around eighty Jewish disciples of Yeshua met in London in response to this letter. What began as a simple call to fellowship became the seed of the Hebrew Christian Alliance.

Gidney later reflected:

“The formation of a union among Hebrew Christians was a natural and important step.”
(History, 1908)

This was more than organisation. It was the recovery of a visible expression of Jewish life in Messiah—a sign of God’s ongoing purposes for Israel within the ekklesia.

Happy 160^th birthday!

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Prayer

Thank you, Lord, for the vision and faith of those who invited Jewish disciples of Yeshua to gather in what would become the Hebrew Christian Alliance.
Strengthen us in our faith, and gather us in unity and peace, that we may be a living witness to your covenant with Israel and your salvation in the Messiah.
May we be not just a curiosity but a prophetic sign—a faithful testimony to your purposes for Israel and the nations.
In the name of Yeshua our Messiah, Amen.

Hebrew
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
מוֹדִים אֲנַחְנוּ לְךָ עַל הַחָזוֹן וְהָאֱמוּנָה שֶׁל הָרִאשׁוֹנִים,
אֲשֶׁר קָרְאוּ לְתַלְמִידֵי יֵשׁוּעַ מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְהִתְקַבֵּץ בָּאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת.

חַזֵּק אוֹתָנוּ בֶּאֱמוּנָתֵנוּ הַקְּדוֹשָׁה,
וְקַבֵּץ אוֹתָנוּ בְּאַחְדוּת וּבַשָּׁלוֹם,
לְמַעַן נִהְיֶה עֵדוּת חַיָּה לְבְּרִיתְךָ עִם יִשְׂרָאֵל
וְלִישׁוּעָתְךָ בַּמָּשִׁיחַ.

תֵּן שֶׁנִּהְיֶה אוֹת וְלֹא סַקְרָנוּת,
עֵדוּת נֶאֱמָנָה לְתַכְלִיתֶךָ לְיִשְׂרָאֵל וְלָאוּמּוֹת.

בְּשֵׁם יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ, אָמֵן.

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Transliteration
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha’olam,
modim anachnu lecha al hachazon veha’emunah shel harishonim,
asher kar’u le-talmidei Yeshua mibnei Yisrael lehitkabetz ba’aretz hazot.

Chazek otanu be’emunateinu hak’doshah,
ve-kabetz otanu be’achdut uva-shalom,
lema’an nihyeh edut chayah livritcha im Yisrael
ve-lishu’atcha baMashiach.

Ten shenihyeh ot velo sakranut,
edut ne’emanah letachlitecha leYisrael vela’umot.

BeShem Yeshua haMashiach, Amen.

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