August 26 addition

The blog posts normally take an hour to research in the evening, and an hour to put up in the morning, but are also the product of 40 years’ ongoing research and working knowledge of Jewish believers in Jesus. But here, on the day of Karl Marx’s baptism, I cannot claim he was particularly Jewish or Christian, and I mistyped the date. He was baptised on 26 August 1844, not 25!

That’s what this project has been all about. A quick skim through the annals and history of Jewish believers in Jesus (JBYs), to see what is out there, trying to construct something of a narrative of JBYs to give present-day Messianic Jews a sense of their history and identity, and learn for myself what was going on throughout the centuries in the interface between Judaism and Christianity, and what happened to those caught in the fault-lines in between.

In the course of my inquiries I have come across false baptisms, insincere conversions, Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, horrific crimes and ill-treatment of Jewish people, and also great examples of heroism and courage shown towards Jews and JBYs, and genuine faith. I have discovered different forms of Jewish-Christian identities, different ways of combining the two faiths, and gained a broader theological and historical perspective on what it means to be a Messianic Jew today.

I have tried to respond empathetically to the plight and challenges faced by previous generations, and have prayed in most posts for the lessons I have learned to be applied in my life and the contemporary Messianic movement today, bearing in mind that history repeats itself, and we are very slow to learn the lessons of our history, so it repeats itself again.

I’m planning to conclude this series when it has run the course of a year and publish my findings in either a page-a-day desktop calendar, e-book or printed book. If you have been reading this post and enjoying it, would you drop me an email at richardsharvey@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts on the series, and if you would like some copies of the calendar/devotional book, or would like to order some for friends or family as Christmas/Hanucah gifts? If I can get an idea of the numbers interested it will help me know how to get them printed, and how many copies to order.

Thanks for reading – I look forward to your comments on “On this day in Messianic Jewish History”. I’m planning my next series of blog posts to be weekly, not daily, as “50 Key Messianic Jewish thinkers”. Do you have any suggestions as to who should be included?

Best regards

Richard Harvey