A History of Judaism and Christianity

This book, pastoral in nature, is to provide the reader with an in-depth analysis of the challenging history of Judaism, Israel, and the Christian church. After offering an introduction to the First Testament (in Hebrew, Tanakh), the author proceeds to portray an image of Early Christianity or the Jesus Movement during the Apostolic Era to the beginning of the fourth century. During the early part of this era, there was a vibrant union between Jewish believers in Jesus (in Hebrew, Yeshua) and Gentile believers in Jesus. However, over these years, anti-Semitism grew within the Christian Church that resulted in a wound of division between the two segments of the Christian faith. This division resulted in anti-Semitic attitudes, discrimination, exiles and pogroms against the Jewish people, the nation of Israel. This lead, in part to one of the most tragic events in human history, the Holocaust or the Shoah. The author documents factors, both distal and proximate, of the tragedy. Beginning in the decade after WWII, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and, the Catholic Council called Vatican Council II, new hopes for repentance, reconciliation, and healing have begun between the Christian Church, Israel and Messianic Judaism.

Sources to the work emerge from the theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Messianic Judaism. The document is framed sociologically by using ideal types and historical sociological materials.

The goal is for the Christian Church to remember, repent of her collective sins against the Jewish people and to journey towards reconciliation among Jews, Messianic Jews, and Christians.