Messianic History

Messianic Judaism came back in the 1800s. From Professor Franz Delitzsch to the Hebrew New Testament to the first Messianic Jews since ancient times, this is the story of the modern Messianic awakening. 

How is this course different than everything else on Messianic Jewish history? 

• It's told as a gripping saga. 

• It's presented in video format so you can watch or just listen. 

• It's illustrated with hundreds of historical snapshots and maps. 

• Not only does it show you page after page of source text instead of just giving you short quotes or paraphrases without citations, but whenever possible you're also given a digitized copy of these sources in the Messianic History Collection below so you can corroborate everything for yourself and conduct further research into the stories that most interest you.

Written academic works mostly tuck their sources away in small print at the bottom of the page or the back of the book. This pioneering work does the exact opposite by putting the sources right in front of you, in full colour! That's what this Archive is: the sources presented in these videos, in their glorious entirety. Tens of thousands of old yellowed pages worth of books and articles, along with a treasure trove of black and white photographs, many of which can't be found anywhere else, all touched up to be as readable and aesthetically pleasing as possible. The Messianic History PDFs Archive is only accessible to members so subscribe first.

Welcome to the Messianic History series! We'll start with the story of Professor Franz Delitzsch - as the grandfather of modern Messianic Judaism and chief translator of the best and most widely-used Hebrew New Testament, his story is a who's who of nineteenth-century Jewish believers in Jesus. In this first sketch you'll hear the mysterious prophecy spoken over baby Franz, glimpse his childhood with an alcoholic father and mysterious Jewish godfather, relive his riveting encounter with the Messiah as a teenager, feel the deep spiritual passion that fueled his lifelong mission, and meet the Jewish missionaries and scholars who first gave Delitzsch his love for Rabbinic Hebrew and the Jewish people.

In this second chapter in the story of Professor Franz Delitzsch we'll cover his marriage, the loss of his parents, and his move to two other cities, all of which spanned his 30s to mid-50s. During these productive years Delitzsch came out with the Keil & Delitzsch OT commentary and a 600-page book on Biblical Psychology, singlehandedly took down the KJV-only argument before it was even a thing, founded the "Sown in Hope" periodical, and quietly started work on his Hebrew New Testament.

After 23 years of exile the King returned home to Leipzig to raving reviews and wild popularity. It was then, at the height of his power and shortly before the completion of his greatest masterpiece, that tragedy struck - two of his sons died and a third began his dark descent to become the Reverse Delitzsch. This third chapter in the story of Professor Franz Delitzsch covers the ten years leading up to the release of his Hebrew New Testament. It also follows the trail of his youngest son Friedrich who became Germany's greatest Assyriologist and was publicly opposed by the Kaiser himself for his outspoken attacks on the Old Testament.

The Delitzsch Hebrew New Testament wasn't the first on the scene. The London Society's version of 1817 was based on the very first Hebrew New Testament translated by Elias Hutter in 1599 for his gorgeous Polyglot Bible. It was criticized by many including Delitzsch for limiting itself to the vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible and rejecting the Mishnaic Hebrew of the time of Christ while at the same time using Greek words like "baptize" and writing Greek names as they were pronounced in English. Nonetheless it was groundbreaking in its time and is an opportunity to talk about some of the issues, historical personages, and old books that you're about to encounter.

In the previous chapter in this historical series we looked at the first edition of the London Society's Hebrew NT and you met some of the movers and shakers in the baby Hebrew Christian movement. In this chapter you'll meet the six men behind the next two editions including the greatest Hebrew genius before Delitzsch, the first Jewish bishop of Jerusalem since ancient times, the author whose attack on Judaism provoked the first argument for Messianic Judaism, and the Hebrew daddy and granddaddy of Professor Delitzsch.

Only one Hebrew New Testament has been cantillated so it could be sung - the third version of the London Society, translated by Ezekiel Margoliouth and Dr. Biesenthal. In this vignette you'll see how this iteration was an improvement and meet Ezekiel and his son David, the Arabic Professor at Oxford. You'll also meet Ezekiel's brother Moses whose life was changed after reading the Hebrew NT and who went on to become one of the most controversial Hebrew Christian voices by promoting British Israelism and Freemasonry, criticizing Delitzsch's "authorized version", and authoring a book bashing Judaism which provoked history's first argument in favour of Messianic Judaism.

Raphael Hirsch became a household name as Dr. Joachim Heinrich Biesenthal, the greatest Hebrew scholar of the 1800s. An academic giant, he was personal friends with the best grammarians, textual critics, philosophers, and church historians of his day - men such as Gesenius, Heidenheim, Vatke, Hegel, and Neander. Dr. Biesenthal worked for the London Society for 37 years and moved to Leipzig the same year that Professor Delitzsch returned. Together they ruled their world, with Delitzsch calling Biesenthal who was 13 years his senior his "beloved teacher". This is the untold story of the greatest of the Hebrew Christians.

The scholarship of Dr. Biesenthal was spectacular. He contributed Hebrew grammars, dictionaries, and lexicons written in Hebrew, Latin, and German and produced critical editions of several books of Tanach. He told the story of early Christianity from Talmudic sources and revealed how Christian doctrines were taught in the Zohar. And, most importantly, he set the New Testament back in its Jewish context with his Hebrew translations and commentaries. This historical vignette begins with a breath-taking overview of the works of Dr. Biesenthal and ends with a comparison of four translations of Hebrews 1:1-2.

Dr. Biesenthal exposed many ancient Jewish texts that had been suppressed, why? Because they taught that Messiah was the Holy One who spoke with Abraham and that not only would he come riding on a donkey to suffer for the sins of the world as per Isaiah 53 but that he would become the mediator through whom all generations would be justified and saved and that he would even sit at God's right hand and be called by the very name Adonai. They also taught that the Messianic Era had already begun. See these suppressed texts for yourself in our first conversation about Dr. Raphael Hirsch Biesenthal's book on the history of the early Yeshua movement.

Dr. Biesenthal wasn't just a great Hebrew scholar - he was also a powerful storyteller who did much to define the Hebrew Christian movement. He retold the story of Yeshua from suppressed Jewish texts, which we'll continue looking at here. He also told the story of that first generation of Jewish disciples, emphasizing that they continued to live Torah-observant lives within the Jewish community. Through Peter's story Dr. Biesenthal cast a vision for all humanity, and through Paul's he revealed the deep feelings he had for his own Jewish people. This is part two of Dr. Joachim Heinrich's history of the early Christian Church.

Imagine being Jewish and not knowing anything about Yeshua of Nazareth except garbled hearsay. Then you read the New Testament and encounter him, but you still don't know what came after the book of Acts. Dr. Biesenthal stepped in to tell that story and give a generation of Jewish believers the heroes they needed. From Nero to Diocletian, for four chapters he told the bloody stories of thousands of disciples who paid the ultimate price. In the process not only did he inspire the young Hebrew Christian movement, he also offered a glimpse into his own heart. This is part three of brother Joachim's history of early Christianity.

Dr. Biesenthal defended historical Christianity and Judaism and made the early Hebrew Christians proud to be both. He pointed out many Jewish elements in the early Church including the reading of the Law and Prophets, Passover on the 14th, ritual hand washing, facing Jerusalem to pray, and belief in a literal Millennium when the promises to Israel would come true. He also preached that believing Jews and Gentiles were one but not the same and that they deeply needed each other. This is part four of Raphael Hirsch's groundbreaking book telling the untold story of the early Yeshua movement.

If the Early Church and Synagogue were on social media their relationship status would have been "complicated". Dr. Biesenthal tackled these tensions in his history of the early Yeshua movement - not only bringing forth suppressed texts about Messiah, but also presenting stories from the Talmud about early Christian-Jewish interactions that showed how deep the hatred ran. Unfortunately, the way these stories were told only furthered the divide. This is a hard conversation about the animosity of nineteenth-century Hebrew Christianity towards Judaism and how even Dr. Biesenthal contributed to it.

Dr. Biesenthal unearthed stories from the Midrash suggesting that the Messiah would not meet Israel's expectations. Instead, the Temple would be destroyed and Messiah himself would mysteriously disappear on a centuries-long journey - first to hell, and then to Rome and the other great countries across the sea. But Dr. Biesenthal wasn't just about the past - he also prophesied the rise of Zionism. In our final conversation about the first Hebrew New Testament published in modern times we'll examine these texts and then finish by reviewing the historical personages we've encountered thus far.

Delitzsch and Salkinson were the Coke and Pepsi of Hebrew New Testaments. In this first conversation about the Salkinson-Ginsburg version we'll look at the human side of Isaac Salkinson - his childhood pain as an orphan and wandering years in Eastern Europe, education and missionary work in Great Britain, and final flourishing in Vienna. We'll also listen in to several interactions with the Jewish Chronicle, Chief Karaite Rabbi, and local Viennese that reveal Salkinson's sensitive heart and poetic style and, on a broader scale, echo the emerging voice of nineteenth-century Hebrew Christianity.

Isaac Salkinson wasn't just a Hebrew Christian missionary - he was a member of the Jewish Enlightenment and the best translator they had, rendering classical works like Shakespeare into biblical Hebrew. He was also a father figure to Peretz Smolenskin, the fiery editor of the widely read Haskalah periodical Hashachar. This is Salkinson the translator: from his hobby carrying English literature over into the holy tongue to his life's work bringing Yeshua back into the camp of the Hebrews, a mission which he completed just months before his tragic and untimely death.

Christian David Ginsburg was the greatest Hebrew scholar Britain ever produced. After Isaac Salkinson's sudden death he paused his monumental work on the Massorah to finish the translation and prepare it for publishing. In this first conversation we'll start with Ginsburg's contribution to the Salkinson-Ginsburg NT and then go back to the first epoch of his career, the romantic era of his 20s in which he married, authored groundbreaking commentaries on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, and championed the cause of women's equality at the height of the Victorian Era.

Dr. Ginsburg's rise to power began in the Liverpool Society where he not only demonstrated his brilliance in multiple lectures which went on to be published as books, but also showed himself to be very human by helping out however he could. In addition to hours-long lectures on the Karaites, Essenes, and ancient and modern versions of the Bible, Ginsburg also made a groundbreaking presentation on the Kaballah, emphasizing passages which spoke of a God who is three in one and a Messiah whose sufferings atone for the world as per Isaiah 53. This is part one of Christian David Ginsburg's Epoch of Power.

C. D. Ginsburg came into his own in Liverpool, the big brawny and bustling New York of Europe. In a city where money was everything Ginsburg made the Hebrew Bible his everything and grew up like a root out of dry ground. In this talk we'll look at Dr. Ginsburg's brilliant inaugural address to the Liverpool Society in which he demonstrated his keen visionary powers and ability to leave an audience of intellectuals on their feet cheering wildly. We'll finish by looking at President Ginsburg's final presentation to the Society in which he passionately explained what the Massorah was and why it was so important.

The Moabite Stone was big news when it was first discovered in the late 1860s. Dr. Ginsburg not only translated this spectacular archaeological find, but was also quick to publish an intensely detailed but readable book about it. As the Moabite stone became a household name, so did C. D. Ginsburg. The Liverpool Society even sent their former President on an exploratory trip to Moab which turned out to be so dangerous that military action was initiated after news arrived that Ginsburg and his team had been taken hostage at the Crusader Castle of Kerak. This is the beginning of Dr. Ginsburg's epoch of fame.

George Eliot wrote her seventh novel about "Daniel Deronda", an English gentleman who meets a dying young visionary named Mordecai who believes that Deronda has been divinely called to lead the Jewish people back to Israel. He objects that he isn't even Jewish, only to discover that he is...and the story unfolds. 20 years before Herzl wrote his watershed "Jewish State" and 10 years before "Zionism" was a word, Eliot's novel was the first Zionist manifesto. This is the untold story of how George Eliot, moved by her own Mordecai, started the movement that became the State of Israel.

She was a scandalous Victorian novelist and ten years his senior. He taught her Hebrew. She taught him how to deal with the critics when he became famous. He sent her the rough draft of the article that made him famous. She kept him from suicide. He became the fiery young martyr in her greatest novel. She called him her dear Rabbi. He left her with a fierce compassion for his people and a vision of the Jewish Christ that turned her into a prophetic voice. This is the story of the unusual friendship that turned the tide of Jewish history.

Emanuel Deutsch came as a harbinger a century ahead of his time. In his wildly popular 1867 article on the Talmud he dared to point out that the New Testament was written by Jews, showed how early Rabbinic writings paralleled and even supplemented the Gospels, and in one stroke reconciled the old and new faiths. The reaction was extreme. It was taboo to speak positively about the Jewishness of Jesus and early Christianity, and this Jew hadn't even converted! And so a generation of Christians was turned from despising their Jewish roots to embracing them.

He held no titles or office and had no power, but he changed the world by changing minds. He was humble, helpful, and lived for years in obscurity. We don't know what he looked like except that he was Jewish. He wasn't physically attractive and never married, but he loved children and they loved him. He was called Immanuel and was a son of David, but still went down to Egypt. He mysteriously prophesied his own demise, died young, and mystically lived on in his friends. This is the personal story of Menachem Ben-Avraham, also known as Emanuel Deutsch, as told by his closest friends.

Dr. Ginsburg became a trusted national celebrity when he exposed the sensational Shapira scrolls as frauds, but his rise to fame began two decades earlier when he exposed the Jewish Jesus as real. Ginsburg contributed 200 groundbreaking articles to the popular 'Kitto's Biblical Cyclopedia' through which the Christian world encountered a Jewish Saviour who wore fringes, read the Haftarah, celebrated Hanukkah, and prayed the liturgy. Not only that, they also met the Jewish world of sages and scholars and were confronted with their own antisemitism. The following excerpts are glimpses of the prophetic scholarship and beautiful heart of a hero whose fame never went to his head.

The Massorah was a massive mess. For centuries the scribes had been more interested in producing a tidy text with fancy frills than in preserving the Massoretic tradition. Jacob Ben Chaim had begun to collect and collate these scattered Massoretic notes but it wasn't until 300 years later that Christian David Ginsburg rose to publish his writings and finish the holy task, driven by the same passion that not one jot or tittle should pass. And as you shall see, Heaven smiled down in miraculous ways. This is the start of Dr. Ginsburg's epoch of glory.

If Dr. Ginsburg had brain crushes it would have been Elias Levita and Jacob Ben Chaim. He didn't just republish their pioneering works on the Massorah - he also told their stories with unabashed force. They saw the wrath of Christian antisemitism firsthand but still dared to engage, working with Bomberg to print Hebrew texts and teaching the holy language to Reuchlin and many others. These two became the grandfathers of the Reformation, turning Jewish suffering into the birth pangs of change. Let's pick up where we left off looking at these republished works firsthand.

It's 1877 and you're in London, sipping your morning tea and reading The Times. Suddenly your eye falls on something unusual - there in the midst of stock prices, cricket scores, and the latest news from the Empire, is a shining article about…"The Massorah"? This is the story of how Dr. Ginsburg laboured for twenty years straight - travelling thousands of miles and searching hundreds of manuscripts; persevering through sickness, personal grief, and insomnia; overcoming printer strikes and lack of funds - all so the original Jewish Bible could go from dusty relic to a celebrated national treasure, transported by the Foreign Secretary and funded by the Prime Minister of Great Britain himself.

Five years after their first article The Times came out with an even bigger, full-page story on the Massorah. In two other articles The Times announced that Dr. Ginsburg hosted a dinner celebrating the completion of 15 years labour on the only official update to the King James Bible and detailed the challenges the 'OT Company' had faced. In the midst of this publicity Volume 3 of the Massorah was published. Surprisingly the preface was dominated by a heated disagreement between Ginsburg and Professor Franz Delitzsch himself, punctuated with expressions of intense respect.

The problem with Dr. Ginsburg's work was that, even though it was interesting, it was also useless to most people. All his Masoretic research was packed into three volumes but there were only a couple hundred printed...in almost indecipherable Hebrew...and they cost thousands of dollars. Dr. Ginsburg changed all that by producing a Massoretic Hebrew Bible with an English introduction that people could actually read and use! What made the Ginsburg Tanach different? And what are these emotional stories about the Bible surviving history's darkest days and Providence coming through for young Ginsburg after he became so discouraged that he gave up?

There was probably a pained look behind the smiles of almost everyone who looked at Dr. Ginsburg's three books on the Masorah. It was spectacular...and almost impossible to understand. 30 years after the project began, Christian David and his wife Emilie changed that by coming out with an English translation that revealed for the first time ever the "mystery of the Massorah", including the possibility that Ginsburg's life itself had been foretold in the code. We'll finish by looking at Ginsburg's donors and subscribers - from intelligent women of high society, to Christian and Jewish institutions across the globe, to the foremost scholars of the time including Dr. Ginsburg's archrival himself - Dr. Baer.

Dr. Ginsburg left his English translation of the Massorah unfinished and spent the last ten years of his life working on the Ginsburg Bible 2.0. While the text was much the same, the footnotes with half a million tiny variations ballooned to almost take over the page. The sun set on C. D. Ginsburg's 'Epoch of Glory' with the publishing of Psalms and by the time the rest of his Bible finally went to press twelve years later almost everyone working on it had died. While seemingly anticlimactic, there were rays of redemption. The project brought together members of old Team Delitzsch and new Team Ginsburg. And Ginsburg 2.0 would go on to be reborn with the State of Israel...but that's for another episode.

What do you think, shouldn't it be a big deal that the greatest Hebrew scholar the English-speaking world ever produced was also a Jewish believer in Yeshua? C. D. Ginsburg was a champion in the early Messianic Jewish movement and one of our best, yet until this series no one has told his story in detail or made all his works available in one place. With this in view let's continue celebrating the "leading Hebraist" of his time, the "last of the great Victorians", the "grand old man of Palmers Green" by looking at some of the Tributes that poured forth in newspapers around the world upon his death and seeing what else we can discover about this Hebrew Christian hero.

Christian David Ginsburg passed away on the eve of history's darkest days. Through two World Wars the Jewish people died and were reborn from the ashes - and with them rose the work of Dr. Ginsburg. The first Tanach produced by Jews in the new State of Israel used his Masoretic text and Jewish publishing houses owned his other works amidst revived Israeli interest in the Jewishness of Jesus. On the Christian side, Bullinger popularized Ginsburg's research through his widely-used Companion Bible and the original Ginsburg OT was repackaged alongside the Delitzsch NT by the Trinitarian Bible Society and was also recently digitized. This is the last installment in the history of the best Scribe we had.

If Salkinson gave the New Testament a Hebrew soul and Ginsburg gave it a published body then it was John Wilkinson who gave it wings, mobilizing his Mildmay Mission to the Jews to put 250,000 copies into 10 million Jewish hands! This is the incredible story of John Wilkinson - from his friendship with Hudson Taylor, George Muller, and Charles Spurgeon to his extraordinary marriage to Ann; from Bible college years when the young trio were bonded for life to Salkinson's prophetic wish that they could work together, Jew and Gentile, as a "complete missionary", and finally to the only time in history when Yeshua was globally presented to his own Jewish people, in their own holy tongue.

Responses to Isaac Salkinson's translation were extreme. Average Jewish readers favoured it as "more Hebrew" because of its pure Biblical vocabulary. Rabbis, Talmudic scholars, and Hebrew newspaper editors rushed to get a copy and hailed it as "exceedingly good" and "more perfect". Scholars, on the other hand, criticized its paraphrased idiomatic style and branded it a barbarous failure. Dr. Samuel Rolles Driver (of BDB Lexicon fame) provided the most even-handed and respectful analysis, recognizing the strengths of both Salkinson and Delitzsch and comparing them on hundreds of specific points - even listing the places where Salkinson found the "happier and more idiomatic expression". TBC!

"Which translation is better, Salkinson or Delitzsch? Which should we be reading?" These were the questions on everyone's mind when the new version came out. Dr. Samuel Rolles Driver provided the most comprehensive answer with a detailed yet concise comparison between the two. Picking up where we left off, let's look at 16 verses where Delitzsch made the "more happy hit" and then see 38 places where phrases from the Tanach were masterfully woven into both of these historic versions. Even if Hebrew is all Greek to you, your heart will thrill at this episode as part of the story of the reappearance of the Jewish Jesus and the restoration of the New Testament to its original Semitic voice.

No translation is perfect. Thought-for-thought paraphrases make for smoother reading but aren't as true to the original; literal word-for-word translations stick closer to the source text but often feel stiff and clunky. In his analysis of 'The Two Hebrew New Testaments' S. R. Driver gave words to the tensions that readers and scholars alike felt as they compared the Salkinson-Ginsburg and Delitzsch versions. This is our third session springboarding from Driver's review into a deep-dive comparison between the dynamic and formal equivalents of Isaac S. and Franz D. To keep things fun we'll also point out imprecatory phrases for you to playfully use on your family members and indulge in some gematria.

For several years things got increasingly heated between Salkinson-Ginsburg and Delitzsch fans, with printed attacks on Delitzsch's translation only adding fuel to the flames. The old Professor finally defused the situation a year before his death by publishing never-before-seen correspondence between himself, Isaac, and Henrietta Salkinson revealing the good feelings which flowed between them and the degree to which they borrowed from each other's works. We'll conclude our last conversation around the Salkinson-Ginsburg Hebrew NT by looking back over the historical personages we encountered and reading 1 Corinthians 13 in Salkinson's own Hebrew handwriting, a testament to his 'labour of love'.

Professor Franz Delitzsch's Hebrew version of the New Testament did more to reveal the Jewish Jesus than anything else in history. This is part one of its story, from first rumblings in Delitzsch's 20s to the successful first edition of 1877. During this time Delitzsch quietly commenced his life's work in Erlangen, released his landmark monograph on the Epistle to the Romans with commentary from Rabbinic literature, spent five years anxiously searching for a publisher, and finally with the help of a young American arrival to Leipzig secured the assistance of the powerful British Bible Society.