I recently participated in Caspari Center’s “Discovering Jesus in His Jewish Context” course for the second time. The first such course I attended was in the fall of 2014. Participating in that first course was very valuable for me, and the experience provided an important foundation on which to build, as I learned more about […]
During the Caspari Center’s Discovering Jesus in His Jewish Context course which took place recently, 13 participants had a unique opportunity to discover the Land of Jesus. Among the course participants there were some Norwegians, some locals and, like me, many Finns. Observing the Ancient Rocks The stones all around reminded us of what […]
The Caspari Center began organizing seminars in Haifa for Russian-speaking teachers in 2011. Our primary goal was to offer training to teachers from the north of Israel, and the Russian language was initially chosen due to the abundance of Russian-speaking congregations in the region. What do we see seven years later? First, the number of […]
Since the 18th century, the question of the historical Jesus has puzzled theologians. They have actively constructed portraits of Jesus, and depicted him as an apocalyptic prophet, a charismatic healer, a Cynic philosopher, a prophet of social change and so on. Jesus has been a black man, a Marxist revolutionist, a Palestinian and a feminist. Many different […]
Last year marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is counted from the event when 95 thesis were nailed at the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, by one Catholic priest, doctor of theology and an Augustinian monk named Martinus Lutherus. Some other date could have been chosen as well, as the Reformation was a […]
Standing back to get a bird’s eye view of history through the lens of bible believers, we find many important landmarks in the calendar year of 2017. These notable points in history, spanning four hundred years from 1517 to 1917, involve both Christians and Jews, and all point to the centrality of Israel in God’s […]
In Matthew 15, we read the story of Jesus meeting a Canaanite woman. After initially dismissing her pleas for help, Yeshua (Jesus) ends up healing her daughter and acknowledging the woman’s faith. As one of the few encounters between Jesus and non-Jews recorded in the gospels, this passage has been interpreted as providing a model […]
Nearly twenty years ago, the Caspari Center began an empirical endeavor to gather specific information regarding Messianic believers in Israel. Where did they gather? What did they believe? How big were their congregations? How were these congregations structured? How many Jewish believers were there in the Land? The Caspari Center survey entitled Facts & Myths […]
Some have wondered why, if Jesus’ life was a perfect sacrifice, Jesus didn’t die on Yom Kippur instead of Passover. During the first decades after the resurrection, when the early Christian community was primarily Jewish, believers continued to participate in Yom Kippur and the rest of the yearly festival cycle, though their understanding of those […]
These were the words and testimony of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, at his son’s circumcision (Lk 1:63). Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were devout Jews, childless and well-advanced in years, living in the time of Herod, king of Judea. Both were descendants of Aaron, of priestly family, and Zechariah served as priest before God, […]