Hebrew Mysticism and Greek Rationalism

After Gentile believers came to greatly outnumber Hebrew believers in the early centuries of the Church, they began to suppress Hebraic wisdom that did not fit into their Greek way of thinking. (For more about this, see this blog’s Introduction here: https://worthychristianforums.com/blogs/entry/839-introduction-hebraic-roots-pre-wrath/ )

The coming of Jesus divided time. The Hebrews who came before Him looked backwards to the past, and particularly to the mysteries of the Creation: how it unfolded and developed. And to the wise among them, God revealed many such mysteries. He also hid secrets of these mysteries within the Torah and Tanakh. But the Hebrews were largely blinded to the future, this being one reason that they killed the prophets.

The Gentiles who came after Jesus looked forward to the end of the age, but were largely blinded to the wisdom of the past: how God brought forth His Creation, and thereafter worked to develop it by means of the Hebrew race. The Gentile blindness has resulted, in Western culture, in a rejection of the biblical account of the Creation, and in the replacing of it with a so-called ‘scientific’ belief in an evolution of the cosmos taking billions of years. And also in an evolution of mankind taking hundreds of thousands or more of years.

“Alpha and omega, beginning and end, first and last.” Jesus understood both, as did Paul, who had both Greek and Hebraic backgrounds. Whereas separately, the Jews and the Gentiles by themselves only understood one side of the equation to any great depth. This is why the mindset of the Gentile Church is suspicious and generally disdainful of the Hebraic roots of the faith, and of their mystical teachings. And why Judaism is likewise suspicious and generally disdainful of Christian theology and its prophetic teachings.

By and large, Gentile believers do not study the Tanakh in any great depth, because they are left-brain objective and rationalizing thinkers, whereas the Hebrew language is derived from right-brain subjective and mystical thinking. That is, in imagery and symbols, which are at the root of tangible/material things:

Hebrews 11:3 …the things being seen have not been made out of things being visible.

In contrast, materialistic rationalism is the basis of the modern Gentile veneration of science, and this idolizing of science has infested the Church. Whereas non-material mysticism – the study of signs and times and imagery and symbolism – are generally rejected by Church leaders as being superstitious nonsense, or of the devil.

Jesus specifically chose and prepared Paul, and not any of the other Apostles, to reveal many mysteries of His Gospel precisely because of his educational background in both Greek and Hebraic worldviews. Paul uses the word “mystery” 17 times in his epistles; the other NT writers zero times, except when quoting Jesus. So which of Jesus’ disciples do you think was the most receptive to learning outside of the box of the religious traditions of that age, both Jew and Gentile?

Many modern-day Christians have recognized the paucity of spiritual depth in the present materialistic Church. To satisfy their longing for the “solid food…of the oracles of God (Heb. 5:12-14 NKJV), they have begun to search out the “Hebraic roots” of the faith. Unfortunately, most get diverted into one form or another of Jewish tradition and legalism. Others follow after various spiritual gurus claiming revealed mystical knowledge. Very few seek actual ancient Hebraic sources of mystical wisdom. Those who do, however, will find a great deal of “solid food” therein.

Without the unseen mystical roots that underlie the faith, there can be no mature fruit. But likewise, without the Gentile branches grafted into and nourished by those roots, fruit will not mature either:

Hebrews 11:40 …they [OT saints] without us [NT saints] cannot be teleiōthōsin/perfected/matured.

The next series of articles will provide an example of OT mystical imagery applied to a NT parable spoken by Jesus.