Tov Neeman

Author of A Better Myth. Exploring Christianity, Judaism, and religious tradition through the Tanakh.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

What happens when inherited religious beliefs are tested against the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) rather than later tradition?

That question became A Better Myth, and it’s the question I’ll be exploring here.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate that.

Karaites are definitely a small minority, but I think there are more Jews than people realize who do not really see the Talmud or later Rabbinic tradition as binding. Many just do not have an obvious community or label that fits them. They are in the greater Jewish community and have inherited traditions, some innocent, others, quite odd and questionable. Karaite synagogues are rare outside Israel.

That is one reason I enjoy discussions that go directly back to the Tanakh itself, Daniel and Isaiah included.

All the best to you as well.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

Right, but Romans 4 is Paul.

My question was where the Hebrew Bible says that.

Genesis says the nations will be blessed through Abraham. It does not say that everyone who later believes a certain doctrine becomes Israel or inherits Israel’s covenant identity.

That is Paul’s interpretation of the Abrahamic promise, not something the Tanakh itself states.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

That argument assumes Rabbinic Judaism.

I’m Karaite. I don’t treat the rabbinic haftarah cycle as authoritative, so the claim that “your synagogue skips Isaiah 53” really misses the point.

I’m perfectly happy to read Isaiah 53 directly in the Hebrew.

And when I do, it still does not say the servant is Jesus, does not call the servant God, and does not say Israel must believe in him to be saved.

So let’s read the text, not argue about a later reading cycle.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

@MikePerceval @rabbriansamuel I'm a Karaite. We don't accept the Talmud as authoritative. The Tanakh is vast enough!

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

@ackbubby @LeadingReport Fair point. I was responding to the implication people are obviously meant to take from the headline, not claiming the sentence literally says archaeology proved the miracle.

I still think we can make this work too. 🙂

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

@idkanymore8888 @LeadingReport New account, old argument. Still waiting for a response to the actual point.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

By starting with the Tanakh itself.

It lays out a basic path for humanity long before Christianity or Rabbinic Judaism existed: know God, reject idolatry and evil, practice justice, mercy, honesty, and righteousness. The nations are never told they need to join a religion or believe in a future savior.

Israel then receives a particular covenant and Torah. And Israel is explicitly told not to add to it or subtract from it. Deuteronomy 13 goes even further: even a prophet who performs a real sign or miracle cannot lead Israel away from what God already commanded.

So I start there. The Torah is Israel’s enduring covenant, and the nations already have a path to God.

Once that framework is clear, the later claim that everything suddenly depends on accepting Jesus becomes something that has to be proved, not assumed.

That basic argument is what I explore in A Better Myth. If you ever read it, I’d genuinely be interested in your take.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

Those are fair questions, and I agree that once you start examining the historical claims closely, things get much less tidy than they are often presented.

But I’d go one step further. The Hebrew Bible never says humanity needs Christianity, or even needs to belong to a religion at all.

For the nations, the path is remarkably simple: know God, reject idolatry and evil, practice justice, mercy, honesty, and righteousness.

Israel has a particular covenant and Torah. Everyone else does not need to become Israel, join a church, accept a creed, or solve every theological puzzle.

That simplicity gets buried under a lot of later religion.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

That paints with too broad a brush.

Not all Jews are Rabbinic Jews, and not all Jews accept the Talmud as authoritative. Karaites, for example, reject the Oral Law and look to the written Tanakh as the authority.

I also would not say the Talmud simply lets Jews “do whatever they want.” My disagreement with Rabbinic Judaism is different: it gives later human tradition an authority that I do not think the Torah itself grants.

And the Hebrew Bible never says Israel ceases to be Israel because Gentiles also come to know God. The nations can worship the God of Israel without becoming Jews, and Israel can remain Israel with its own covenant obligations.

Unity before God does not require erasing Israel.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

This is actually one of the things that gives me pause about Christianity.

Paul becomes enormously influential based on a revelation that, ultimately, was given to Paul. He even says his gospel was not received from man, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Everyone else has to believe him.

Now compare that with Sinai. The Torah does not say Moses disappeared somewhere, came back, and announced that God had privately revealed a new covenant to him. Israel was there. The nation heard God speak.

That distinction is enormous.

A private revelation that radically reshapes religion is common in religious history. The Torah’s model at Sinai is almost the opposite: public revelation before an entire people.

Before I overturn what was given at Sinai because Paul says he received a new revelation, I need a much better reason than Paul telling me that he did.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

I think there’s another way to read Jesus in his Jewish setting.

Much of his conflict was not with the written Torah itself, but with expanding human traditions around it. In Mark 7, for example, he criticizes people for setting aside the commandment of God in favor of “the tradition of the elders.”

That sounds much more like an argument for returning Israel to the written Law than abolishing it.

The oral traditions were still developing in Jesus’ time. They were later codified in the Mishnah and eventually became the foundation of the Talmud and Rabbinic Judaism.

So historically, Jesus may make more sense as a Jewish reformer arguing about Torah from within Israel than as someone announcing that Torah was finished and a new religion was beginning.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

This is a false choice.

Science tells us how the natural world works. The Hebrew Bible is concerned with who God is, how humans should live, justice, morality, and our responsibility before Him.

Using medicine, physics, or biology does not require rejecting God any more than believing in God requires rejecting science.

The real problem is not science challenging God. It is religion making claims the evidence cannot support.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

I get that you don’t like where the reading leads, but that’s a different argument.

The Tanakh just doesn’t present God and Satan as two equal opposing powers. God is sovereign, and even hostile agents operate within that framework.

You can think that picture is harsh. Fair enough. But that still doesn’t make the texts contradictory.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

Even if the “lost tribes became Europeans” theory were true, I’m not sure it would prove very much.

In the Tanakh, Israelite tribal identity is generally traced through the father, not through the later rabbinic matrilineal rule.

But more importantly, ancestry is not the same thing as covenant faithfulness. Israelites can be cut off from their people for violating the covenant, while foreigners can attach themselves to Israel and live under its obligations.

So discovering that you have an Israelite ancestor would be genealogically interesting. It would not automatically make you part of faithful Israel.

The Tanakh cares a lot more about covenant loyalty than hidden bloodlines.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

That is exactly why Job matters. In the Tanakh, “the satan” is not an independent power competing with God, but an adversarial agent who can act only within God’s authority.

So 2 Samuel can attribute the census to God as the ultimate cause, while Chronicles attributes the immediate action to a satan, an adversary. You can still argue about why the two writers describe it differently, but “God did it” and “an adversary acting under God’s sovereignty did it” are not necessarily mutually exclusive claims in the worldview of the Tanakh.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

Exactly, and this is where the Hebrew matters. Mashiach simply means “anointed one,” and the Tanakh applies that term to multiple people, including kings, priests, and even Cyrus in Isaiah 45:1.

So the Hebrew Bible does not use mashiach exclusively for one future figure. Many English translations render the same Hebrew word as “anointed” in most passages, while readers often encounter “Messiah” as a specialized title in later Christian interpretation. That can make it easy to miss how broad the term actually is in the Tanakh.

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

That would be a stronger argument if we actually had firsthand evidence that the apostles were told, “Deny what you personally witnessed about the resurrection or die,” and chose death. We don't.

There is reasonable evidence that some early Christian leaders were martyred, but for most of the apostles the death stories come from later traditions, and even the better-attested cases do not establish a recant-your-eyewitness-testimony-or-die scenario.

So martyrdom may show sincere belief. It still does not establish that a resurrection occurred. And that leaves my original question untouched: do the claims about Jesus actually withstand examination against the Hebrew Bible?

[Tov Neeman @tovneeman]

There are things I know, and there are things I believe. I believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible, but I know that Christianity teaches doctrines that are not found in the Tanakh and often conflict with it. I also know that later rabbinic tradition is not the same thing as the written Torah, which is why a Karaite-like, Tanakh-first approach makes more sense to me. Israel has its covenant, while the rest of humanity does not need Christianity, conversion, or religious machinery to live rightly before God.