So far we have discussed that long before there ever was a New Testament and long before Yeshua and his disciples ever came onto the scene, the Jewish people had believed in the Holy Spirit and that it could be “laid upon“, “descend upon” or even “dwell inside” men.
We also learned that the ancient Rabbis and sages meditated deeply on the exact nature of God’s “oneness“.
The fact that the Lord is ONE or ECHAD, yet in Scripture He manifests Himself in different ways and that one of those ways was “The Word” (in Hebrew MEMRA) was a hot topic of debate among the Hebrews.
There was also another fascinating manifestation of HASHEM that was discussed but today is rarely brought up in Western Churches.
It does play a large role in the theology of Eastern Christian denominations however.
I’m talking about the manifestation of an attribute of God called SOPHIA or Wisdom.
My whole point is that these topics concerning the nature of God and whether His Nature consisted of one or many were NOT new topics that suddenly came onto the scene with the birth of the Christian religion.
The only reason people treated these ideas as new was because the gentiles who soon began to outnumber the Jews in the growing Messianic faith unfortunately decided to distance themselves from the Jewish people and thousands of years of Rabbinic scholarship.
What’s even sadder is that gentiles went so far as to separate themselves from Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua.
Even today among believing gentiles, the oral law (Mishnah and Talmud) is viewed with distaste and revulsion.
Fortunately, long established Jewish scholarship is now making a comeback and people are beginning to realize that the notion of the “Old” Testament being just for Jews and the New Testament being just for Gentiles is a bunch of hogwash.
Even today, people view the Gospel of Matthew as the first book of a whole new set of Scriptures or new Bible that is completely separate from the Hebrew Bible or the Tanach.
In terms of proper sequence, the truth is the Book of Matthew should have followed immediately after the Book of Ezra.
I think a good way to look at it is to consider that the Tanach or the “Old” Testament to be the foundation and the New Testament is the house which is built upon that foundation.
You can’t have one without the other.
It is only by understanding and accepting the foundation (the Torah and Prophets) that we can properly understand the New Testament and begin to apply its principles and patterns to our lives.
I assume mean Ezra in the sense that Nehemiah was usually part of the same scroll as Ezra.
Christians should reject the “Oral Torah” because it was exactly those Oral Tradition Jesus and Paul spoke against. There is a constant contrast between when Jesus says “It is written” and “You have heard it said”.
Jesus also said to call no Man Rabbi.
Paul we should not regard Jewish Fables. And we’re also warned our Tradition will nullify the Word of God.