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Hebrew roots of Christianity

Christianity began inside the faith of Israel. Paul, on trial before the Roman governor Felix, described his faith in one sentence: "according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets" (Acts 24:14, ESV). He worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he believed the whole of Israel's Scriptures, and the Jesus he preached was the Messiah those Scriptures had promised.

Christianity is the faith God gave Israel, followed through to its Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah Israel's Scriptures promised, and the New Testament shows Him meeting what they required of Him, in His line, His birth, His ministry, His suffering and His rising, with His reign on David's throne kept for His return.

Jesus's Bible, and the apostles' Bible, was the Hebrew Scriptures. Paul tells Timothy that "all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). The "Scripture" he has first in view there is the Old Testament. The New Testament was still being written, and no collection of it yet existed. When the risen Christ explained Himself to two confused disciples on the Emmaus road, He opened the Scriptures they already had (Luke 24:27, below), and the Old Testament still does that job for the church today.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Messiah. "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ) (John 1:41). The apostles preached Jesus from Israel's own Scriptures, "explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead" (Acts 17:3).

Type. The Old Testament's institutions function as σκιά (skia, skee-AH, G4639), shadow: its sacrifices, its priesthood, its appointed feasts (Hebrews 10:1; Colossians 2:17).

A shadow is cast by something real. It becomes recognisable once you see the object casting it, which is why the New Testament keeps reaching back into the Old to say what Christ fulfils.

Prophecy. Direct prediction is a different thing from the type-shadow relationship. Jesus told His disciples that everything written about Him in the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled (Luke 24:27, 44).

Lessons about Jesus

  • He is "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1), the Messiah from Israel's own line, and God will yet give Him "the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32).
  • He treated the Old Testament as the authoritative text He had come to fulfil (Matthew 5:17).
  • He read Himself out of it, in His own words, on the day of His resurrection (Luke 24:27).
  • He kept its appointed feasts (John 2:13; 7:10), and the apostles read His death and resurrection through the one they were keeping when He died (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Memory verses

✝️ Colossians 2:16-17 (ESV)

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

✝️ Luke 24:27 (ESV)

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

✝️ Romans 15:4 (ESV)

4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Be Transformed

  • Think. The Old Testament is the Scripture Jesus called authoritative and the apostles preached from.
  • Attitude. Read like the Bereans, who "received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). They searched the Old Testament to test a message about Jesus.
  • Do. This week, take one Old Testament text a New Testament writer quotes and read it in its own chapter. Then pray the promise it carries over the thing you are enduring, since "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Romans 15:4, ESV).

Prayer

Father, long before Bethlehem you wrote your Son Jesus into the Scriptures your people carried for more than a thousand years, so that when He came He had a witness. Thank you that the book He opened on the Emmaus road is a book I can still open. Give me the Bereans' eagerness to search what was written for my instruction, and to recognise in it the substance your Son told me it was pointing to. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

Jesus, the Messiah Israel was promised

The word

Messiah is a Hebrew title. מָשִׁיחַ (mashiach, mah-SHEE-akh, H4899) means "anointed one". It names the anointed priest (Leviticus 4:3) and the anointed king (1 Samuel 24:6, Hebrew 24:7), and Daniel uses it of an anointed one still to come (Daniel 9:25-26). The Septuagint translates it Χριστός (Christos, khris-TOS, G5547), as in "against the LORD and against his Anointed" (Psalm 2:2). The New Testament also carries the Hebrew over as Μεσσίας (Messias, mes-SEE-as, G3323). John keeps that form twice and glosses it himself: "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ) (John 1:41; compare John 4:25). So "Jesus Christ" is a confession in two words: Jesus is the Messiah.

What the Scriptures required of Him

Jesus set the standard Himself: "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44, ESV). The apostles preached by that standard. In the Thessalonian synagogue Paul "reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ'" (Acts 17:2-3, ESV).

The Scriptures fixed His line: the offspring of Abraham (Galatians 3:16), from the tribe of Judah (Hebrews 7:14), a son of David (Romans 1:3). They named His birthplace, Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:5-6), and a messenger to go before Him (Malachi 3:1; Mark 1:2-3). They described a king coming to Jerusalem on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:4-5), a servant led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7-8, which Philip read as "the good news about Jesus", Acts 8:35), one God would not abandon to the grave (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31), and one seated at God's right hand (Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34-35). Peter's conclusion to the crowd at Pentecost is the conclusion of the whole list: "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36, ESV).

The Promised Messiah: across the top, the line the promises travel, from the patriarchs (Romans 9:5) to Israel with the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms (Luke 24:44), to Jesus the Messiah (John 1:41), to the nations (Romans 15:9), under Romans 15:8. Below, each promise beside its New Testament fulfilment. His line: offspring of Abraham (Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:16; Matthew 1:1), the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10; Hebrews 7:14), a son of David (2 Samuel 7:12-13; Romans 1:3; Acts 2:30). His birth: the virgin shall conceive (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-23), a ruler out of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:5-6). His ministry: a messenger prepares the way (Malachi 3:1; Isaiah 40:3; Mark 1:2-4), a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:20-22), the king on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:4-5). His suffering and glory: led like a lamb (Isaiah 53:7-8; Acts 8:32-35; Acts 3:18), not abandoned to the grave (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31-32), seated at the right hand (Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34-36). At His return: His feet on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4; Acts 1:11-12), and, dashed as contested timing, David's throne for ever (2 Samuel 7:16; Isaiah 9:7; Luke 1:32-33) and the kingdom restored to Israel (Amos 9:11; Jeremiah 23:5-6; Acts 1:6-7; Acts 3:21). It closes on 2 Corinthians 1:20.

What His return will complete

The New Testament leaves part of the list open, and says so. Gabriel promised Mary that "the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever" (Luke 1:32-33, ESV). After the resurrection the apostles asked, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?", and Jesus answered with the timing: "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority" (Acts 1:6-7, ESV). Peter told Jerusalem that heaven must receive Jesus "until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago" (Acts 3:21, ESV).

When that reign begins is contested. Many read Peter at Pentecost (Acts 2:30-36) as announcing David's throne already taken at the ascension, and the reign as Christ's present rule from heaven. This site reads it as future: Jesus sits now at the Father's right hand, and takes David's throne over a restored Israel when He returns "in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, ESV; see Israel and the Church). Both readings agree on the Person. Jesus has met every qualification the Scriptures set for the Messiah, and the promises still outstanding rest on Him: "all the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20, ESV).

From Israel to the nations

Paul lists what God gave Israel: "to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ" (Romans 9:4-5, ESV). Jesus told a Samaritan woman the same thing in five words: "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22).

Paul names both purposes of Christ's coming in one sentence: "Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9, ESV). This shows that God keeps His word. He swore to Abraham and to David, and He kept it in Jesus, in the open, in a form His people could check against what He had written. A Gentile believer worships the God of Israel through Israel's Messiah and reads Israel's Scriptures as their own instruction (Romans 15:4). So you may trust the promises God has not yet completed on the strength of the ones He already has.

Cautions

Two different things share the phrase "Hebrew roots," and this study is about the first.

  1. Studying the Old Testament's shadows and types, its Torah, its feasts, and its prophecy, the subject of the rest of this page, is what Jesus and the apostles did, and it is what this section of the site is for.
  2. "Hebrew Roots" as a theological movement teaches things this site does not hold, chiefly that the Church is Israel, or that Gentile believers are a scattered tribe of Israel rediscovering its identity. Scripture sends the gospel to the nations as nations. Israel and the Church sets out why Scripture keeps the two distinct, and nothing below blurs that line.

A related error runs the other direction: treating study of the Torah as grounds for requiring Gentile believers to keep it. Paul's warning against it is some of his sharpest language: "if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you… you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law" (Galatians 5:2-4). The Jerusalem council reached the same conclusion by a gentler route, refusing to place on Gentile disciples "a yoke… that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear" (Acts 15:10). Studying what the Torah reveals about God's character, and what it foreshadows in Christ, is this page's subject; binding Gentile believers to keep it is the error both texts are written against.

Key features

Six things repay a church's attention, each a different angle on the same Old Testament.

Shadows and types

An Old Testament person, object, or ritual can pattern Christ or the gospel without saying so in words. The New Testament's word for this is τύπος (typos, TOO-pos, G5179; Romans 5:14). The tabernacle's sacrifices are the clearest case: they covered sin repeatedly and never finally, "since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities" (Hebrews 10:1). Recognising the shadow is what lets a reader recognise the substance when it arrives. This site's Melchizedek priesthood study works one such type through in full.

Torah

Torah, תּוֹרָה (torah, toh-RAH, H8451), is usually rendered "law" in English. TWOT glosses it direction, a noun from יָרָה (yarah, yah-RAH, H3384), a verb that can mean to point out or to teach. Jesus held every letter of it in place: "Not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). The psalmist had already called God's word a lamp to walk by (Psalm 119:105).

Festivals

Moed, מוֹעֵד (moed, moh-ED, H4150, "appointed time"), is the word behind "the appointed feasts of the LORD" (Leviticus 23:4). Each one is a holy convocation, kept on its own calendar date every year, and the New Testament reads at least one of them as already fulfilled: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival… with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). The Feasts section works through all seven in full. This page makes a narrower point: a church unfamiliar with what a feast was foreshadowing cannot recognise it being fulfilled.

Creation

The seven-day pattern is set at creation, before Israel receives a single command. "On the seventh day God finished his work… and he rested on the seventh day" (Genesis 2:2).

A Day Is a Thousand Years follows that week through the whole of history, and The Zadok Calendar traces the same seven-based structure under Israel's appointed times, sabbatical years and jubilees included.

Prophecy

The Old Testament also predicts, and Jesus read its predictions as being about Himself (Luke 24:44). The promised Messiah section above sets the main ones beside their fulfilment, and Bible Prophecy Essentials checks several of them against source in detail. Prophecy is where a reader should expect to find Christ.

Extra-biblical Jewish texts

Not everything the New Testament's first readers knew was inside the canon, and the New Testament authors sometimes name their sources. Jude names his. "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones'" (Jude 14) quotes 1 Enoch 1:9, a Jewish apocalyptic work the ESV Study Bible dates to the second or first century BC. That date is debated for the part Jude quotes: 1:9 opens the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), which many scholars place earlier, and copies of 1 Enoch survive among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Quoting it does not make 1 Enoch Scripture (ESV Study Bible, note on Jude 14-16). Jude writes to readers who knew the book, and he draws on it as a true example on this one point.

Five verses earlier he alludes to another non-biblical work without naming it. The archangel Michael "disputing about the body of Moses" (Jude 9) has no source in the Old Testament's account of Moses's death (Deuteronomy 34:5-7). Which work Jude drew on is contested. Two study Bibles name the Assumption of Moses; the ESV Study Bible suggests "perhaps a lost section of a work called Testament of Moses." The Jewish work that survives under those titles (R. H. Charles published it as the Assumption of Moses) breaks off before Moses dies (12:8), so the dispute is not in what remains. Origen names the book: "The Ascension of Moses (a little treatise, of which the Apostle Jude makes mention in his Epistle)" (De Principiis 3.2.1). Either way, Jude expects his readers to recognise a story his letter does not stop to explain.

Paul does the same with names. "Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses" (2 Timothy 3:8) names Pharaoh's magicians from Exodus 7, who go unnamed in Exodus. The names come from early extrabiblical Jewish writings (ESV Study Bible, note on 2 Timothy 3:8), and Paul expects Timothy to recognise them without explanation.

The Mishnah is a different case. It was redacted around AD 200, after the New Testament, so no New Testament author quotes it the way Jude quotes 1 Enoch.

Some of what it documents is older than its redaction date: it records the liturgical practice of the feasts, and how much of that a first-century Jew would already have known is debated. This site therefore cites it as background: the four cups of the Passover Seder in The Last Supper and the Cups of Passover, and the shofar procedure behind the Feast of Trumpets.

Why this still matters for the church today

Paul says why. "Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction" (Romans 15:4). He writes that of the Old Testament, to a church centuries after it was first written, and he calls it instruction.

A church that treats the Old Testament as solved background reading loses what Paul says you still need for endurance and hope.

Discussion questions

  1. The language. Colossians 2:17 calls food and drink, festivals, new moons and Sabbaths "a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." Paul's word is σκιά (skia), the word Hebrews 10:1 uses of the law's sacrifices. What changes about how you read an Old Testament ritual once you look for what it is a shadow of?
  2. The text in its context. Paul writes that "Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9). How does that sentence place a Gentile believer in relation to the promises God made to Israel's patriarchs?
  3. Christ. Jesus opened the Hebrew Scriptures to explain Himself on the Emmaus road (Luke 24:27) before a single Gospel had been written. What does that say about how much of the church's Christology was already available before the New Testament existed?
  4. The law. Jesus said that "not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). At the Jerusalem council Peter refused to place "a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear" (Acts 15:10). What place does the Torah have in a Gentile believer's life when both texts are read together?
  5. The hard part. At Pentecost Peter says God swore to David "that he would set one of his descendants on his throne" and that Jesus is now "exalted at the right hand of God" (Acts 2:30, 33). Weeks earlier Jesus left the question of restoring the kingdom to Israel with "times or seasons that the Father has fixed" (Acts 1:6-7), and Peter later says heaven must receive Jesus "until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets" (Acts 3:21). How do you read Acts 2:30-36 alongside Acts 1:6-7 and Acts 3:21?
  6. Be transformed. Paul says the Old Testament "was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Romans 15:4). Which Old Testament promise do you need for the endurance you are being asked for right now?

Scripture and original-language data

  • ESV Bible (Crossway) — primary translation quoted throughout.
  • MACULA Hebrew (WLC) Linguistic Dataset, via this repo's references/build/bible-text.db — Hebrew forms above.
  • Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Moody, 1980) — root glosses for תּוֹרָה (torah, H8451, "direction") and מוֹעֵד (moed, H4150, "appointed time"), via this repo's TWOT lookup tools.
  • Mishnah, Sefaria Community Translation (CC0), via sefaria.org — the source behind the Mishnah citations on the Feasts pages linked above.

Commentaries consulted

  • ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2016) — notes on Jude 8-10 (the Michael/devil story "lost to history"), Jude 14-16 (1 Enoch as an extrabiblical source Jude cites as true on one point without treating it as Scripture), and 2 Timothy 3:8 (Jannes and Jambres as names from early extrabiblical Jewish writing, not from Exodus itself).
  • CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible (Holman) — book introduction to Jude, naming the Assumption of Moses as Jude's likely source at v. 9 alongside its quotation of 1 Enoch at vv. 14-15.
  • NLT Life Application Study Bible, third edition (Tyndale, 2019) — note on Jude 9, concurring on The Assumption of Moses.

Extra-biblical witnesses

  • Origen, De Principiis 3.2.1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 4 — names "The Ascension of Moses" as the treatise Jude mentions.
  • Assumption of Moses 12:8, trans. R. H. Charles, as held in the scrollmapper deuterocanonical dataset — the surviving text breaks off before Moses's death. Cited as history, never as Scripture.

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