INTRODUCTION TO PAUL’S EPISTLES
Some basic yet fundamental assumptions shall be laid down in order for the reader to follow the expositions clearly. A wide range of names for Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father are being used depending on the particular denomination or sect of Christianity or Messianic following that one prescribes to. In all honesty there is no absolute, concrete evidence to know how to pronounce the original Hebrew names of the Son nor of the Father, hence a broad, open, rational and accepting mind is required in order for the message to at least reach the student of the Bible. Please do not find offence at my personal preference of usage and pronunciation of names.
Ultimately there is only one enemy the devil, Satan, whose kingdom still quakes at the name of the Son of Elohim, irrespective of how His name is pronounced nor in what language it is rendered. That is the beauty of the power of the Holy Spirit, which is only given to a pure, contrite heart, whose intentions are for the setting free of captives. Hence, despite the devil’s 6000+ year head start on us, we still can through our very tainted clay tabernacles, be used by the Holy Spirit as vessels of power against the gates of hell and its residents.
My personal preferences arisen through years of intense study, names of which I do not wish to impose upon anybody are as follows:
1. Elohim- the term ‘God’ is of questionable origin, and I cite Isa 65:11, which has been thoroughly butchered in the KJV and should read:
‘But ye are they that have left me, and forget my holy mountain, and prepare a table for the devil, and fill up the drink-offering to Fortune’. Greek Septuagint LXX Bible read in Yeshua’s day.
“But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the drink offering unto that number.” KJV
The Hebrew word for ‘devil’ here is ‘G-d’. There is absolutely no sound explanation as to why KJV has translated it as ‘that troop’. Regardless it must be noted that the name God has been used by great men of Elohim from times past who have had the power of the Holy Spirit work through them. Ignorance on one’s part of truth does not preclude them being used by the Holy Spirit, hence why believers are given gifts in measure, according to their level of truth, as the Pauline epistles reveal.
Because Hebrew, according to scripture, was spoken by our forefathers, and Yeshua Himself, I am compelled to use the names for reference to their Heavenly Father as they would have known.
2. Yehovah- The letter J is absent in Hebrew. I base my parlance or rendering of the name on a great study done by Nehemiah Gordon, proving to a great degree the proper pronunciation of the sacred Name. Although he is not a believer in Messiah and is a self-professed ‘Karaite Jew’, this does not disprove that section of truth revealed to him.
3. Yehoshua- The name ‘Jesus’ is quite clearly not Jewish, bearing in mind that the man to whom this appellation is ascribed, was, and is still a Jew, of the line of David. Additionally, the letter J is non-existent in Hebrew. Furthermore, it is made abundantly clear in Acts 7:45 of KJV that the Jesus referred to was Joshua of the Old Testament, who in Hebrew is Yehoshua.
Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David; Acts 7:45 KJV
In modern Hebrew this is shortened to Yeshua. American Messianics further shift the emphasis of shoo to give variance in pronunciation i.e. ‘Yeshoooah’, as opposed to simply ‘Yeshwa’, as the Hebrews/Ibrim would enunciate.
4. Although I would prefer to stick to original Hebrew names such as Shaul, Kepha, Yochanan etc, for the sake of avoiding confusion to the not so advanced student of scripture I, in most instances will interchange from the English rendition to Hebrew. As they are not my Creator, I do not feel the need to deify them and be compelled to expressly verbalise their names with fastidious precision.
5. Yah-rendered Jah in KJV, is an unchallengeable name of the Most High Elohim, which may appease the yud heh vav heh contenders and hopefully be a name we can all agree on without unnecessary quibbling.
Yeshua is a Jewish man at present, sat at the right hand of Elohim the Father i.e. of the tribe of Judah and shall return a Jewish man to rule for at least a thousand years on earth. He lived as a Torah-observing Jew, and Isaiah and Ezekiel expressly without a shadow of a doubt prophesy the re-inception of Torah observance inclusive of animal sacrifice in that millennial reign to come. I shall present my exposition from the lens of the Messianic believers, Jew and Gentile in the days of Paul and the apostles i.e. in the 1st century AD, and shall totally be oblivious and deliberately ignore any new teachings of the Romanised church fathers thereafter. I do so as they certainly did not contribute to scripture, hence most doctrinal teachings on their parts shall not influence that which I read. I do not intend to interpret the Bible but to lay out that which I read as a little child would, and where ambiguity or worse, contradiction, may seem to be present in scripture, I will use the witness of other related scripture to expunge such.
Paul’s writings are indeed the most difficult to understand especially for the novice who is new to the Bible study, and it is here that Satan and his spiritual and bodily minions have crafted and perpetuated much doctrinal confusion through great sophistry, which has appeared as immutable truth which most deceived people have engrained in their minds, and refuse with all their might to question under any circumstances.
Yeshua is truth, and none of us have the whole truth, of which we shall fully appreciate in our uncorrupted new bodies when we meet Him in the air and are transformed on that glorious day of His return. However, the more we study scripture in Holy Spirit power, the greater the truth is revealed to us, and the greater the power from on high is bestowed upon us, spiritual weaponry of which no principality or power of Satan can overcome. Hallelujah.
The Proclaim His Holy Name KJV Bible shall be used, as it has Yehovah’s name inserted in the so-called Old and New Testaments, and also the names Yehoshua and Elohim. The 1611 KJV is preferred to other English translations, for its thoroughly researched compilation and attention to detail, and is not beleaguered by as much corruption as most versions written thereafter, which miss verses, passages, and even add texts that weren’t in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. This is not the platform to debate my affirmations thus far, and maybe with time I may veer off into these philosophical debates. My main goal is to simply present an unbiased non-interpreted exposition of scripture. I may from time to time refer to the Septuagint Bible which was used in Yeshua’s time in order to reverse engineer some Greek words, to compare with the Hebrew of the Tanakh/Old Testament, for the sake of erasing ambiguity as to Paul’s intended meaning in some cases. I am greatly indebted to Professor James Strong for his exhaustive concordance of the KJV, which any serious student of scripture will find invaluable in deciphering the true meaning of English words in the Hebrew for the Old, and the Greek for the New Testaments.