Nota Bene For The Jew First Summary

To the Jew First: The Case for Jewish Evangelism in Scripture and History edited by Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser builds a case for the importance of Jewish Evangelism based on the Bible, theological viewpoints, and the suggested missions approach.

In the first article, “’For the Jew First’: Paul’s Nota Bene for His Gentile Readers”, Mark Seifrid presents the importance of evangelism to the Jews as focused on the salvation of the Gentiles in order to provoke jealousy of the Jews. Seifried paints a rather gloomy picture of the numbers of Jews receiving the Gospel. However, he does admit that we should not limit God “in our thinking, our prayers, and our efforts” (Kindle location 309). I found this first chapter to be difficult because Seifrid

His case that the Apostle Paul did not know of an entity such as the “Gentile Church” is duly noted. However, he asserts that it is the Body of believers, both Jew and Gentile together, that provokes Israel to jealousy. This is a difficult position to fully support in scripture. Paul makes it clear that God brings salvation to the Gentiles so that the Jews will see the goodness of God poured out on the Gentiles and be provoked to jealousy. Paul’s distinction between Jew and Gentile does not suggest to me that a Jew who is a believer in Yeshua is part of the provocation that Paul is discussing in Romans 11:13-14. In the TLV, Romans 11:13 indicates that Paul is “spotlighting” his ministry to the Gentiles as provocation to the Jews. Paul is leveraging the idea that now the Gentiles may be included in the goodness of God if they accept

Glaser speaks of the annihilation of entire groups of Messianic Jews during the Holocaust, even making the proclamation that “An entire generation of Messianic Jews was, in fact, wiped out in the concentration camps” (Kindle, loc 2600). In spite of the horror of this statement, a few paragraphs later he mentions that the anti-Semitic state of Europe actually resulted in many Jewish people turning to Yeshua. While this is encouraging, it does not erase the atrocities of the historic record. Glaser addresses the success experienced in the first fifty years of the twentieth century in Jewish evangelism, noting that denominational acceptance of the Jewish people at the local church level. Jewish evangelists proved to be more effective in being sensitive to the needs of the Jewish people. This was an exciting portion of the reading because it resonates with my personal belief that while the church can and should be reaching out to the Jewish community, there is potentially an inherent advantage in the Messianic Jewish community of reaching unbelieving Jews. The Jewish identity is complex, yet there is potentially a deeper rapport between those who are Jews because of shared experiences and