First Covenant Foundation

Hiram wants to get into Isaiah 53 and the true identity of G’d’s suffering servant. We had an article here on the subject, but, as I went through it, trying to correct a huge number of misformatted punctuation marks, I decided that I just didn’t like the article that much. It wasn’t that it was strident or offensive to Christians - though it did seem gratuitously offensive - but that it just didn’t do a good enough job of interpreting Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 is very important. It scrolls across the beginning of the Mel Gibson movie, the Passion of the Christ, and much of the point of that movie is that prophecy - Isaiah - foretold that “a man” should suffer horribly for the sake of G’d before man. But anyone who reads Isaiah chapter 53 in context with Isaiah chapters 49-52 and 54 should immediately recognize that the “man” is Israel, the Jewish people as a whole. It’s the Jewish people, not a single Jewish man (that is, not just Jesus, or Yeshu ben Yosef, but the Children of Israel collectively) who represent G’d’s special instrument to bring Torah principles to the rest of humankind. What Isaiah is saying is that the Children of Israel will experience great suffering as they try to accomplish the special mission that G’d has given them.

Probably the strangest thing about the history of Isaiah 53 is the way that that it, through what we might call the Gibson intepretation of the chapter, has promoted Jewish suffering - that Isaiah’s acute prophecy has directly contributed to the woes of the Jewish people on earth, by making them out to be the bad guys, the bad people who cause the horrible suffering of their own fellow Jew, Jesus.

A good article on the subject of Isaiah 53 - on its meaning, on its history, on the Gibson version of it, etc. - would be very welcome here. In the meantime, if you want to see  the article that we used to have here, please contact Hiram, in care of this blog, and he can send it along to you himself. 

Our purpose here is to introduce people of every creed to the greatness of the Seven Universal Laws. The world needs to discover the depth and brilliance of the Noahide Laws. That just isn’t going to happen if, instead of straightly explaining these sublime principles, we try to take people’s precious religious ideas and feelings away from them. The First Covenant Foundation exists to give, not to take or diminish. We have this tremendous Biblical system to offer - the stories of Adam and Noah and Abraham and the patriarchs and Moses, etc., and true knowledge of right and wrong. We don’t do our job when, instead of adding to people’s knowledge, we insult, mock or diminish their reality.

Every spiritual institution, whether church, temple, synagogue, or mosque, should teach the Seven Universal Laws. Without eliminating existing religions (and true understanding of Isaiah 53 isn’t about to eliminate Christianity), these sublime moral principles, the Seven Universal Laws, will eventually bring the world’s people together in harmony and love.

 MD