Posts by Julia Blum

 On the Same Day As we all know, Luke is the only author in the New Testament who felt it necessary to complete the story of the “hidden” life of Jesus in the Gospel, with the story of his disciples in Acts, openly proclaiming here that Jesus is the Messiah!  Moreover, in his two-volume work, […]

Before and After In my previous post I outlined why, according to Isaiah 53:3, the hiding of the face had to become an important step in the Messianic program and a prominent feature in the “Messianic Servant” image. We might therefore expect this concept to be present in the New Testament as well: Messiah, hidden […]

By now, you already know that the mysterious “hidden prophecy” I am talking about has to be looked for in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Of course, you all know these verses; yet let me remind you that in this chapter, Isaiah describes “God’s servant, who will be exalted and honored even by kings and […]

Last time, we spoke about one of the greatest quandaries of the New Testament: the Messianic Secret—the fact that Jesus continuously discouraged and avoided use of the title “Messiah” throughout the length of his public ministry. Before we continue any further, I need to ensure that we distinguish between two different audiences: the audience of […]

Some of my readers may remember the series about Hidden Messiah that I presented on this blog some time ago. At that time I was working on a book about the Hidden Messiah, and therefore it was only natural that I would write on this topic. However, there were things that I didn’t write about […]

The Prophetic Clock Maybe, some of my readers remember my post from the previous New Year: ENTERING 2017 FROM JERUSALEM. I wrote about the “prophecy” of Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel (Hebrew name is Yehudah Hachassid – Judah the Pious) and numerous English-speaking websites that “prophesied” the coming of Messiah in 2017. I showed that we […]

As Christmas draws near, I would like to say a few words about this wonderful time of a year. Yes, we all know that the origins of Christmas cannot be traced back to either the teachings or the practices of the first believers, and yes, we also know that Christmas was not observed until about […]

WHERE IS THE MIRACLE? Today we continue our Hanukkah reflections. Last time, we followed the narrative of the First book of Maccabees, which recounts the events that Hanukkah commemorates. We saw that, after a series of battles, the Maccabees miraculously recaptured the Temple. They began to cleanse and restore it and were finally able to […]

Last year, Christmas and Hanukkah fell on the same day and therefore we didn’t have a chance to discuss Hanukkah at length and separately:  last year, my Hanukkah post on this blog  was called “Hanukkah reflections for Christmas” (https://israelbiblicalstudies.com/jewish-studies/hanukkah-reflections-christmas/ )‎.  This year, Hanukkah starts almost two weeks earlier (December 12th), so will discuss, in a couple […]

My dear readers, every time I use the PARDES technique, applying it to a particular Scripture text, I always tremble in excitement and anticipation when I reach the final level – SOD, secret or mystery. So far, I have never been disappointed: the things that are revealed on this level, for me, indeed have been […]