The answer is a resounding "NO!"

Even the anti-Semite Martin Luther (1483-1546), said: "If I were younger I would want to learn this language [i.e. Hebrew], for without it no one can properly understand the Holy Scripture …. For that reason they have said correctly: ‘The Jews drink out of the original spring, The Greeks drink out of the stream flowing out of the stream, The Latins, however, out of the puddle.’"

The scriptures of Rabbi Sha'ul (Apostle Paul) whose native tongue was Hebrew, have been mistranslated or misunderstood since the advent of the "church age." This is because people are viewing his teachings through a "Greek" as opposed to a "Hebrew" mindset. Paul never went against Yeshua's teachings, nor did he forsake the Torah. The following article, borrowed, in part, from Yashanet's Study on the Book of Romans will show that Paul's declarations have either been misunderstood, mistranslated, or wrongly interpreted - not to mention, used by some Gentile churches as an excuse to negate God's Torah and thus continue the age-old, anti-Semitic stance against the Jews.

Many people tend to forget that Paul was a Jew whose teachings NEVER contradicted Torah (God's original teachings/instructions). If he had, he would have rendered Scripture contradictory.

Acts 21:15-21 - which was written after Paul had written the Galatians - clearly reveals Paul was Torah observant. It is commonly misunderstood that Paul's teachings - especially the idea that Paul said in Galatians, "if one is led by the Spirit, he or she is not under law..." - that the authority of the law has been abolished for believers in Yeshua and that the Torah has been superseded. Many people are confusing legalism (man's requirements) with Torah observance.

When Paul speaks of being "under the law" or the "works of the law", he is speaking against legalism, and not against the Torah. There is no Hebrew word for the concept of "legalism" or "legalist" so Paul was hindered in his attempt to explain to the Gentiles that legalism was not what God intended. Paul was not teaching against Torah observance by believers of Yeshua; rather, he was being careful in his language to make it clear that Torah was not given by God to be used in a legalistic manner.

Some people insist that there is no explicit text in the New Testament that commands us to "walk in Torah" or in any way continue to adhere to any of the commands of the old covenant. However, Romans 3:31 clearly says: 31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law....

The leadership of this new Gentile "church" was quick to embrace the Roman government's position regarding Jews and was overtly hostile to anything Jewish, including the Torah. Numerous false doctrines were established as early as the second century. Among these were the teachings that "the Law" was actually given as a punishment to the Jews, that Jerusalem had been destroyed and taken from the Jews due to their sin, and that the "Church" had replaced Israel as God's people.

For instance, as early as the second century, we have Justin Martyr saying:

We too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your Sabbath days, and in a word, all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins and the hardness of heart. The custom of circumcising the flesh, handed down from Abraham, was given to you as a distinguishing mark, to set you off from other nations and from us Christians. The purpose of this was that you and only you might suffer the afflictions that are now justly yours; that only your land be desolated, and your cities ruined by fire, that the fruits of your land be eaten by strangers before your very eyes; that not one of you be permitted to enter your city of Jerusalem. Your circumcision of the flesh is the only mark by which you can certainly be distinguished from other men…as I stated before it was by reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other precepts, God imposed upon you the observance of the Sabbath as a mark.

In the third century, we have the following opinion from Origen of Alexandria:

We may thus assert in utter confidence that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race…hence the city where Jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed, the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election.

The attitude of these two "Church fathers" was not an anomaly. The whole of Roman society around the time of Yeshua and Paul was extremely anti-Jewish. One reason being that many Roman families had lost sons in the Jewish wars. Roman intellectuals of the day wrote much derogatory material about the Jews living among them.

Roman society was pagan and centered around the worship of many gods. In the midst of this was a Jewish society of around 7 million, (about 10 percent of the Roman population), a very noticeable minority. Jews were despised for their peculiar religious practices and failure to worship the gods of Rome as every other conquered people was forced to do. Once the Jewish leadership had been removed, changes were immediately put into effect with little opposition.

It is critical to the study of Romans, to know that these new "gentile believers" came out of this background and had no regard for anything Jewish. As we will see, most of Paul's letter is addressed to these people as they were not living as gentile believers in Yeshua should have been.

Church Councils and Jewish Regulations

Continued anti-Jewish laws passed by the Roman government, assured that there would be "no going back." Constantine, (the 4th century emperor of Rome, who remained a pagan sun worshipper unto his deathbed), claimed to have had "a vision" that led him to "legalize Christianity." This initiated a process that would eventually make paganized Christianity the religion of the Empire.

Now, if you were a Jew, and wanted to "believe in the Messiah," you had to publicly renounce all things Jewish and become "a Christian." Any Gentile who joined with the Jews in their worship would be breaking the law and punished. As early as the fifth century, laws were passed preventing Jews from holding public offices and forbidding the building of new Synagogues.

The church councils of the fourth century formulated the doctrines and creeds that Christianity holds to this day. These councils were made up of gentiles from the same anti-Semitic background as those of the previous two hundred years. Jewish believers who held regard for Torah were barred from attending these meetings, and their positions on the meaning of Scripture with regard to Torah were "overruled." One of the earliest councils ruled that anyone found eating with Jews would be prevented from taking communion so that he would "learn to amend," and that marriage to a Jew would result in excommunication.

The remaining believers, who held fast to the Torah observant doctrines of the original community, were mocked and considered at best "weak" in their faith if not in fact heretics.

For example, we have Epiphanius, in the fourth century, stating:

"They [the Nazarenes] have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion -- except for their belief in Messiah...but since they are still fettered by the Law -- circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest-- they are not in accord with Christians."

By the end of the 4th century, anything resembling a "pro-Torah" view of "the faith" had become non-existent in what was now called "Christianity." The Councils of Antioch (341CE) and Laodicea (360CE) prohibited Christians from participating in Jewish rituals. As one modern historian puts it, this was all done to show that Jewish tradition was, "inherently evil, obsolete and irrelevant for practical Christian life."

Faith in Yeshua went from being 100 percent Jewish to 100 percent anti-Jewish in less than 300 years.

All of this history is the foundation of the Christian Church. Persecution of Jews throughout history, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, numerous mass expulsions throughout history, and of course the Holocaust, are all the direct result of the Church's anti-Semitic doctrines.

The "Protestant Reformation" of the 16th century did nothing to change Christianity's anti-Jewish foundation. The "reformers," such as Luther and Calvin, were as anti-Semitic, if not more so, as their predecessors a millennium before them. Martin Luther's writings were a favorite of Adolph Hitler, who acquired many of his ideas on how to deal with Jews from him.

The concerns of the "reformers" were solely with what they felt was corruption and abuse of power in the Christian/Catholic church. They had no desire to return to the Torah-based Judaism of Yeshua and the apostles.

An understanding of the following is imperative:

The anti-Semitic ideologies and anti-Torah theologies of the early Church leaders and later Protestant "reformers," established the foundation for all Christian opinion, Catholic and Protestant, to this very day. All interpretation of Scripture coming from Christian teachers, authors or institutions, including every Christian Bible translation available and all of their footnotes, every Christian Bible commentary book, study course, Sunday sermon and seminary's teaching curriculum and movies, has been filtered through the doctrines of these men and reinforced through hundreds of years of Church teaching.

If a person is willing to accept the facts of history, and the idea that what they have been taught in their church may not be the correct interpretation of Scripture, then they have a chance to understand what Paul, the Torah-observant Pharisee, was saying in the book of Romans.

The following is a small sampling of some of the misinterpretations of Paul's writings:

Question: Did Rav Sha'ul (Paul) say the Law (Torah) was nailed to the cross?

Col 2:14 - He wiped away the bill of charges against us. Because of the regulations, it stood as a testimony against us; but he removed it by nailing it to the execution-stake.

Answer: No. He wiped away the documented opinions of men (bill of charges) against us and took them from our midst....

The Torah is holy, righteous and good. To suddenly have it "nailed to the cross" would mean that the things of God were originally evil, something to be done away with.

Rav Sha'ul also said, concerning the opinions of men:

Col 2:16 - So don't let anyone pass judgment on you in connection with eating and drinking, or in regard to a Jewish festival or Rosh-Hodesh or Shabbat.

This doesn't mean Rav Sha'ul was negating Torah. He was warning about the opinions of men concerning these things - NOT giving permission to transgress or dismiss them.

Question: Did Rav Sha'ul say it is up to each of us to decide what we should eat and what day we should keep?

Romans 14:5-6: 5 One person considers some days more holy than others, while someone else regards them as being all alike. What is important is for each to be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes a day as special does so to honor the Lord. Also he who eats anything, eats to honor the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; likewise the abstainer abstains to honor the Lord, and he too gives thanks to God.

Answer: Absolutely not. The context of this passage was a dispute over whether one may eat food that MAY or MAY NOT have been offered to idols. In those days food that was offered to idols was usually put out for sale to people on a certain day of the week. It could or could not have been offered to idols. Therefore, some believers would not buy food and eat it on those days just to make sure. However, some believers did, because they reasoned that since they didn't know for sure it was offered, it was not wrong. Paul's instruction did not address either Kosher or Sabbath day observance. It addressed the dispute over whether marketplace food, because of idolatry, should be purchased and eaten on a certain day of the week. It also shows how sensitive the believers were to the possibility of food offered to idols. How much more sensitive should we be to what we eat, as to whether or not it is approved by the Word of God.

(Check out David H. Stern's explanation in the preface of his Complete Jewish Bible, where he demonstrates that there is a difference between what is kosher and what is ceremonially clean. God NEVER said pork, shellfish, etc. were food - people called it food in rebellion against God. Where the passages are in question in the Bri't Chadasha (NT), it is dealing with animals God gave us to eat and whether they are ceremonially clean and can be eaten at that time. Even in Peter's vision, he would never have eaten the kosher animals that had been in contact with treife (non-kosher) animals. The vision was to show that the kosher animals were no longer considered unclean because they were among the treife. This was clearly showing that the Gentiles were to be accepted and it would be okay to associate with them. The rest of the passage shows that this is the correct interpretation and what the vision was all about.)

Question: Does the book of Hebrews say that the Old Covenant of Moses is taken away?

Hebrews 10:8-9: 8 In saying first, "You neither willed nor were pleased with animal sacrifices, meal offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings," things which are offered in accordance with the Torah; 9 and then, "Look, I have come to do your will"; he takes away the first system in order to set up the second.

Answer: No. Through Yeshua it is transformed. The Covenant animal sacrifices are no longer necessary because of the New Covenant SIN sacrifice of Yeshua. But the demands of a blood covenant in Torah were not taken away - which means, the Law of the former Covenant was not "done away with".

Also, in the same general passage we see in verse 16, "'This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days,' says ADONAI: 'I will put my Torah on their hearts, and write it on their minds,'"

Question: Does 2 Corinthians 3:13 show that the Law of Moses was fading away?

2 Cor. 3:13 - unlike Moshe, who put a veil over his face, so that the people of Isra'el would not see the fading brightness come to and end.

Answer: No. There was nothing for Isra'el to gain by staring at Moses' "shining face" because their hearts were hardened.

In the following verses Rav Sha'ul declares that Isra'el could not fully understand what the Tanakh ("old testament") said because of the spiritual veil over their hearts. He says that when one comes to know Messiah they then can better understand the Tanakh. His lesson has nothing to do with the Law (Torah) being taken away.

Question: Does Ephesians 2:15-16 show that Yeshua abolished the Law of Commandments?

Eph 2:15-16: 15 by destroying in his own body the enmity occasioned by the Torah, with its commands set forth in the form of ordinances. He did this in order to create in union with himself from the two groups a single new humanity and thus make shalom, 16 and in order to reconcile to God both in a single body by being executed on a stake as a criminal and thus killing in himself that enmity.

Answer: No. When Yeshua was here in physical form, he made useless the antagonism between the two groups caused by the opinions of men concerning the Law of Commandments, and through him "one new man" was made from the two. Yeshua came to put away that enmity and bring into existence "one new man" that agreed through Him on the Commandments of YHVH.

Question: Did Rav Sha'ul say we are not to obey the Old Testament commandments anymore?

Col 2:20-21: 20 If, along with the Messiah, you died to the elemental spirits of the world, then why, as if you still belonged to the world, are you letting yourselves be bothered by its rules? - 21 "Don't touch this!" "Don't eat that!" "Don't handle the other!"

Answer: No. Rav Sha'ul is talking about dogma, the opinions of men. He is NOT talking about God's Word which has always been holy and good!

In Col 2:23, Paul shows the intent of his instruction, which is to head off the invention of more man made opinion about how we should act: They do indeed have the outward appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed religious observances, false humility and ascetiscism; but they have no value at all in restraining people from indulging their old nature.

Question: Didn't Rav Sha'ul say that we could eat whatever we want, meaning there is no more "Kosher"?

1 Tim 4:1-5: 1 The Spirit expressly states that in the acharit-hayamim some people will apostatize from the faith by paying attention to deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come from the hypocrisy of liars whose own consciences have been burned, as if with a red-hot branding iron. 3 They forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods which God created to be eaten with thanksgiving by those who have come to trust and to know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing received with thanksgiving needs to be rejected, 5 because the word of God and prayer make it holy.

Answer: No. First of all we have to remember that Paul was talking to the Jews - who were KOSHER. They wouldn't dream of going against what God said in Leviticus about what He considered to be food. Kosher Law is still God's Law, and Paul actually confirming this. Here, he warns against doctrines of demons, which say you can't have certain foods which God has said is good to eat. Every creature is good and not to be refused IF it is made holy by the Word of God and prayer (thanksgiving). The Word of God in Leviticus tells us what is holy and not holy. That is what Kosher means, because it comes from the same root as kodesh, meaning holy.

For an indepth study on the above, please check out the Book of Romans Study at Yashanet; and, more specificially - Yashanet's article Number 3, "Not Subject to the Law of God?", in which the author explains how it came to be that the teachings of Paul have been completely misunderstood by most mainstream Christianity.