Torah Study
Since we believe that the Torah is the inspired Word of our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we see that it requires depth and knowledge of that Word to know how to walk in a manner pleasing to Him.
Although we had been involved in our previous church families and many had been in various kinds of Bible study, we saw that the Hebraic perspective was much deeper and challenging in the way it took us more fully into a worldview much different than our western, European perspective.
It was clear that we needed to establish a foundation in this new way of thinking and were prayerfully dependent on the Spirit to lead us in how we should go about developing that in this community dedicated to restoration and the development of maturity in Messiah.
We have been thankful for the wise counsel of others more experienced in this study who helped us with our first choices. Since then, we can see YHWH's Hand as He seems to have orchestrated our studies in a way that we couldn't foresee; causing us to develop understanding that we later would see was crucial to taking the next step.
We continue to affirm that a good working knowledge of the people, places, and events of all of Scripture is the place to begin.
When this information is more accessible to our memories, it offers the opportunity for the Spirit to work in us more fully, beginning to draw together the themes and pictures our Elohim has placed there for us.
When the basic information is more familiar, we suggest moving through the various trainings available that take us to deeper levels of understanding.
In Hebraic thought, there are four levels of interpretation:
- Pshat: Simple, straightforward meaning of the text.
- Remez: hints of meaning
- Drash: to search
- Sod: hidden.
This study method is often referred to by its acronym, PaRDes.
Taking the next step of understanding has been a joy as we began to study chiastically, or by observing the themes woven in and through all of Scripture. Five short introductory articles describe the PaRDes method, and an entire year's commentary on the weekly readings is available free of charge at his Restoration of Torah site.
Deepening our understanding of Hebrew, both modern and paleo-Hebrew has also been a great help to us. There are many fine resources to use in this process, Among them would be Brad Scott's work as presented on his site, Wild Branch.
Additional resources are found on our resource page, and if you'd be interested to see the path of study we have been on, you will find it listed on our mini-site, Plant and Grow Messianic Fellowships.