The book “Yeshua a guide to the real Jesus and the original church” by Dr. Ron Moseley is 192 pages long made up of 9 main chapters.
The premise of the book is that we don’t know the REAL Jesus or the REAL original church if we don’t understand the Jewish/Hebrew background. The Church, Jesus, and the New Testament are said to be Jewish and we need to know all the intricacies in order to fully understand Christianity.
The book tries to make people feel like they are missing out on something if they don’t know all the Jewish background information but it even goes further than that by trying to prove that Jesus was just another Pharisee and that the Law/Torah has not been done away with. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 all deal with the Law/Torah and the Old and New Covenants. Many will be surprised by what they find in these chapters.
While there are some good and interesting things in this book related to the historical and cultural background of the New Testament I can’t recommend it to anyone except the most critical reader because the views that are just simply unbiblical and untrue.
It seemed that the author wants everyone to become ethnically Jewish in order to be real Christians. Whether or not that’s his intentions that’s the feel of the book. I can’t accept that I need to become a Jew in order to fully be a Christian. I think I recall Paul saying something like “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, neither male nor female in Christ.” Jesus is all I need!! Not Jewish rituals, the Torah, or the Jewish customs but Christ alone!!
There are far better background books that don’t Judaize. See the International Bible Encyclopedia (Or maybe the Zondervan Encyclopedia) or some of the works by N.T. Wright and others on first century Judaism (Second Temple Judaism).
See: Colossians 2:16-23, 