Messianic Synagogues

Messianic Jews claim both Jewish identity and belief in Jesus as Messiah. The worship practices of the messianic synagogues are diverse and fluid, but most draw on the basic structure of Jewish worship while incorporating the New Testament in some way. The contemporary Messianic Jewish movement locates its roots in the original Jewish community of believers in Jesus that flourished in the century following the Crucifixion. The movement seeks to reconstruct that indigenous messianic presence within the Jewish community today. The modern origins of Messianic Judaism lie both in the lives of believers who lived quietly within the Jewish community and in the ministries of evangelists and missionaries. The evangelistic efforts slowly bore fruit in the emergence of small mission congregations, several of which eventually became the early Messianic synagogues. As an Aramaic-speaking Galilean, Jesus would probably have been called something like Yeshua bar-Yosef-Jesus, son of Joseph. The m…