RE: Yeshua/Jesus Y\'all gotta understand that me and Jim have this thing... He gives me grief all the time, so I gotta give him a little back. It\'s mostly in fun. I do mean what I say, but there is more to it, as well. I have always believed that proper nouns just don\'t translate, and I think it\'s a kind of cultural elitism to try to force them to. As I say, it often strips the meaning from the name, and it wouldn\'t be that hard to respect the actual name. The capitol of Russia is Moskva. The capitol of Israel is Yerushalayim. The Son of G-d is Yeshua. But, of course, when we pray \"in Jesus\' name\" G-d knows what we mean, and if that\'s someone\'s biggest failure, they\'re in pretty good shape. :) Hexis- Wow, very impressive! Your intepretation of the beginning of John seems like common sense in a way. It probably does to you, too. But a lot of people want to put implications and interpretations into scripture, instead of reading what\'s there. I don\'t want to derail the conversation, just wanted to say Kudos! for keeping it simple. What you say does clarify your beliefs, thank you. I do disagree (mildly), because of something I only barely touched on. To say that we are saved by works.. That implies a certain type of works, right? \"Good works\" ? I just don\'t see slaughter and sacrifice itself as qualifying as a \"good work\". I tend to agree with Soldier in Christ, that it doesn\'t neatly fit into either package. But I am convicted that it is oversimplifying things to say that in pre-Messianic times we were \'saved by works\'. And also as I said, this is because I have not found a promise from G-d \"Do this sin offering and your sins are forgiven\". But we can agree to disagree, and I\'m glad that we can have the discussion. I also want to say to you or anyone else, please don\'t hold back your opinions because you think someone else has studied the subject more. One theme that glares at us from the New Testament is that we are all equals in His Kingdom(i.e. \"Call no man Rabbi, call no man Father\"). SiC- I learn from a lot of different places. I subscribe to a few Messianic magazines.. My favorite is Messiah Magazine, published by First Fruits of Zion.. and there\'s another really great one I get called Ascend, I don\'t immediately recall who puts that one out, but I would say those are both GREAT starting points for someone who wants to learn about Hebraic perspectives, without getting overloaded. MM usually has a couple of deep reading, study-worthy articles, and some quicker reading articles as well. And then I\'ve also taken a couple of Hebrew classes (both Biblical and Modern Hebrew) at my local synogogue. This has been a great resource, not just to learn and read the language, but to allow me to meet and talk with Jewish people about various issues. I think in my first Modern Hebrew class, we spent as much time talking about culture, traditions, the Bible, etc.. as we did learning Hebrew :) And we in Indy are blessed to have another local synogogue with a free library and bookstore inside, I\'ve made great use of that. There\'s plenty on the internet, as well. I can recommend ancient-hebrew.org for the more scholarly among us (I admit I have to be in the right frame of mind to be able to wrap my mind around some of that stuff). I also have two books from Jeff Benner, who runs ancient-hebrew.org, and drove 7 horus (one way) to hear him give a seminar.. Highly recommend that, if you get a chance, but you\'ll get more out of it having some foundation in Hebrew. And there are plenty of congregations with great resources, as well. I can\'t seem to find the ones I know on google, but PM me and I can get you links from my home PC, or just google things like \"Hebrew Roots\" or \"Messianic Judaism\", and I\'m sure they\'ll come up with a ton of links (some good, some bad, like with any web search, I always recommend independant verification). Hope that helps. Mister Nathan- It\'s older than Spanish. Yeshua (yeh-SHOO-wah) was made into Yesus (yay-SOOS) by a Greek culture that said masculine names couldn\'t end in a vowel. Then when Latin was invented, I don\'t know what happened, I guess they needed some words to try out their new letter on (\"J\"). The logic is that in Hebrew, the wording is exactly the same. I can say \"Do you know Yeshua?\" and I am saying this with the same words as if my intent is \"Do you know that He Saves?\" Anytime I refer to it, it is a direct literal meaning, a word that could be used in common conversation to indicate \"he saves\".. See, we think our names have meaning in English, too. I can look in a book and see that my name \"Matthew\" means \"Gift of G-d\"... But if I want to say \"Gift of G-d\" I will not use \"Matthew\" in conversation to say this.. \"Oh your new baby is so beautiful! Thank the Lord for this Matthew!\" I will say \"blessing\" or something else. It\'s a distant meaning.. Same thing. Since \"Jesus\" is a translation of \"Yeshua\", yeah we can say that distantly, it still means \"He saves\".. but when we say the word \"Jesus\" we are referring only to the person, and the idea is only an extension of that. I hope that makes sense. But, per above, I was kind of giving Jim a hard time with that, though I do believe it all. So don\'t read too much into it. Arius- :) I\'m glad you are able to make sense of it! I\'m afraid I\'m a much better student than I am a teacher :P I look forward to discussing it further with you, and I hope you will post when you come across things worth sharing! I\'ll be checking Half-Price Books for both of these titles next time I go.