The Eternal Life Series offers a look at eternal life based on John 17:3 and related New Testament scriptures.
Most or all of the New Testament was written in Greek, so Bible students often dissect scripture by minutely examining Greek words and philosophies. This is natural for Americans because the American education and culture is based on Greek ways of thought.
However, Jesus probably taught mostly in Hebrew, with some of his teachings in Aramaic. Jesus and his followers were well educated in the Hebrew Old Testament. For the first couple of decades after his death, the followers of Jesus were mostly practicing Jews. It seems likely that a better understanding of the teachings of Jesus can be attained by looking at them through a Jewish cultural viewpoint and a better understanding of Hebrew words.
The impetus for this series were some of the episodes of the Bema Discipleship podcast, along with personal study times with Hebrew experts Elle Grove Fricks and Brad H. Young. Working with them, we developed a dictionary of some Hebrew words that you can find in Reference 7 of the Reference section of this website.
Although each episode in this series can be approached individually, the Eternal Life Series is written for viewers to watch all of the episodes in the order in which they are presented.
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Abraham and Sarah were the original ancestors of the Jewish people. The Old Testament records Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being the first three fathers of the nation. Jacob (later named Israel by God) had twelve sons that became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. What started as a family became a community of many families. The Old Testament is mostly a history of that community of Jews/Hebrews.
By the time of Jesus, the Jewish community consisted of many tens of thousands of families who were concentrated in Israel, but were also scattered throughout the Roman Empire. The community had hundreds of written rules and hundreds of unwritten rules of how those of the community should relate to one another and relate to people outside of the Jewish community. Jesus was born into this community where people knew of God and understood how to follow him.
For the first two decades after the death of Jesus, almost all of his followers were Jewish and had a common understanding of how a community should function. Passages such as Acts 2:43-47 and Acts 4:32-36 describe how the early Christians acted as a community.
