This is an extremely important introductory section for it is here that Brazier sets Jesus into a Jewish context as the Jewish Messiah. Brazier starts this by noting that Jesus had a Hebrew name, Yeshua, as did all Jews of the time, and that Christ means the messiah which is Hebrew for the anointed one. Brazier properly notes that Hebrew Bible kings and even High Priests were anointed and called messiah, and that being a messiah does not imply that the person is God (or, as Christians would say, part of the trinity).
The care Brazier uses in defining his terms is commendable. He notes that "the son of God" does not a priori mean the Son in a trinitarian fashion, and that the salvation promised by Jesus was that the one assumed by the Jews of the late Second Temple period. Brazier's claim is that in hindsight in can be seen that despite those expectations, Jesus is the messiah promised in the Hebrew Bible, and he is actually THE Messiah as the Son in the trinity. Not surprisingly, Brazier will spend significant time on Lewis attempts to infer Jesus from the Hebrew Bible.
By laying out this argument step-by-step Brazier clarifies two important points. The first, which is not of course the focus of his work, is that it is very easy to see at what points Judaism would disagree with the assertions of Christianity. From the Jewish perspective, Jesus did not fulfill the clear political promises of the messiah and therefore was not the messiah. Furthermore, Jews reject the asserted trinitarium of the early Church and the need or possibility that God took human form and thus reject Jesus as part of the godhead.
The second point is that, with this, Brazier sets the foundation of what it means to be a Hebraic Christian. A Hebraic Christian must see Jesus in the context of Jewish culture of his time. A Hebraic Christian understands that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah spoken of eschatologically in the Hebrew Bible, and a Hebraic Christian recognizes that the name Jesus Christ is simply a translation of the original Hebrew Yeshua hamashiach.
Brazier continues his introduction by defining several more phrases which will look at next time. But a main goal of his work is to demonstrate Lewis' agreement with the foundations of Hebraic Christianity introduced in this section.
