Why the AFI Institute
Bible School?
On the calling, the legacy, and the work that remains
There are schools that teach about the Bible, and there are schools formed inside the Bible — inside its languages, its Jewish first readers, and the Messiah its every page was pointing toward. The AFI Institute exists to be the second kind. What follows is a walk through why.
The Calling
The Institute did not begin with a curriculum. It began with a commission — go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19–20) — read the way its first hearers would have read it: as a summons that starts with the Jewish people and reaches, tribe by tribe, to all 7,000 language groups of the world.
That is not a metaphor here. It is a working target, set for the year 2033, and it requires translators, not merely readers — men and women trained deeply enough in the text to carry it faithfully into languages that have never held it before.
A school exists because a translation task this large cannot be carried by one lifetime alone.
A Translator Formed in the Text
The Institute grows out of a particular kind of formation: three decades spent inside Chasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities, studying every word of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament closely enough to render them as the Orthodox Jewish Bible — not translated around Jewish categories, but through them.
That labor produced a text. It also proved a method. The Institute exists to hand that method to the next generation, rather than let it belong to one translator's lifetime.
What Distinguishes the Institute
- A Messianic Jewish Reading Scripture studied through its own vocabulary — kaporah, golus, Moshiach, the order of Melki-Tzedek — instead of inherited assumptions layered on from outside.
- The Original Languages, First Hebrew Tanakh and Jewish Koine Greek Brit Chadasha held in interlinear view, so that students meet the text before they meet anyone's translation of it.
- Trained for Translation, Not Only Reading The aim is not comprehension alone, but the competence to help carry Scripture into languages that do not yet have it.
- Rooted in Manhattan, Aimed at the World A small school in a single city, built to seed Bible translation across every language group the Great Commission names.
Who Walks Through This Door
Those who sense a call to the ministry. Those who want to become Bible translators, not merely Bible readers. Those who have looked at the New Testament's Jewish setting and want to study it seriously, in the original languages, rather than at a distance.
The Institute is small by design. It is built for people who intend to spend their labor on this task for a very long time.
The Invitation
Linda, restored — reading, smiling, her voice and her ministry back in her own talented self.
Hell is not a quiet place. And I heard all the howling of the damned in the fire. I had left the V.P. of AFII Linda, that is, her phone with her in the rehab and I was on my way back to the office to feed the cat. At the same time I was using my phone to host our nightly prayer Zoom on the NYC bus. Then O No! No! No! I thought the bus driver was going to stop the bus! Linda's room partner in the rehab is a demon-possessed dwarf-like soul and she was violently reacting to the Zoom prayers Linda was listening to on speaker phone. The people on the bus with me were listening in terror to what sounded like the howling of the damed in the fire. Look at Mark 9:20 / Luke 9:39 (a youth with a mute/convulsing spirit) — the recognition of a demon, of an unclean spirit convulsing/throwing down the person violently at the sight of Moshiach Ben Dovid, and Mark’s Jewish Greek elsewhere in these scenes uses tearing/rending language for the demon's howling recognition reaction. Linda has been completely healed, her voice restored, her ministry to the lost re-instated and the demons of New York City couldn't be unhappier! Praise the Lord for your answered prayers! The accreditation of exorcisms and signs and wonders following the preaching of the Word was the First Century method of accrediting Schools of Ministry. Not mere talk of arrogant teachers but rather their power (I Corinthians 4:18-20). This was the First Century sign of authorization and accreditation that vouched safe ministry formation. That is exactly what the AFI Institute is aiming for and what Linda's rehab incident illustrates.
See what was unfolding on my laptop in the Intensive Care Units of two hospitals while Linda fought for her life in a coma: this is a place holder for the defunct Alliance Theological Seminary and the New York Theological Seminary; this is our AFI Institute Yeshiva
Send an offering to help us print the Yiddish Tanakh Interlinear Triglot.
Artists for Israel International is a Messianic Bible society and Bible school working out of Manhattan, New York — translating, teaching, and building the tools that carry Scripture toward all 7,000 world languages.
Write to us — pgoble@gmail.com