Why Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah

[cnorman18]

A word before I begin:

This post is NOT an attack on Christianity.

Jews, as a rule, do not comment on the truth or falsehood of any other faith, and that includes the Christian faith; we have no right. We only claim to know how God chose to speak to US. If He chose to speak to another people in another manner, that is no business of ours, and we have no warrant to say yea or nay. Only in the matter of literally worshiping idols as divine beings do we pronounce judgment, and that is rather rare in the modern world.

In my own, personal belief, Jesus was indeed sent by God to bring the light of Torah to the rest of the world. The Jews will always be "a small people"--the Book says so--and surely the rest of the was not meant to be left in the darkness of paganism. If not for Jesus, and perhaps even more for Paul, my own Celtic ancestors might have continued to paint themselves blue and worship trees.

The battle has never been between Christians and Jews, anyway. We are on the same side. On the other side are today's pagans--those who worship things; money, power, fame, gratification, status. May we both always remember that.

This post is on the rather more limited topic of why the Jews did not, and do not, accept Jesus as our Messiah. That some few have, and do, does not matter. Peace to them, but there are reasons why very few Jews who are familiar with and committed to their faith and tradition ever have, or ever will, believe in Jesus. This post is an effort to explain some of the most important.

To begin, then; Jesus, to put it plainly, simply did not perform the very specific actions that the Messiah was expected to do. There can be no "wiggle room" here; the tradition has been constant for thousands of years, and has not changed.

It is not that there were certain "prophecies" that the Messiah had to "fulfill"; the Messiah was DEFINED by certain acts. To do them was to be the Messiah, and the meaning of the word "Messiah" was "the man who does these things."

Jesus did not do them. He was not the Messiah. There is no "therefore," because the phrases are synonymous.

Further, Jesus claimed (or it was claimed for him) that he had power and authority that no Jew could or would claim for any man, far beyond any that were ever attributed to the coming Messiah; and he took on a role that no Jew, at any time from Abraham forward, had ever contemplated that any man, Messiah or no, would ever be called upon to fulfill. There was no need for it.

Jesus fulfilled one and only one attribute of the Messiah; he was of the tribe of Judah. Much is made of this in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, with elaborate genealogies given for Mary, and, oddly, for Joseph.

Other than that, St.
Paul and the Gospels to the contrary, Jesus did nothing expected of the Messiah. Three such expectations will suffice for our purposes: (1) The Messiah was to be a military, or at least a political, leader, an actual, rightful King. (2) He would restore the independence of Israel and free it from foreign (at the time, Roman) rule. (3) Most importantly, he would institute a reign of perfect peace, justice, liberty and piety that would shortly extend over all the earth.

It seems rather clear that none of these occurred; most glaringly the last, which was and has always been the most important sign and task of the Messiah (The short answer, for many Jews, to the question "Why don't you believe in Jesus?" is "Oy! Look around!").

The Messiah was the coming King who would restore the line of David, free Israel, and being peace to the world; he would institute the Messianic Age. He was named for it, and it would be named for him. The two would come together, or not at all. They were one.

At the end of Jesus's life, these things had not happened. The Messiah had not come.

As if all that wasn't enough, Jesus, or his followers, made claims for him that were alien to Judaism, and in fact often blasphemous from a Jewish point of view. For starters, that Jesus was God incarnate.

It would be hard to think of an idea more repugnant to Jews, then or now. The oldest and most fundamental and nonnegotiable tenet of Judaism is that God is One, which means a good deal more than "one God." Among other things, it means that God is unique and indivisible, and shares His Essence and Being with no one and nothing.

It would be easier for Jews to begin chowing down on ham-and-Swiss sandwiches than to accept the claim that a man could be, in any sense, God. The Messiah was never conceived to be anything other than an ordinary mortal man; anointed by God, to be sure, but no more a God himself than King David was. There is no hint of such a thing in any Jewish tradition; it is about as likely as the High Priest carving a stone idol and placing it in the Holy of Holies. It was, and remains, quite literally unthinkable.

Second, Jesus was said to be the literal son of God. This was way beyond bizarre. The idea that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and Sinai, could or would come down to earth and father a human child is as foreign to Judaism as temple prostitution. That is a Greek idea, not a Jewish one--consider Zeus had Hercules--and it may be no coincidence that Paul was speaking to Greeks, not Jews, when he formulated it. There has never been anything within a light-year of that idea anywhere in all the enormous tradition and long history of the Jewish people. It is, again, unthinkable:

Third, Jesus claimed the power and authority to forgive sins.

All sins.

Now this is difficult, because this is not widely known: Jews do not believe that God Himself has that power. God can forgive sins against Himself--ritual offenses, broken vows, and so on--but no more; a sin against another human must be forgiven by that person, or not at all. (This is why there can be no forgiveness for murder. The only one with the power to forgive is dead. This is also why the Jews of today cannot "forgive" the Holocaust. You must ask the six million for that forgiveness; we have no right to give it.)

By claiming this power, Jesus was not claiming to be coequal with God, but in fact greater than God. No wonder some tore their robes when they heard him speak.

And again, as if all this were not enough--it is claimed that Jesus was the sacrifice that saves all men from their sins, and that this salvation is accessed by believing in it.

This seems simple; but for Jews, there are no less than six separate problems here.

First, the idea that people need to be saved from their sins. Jews have never believed in "Original Sin," or that all people are born sinful. We believe that everyone has an impulse to do good, and an impulse to do evil, and that these remain with us all our lives; our job is to follow the first and resist the second to the best of our ability.

Second, St. Paul to the contrary, Jews have never taught, nor do we believe, that we are obligated to fulfill "the whole of the Law" or face eternal damnation. We believe that, since God made us, He knows our imperfection and our weakness, and does not demand that we be perfect and without fault or flaw. That would be the act of an unjust God, and we do not believe that God is unjust.

Third, Jews do not believe that any human can bear the sins of another. That principle is underlined in the Torah over and over again. Each man bears his own sins, and that cannot be changed.

Fourth, we do not believe that a "sacrifice" is necessary to obtain forgiveness for sins, whether animal or human (and the idea of a human sacrifice is so far from any Jewish belief or practice that it is barely comprehensible that anyone would even propose it as a possibility). It is true that animal sacrifices were performed in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, but it is clear throughout the Torah and the Prophets that the sacrifice itself was meaningless without the repentance and devotion of the individual human heart.

Fifth, in Judaism, "belief" accomplishes precisely nothing by itself. There is no Creed in Judaism, no specified set of acceptable beliefs. What one "believes" is all but insignificant next to what one does, and no amount of "belief" cancels or ameliorates the results of one's actions. Believing the proper "doctrines" in Judaism is utterly irrelevant to anything at all.

Put simply: if I am in need, what do I care what you "believe"? Will you help me, or not? Nothing else matters.

Sixth, Jews are not even certain that there is a Heaven at all. Judaism has rather little concern with the afterlife; it isn't mentioned in the Torah, and belief in it seems to have been entirely absent from its teachings in the early years of our religion. Even those Jews who do believe in Heaven spend little time or energy thinking and talking about it. The point of the Jewish religion is THIS life. The next, we leave to God.

As you can see, though Judaism and Christianity share an ethic, basic values, and many religious practices, our views of the nature and structure of the relationship between God and man, the nature and importance of sin and the means of its forgiveness, the significance of the afterlife, and many other matters, are so different that they really do constitute entirely separate religions. That one was derived from the other, and that we share a large body of Scripture, no longer matters. We stand beside each other as brothers; but we have long since taken separate paths. We ought to respect one another and work together where our ideals and ethics converge--which is almost everywhere. Where our beliefs differ, we should agree to disagree and leave each other alone.

One more note: It is wholly illegitimate and improper for a follower of any faith to attempt to dictate to a follower of another what his beliefs OUGHT to be, then castigate him because they do not follow his prescription. No one has any warrant to point out passages of "prophecy" in our own Scriptures that we do not, and have never, read as such, and overrule the traditions and beliefs that we have held for more than three thousand years--and tell us what we ought to think and believe. No one has that right.

We have no warrant to deny that Jesus is your Savior, or to deny that, for you, any belief you may hold about him is true. That is between you and God, and is none of our business.

But in the same way, it is not your right to insist that we abandon our own beliefs and convictions in favor of an understanding of our own Scriptures that we have never held.

Thank you for reading. May we all work together for the good of the Kingdom of God and forgive each other our disagreements.

I'll close with a saying from the Talmud. When the sages of old disagreed and could find no way to reconcile their differences, they would often allow both rulings to stand as equally acceptable options in Jewish law. When asked how this was possible, it was said that "When Elijah comes, he will explain which of us was right--or why we both were."

Peace to all.

Charles

[cnorman18]

To Goat:
Thanks very much for your response to advil. I agree on all counts, and I do not think I could have done nearly as well.

To Assent:
(sigh) I've always said that my Scottish immigrant ancestors brought over their most cherished traditions from the Old Country--to wit, drunkenness and wife-beating. I see I have to add two more to the list...

To cogitoergosum:
You are quite right, and another whole thread has been started based on my mistake. I meant to say "idol worshippers," not "Pagans." Everything you say is true, and I deeply regret the error.

To Goat again:
Thanks for your response to jgh7 as well. I would add that the absence of any other reference to a Messiah figure in Deutero-Isaiah argues strongly that the "Suffering Servant" was not such a figure. Jewish tradition is of many opinions as to who that figure is intended to represent: the Jewish people as a whole, a faithful minority among those people, even Jeremiah or Moses. None of those opinions holds that the servant is the Messiah, let alone Jesus.

There is also the little matter of v. 10, which clearly states that the servant will live to see his children. Unless one is willing to sign off on The Da Vinci Code as part of the Christian canon, that does not appear to apply to Jesus.

This is a pretty good example--indeed, the most commonly seen example--of Christians overruling the Jews' interpretation of their own Scriptures and substituting their own. If I were to cite Jesus's remark that "If he calls him 'my Lord,' how can he be his son?" as evidence that Jesus did not believe that the Messiah could come from the house of David (which appears to be the plain meaning of that text), I would be engaged in the same sort of thing.

If Christians wish to believe that Jesus was who he is credited as being in Christian belief, and that Isaiah 53 refers to him, that is their right and peace to them; but they have no right to dictate to Jews how we must read our own Bible. After all, it was OUR book first.

To jgh7:
I was formerly a Methodist minister, so yes, I have read the Gospels. Please post the basis for your statement that I am, or might be, "lying" about anything.

You have not responded to my pointing out that the Messiah is to be defined by the three acts listed: becoming the King, freeing Israel, and instituting the Messianic Age. Any other alleged "prophecies" are trivial; being the Jewish Messiah was and remains synonymous with those acts.

Sorry, Jews get to decide who is a Jew just as Catholics get to decide who is a Catholic. You can call yourself the Kohen Gadol for all I care, but that doesn't make it so. The unanimous consensus of the Jewish community, which is binding in such matters, is that a Jew who believes in Jesus is no longer a Jew, but a Christian. If you think that we must accept your assertion that you are Jewish, you must also accept the assertions of Mormons, Jehovah's Withesses, and Christian Scientists that they are Christians. Are you willing to do that?

I have only one further question; were you born a Jew, or have you ever gone through the process (milah and mikvah) to become a Jew?

Peace.

Charles

[Goat]

One item I will also add is that the Jewish expectation for the Messiah is not the same concept as the Christian concept of Jesus. The Messiah in term of Judaism is a man, mortal, and not 'god'.. who performs certain tasks. At least one rabbi in the Talmud said that the timeframe that the Messiah could have come is past.

He was a hoped for King that would drive out the invaders of Judah, and reestablish the House of David over Israel. Hasn't happened, and I would be surprised if it does.

[justifyothers]

A word before I begin:

This post is NOT an attack on Christianity.

Jews, as a rule, do not comment on the truth or falsehood of any other faith, and that includes the Christian faith; we have no right. We only claim to know how God chose to speak to US. If He chose to speak to another people in another manner, that is no business of ours, and we have no warrant to say yea or nay. Only in the matter of literally worshiping idols as divine beings do we pronounce judgment, and that is rather rare in the modern world.

In my own, personal belief, Jesus was indeed sent by God to bring the light of Torah to the rest of the world. The Jews will always be "a small people"--the Book says so--and surely the rest of the was not meant to be left in the darkness of paganism. If not for Jesus, and perhaps even more for Paul, my own Celtic ancestors might have continued to paint themselves blue and worship trees.

The battle has never been between Christians and Jews, anyway. We are on the same side. On the other side are today's pagans--those who worship things; money, power, fame, gratification, status. May we both always remember that.

This post is on the rather more limited topic of why the Jews did not, and do not, accept Jesus as our Messiah. That some few have, and do, does not matter. Peace to them, but there are reasons why very few Jews who are familiar with and committed to their faith and tradition ever have, or ever will, believe in Jesus. This post is an effort to explain some of the most important.

To begin, then; Jesus, to put it plainly, simply did not perform the very specific actions that the Messiah was expected to do. There can be no "wiggle room" here; the tradition has been constant for thousands of years, and has not changed.

It is not that there were certain "prophecies" that the Messiah had to "fulfill"; the Messiah was DEFINED by certain acts. To do them was to be the Messiah, and the meaning of the word "Messiah" was "the man who does these things."

Jesus did not do them. He was not the Messiah. There is no "therefore," because the phrases are synonymous.

Further, Jesus claimed (or it was claimed for him) that he had power and authority that no Jew could or would claim for any man, far beyond any that were ever attributed to the coming Messiah; and he took on a role that no Jew, at any time from Abraham forward, had ever contemplated that any man, Messiah or no, would ever be called upon to fulfill. There was no need for it.

Jesus fulfilled one and only one attribute of the Messiah; he was of the tribe of Judah. Much is made of this in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, with elaborate genealogies given for Mary, and, oddly, for Joseph.

Other than that, St.
Paul and the Gospels to the contrary, Jesus did nothing expected of the Messiah. Three such expectations will suffice for our purposes: (1) The Messiah was to be a military, or at least a political, leader, an actual, rightful King. (2) He would restore the independence of Israel and free it from foreign (at the time, Roman) rule. (3) Most importantly, he would institute a reign of perfect peace, justice, liberty and piety that would shortly extend over all the earth.

It seems rather clear that none of these occurred; most glaringly the last, which was and has always been the most important sign and task of the Messiah (The short answer, for many Jews, to the question "Why don't you believe in Jesus?" is "Oy! Look around!").

The Messiah was the coming King who would restore the line of David, free Israel, and being peace to the world; he would institute the Messianic Age. He was named for it, and it would be named for him. The two would come together, or not at all. They were one.

At the end of Jesus's life, these things had not happened. The Messiah had not come.

As if all that wasn't enough, Jesus, or his followers, made claims for him that were alien to Judaism, and in fact often blasphemous from a Jewish point of view. For starters, that Jesus was God incarnate.

It would be hard to think of an idea more repugnant to Jews, then or now. The oldest and most fundamental and nonnegotiable tenet of Judaism is that God is One, which means a good deal more than "one God." Among other things, it means that God is unique and indivisible, and shares His Essence and Being with no one and nothing.

It would be easier for Jews to begin chowing down on ham-and-Swiss sandwiches than to accept the claim that a man could be, in any sense, God. The Messiah was never conceived to be anything other than an ordinary mortal man; anointed by God, to be sure, but no more a God himself than King David was. There is no hint of such a thing in any Jewish tradition; it is about as likely as the High Priest carving a stone idol and placing it in the Holy of Holies. It was, and remains, quite literally unthinkable.

Second, Jesus was said to be the literal son of God. This was way beyond bizarre. The idea that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and Sinai, could or would come down to earth and father a human child is as foreign to Judaism as temple prostitution. That is a Greek idea, not a Jewish one--consider Zeus had Hercules--and it may be no coincidence that Paul was speaking to Greeks, not Jews, when he formulated it. There has never been anything within a light-year of that idea anywhere in all the enormous tradition and long history of the Jewish people. It is, again, unthinkable:

Third, Jesus claimed the power and authority to forgive sins.

All sins.

Now this is difficult, because this is not widely known: Jews do not believe that God Himself has that power. God can forgive sins against Himself--ritual offenses, broken vows, and so on--but no more; a sin against another human must be forgiven by that person, or not at all. (This is why there can be no forgiveness for murder. The only one with the power to forgive is dead. This is also why the Jews of today cannot "forgive" the Holocaust. You must ask the six million for that forgiveness; we have no right to give it.)

By claiming this power, Jesus was not claiming to be coequal with God, but in fact greater than God. No wonder some tore their robes when they heard him speak.

And again, as if all this were not enough--it is claimed that Jesus was the sacrifice that saves all men from their sins, and that this salvation is accessed by believing in it.

This seems simple; but for Jews, there are no less than six separate problems here.

First, the idea that people need to be saved from their sins. Jews have never believed in "Original Sin," or that all people are born sinful. We believe that everyone has an impulse to do good, and an impulse to do evil, and that these remain with us all our lives; our job is to follow the first and resist the second to the best of our ability.

Second, St. Paul to the contrary, Jews have never taught, nor do we believe, that we are obligated to fulfill "the whole of the Law" or face eternal damnation. We believe that, since God made us, He knows our imperfection and our weakness, and does not demand that we be perfect and without fault or flaw. That would be the act of an unjust God, and we do not believe that God is unjust.

Third, Jews do not believe that any human can bear the sins of another. That principle is underlined in the Torah over and over again. Each man bears his own sins, and that cannot be changed.

Fourth, we do not believe that a "sacrifice" is necessary to obtain forgiveness for sins, whether animal or human (and the idea of a human sacrifice is so far from any Jewish belief or practice that it is barely comprehensible that anyone would even propose it as a possibility). It is true that animal sacrifices were performed in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, but it is clear throughout the Torah and the Prophets that the sacrifice itself was meaningless without the repentance and devotion of the individual human heart.

Fifth, in Judaism, "belief" accomplishes precisely nothing by itself. There is no Creed in Judaism, no specified set of acceptable beliefs. What one "believes" is all but insignificant next to what one does, and no amount of "belief" cancels or ameliorates the results of one's actions. Believing the proper "doctrines" in Judaism is utterly irrelevant to anything at all.

Put simply: if I am in need, what do I care what you "believe"? Will you help me, or not? Nothing else matters.

Sixth, Jews are not even certain that there is a Heaven at all. Judaism has rather little concern with the afterlife; it isn't mentioned in the Torah, and belief in it seems to have been entirely absent from its teachings in the early years of our religion. Even those Jews who do believe in Heaven spend little time or energy thinking and talking about it. The point of the Jewish religion is THIS life. The next, we leave to God.

As you can see, though Judaism and Christianity share an ethic, basic values, and many religious practices, our views of the nature and structure of the relationship between God and man, the nature and importance of sin and the means of its forgiveness, the significance of the afterlife, and many other matters, are so different that they really do constitute entirely separate religions. That one was derived from the other, and that we share a large body of Scripture, no longer matters. We stand beside each other as brothers; but we have long since taken separate paths. We ought to respect one another and work together where our ideals and ethics converge--which is almost everywhere. Where our beliefs differ, we should agree to disagree and leave each other alone.

One more note: It is wholly illegitimate and improper for a follower of any faith to attempt to dictate to a follower of another what his beliefs OUGHT to be, then castigate him because they do not follow his prescription. No one has any warrant to point out passages of "prophecy" in our own Scriptures that we do not, and have never, read as such, and overrule the traditions and beliefs that we have held for more than three thousand years--and tell us what we ought to think and believe. No one has that right.

We have no warrant to deny that Jesus is your Savior, or to deny that, for you, any belief you may hold about him is true. That is between you and God, and is none of our business.

But in the same way, it is not your right to insist that we abandon our own beliefs and convictions in favor of an understanding of our own Scriptures that we have never held.

Thank you for reading. May we all work together for the good of the Kingdom of God and forgive each other our disagreements.

I'll close with a saying from the Talmud. When the sages of old disagreed and could find no way to reconcile their differences, they would often allow both rulings to stand as equally acceptable options in Jewish law. When asked how this was possible, it was said that "When Elijah comes, he will explain which of us was right--or why we both were."

Peace to all.

Charles

Thank you so much for sharing your beliefs. I really learned quite a bit from you. I have a couple of questions - some things I've always wondered. Hope you have time to answer them.

1. What is meant by 'soul' in the Jewish writings (if not an eternal spirit) ?
2. What is meant by 'saving from the pit' and '...not going down to the pit' and 'not leaving my soul in the pit', etc.? I never knew that Jewish people didn't beleive in an afterlife necessarily. Job has " He will redeem his soul from going down to the pit..." JOB 33:29

I also beleive we shouldn't condemn others for their beleifs. Thank you for taking the time to write all of this.

[jgh7]

To jgh7:
I was formerly a Methodist minister, so yes, I have read the Gospels. Please post the basis for your statement that I am, or might be, "lying" about anything.

You have not responded to my pointing out that the Messiah is to be defined by the three acts listed: becoming the King, freeing Israel, and instituting the Messianic Age. Any other alleged "prophecies" are trivial; being the Jewish Messiah was and remains synonymous with those acts.

Sorry, Jews get to decide who is a Jew just as Catholics get to decide who is a Catholic. You can call yourself the Kohen Gadol for all I care, but that doesn't make it so. The unanimous consensus of the Jewish community, which is binding in such matters, is that a Jew who believes in Jesus is no longer a Jew, but a Christian. If you think that we must accept your assertion that you are Jewish, you must also accept the assertions of Mormons, Jehovah's Withesses, and Christian Scientists that they are Christians. Are you willing to do that?

I have only one further question; were you born a Jew, or have you ever gone through the process (milah and mikvah) to become a Jew?

Peace.

Charles

I was born Jewish. I already explained the part about where you were lying. You said the only property Jesus fulfilled for the Messiah was that he was of the tribe of Judah. He has fulfilled many more prophecies, but you just don't believe he has. Please assert your opinions as opinions, and not as facts. Otherwise, it is deception.

It is also your opinion that the only important properties for the Messiah are the three that you mentioned. Who made the rule that these are the only important ones? I say they all are important, ever single one of them, and all of them will be fulfilled. What gives you the right to go around asserting which prophecies you think are the truly important ones, or the ones to pay attention to? Do you think God just gives out superfluous prophecies about the Messiah that we shouldn't pay attention to?

Jesus will establish his Kingdom and institute the Messianic Age at the end of ages that he talks about in the gospels and that John talks about in Revelations. These are my beliefs. Many of the prophecies about the Messiah, such as the ones spoken in Isaiah 53 have already come to pass, but most Jews don't believe it. It seems like Jews interpret prophecies from people like Isaiah however they see fit. To each his own.

I have faith in Jesus, and I have faith that I am a Jew even though I believe in Jesus. Jesus was a Jew himself and I don't see why anyone stops being Jewish because they decide to have faith in him. Ultimately, it is God who is the authority on who is Jewish and on what it truly means to be Jewish. I don't care what others assert about themselves or others. Our actions and the fruits we produce will speak of who we really are.

[Easyrider]

To begin, then; Jesus, to put it plainly, simply did not perform the very specific actions that the Messiah was expected to do. There can be no "wiggle room" here; the tradition has been constant for thousands of years, and has not changed.

It is not that there were certain "prophecies" that the Messiah had to "fulfill"; the Messiah was DEFINED by certain acts. To do them was to be the Messiah, and the meaning of the word "Messiah" was "the man who does these things."

Jesus did not do them. He was not the Messiah. There is no "therefore," because the phrases are synonymous.

I'd first like to see an agreed-upon list of Messianic prophecies in their entirety - meaning where is this established list and where's the back-up that the majority of Jews abide by them to identify their Messiah? The fact is that the Jews cannot even agree that there is one Messiah or two (Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David). From what I can tell they were never able to account for how the Messiah was to be a suffering servant (Isaiah 53, etc.) and a conquering king at the same time. Which is why they came up with the two Messiah approach. Additionally, one has to consider both advents of Christ (the 2nd to fulfill the remaining Messianic prophecies), and not just his 1st advent.

Further, Jesus claimed (or it was claimed for him) that he had power and authority that no Jew could or would claim for any man, far beyond any that were ever attributed to the coming Messiah; and he took on a role that no Jew, at any time from Abraham forward, had ever contemplated that any man, Messiah or no, would ever be called upon to fulfill. There was no need for it.

Where is this in the Tanakh?

Jesus fulfilled one and only one attribute of the Messiah; he was of the tribe of Judah. Much is made of this in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, with elaborate genealogies given for Mary, and, oddly, for Joseph.

Numerous ancient Jewish rabbis contend Isaiah 53 was Messianic, as was Daniel 9:24-27, etc. Matthew, etc., provide us with additional prophetic fulfillments.

Jesus did nothing expected of the Messiah. Three such expectations will suffice for our purposes: (1) The Messiah was to be a military, or at least a political, leader, an actual, rightful King. (2) He would restore the independence of Israel and free it from foreign (at the time, Roman) rule. (3) Most importantly, he would institute a reign of perfect peace, justice, liberty and piety that would shortly extend over all the earth.

Once again you're ignoring the 2nd Advent, which is believed will fulfill the rest of these.

As if all that wasn't enough, Jesus, or his followers, made claims for him that were alien to Judaism, and in fact often blasphemous from a Jewish point of view. For starters, that Jesus was God incarnate.

It's right there in the Tanakh (Isaiah 9:6-7, Jeremiah 23:5-6 etc.). There's even some rabbinic quotations alluding to the deity of the Messiah.

http://www.grantjeffrey.com/article/chphnwr.htm

The oldest and most fundamental and nonnegotiable tenet of Judaism is that God is One, which means a good deal more than "one God." Among other things, it means that God is unique and indivisible, and shares His Essence and Being with no one and nothing.

I assume you're talking about the "Shema" (Deuteronomy 6:4). There's nothing in that passage that rules out Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, once you understand the Hebrew word for "one" in that passage. Echad is often seen in scripture as a compound unity noun where 2 or more individuals are united as "one."

Second, Jesus was said to be the literal son of God. This was way beyond bizarre. The idea that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and Sinai, could or would come down to earth and father a human child is as foreign to Judaism as temple prostitution. That is a Greek idea, not a Jewish one--consider Zeus had Hercules--and it may be no coincidence that Paul was speaking to Greeks, not Jews, when he formulated it. There has never been anything within a light-year of that idea anywhere in all the enormous tradition and long history of the Jewish people. It is, again, unthinkable:

Isaiah 9:6-7, Jeremiah 23:5-6 and other verses indicate otherwise.

And again, as if all this were not enough--it is claimed that Jesus was the sacrifice that saves all men from their sins, and that this salvation is accessed by believing in it.

You mean by believing in him (God)? Abram believed in God and it was credited to him as righteousness, and this was before his circumcision and before the Law was given.

Jews have never believed in "Original Sin," or that all people are born sinful. We believe that everyone has an impulse to do good, and an impulse to do evil, and that these remain with us all our lives; our job is to follow the first and resist the second to the best of our ability.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. The fact is that since Adam all have sinned. Call that whatever you want.

Second, St. Paul to the contrary, Jews have never taught, nor do we believe, that we are obligated to fulfill "the whole of the Law" or face eternal damnation.

They'd better obey God or it's written in Deuteronomy chapter 28 that he will send a vast series of judgments on them for disobedience. Can hades not be close behind?

Third, Jews do not believe that any human can bear the sins of another. That principle is underlined in the Torah over and over again. Each man bears his own sins, and that cannot be changed.

If Israel is your suffering servant of Isaiah 53, then they apparently can bear the sins of others (Isaiah 53:6 - "And the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all"; mortals bearing other's sins, right? p.s. Israel doesn't even fit the description of Isaiah 53. Who else would it be, then?

Fifth, in Judaism, "belief" accomplishes precisely nothing by itself.

"But the righteous (or just) will live by his faith." - Habakkuk 2:4

Sixth, Jews are not even certain that there is a Heaven at all. Judaism has rather little concern with the afterlife; it isn't mentioned in the Torah, and belief in it seems to have been entirely absent from its teachings in the early years of our religion.

It's right there in your Tanakh. David will "dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Psalm 23); "The dust will return to the ground as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:17); "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2). And there's a number of others as well.

Finally, feel free to review other (pro-Judaism) arguments that have been dispelled concerning the Messiah.

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 12&start=0

Cheers....

[Easyrider]

I was born Jewish. I already explained the part about where you were lying. You said the only property Jesus fulfilled for the Messiah was that he was of the tribe of Judah. He has fulfilled many more prophecies, but you just don't believe he has. Please assert your opinions as opinions, and not as facts. Otherwise, it is deception.

It is also your opinion that the only important properties for the Messiah are the three that you mentioned. Who made the rule that these are the only important ones? I say they all are important, ever single one of them, and all of them will be fulfilled. What gives you the right to go around asserting which prophecies you think are the truly important ones, or the ones to pay attention to? Do you think God just gives out superfluous prophecies about the Messiah that we shouldn't pay attention to?

Jesus will establish his Kingdom and institute the Messianic Age at the end of ages that he talks about in the gospels and that John talks about in Revelations. These are my beliefs. Many of the prophecies about the Messiah, such as the ones spoken in Isaiah 53 have already come to pass, but most Jews don't believe it. It seems like Jews interpret prophecies from people like Isaiah however they see fit. To each his own.

I have faith in Jesus, and I have faith that I am a Jew even though I believe in Jesus. Jesus was a Jew himself and I don't see why anyone stops being Jewish because they decide to have faith in him. Ultimately, it is God who is the authority on who is Jewish and on what it truly means to be Jewish. I don't care what others assert about themselves or others. Our actions and the fruits we produce will speak of who we really are.

Amen! The Jews oftentimes would not even believe or obey their own prophets, and even slew a number of them. They disobeyed God to the point where he called them "stiff-necked," and sent Nebuchadnezzar and others to sack Jerusalem, etc. Why then should we expect they'd receive their own Messiah (Jesus)?

[Easyrider]

Recommended reading on Messianic prophecies:

"Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus," by Dr. Michael L. Brown

Dr. Michael Brown is one of the worlds foremost experts on the Biblical Jesus as he relates to Old Testament Judaism and Messianic Rabbinic literature. Dr. Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is an accomplished Old Testament and Semitic Scholar. He has debated Jewish Rabbis on TV, radio, and on college campuses, and is a prolific author of numerous theological works.

In his 4 volume series he answers objections and provides documentation for questions such as:

If Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, why dont more Jews believe in him?

If Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, why isnt there peace on earth?

Why did God allow six million Jews to die in the Holocaust?

Are Jews correct in saying the Messiah will only come once?

Why did the ancient Rabbis apply Isaiah chapter 53 to the Messiah?

Did Jesus really fulfill hundreds of Old Testament prophecies?

Do the Gospels portray a mythical Jesus?

These and scores of other questions are answered in Dr. Browns following works:

Volume 1 - General and Historical Objections
Volume 2 - Theological Objections
Volume 3 - Objections to Messianic Prophecy
Volume 4 - New Testament Objections

http://www.realmessiah.com/resources.htm

I can highly recommend these books for the serious student of Messianic prophecies, and how Jesus relates to them.

[cnorman18]

1. What is meant by 'soul' in the Jewish writings (if not an eternal spirit) ? 2. What is meant by 'saving from the pit' and '...not going down to the pit' and 'not leaving my soul in the pit', etc.? I never knew that Jewish people didn't beleive in an afterlife necessarily. Job has " He will redeem his soul from going down to the pit..." JOB 33:29

(Better you should ask a rabbi... But I'll take a run at it.)

Judaism does not recognize a soul or spirit that is separate from the body. The human being is one creature. Jews who do believe in an afterlife (and many, if not most, do) generally believe in a return to life at the end of time, rather than an immediate appearance in Heaven at the moment of death. The liturgy in the daily service blesses God as "You who keep faith with those who sleep in the dust," Ana many believe that that is a reference to this future life. It is truly an open question.

In the early days of Judaism, there was apparently no reference to an afterlife at all. Later, there was a belief in "Sheol," a dim and dreary place where the dead go, rather like the Greek conception of Hades. It is uncertain if this was a literal belief or a matter of metaphor, an indirect way of referring to death. References to "going down into the pit" are probably examples of this (Job is a very old book, according to some authorities the oldest book in the Bible).

A note here; very many Jews are relatively ignorant of the formal tenets of Judaism. Judaism is as much a culture as a religion, and Jews who are members of synagogues are a minority in America. Others may celebrate the holidays (particularly Passover), attend services during the High Holy Days, and proudly identify themselves as Jews, but otherwise not spare much time for the religious aspects. This is not uncommon.

Converts such as myself are often better-informed about Judaism than born Jews, since an extensive course of study is required before one is permitted to appear before a Beit Din (a rabbinical court) and be examined before the ceremony of conversion. Born Jews are Jews even if they never study Judaism at all, and that is an accepted option. We leave each other alone about it.

For this reason, many Jews simply pick up on the cultural beliefs of the society in which they live and talk about "going to Heaven" as a Christian would.

I hope this helped. Ask away; I enjoy questions, and am not easily offended.

[Easyrider]

1. What is meant by 'soul' in the Jewish writings (if not an eternal spirit) ? 2. What is meant by 'saving from the pit' and '...not going down to the pit' and 'not leaving my soul in the pit', etc.? I never knew that Jewish people didn't beleive in an afterlife necessarily. Job has " He will redeem his soul from going down to the pit..." JOB 33:29

(Better you should ask a rabbi... But I'll take a run at it.)

Judaism does not recognize a soul or spirit that is separate from the body. The human being is one creature. Jews who do believe in an afterlife (and many, if not most, do) generally believe in a return to life at the end of time, rather than an immediate appearance in Heaven at the moment of death. The liturgy in the daily service blesses God as "You who keep faith with those who sleep in the dust," Ana many believe that that is a reference to this future life. It is truly an open question.

In the early days of Judaism, there was apparently no reference to an afterlife at all. Later, there was a belief in "Sheol," a dim and dreary place where the dead go, rather like the Greek conception of Hades. It is uncertain if this was a literal belief or a matter of metaphor, an indirect way of referring to death. References to "going down into the pit" are probably examples of this (Job is a very old book, according to some authorities the oldest book in the Bible).

A note here; very many Jews are relatively ignorant of the formal tenets of Judaism. Judaism is as much a culture as a religion, and Jews who are members of synagogues are a minority in America. Others may celebrate the holidays (particularly Passover), attend services during the High Holy Days, and proudly identify themselves as Jews, but otherwise not spare much time for the religious aspects. This is not uncommon.

Converts such as myself are often better-informed about Judaism than born Jews, since an extensive course of study is required before one is permitted to appear before a Beit Din (a rabbinical court) and be examined before the ceremony of conversion. Born Jews are Jews even if they never study Judaism at all, and that is an accepted option. We leave each other alone about it.

For this reason, many Jews simply pick up on the cultural beliefs of the society in which they live and talk about "going to Heaven" as a Christian would.

I hope this helped. Ask away; I enjoy questions, and am not easily offended.

Here's something that I found interesting on this:

A Jewish Rabbi discusses the soul and the afterlife in Judaism:

http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askr ... enhell.htm

[cnorman18]

To jgh7:

I was born Jewish.

Then I have a few more questions for you.

Did you attend Hebrew School?

Were you Bar Mitzvah?

Just how familiar were you with Judaism before you became a Christian?

How do you reconcile the divinity of Jesus with the indisputable fact that such a belief has never been a part of Judaism, and in fact runs counter to its most basic belief?

How do you reconcile the equally alien belief that Jesus was the literal son of God?

If you don't care to answer, that's your right; but in that case, we're done. I did not come here to challenge anyone's beliefs, but only to explain the Jewish point of view on a very old question.

I am not the one claiming authority and setting myself up as the one with all the answers, overruling all others. That would be yourself.

If you're going to essentially denounce a 4,000-year-old tradition as a tissue of lies, I certainly have the right to find out just how much you know about it.

I already explained the part about where you were lying. You said the only property Jesus fulfilled for the Messiah was that he was of the tribe of Judah. He has fulfilled many more prophecies, but you just don't believe he has. Please assert your opinions as opinions, and not as facts. Otherwise, it is deception.

Will you apply that advice to yourself?

If so, fine.

If not--if you insist that you hold the Truth and that by disagreeing with it, I am "lying"--we have nothing to talk about. Let's establish that as a groundrule before we go any farther, shall we?