For 2,000 years Jews have rejected the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah. Why?

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Why Jews Don’t Believe In Jesus

aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html

This page(the above link) was brought to my attention by a co-worker who is agnostic / Christian / well he doesn’t really know what to believe. His thoughts are that the Bible in a whole contradicts its self because of this article. Christians believe in the same God as the Jews but why the Jews have this unbelief in Jesus as the Messiah. The Ideas and thoughts on all the scripture in this article caught his attention. So all you striving apologist out there help me win this heart over to the One True ever living God our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ !!!👍

In the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
 
Because they believe he was a heretic.

And they believe the Messiah will be sent to save the Jewish people.

Remember how he disagreed with the elders on points of theology.

But that’s wrong.

He is the Messiah for us all and the Son of God.
 
I thought its because they expect the Messiah to be more of a warrior type…like King David? Remember how some disciples left after Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse? They wanted a KING…someone to save them from the Roman occupation…but he came to Save them from their Sins.
 
Why should they not? I mean, and I know many Jews, that is what the tradition in their teaching is. They can ask us the same question.

When to different views of faith collide there will always be sparks. We can do what they do, hang on to our faith, what else do we have?

Faith is a strange thing. We believe in something we can’t see. But we should always be open to all kind of aspects. We learn guite a lot from others. But we must also be faithfull to our own faith. We know what God want us to do, if we have time to stop and think, alas we seldom seem to have that minute. If we do what God want us to do, we do what is right. The most important thing a doctor must keep in mind is “do no harm”. And that lesson is suitable for our whole life and what ever we may do. And if we do Gods will, we do not harm anyone or anything. Easy to say, easy to write but hard to follow. But if try and then fail, we still have made a honest effort, and that is enough for God, because He know that next time we may get it right. And to confront a other and maybe different way to live and practice our faith, we must remember that if we want them to honor our trust, we must honor theirs.
 
Mystical777 said:
Why Jews Don’t Believe In Jesus

aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html

This page(the above link) was brought to my attention by a co-worker who is agnostic / Christian / well he doesn’t really know what to believe. His thoughts are that the Bible in a whole contradicts its self because of this article. Christians believe in the same God as the Jews but why the Jews have this unbelief in Jesus as the Messiah. The Ideas and thoughts on all the scripture in this article caught his attention. So all you striving apologist out there help me win this heart over to the One True ever living God our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ !!!👍

In the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Click to expand...
I appreciate the article and think it is great to have a succinct account to sharpen our arguments against.

It should be noted in the first place that the Jews did not entirely reject Jesus: “Scholars generally agree that in the first century there were approximately six million Jews in the Roman Empire (for some reason, Klinghoffer says five million). That was about one tenth of the entire population. About one million were in Palestine, including today’s State of Israel, while those in the diaspora were very much part of the establishment in cities such as Alexandria and Constantinople. At one point Klinghoffer acknowledges that, during the life of Jesus, only a minuscule minority of Jews either accepted or rejected Jesus, for the simple reason that most Jews had not heard of him. Some scholars have noted that, by the fourth or fifth century, there were only a few hundred thousand, at most a million, people who identified themselves as Jews. What happened to the millions of others? The most likely answer, it is suggested, is that they became Christians.” source The apostles were all Jews, the first converts were all Jews, and by the fifth century, most of the Jewish population had ceased to be Jewish, and the major religion of the Roman Empire was Christianity. All of that suggests that the Jews did not entirely reject Jesus. He really did fulfill their religion, and most of them ended up recognizing that.

The gentlemen rejects Jesus for failing to build the Third Temple. But He did. It is the Church.

He rejects Jesus for failing to usher in a new era of peace. The Christian religion is the source of peacemakers, and peace. The reason there is not always peace is because people don’t always follow the Christian religion. If the author wants to blame Jesus for not everybody following Him, He is blaming Jesus for free will, which is silly.

Several of the gentleman’s first four points are supposed to be fulfilled at the Second Coming. The gentleman says there is no evidence that there will be a second coming of the Messiah. That is quite false; the Messiah is described as coming in pain, suffering, and humility, and as coming in glory, power, and majesty. The two aren’t compatible, so they must refer to two comings.

The author says that the Messiah was supposed to be a prophet second to Moses. That is not true. He was supposed to be a prophet equal to or greater than Moses. This is why Moses said, “A prophet like me will the Lord God raise up for you. You must listen to him.” Deuteronomy 18:15. Now you’ll notice that there were prophets who came along later that did mightier works than Moses: Elijah and Elisha raised the dead, for example, which Moses never did. But nevertheless the Israelites always repeated these words: “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.” Deuteronomy 34:10. If other prophets surpassed Moses in works, and still were not his equals, the only way to fulfill that qualification is to surpass him in dignity, and that would require being God. You can’t surpass knowing God face to face except by being God in the face. Pope Benedict focuses on this prophecy in his book Jesus of Nazareth: Deuteronomy 18:15, if read carefully, is a prophecy of Jesus’ divinity and His prophethood.

The author also says that you can’t be a prophet unless all Israel hears it. This is false. There were several prophets during the Babylonian captivity, both in Israel (Haggai) and in Babylon (Daniel). They both spoke to different groups of Jews.

The author says that Jesus isn’t a descendant of David on his father’s side because he has no father. He rejects that the Messiah could fulfill this by being adopted, and he rejects that Joseph could fulfill this because he is a son of Jeconiah, who was cursed to not have descendants on the throne. In reality the only way this could be fulfilled is through adoption, and that is for several reasons. One is that the Messiah was prophesied to be of virgin birth (see below). He couldn’t be of virgin birth if he had to have a biological father. Therefore his father would have to adopt him. Now being the adopted son of Joseph avoids the curse of Jeconiah because it was only to affect his descendants; however it does make Jesus a son of David through Solomon, in the legal sense. The author responds to this by saying, “There is no biblical basis for the idea of a father passing on his tribal line by adoption.” Actually there is; the virgin birth prophesy presupposes that the descendant has to be adopted by his father, but it explicitly says the child will be king. (Isaiah Chapter 7, Chapter 9; see below)

cont’d below
 
cont’d from above

The author says that the Messiah won’t be divine. This is contradicted by several prophesies, including the Emmanuel prophecy (Emmanuel means “God with us”) and the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6, where he is called “Mighty God.”

The author says Jewish belief is based only on national revelation, which he says means God speaks to the whole nation and to each individual. But Jewish belief is also based on prophets revealing God’s messages, and Jesus was one. (See above) I don’t know how the author thinks he can get away with saying that God’s message was not to be revealed by prophets; this seems to be what he is saying when he writes, “thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that he or she is God’s true prophet. But personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion because one can never know if it is indeed true. Since others did not hear God speak to this person, they have to take his word for it.” – Israelite history is filled with prophets revealing God’s messages personally. Does the author discount everything the prophets declared?

The author says that no true prophet would contradict the Torah, and he says that Jesus, by changing its laws, was contradicting it. That’s not true. The Torah itself, and many of the prophets, declared that there were many provisions in the Torah that were temporary and would change with the Messiah. Especially important in this regard are the prophesies of a “new covenant, not like the former covenant” which appear in Jeremiah 33 and Leviticus 9:9-10. The temporary nature of the sacrificial system is taught in many ways:
1 Samuel 2:27-36 explicitly says that the Jewish priesthood will be done away with and a new Priest will be taken up by God.
Samuel the descendant of Eleazar repudiated the sacrifices of his fathers and said, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”
Later Hosea prophesied, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” which is true in our Church, where sacrifices are abolished.
Isaiah said, “Incense is an abomination unto me,” which shows that God never delighted in sacrifices in the first place, but rather as we teach He instituted them to teach the Israelites to be detached from this earth and its belongings, for their minds were constantly drawn to this world.
The central part of the Law of Sacrifices contains a prophecy of the New Covenant in which the Old Law with its sacrifices would be done away: thus Leviticus says in chapter 9, verses 9-10, “And I will turn to you and establish my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new.”
Daniel prophecies that the Messiah would be present on earth 483 years after Artaxerxes the King (who reigned 465 BC), and further said, “Then the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end shall be as a flood: wars shall continue to the end, and desolations are determined.” All of this came true. For less than 50 years after the Messiah died King Titus destroyed the Temple, and the Jews have not had sacrifices since that time.

I could go on, but if the Torah itself says that some of its provisions are temporary, to be done away with in a New Covenant, and then the Messiah comes and does that, He isn’t contradicting the Torah, He is fulfilling it. And that’s just what He claimed.

The author says that Isaiah 7:14 isn’t a prophecy of a virgin birth because the word “alma” isn’t virgin, and Christian translators mis-translated it as “virgin” centuries after the the prophesy was given. There are several problems with this argument, including that the Septuagint Greek translation of the Scriptures translated it as “virgin” (parthenos, in Greek) centuries before Christianity existed, and that translation was made by Jews. Second, “alma” can mean virgin and it does in several passages of Scripture, including Genesis 24:43, Exodus 2:8, Psalm 68:25, Proverbs 30:19, Song of Solomon 1:3, and Song of Solomon 6:8. Finally, the passage itself says that the “alma” giving birth is a “great sign” (Isaiah 7:14). A young woman giving birth is not a great sign. A virgin giving birth is. All of that suggests that “virgin” is the correct translation, which supports the Christian doctrine.

Finally, the author says that Isaiah 53 isn’t a prophesy about a single person, but about Jews as a whole. He supports this by saying that the word “servant” means Israel in eleven chapters before Isaiah 53, as if the word can’t be used in more than one way. Apart from that, there is proof from within Isaiah 53 that it isn’t about Israel as a whole, because it specifically says, “he shall bear their iniquities,” and “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.” “He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Verses 11-12) Now why would it distinguish the bearer of transgression and the transgressors if it’s trying to make the point that Israel is the suffering servant? Why does it say He makes intercession for them if “they” and “he” are the same people? The text of the prophesy explicitly distinguishes between the servant (the Messiah) and the served (Israel); therefore the author’s explanation doesn’t work.

I hope that helps answer your friend’s difficulties. The Christians have a great response to Jewish arguments re: the Messiah, and I hope everyone can begin to see that. For further reading, I recommend Justin Marty’rs Dialog with Trypho the Jew, written in about 150 A.D. It goes into all these arguments in further detail, and shows from the whole Old Testament and all its prophesies why we believe Jesus is the Messiah. God bless!
 
I’ve always likened it to ethnic Israel always being disobediant, buts thats just me. Also the church is now true israel.
 
[BIBLEDRB]Deut. 6:4[/BIBLEDRB], which is the Shema or “Hear, O Israel” and a major tenet, if not the biggest tenet of the Jewish faith. That, in the Jewish religion, contradicts any idea of Christ as divine at all.
 
I don’t mean to offend, but there have been several threads on this subject. Still it’s good to see people with conviction and that includes the Jews.
 
The Messiah ben David is by definition that man who fulfills all six of the criterion in the Jewish scriptures. From a Jewish perspective what makes Christian claims that Jesus was the Messiah ben David so remarkable, is that he did not fulfill a single one of the six criterion.

On the other hand, there is no concept in Judaism that faith in the Messiah ben David leads to personal salvation. There is not a single verse in the Torah or prophets that states or implies that belief in the Messiah ben David is required for or related to personal salvation. The salvation program for Jews is to love God, fear God and keep His commandments.

The six authentic Jewish Messianic criteria are:
  1. have the correct genealogy by being descended from King David and king Solomon
  2. be anointed King of Israel
  3. return the Jewish people to Israel
  4. rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem
  5. bring peace to the world and end all war
  6. bring knowledge of God to the world
We see that each of the six Jewish messianic criteria is empirically verifiable and therefore faith is not required to determine the identity of the Jewish Messiah ben David. We can see if the Temple has been rebuilt, if all the Jews have returned to Israel, if the entire world believes in God and follows Torah, if the entire world is at peace.

Christianity couldn’t overcome the defect of their leader not fulfilling a single one of the six criteria, so they created the concept of “faith” in the Christian leader to overcome this defect. Of course, they were still stuck with the non fulfillment of the criteria for the Jewish Messiah ben David, so they also came up with the concept, which has no basis in Jewish scripture, of the “second coming”. So Christians say, Jesus didn’t have to fulfill the six criterion of the Jewish Messiah ben David ( (which ironically are the way to identify the Messiah ben David), and they say you can put off the fulfillment of these criterion, until Jesus comes back to life on earth a second time. However, if this is true, can’t anyone claim that a beloved deceased relative was a good and righteous man and is in fact the Messiah ben David?. Of course, They’ll have to wait until he returns to know if they are correct in their assumption, however they can claim to have “faith” that they are in fact correct.

That left Christianity with two problems. If the Christian leader didn’t bring about the state of things as stated in the six criteria, what did he do and under what other criteria can they claim that he was the Messiah ben David?

If we read the Christian scriptures, we see that the Christian leader made a couple of egregious misquotes of the Jewish scriptures. None the less, he did say a few really worthwhile things. However, it turns out that these things were lifted from the Jewish scriptures and presented as if original to Jesus in the Christian scriptures.

Here are just a few of many concrete examples:
Psalms 37;11
'but the humble shall inherit the earth, and delight in abundant peace"

becomes in Matthew 5:5 (the sermon on the mount)
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’

Psalms 24:3-4
“Who may ascend the mountain of Hashem and who may stand in the place of sanctity?One with clean hand and pure heart;”

becomes in Matthew 5:8
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”

Lamentations 3:30
“Let one offer his cheek to the smiter, let him be filled with disgrace”

becomes in Matthew 5;39

“…but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…”

So Christianity found itself rejected by Jews, since from a Jewish perspective it was clear that Jesus did not fulfill the criteria of the Messiah ben David. In as much as he was rehashing Jewish scriptures, that too was not impressive to the Jews.
 
In this regard, it should be mentioned that Jesus is mentioned in the Torah as a test of the Jewish people’s faith to God and the eternal covenant:

Devarim - Deuteronomy - Chapter 13
  1. Everything I command you that you shall be careful to do it. You shall neither add to it, nor subtract from it.
  2. If there will arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of a dream, and he gives you a sign or a wonder,
  3. and the sign or the wonder of which he spoke to you happens, [and he] says, “Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us worship them,”
  4. you shall not heed the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of a dream; for the Lord, your God, is testing you, to know whether you really love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.
  5. You shall follow the Lord, your God, fear Him, keep His commandments, heed His voice, worship Him, and cleave to Him.
Jesus is presented in the Christian scriptures as a prophet who performed signs, wonders and miracles. The concept of the son of God and the trinity are gods that the Jewish people did not know.

God tests the Jews to keep the eternal covenant between Him and the Jewish people. From a Jewish perspective, for a Jew to “believe” in Jesus is a failure of God’s test. While Judaism teaches that it is easier for the Gentile than for the Jew to get into the World to Come as the Gentile has only to uphold the seven Noahide commandments, the penalty of failing God’s test for a Jew is to be separated forever from God in the World to Come.

Matthew,Mark;Luke and John are the putative authors of their respective Gospels, only Matthew and John are mentioned as disciples and witnesses to to events in the life of Jesus. Mark and Luke did not claim to be eyewitnesses to events in Jesus’ life.

Now we know that the Gospel of Mark (who was not an eyewitness) was the first synoptic Gospel since Matthew copied about 90% of the Gospel of Mark (600 out of 660 verses) and Luke copied over 50% of the Gospel of Mark. Now if Matthew really was a disciple and a witness to events why would he need to copy Mark and rely so heavily of Marks version of events ? (why would he refer to himself in the third person in Matthew 9:9?). Which leaves us with John which contains material not found in Mark, contradicts events reported in Matthew and Luke and contains none of the" historical material" contained only in Matthew and Luke such as infancy and childhood.To make matters even more complicated, whenever they reported "historical material"l not found in Mark (on whose Gospel they obviously relied) and although they were not eyewitnesses, they contradict each other and make alterations and additions to Mark’s Jesus story.

The Epistles make no mention of the Gospels which strongly suggest that the Gospels did not exist until after the Epistles were written. Although this earliest Christian document was written much closer to the alleged lifetime of Jesus, the Epistles speak of a divine being with virtually no reference to physical events on earth or in history. There are no sayings of Jesus, or parables, or miracles or details about his life. There is no crucifixion mentioned, no empty tomb, no alleged rising from the tomb.

Although Christian scholars put forward that the Gospels existed in some form by the late first century of the common era, the first time there is a written reference to a Gospel is a reference to the Gospel of Mark in 125 c.e. and the first written reference to all four Gospels is in 175 c.e.

Now although Christians believe that a god had literally come down to earth, this was missed by every one of the 41 historians who lived during the first and early second century, who wrote about Judea and Rome and whose works have survived. Not a single one of them mentioned Jesus, his alleged disciples, his apostles or any of the miraculous events described in the Gospels.

The lack of sources outside of Christianity has led to reliance on forged passages from Josephus and even trying to interpret Talmudic passages as somehow referring to the Jesus figure. Now Jesus may have existed historically but there is little or no credible evidence supporting his existence.

The Jewish prophets have explicitly stated,that in the Messianic Era, Gentiles will stop being blinded to the truth and realize they have inherited falsehood:

"Hashem (God) my Strength, my Stronghold and my Refuge on the day of distress! To You (God) nations will come from the ends of the earth and say: "It was all falsehood that our ancestors inherited, futility that has no purpose. Can a man make gods for himself - they are not gods! (Jeremiah 16:19-20)
יט יְהוָה עֻזִּי וּמָעֻזִּי, וּמְנוּסִי–בְּיוֹם צָרָה; אֵלֶיךָ, גּוֹיִם יָבֹאוּ מֵאַפְסֵי-אָרֶץ, וְיֹאמְרוּ אַךְ-שֶׁקֶר נָחֲלוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, הֶבֶל וְאֵין-בָּם מוֹעִיל.
כ הֲיַעֲשֶׂה-לּוֹ אָדָם, אֱלֹהִים; וְהֵמָּה, לֹא אֱלֹהִים.

{In the Messianic Era} “Nations will walk by your [the Jewish People’s] light and kings by the brilliance of your shine” Isaiah 60:3
וְהָלְכוּ גוֹיִם, לְאוֹרֵךְ; וּמְלָכִים, לְנֹגַהּ זַרְחֵךְ.

"I will set you [the Jewish People] for a covenant to the people, for a light to the nations, to open blind eyes [in the Messianic Age] Isaiah 42:6-7
וְאֶתֶּנְךָ לִבְרִית עָם–לְאוֹר גּוֹיִם.
לִפְקֹחַ, עֵינַיִם עִוְרוֹת
 
Thank you all so much for your (name removed by moderator)ut and always remember…
Luke 23 33-34
When they reached the place called The Skull, there they crucified him and the two criminals, one on his right, the other on his left.
Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.’ Then they cast lots to share out his clothing.

God Bless
 
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