Jews – Do You Believe Jesus Rose From The Dead?

[Moses613]

Thanks guys for your responses.

What I’m trying to get at here, is by using the same consistent standard to ascertain the authenticity of the previous prophets, how could the Jews deny Jesus? For example Jews believe Elisha did indeed perform miracles, so why don’t the Jews believe in the works (miracles, resurrection) of Jesus?

There have been a lot of posts on this thread but I don’t know if this question has been addressed comprehensively. I feel like there are two separate questions that need to be asked.

1. Do Jews believe Jesus did miracles and/or rose from the dead and if not why not?
2. If yes, why do they not accept him as the messiah?

In answer to #1 I would have to say that personally, I see absolutely no reason to accept any of the claims about Jesus’s actions written down by one or two supposed eye-witnesses, and in later decades and centuries by others. (Don’t answer me by saying there are other eye-witness accounts that were written immediately - if there are, it’s still not enough to establish their credibility beyond a reasonable doubt.) Especially take into account the contradictions between the various gospels. I reject Josephus as a source for the obvious reason that there is much scholarly agreement that his accounts were interpolated by later Christian writers. If one witness wrote an account and claimed there were 5000 other eye-witnesses, that account is still not more credible than the one person who wrote it down. No contemporaneous Jewish or secular literature objectively records 1) miracles that Jesus did, or even 2) claims that others witnessed him perform miracles. One last point - if I remember correctly, the Christian Testament itself records the Pharisees asking Jesus for a sign to prove himself, and his response was that only a “sinful generation” requests a sign. This is directly in contradiction to the Torah, which mandates fealty to a prophet only if he has performed a miracle or correctly predicted the future in a meaningful way, speaking in G-d’s name. So to Jews, it looks like Jesus was only willing to perform miracles in front of the ignorant multitudes, not the scholars. So sorry, miracle claims are not convincing. You’d have a better case trying to prove that various NT prophesies came true at a later time.

To answer #2, I can fully accept that the human being Jesus of Nazareth performed miracles as per the verses in Deuteronomy cited by an earlier respondent (chapter 13). G-d may give license to even false prophets to test the faithfulness of His people. Even were you to assume he was righteous, that would lead me to the last issue, which is that of other prophets like Elisha who performed miracles. The function of miracles in Judaism is to establish the reliability of a prophet, who may then do any or all of the following things: A) Rebuke the Jews for their sins and urge them to repent
B) Predict calamities in response to sins
C) Predict good things to happen in response to righteousness
D) Instruct people that it is G-d’s will for them to do specific time-limited actions
E) Transmit ethical teachings from G-d
F) TEMPORARILY ABROGATE certain Biblical laws. For example, the prophet Elijah offered a sacrifice on Mount Carmel, which is in violation of the stricture only to offer sacrifices in the Holy Temple. This was one-time permission granted directly from G-d. One more example, at the dedication of the First Temple, Solomon prophesized that the Jews may eat on Yom Kippur in celebration - that year ONLY.
In Judaism, a prophet may NEVER:
A) Enact new laws in the name of G-d
B) Rule, via prophesy, on a matter of Jewish law, without any logical proof to the ruling, and insist upon its acceptance.
C) Permanently abrogate any Biblical law
D) Contradict the Torah in any other way.
If he does so, Maimonides rules explicitly in his code that such a prophet is considered a false prophet who is sentenced to death (Deut 13:10: “And that prophet or that dreamer shall be put to death, for he has slandered the Lord your G-d (Who took you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage), to push you off of the path that the Lord your G-d has commanded you to walk on, and you shall expunge the evil from your midst.” (my translation)).
So yes, Elisha performed miracles, but he was not G-d, or the ‘son’ of G-d (except in the sense that we all are…), nor did he claim to be. And the fact that he resurrected the boy did not prove the boy’s divinity, did it? So resurrection proves zero, even were someone to believe that it happened. Neither his acceptance, nor the hypothetical acceptance of Jesus as a prophet, would change any laws of Judaism.

I welcome further questions.
Respectfully,
Moshe