Jews and Christianity

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At the end of your three posts in reply to my post, you wrote this most beautiful prophecy by Isaiah:

“I will set you [the Jewish People] for a covenant to the people, for a light to the nations, to open blind eyes.”

Isaiah 42:6-7

Amen. Anyone who does not believe in prophecy should read these words and dwell on history for a little while.

Honestly, I do not see how this could be effectuated without Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth, who I know deep in my heart is the Christ and the Messiah who by experiecing suffering, death, and resurrection takes away the sins of the world.

Without Christ, I question how billions of the Earth’s inhabitants would have access to the Torah, or how Jew and Gentile alike would not sing as King David did:

Let me exalt You, my God the King,
and let me bless Your name forevermore.
Every day let me bless You,
and let me praise Your name forevermore.
Great is the LORD and highly praised,
and His greatness cannot be fathomed.
Let one generation to the next extol Your deeds
and tell of Your mighty acts.
Of the grandeur of Your glorious majesty
and Your wondrous acts let me treat.
And the power of Your awesome deeds let them say,
and Your greatness let me recount
The fame of Your great goodness they utter,
and of Your bounty they joyously sing.
Gracious and merciful is the LORD,
slow to anger, great in kindness.
Good is the LORD to all,
and His mercy is over all his creatures.
All Your creatures, LORD, acclaim You,
and Your faithful ones bless You.
The glory of Your kingship they say,
and of Your might they speak,
to make known to humankind His mighty acts
and the grandeur of His kingship’s glory.
Your kingship is a kingship for all time,
and Your dominion for all generations.
The LORD props up all who fall
and makes all who are bent stand erect.
The eyes of all look in hope to You
and You give them their food in its season,
opening Your hand
and sating to their pleasure all living things.
Just is the LORD in all His ways,
and faithful in all His deeds.
Close is the LORD to all who call Him,
to all who call Him in trust.
The pleasure of those who fear Him He performs,
and their outcry He hears and rescues them.
The LORD guards all who love Him,
and all the wicked He destroys.
The LORD’s praise let me mouth speak
and let all flesh bless His Holy Name
forevermore.

Psalm 145, The Ashrei (trans. Robert Alter).

youtu.be/v9rQ7KG0Ips

youtu.be/G5a5_c9eoU4

We will not always agree, but let us always pray for eachother, love eachother, and commend to eachother to act with mercy and justice and to “bless His Holy Name forevermore.” As so much of the world falls back into atheism, paganism and despair, let us draw together in friendship and encourage eachother in fellowship and obedience to God.

God bless you!!!
 
“Jesus fulfilled all the prophesies that could be achieved through text manipulation’ but not the ones that couldn’t, they are left over for the ‘Second Coming’”.

There is the ‘marriage’ of the Jews to God who is the groom. In the ancient Jewish wedding, the groom comes to the bride twice (even in the modern Jewish wedding there are these two parts although they usually take place in one day now.) So a second coming of the ‘groom’ is actually deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, so an expectation of a second coming when the wedding feast takes place is more a Jewish custom than Christian one, and points again to Jesus and all He did being focused first on the Jews, then later the Gentiles. Jesus said He was returning to His Father’s House, and that He would return for us, His bride. Meanwhile, He left us the ketubah - His teachings and the Holy Spirit - just as the ancient Jewish groom left the ketubah, the wedding contract, with the bride until his return from his father’s house. So a second coming idea is more Jewish than Christian, although the Jews don’t seem to notice this.

The way God chose and planned to save the fallen world is seen in the Jewish traditions, because salvation of the world is from the Jews. So the practices God gave the Jews were given as foreshadowing of His later action over the world. The easiest Jewish custom to connect to the world’s salvation is the Passover. A less obvious one: the Jewish wedding customs, including the return, or second coming, of the groom. Good day.

“So let’s, now, take the Old Testament and read it ‘forward’, which, for arguments sake, let’s say we’ve done. Would you come up with Jesus as Messiah/God? I think you’d have to think about that for a while.”

It is not really correct and thus more of an artifice to say Jesus can only be found in the Old Testament by looking back. All of Scripture prophecy is best seen in hindsight, so this is the ‘normal’ way for all of it. Old Testament prophecies on their own (those only speaking about future Old Testament events), those that speak of the first destruction of the Temple for instance, are more easily discerned when looking back.

God bless you.
 
beehumble said:
There is the ‘marriage’ of the Jews to God who is the groom. In the ancient Jewish wedding, the groom comes to the bride twice
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Except that in the first stage the object of value (‘world peace’, perhaps, at your macro level) came first, the heavy obligations second. 🙂

The Messianic prophesies require ‘real world events’ and they’ve not happened so what you’re left with is searching through the OT and ancient Jewish customs to find potential ‘textual’ links to interpret into ‘evidence’.

That this works for Christians is OK by us but, from our perspective, it’s what might be described as ‘weedy’, ie it allows great fertility of imagination but without the discipline of the hoe of events.
It is not really correct and thus more of an artifice to say Jesus can only be found in the Old Testament by looking back. All of Scripture prophecy is best seen in hindsight, so this is the ‘normal’ way for all of it. Old Testament prophecies on their own (those only speaking about future Old Testament events), those that speak of the first destruction of the Temple for instance, are more easily discerned when looking back.
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It would seem that artifice is in the eye of the beholder.
 
andremiguel said:
Will you wish the Jews to convert to Christianity as the chosen people of God?
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The official Teaching of the Church is that Jews will come to Christ in their own time. When that happens is a mystery. This is why Catholics are not allowed to actively prosletyse Jews.
 
Hi, Kaninchen,

I really appreciate our dialogue on this matter. To be honest, I really did not understand why Jews rejected (and still reject Christ) as the Savior. I now have a much better idea. As you probably guessed, our different view remain. We really are worlds apart … but, in the same universe with monotheism that believes in a Loving God. I once heard that, “If everyone pulled the same way, the world would tip over”… 😃

God bless - and we can keep each other in our prayers.
Kaninchen said:
The answer would be ‘-ish’. ‘The Law’ is ‘Torah’ (the first five books), by the way, not the Talmud. The Talmud is ‘Oral Torah’, a collection of tradition, interpretation and argument, a whole lot of ‘on the one hand, while on the other hand, meanwhile on yet another hand.’

We’re in the world of ‘reading forwards/reading backwards’ here. The reading forwards version is that God made a fairly simple covenant with the ‘sons of Noah’ which applied to everybody, then a series of Covenants (Abraham onwards) with his ‘chosen people’ who had to do lots more stuff (one of the reasons why we say that non-Jews have it easier and why they’re, actually, at an advantage in terms of ‘hope for the World To Come’).

Then we come to the tricky problem of ‘salvation’, with the inevitable question: ‘saved from what?’ To use another (frequent) CAF Kaninchenism: “the genius of Christianity was to invent an illness ‘you’re all doomed’ and prescribe itself as the only cure.”

We don’t share the same eschatology, you see, and that makes the concept of Messiah very different.

Bit like Christians not seeing the ‘truth’ of Islam, perhaps? 😉

I’m only partly joking here. It’s a feature of new/subsequent religious movements that they seek explanations of why people say ‘hey, we don’t need all that, we’ve got all the religion we need, thank you.’ Muslims have them, Mormons have them, etc, etc, etc.

Oh, I don’t go with the ‘back-water Carpenter, picked up by a bunch of less than gifted followers’ business. There was one of the world’s greatest religious geniuses involved - he hadn’t met the Carpenter but he repackaged the whole thing into a coherent whole for the ‘Gentile market’. I think Paul was quite awesome (in the same way that I think the people who put the hugely influential religion of Zoroastrianism together or Mohammed were).

Well faith is important to Judaism but not in the same way, I think. We’re more a ‘doing’ religion than a ‘belief’ religion, that’s our focus, how to live ‘ethical Monotheism’, what does it mean to ‘live a good life, here and now?’

We have a God that we’re constantly being reminded of (all the rules that we bump into all the time remind us of who we are and what we do because of who we are) and about whom we have to be careful in our considerations since ascribing characteristics can so easily verge on idolatry.

Our history begins over three millennia ago, in the age of the great pagan religions and their powerful civilizations, their successor pagan religions and their powerful civilizations came and went, we survived, they didn’t. We’ve been driven from place to place, there have been massacres, pogroms, ‘final solutions’, we’re still here.

I think we’ve ‘sustained’ quite well really. Messiah will come when he comes.

I’m afraid the answer is ‘No’.
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tqualey said:
Hi, Kaninchen,

I really appreciate our dialogue on this matter. To be honest, I really did not understand why Jews rejected (and still reject Christ) as the Savior. I now have a much better idea. As you probably guessed, our different view remain. We really are worlds apart … but, in the same universe with monotheism that believes in a Loving God. I once heard that, “If everyone pulled the same way, the world would tip over”… 😃

God bless - and we can keep each other in our prayers.
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Well, the explaining why thing is part of why some of us come here. We’re not here to change your minds about your religion, far from it, that Christians be the best Christians they can be is a good thing.

As to Jews all pulling the same way, herding cats would be easier to achieve. 😃
 
steve9191 said:
In my opinion the better wording of that question is: “Will you wish the Jews to recognize the fulfilment of the covenant God made with Abraham?”
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The Covenant realized in Jesus Christ, yes.
 
tqualey said:
(of course it was still standing in 33AD)
4.) be observant Himself, and spread education and observance of the Talmud, (He and didn’t do this with miracles and work being done on the Sabbath)
5.) reestablish the Sandredrin (it, too, was still in existence in 33AD)

]

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.

Christians found themselves outside of the “privi lege” granted to the Jews concerning exemption from participation in Roman religious ceremonies. They suffered Roman persecution.

In order to understand how Christianity develops itself to spread among the Pagan population of the Roman empire, how it became the religion of the Roman empire, how it came into an ever deepening conflict with Judaism, it is necessary to understand both certain concepts in Judaism, concepts of widespread Gentile pagan religious beliefs at the time and the fundamental problems facing Christianity in spreading itself through the Pagan population of the Roman empire. The solution of Christianity is brilliant and successful. However, we need to continue our discussion on a separate and later post.
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Hi, Chosen People,

I am confident that you will have no trouble in believing me when I say I had no prior knowledge of these Jewish criteria. And, honestly, I just do not know how to appropriately address this concern. It simply has never come up - then again, I have never had such a conversation with Jews… 😃

Let me come up with one item - and maybe we can discuss it.
chosen_people said:
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.

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
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As a Catholic, I see Jesus as the Messiah - the Savior of the world. Nothing new there… 😉 And one of the items as a criteria is that He would come from the Davidic line. Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit (Third Person in the Blessed Trinity) impregnated Mary. The Son of God would have a human mother from the Dividic line - and a Step-Father from the Dividic line. The issue of disagreement (let’s just skip over the Trinity for a moment…) is that Joseph is not good enough to qualify for the Dividic line criteria because he was not the ‘natural father’.

As I see it, this seems to be telling God that He is limited to just how a certain item is understood. Any deviation by God would require not only an explanation (Luke 1 provides the account) but acceptance by humans to be legitimate. God doesn’t really work that way. Moses, for example, knew God could do anything -but when it came to getting water our of a rock - two strikes with his staff was the way he wanted to handle the Order from God. Besides, throughout the OT we find that God is constantly nudging His Chosen People to do what He has told them to do - and devises some painful ways to get this accomplished.

What do you see as problematic with this view of the ‘first criteria’ being fulfilled?

God bless
 
Chosen People -

Thank you for your replies as they have been insightful. I understand that there was a very high expectation of the Messiah coming around the time of Christ. Per the Messianic critieria, how is the expectation of the messiah coming reconciled with the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would rebuild the temple as the temple was already standing?

Thank you in advance for your reply. God Bless.
 
I read here of Messiah Ben David. Who is Messiah Ben Joseph? I heard once somewhere that Messiah Ben Joseph more matched the first coming of Jesus while Messiah Ben David is more applicable to the return of Jesus.

Just asking…

God bless you.
 
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