Rabbi Tovia Singer / Michael Skobac

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Ryt

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How do people answer what Rabbi Tovia Singer and Michael Skobac claim about Jesus and Christianity? They are Jewish counter missionaries who disprove the New Testament and Christianity. I heard a Lecture from Rabbi Skobac who claims that Paul started the Christianity that we know of today, before that it was just another sect of Judaism.
 
I have never heard of the rabbis you name here, but yes, the Christian Church started off as a sect within Second Temple Judaism. I don’t think anybody denies that. You can read about it in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The parting of the ways came years later, and was a gradual process. It didn’t happen all at once.
 
Ryt said:
They are Jewish counter missionaries
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That’s, actually, the key point. It’s not that they’re trying to convince/convert Christians, they’re part of educating Jews who are faced by Christian missionaries.

Any group faced by missionaries needs a number approaches, the most important is to become more aware of one’s own faith and what it’s about, another vitally important route is dealing with attempts by missionaries to establish (rather than merely argue) the ‘truth’ of their claims. Missionaries tend to be very voluble and determined about that and it’s their strength (their weakness is often lack of understanding of the religious beliefs of the people they’re targeting) and people need to learn how to deal with that.

Unless you’re in the conversion business, Singer and Skobac aren’t your problem.

BTW: I’m a Jew who has been discussing religion with Christians for over 20 years and I’ve never sought to convert anybody (we don’t believe anybody is disadvantaged religiously by not being Jewish, so there wouldn’t be any point) but I’ve become rather good at taking on people who try to convert me. 😀
 
I am not worried about Jews converting me I am a jew who is considering Christianity. I am a man of truth and don’t want to live a lie. I want to make sure that what these rabbis are saying is not true.
 
Ryt said:
I want to make sure that what these rabbis are saying is not true.
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From what I remember, it’s a case of “it’s arguable” and who are you going to believe if not the Rabbis?

What a proselytiser might argue is one thing, what a Biblical scholar (Christian or not) might argue would be something else - the nature of the texts, the range of potential authors of the texts and so on isn’t a ‘given’ (though most members of religious discussion boards do tend to a consensus tied to the traditional paradigms of their particular belief structure - even if what might be described as their religious authorities have moved on).

To me, you’re asking questions that, for a man of ‘truth’, would surely need a more scholarly approach than a Christian discussion board is likely to offer.

Meanwhile, you’re going to get one woman’s view after all these years of conversation with Christians and reading biblical scholars from time to time, it’s summed up in two words: pious fiction.
 
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@Ryt, here’s another website where you can expect to find specialist answers to your questions, such as wearing a kippah at Mass. It’s the St. James Vicariate for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel, which is part of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Note: “Hebrew-speaking Catholics”, in this context, does not necessarily means converts from Judaism or people from a Jewish background. From what I’ve read, the majority of Hebrew-speaking Catholics are immigrants from the Philippines and other Catholic countries. Nevertheless …

http://www.catholic.co.il/index.php?lang=en
 
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