B
BenYosef
Guest
There are no prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures that read:
“And the Messiah shall do” this and that. Or “and you shall expect the Messiah will be” such and such.
In fact, the term “the Messiah” in reference to the promised hope of the Jews does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a post-Biblical term. Jews have applied some verses from Jewish Scripture to the Messiah, but these texts in themselves never mention the Messiah by name and are not exclusive to the Messiah in and of themselves.
The Messiah is not central to Judaism anyway. Since Judaism does not have a belief in Original Sin or a belief that we are imperfect and need someone to atone for our sins to God, or even that this is the job of the Messiah. When the Messiah is mentioned by Jews, many still expect a prominent figure that will reunite all Jews together, bring peace and prosperity to Israel, perhaps even to the world. Other Jews do not see this as a person but as a Messianic era instead but still accomplishing the same tasks. In the end, Jews do not deny the Messiah. They just do not accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah.
After all, the concept of Messiah is our Jewish concept. It comes from our religion. It is a Jewish, Hebrew word. The Messiah is not who Jehovah’s Witnesses say it is.
Again, you may be a religion that is based on the Bible and proud of that fact. But we are people who wrote the Bible, and it is based on our religion. And the religion defines what the Book says, not the other way around, just as a writer has a say on what his own book means.
You are just the reader. You can say all you want that we have it wrong. But you folks didn’t write it. You can’t even read it unless you have it translated for you. I can read both Hebrew and Greek. It’s the same with the Catholic Church. The Church came first, not the New Testament. The Church defines what the New Testament says and means. Not the other way around. Even there you are just the reader. The New Testament didn’t come from your religion, it came from the Church. It has the right to define what it means, not your folks.
We, Jews and Catholics, are not people bound by the books. We are not religions from the Bible. We are the religions that wrote the Bible. We define the Bible. We are the people who teach what it means. We may have differences of opinions on who is the Christ, but as a Jew I can declare that Jesus was not a mistake. He was from God, he taught God’s word, he was a light to the Gentiles, and he has brought us together to worship the one true God of Abraham.
As to you saying Jews do not have sufficient authority to dictate theology, you have some nerve. You wouldn’t have the Bible to begin with if a Jew had never written a stoke of it.
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