Who was Jesus Christ considered to be in Judaism?

[IGotQuestions]

Thanks!

 

[Nelka]

Jesus Christ by some and Beelzebub by others I guess.

 

[myway]

The Jews saw Jesus as a heretic.

 

[EricF]

The high priest and the Sanhedrin pushed for his execution. Seems clear enough.

 

[Kaninchen]

Nothing - not Messiah, not a prophet and certainly not God.

 

[meltzerboy]

Nothing - not Messiah, not a prophet and certainly not God.

Instead a very liberal, revolutionary rabbi and essentially a good man. For some Jews at the time, a heretic as well, while, for others, the Messiah but not G-d.

 

[Kaninchen]

Instead a very liberal, revolutionary rabbi and essentially a good man.

And we know all this how?

 

[powerofk]

Instead a very liberal, revolutionary rabbi and essentially a good man. For some Jews at the time, a heretic as well, while, for others, the Messiah but not G-d.

And a handful of Jews did consider Jesus to be God (the Twelve (most notably, Simon Peter and John, the “beloved disciple”), plus at least His Mother, Mary and her husband, Joseph, along with Mary of Magdala and the few other women with Him).

Many Jews (especially in Galillee) considered Jesus to be a prophet, but many (especially the Temple leaders) considered Jesus to be a blasphemous heretic. The Pharisees seem to have been divided, as they would often argue amongst themselves about whether what Jesus was doing was lawful.

 

[McCartney]

A Jewish friend of mine said he was a false prophet.

 

[MartinJordan]

Nothing - not Messiah, not a prophet and certainly not God.

This. Although Muslims will have a real hard time with calling him Nothing.

Btw you can give sources from Rabbi’s calling Jesus "Nothing ". It’ll be useful.

MJ

 

[SAVINGRACE]

Judaism generally views Jesus as having been the most influential, and consequently the most damaging, of all false messiahs. However, since the mainstream Jewish belief is that the messiah has not yet come and the Messianic Age is not yet present, the total rejection of Jesus as either messiah or deity in Judaism has never been a central issue for Judaism.

Judaism has never accepted any of the claimed fulfillments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus. Judaism also forbids the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, since the central belief of Judaism is the absolute unity and singularity of God.

Jewish eschatology holds that the coming of the Messiah will be associated with a specific series of events that have not yet occurred, including the return of Jews to their homeland and the rebuilding of The Temple, a Messianic Age of peace and understanding during which “the knowledge of God” fills the earth, and since Jews believe that none of these events occurred during the lifetime of Jesus (nor have they occurred afterwards), he is not a candidate for messiah.

Traditional views have been mostly negative, although in the Middle Ages Judah Halevi and Maimonides viewed Jesus (like Muhammad) as an important preparatory figure for a future universal ethical monotheism of the Messianic Age. Some modern Jewish thinkers have sympathetically speculated that the historical Jesus may have been closer to Judaism than either the Gospels or traditional Jewish accounts would indicate, starting in the 18th century with the Orthodox Jacob Emden and the reformer Moses Mendelssohn. This view is still espoused by some.

In Judaism, the idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical — it is even considered by some polytheistic. According to Judaic beliefs, the Torah rules out a trinitarian God in Deuteronomy: “Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

In his book A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson describes the schism between Jews and Christians caused by a divergence from this principle:

To the question, Was Jesus God or man?, the Christians therefore answered: both. After 70 AD, their answer was unanimous and increasingly emphatic. This made a complete breach with Judaism inevitable.

Judaism teaches that it is heretical for any man to claim to be God, part of God, or the literal son of God. The Jerusalem Talmud (Ta’anit 2:1) states explicitly: “if a man claims to be God, he is a liar.”

In the 12th century, the preeminent Jewish scholar Maimonides codified core principles of Judaism, writing “[God], the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism%27s_view_of_Jesus

 

[TCEL]

In my Judaism class, the rabbi said Jesus was a very naughty Jew.

 

[Kaninchen]

Although Muslims will have a real hard time with calling him Nothing.

Goodness, we must always remember to apologise when our beliefs differ from theirs.

 

[Kaninchen]

Now the problem with all this is that virtually all that is supposedly ‘known’ is what appears in the Christian scriptures, early Christian ‘commentary’ and general Christian guess work.

Not only that but the OP didn’t ask about ‘Jews’, the OP asked about ‘Judaism’.

About the views of the Jewish people about Jesus, other than Christian texts, we know very little and that’s, actually, highly significant - what I’ve called the ‘Silver Blaze’ effect, ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night’ in the Sherlock Holmes story (the guard dog not barking while a murder and horse theft takes place is the deciding clue).

According to the Christian scriptures, an itinerant rabbi is going around performing all sorts of wonders, some of them large-scale, and the rest of the population don’t notice?

Now a Christian might argue that the ‘authorities’ clamped down on the news - the problem with this is that our whole history is of a people who are not good at being told what to do, in fact we’re useless at it. In ancient times we were hopeless at toeing the line, in the century and a half after the Romans arrived, we died in our hundreds of thousands and got driven into exile rather than behave and for the last couple of thousand years we’ve been a captive audience for Christians and Muslims who’ve done a lot to try to tell us what to do and we’ve failed miserably.

So, were the Jewish people at the time obeying orders? Or did they think of Jesus as Messiah, great prophet, God? Did they think him as a nice, friendly ‘reform’ rabbi? Or did they think/do nothing because, basically, nothing happened?

The answer is that, outside Christian texts, we have no idea and that’s significant in itself.

As to ‘Judaism’, well it was going through an entirely different existential crisis.

 

[MartinJordan]

Goodness, we must always remember to apologise when our beliefs differ from theirs.

No one spoke about apology. Where is this coming from?

Anyway have any Rabbi quotes?

MJ

 

[Kaninchen]

No one spoke about apology. Where is this coming from?

MJ

You wrote: “Although Muslims will have a real hard time with calling him Nothing.”

as if it was something that we Jews should find an impressive argument - otherwise why bring it up at all?

 

[MartinJordan]

You wrote: “Although Muslims will have a real hard time with calling him Nothing.”

as if it was something that we Jews should find an impressive argument - otherwise why bring it up at all?

So Not one Jew speak to Muslims about their faith?

MJ

 

[Kaninchen]

So Not one Jew speak to Muslims about their faith?

MJ

What makes you think that Jesus would be the main topic of conversation between a Muslim and a Jew?

 

[sennincatholic]

Now the problem with all this is that virtually all that is supposedly ‘known’ is what appears in the Christian scriptures, early Christian ‘commentary’ and general Christian guess work.

Not only that but the OP didn’t ask about ‘Jews’, the OP asked about ‘Judaism’.

About the views of the Jewish people about Jesus, other than Christian texts, we know very little and that’s, actually, highly significant - what I’ve called the ‘Silver Blaze’ effect, ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night’ in the Sherlock Holmes story (the guard dog not barking while a murder and horse theft takes place is the deciding clue).

According to the Christian scriptures, an itinerant rabbi is going around performing all sorts of wonders, some of them large-scale, and the rest of the population don’t notice?

Now a Christian might argue that the ‘authorities’ clamped down on the news - the problem with this is that our whole history is of a people who are not good at being told what to do, in fact we’re useless at it. In ancient times we were hopeless at toeing the line, in the century and a half after the Romans arrived, we died in our hundreds of thousands and got driven into exile rather than behave and for the last couple of thousand years we’ve been a captive audience for Christians and Muslims who’ve done a lot to try to tell us what to do and we’ve failed miserably.

So, were the Jewish people at the time obeying orders? Or did they think of Jesus as Messiah, great prophet, God? Did they think him as a nice, friendly ‘reform’ rabbi? Or did they think/do nothing because, basically, nothing happened?

The answer is that, outside Christian texts, we have no idea and that’s significant in itself.

As to ‘Judaism’, well it was going through an entirely different existential crisis.

Soo…are you saying Jesus Christ had no impact at all on the Jews of his time?

 

[Kaninchen]

Soo…are you saying Jesus Christ had no impact at all on the Jews of his time?

I’m saying that we don’t know but it’s unlikely that any impact was significant.