Why didn't a lot of Jews join the Universal faith (besides these):

[Robert_Parsons]

I understand the Pharishees and Sadducees being ones who held Jewish religious law and customs to the max. I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as showing the first 5 books+ of the Torah and our Bible too and thus their belief in the lineage and lives of the Jews through the eras. I have a harder logical clarity of why didn’t more of them recognize the Messiah when he walked among their midst and did miracle cures, raising of the dead, masterful teaching, his own resurrection, the witnesses who saw him Baptised, Sermon on the Mount, direct lineage of all the Popes starting with Peter and other highly visible divine things, his return to the Apostles and more. Logically, nobody could have faked all these things and no one else could do such feats. I know some of these magi and enlightened ones did convert, but it sounds like a very small number perhaps. It is almost like they (Jews) were set in their ways and nothing would change that mind set and they are out numbered today in believers of which faith is the true faith. I also understand the Moses side of it too, that would be a great role model for their faith. I admit I really don’t know hardly anything of the Jewish religion or traditions and only comparitively trying to understand what happened.

 

[oldfogey]

Actually, I did read an estimate somewhere that there was a dramatic decline in the number of Jews in the Roman Empire after Christ died. If I remember right, from about 4 million to 400,000 (I’ll gladly stand corrected if the numbers are wrong.)

One theory is that these Jews converted to Christianity, which would explain the great hostility in the synagogues to the Christian preachers, because conversion would have been destroying the Jewish faith. I am sure another explanation could be that the Jews became secularized, especially after the destruction of the Temple.

Anyway, conversion could have happened on a wide scale.

Maybe someone else knows more on this.