I’ve started going to synagogue again, and one thing I’ve been pouring over in my brain is that one of the fundamental tenets of Judaism is that we will receive a Messiah, he or she just hasn’t been sent yet.
Christians accept Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus was a Jew. What was it about Jesus that Jews didn’t see him as Messiah material?
One possible argument is that the Messiah will save us from our sins. Since we’re still sinning, Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah.
Thoughts?
As I understand it, he failed to fulfill most or all of the prophecies associated with being the Messiah.
Most Jews did not accept Joshua bin Joseph as the Messiah. Early Christianity was a quirky, minor sect of Judaism for hundreds of years, and didn’t gain mass acceptance until Emperor Constantine I converted & declared Christianity to be Rome’s official state religion.
Quite a number of people declare themselves to be a messiah and/or start religions. The question is why would the Jews have accepted Jesus as a messiah?
First of all you must remember that the traditional and historic meaning of “Messiah” is different in Jewish thought than what it became in Christian thought. Wikipedia actually has a decent overview, and Maimonides analysis of why Jews did not and do not see Jesus as the Messiah.
The Christian view of the Messiah concept, historically, owes a lot to the heavily Greek inspired thought of Paul.
If I remember my history right,Constantine didn’t convert until his death bed, but he was responsible for calling a council of Bishops to have the Christian church united as he claimed to see a cross in the sky, which he thought was a sign on which to conquer. The Roman Bishop was a successor to Peter so was considered by many to be head of the Church.
Monavis
Why do Christians accept Jesus as the Messiah?
Why do people seem to always start these type threads on the Jewish Sabbath?
Huh? I ‘m no Industrial Strength Jew (as evidenced by my posting on Saturday), but I don’t recall anything in the Talmud or Maimonides’ list about saving us from our sins. Original sin is a Christian concept. Jews are not baptized because nothing in Judaism says that we are born with the guilt of original sin. Somebody else absolving you is a Christian concept. On Yom Kippur, G-d can only forgive your sins against Him. If you have sinned against other people, you must get forgiveness from them.
Yeshua Bar Yosef never proved descent from King David. He did not gather all the Jews together in the Promised Land and expel our enemies. He did not usher in an era of world peace. None of the prophecies of the messiah make allowances for a second coming. Dying without fulfilling all the prophecies is proof that you are not the messiah. Right now, Zev Steinhardt, CM Keller, myself, you and every other male Jew is a potential messiah. We just have to fulfill the prophecies to prove it. Gather us in the Promised Land, rebuild the Temple, bring about world peace and do a few other minor things and I’ll admit you are the messiah.
A wacky guy by the name of Shabbati Zevi (spellings differ) claimed to be the messiah back in the middle ages. He built up quite a following. But when he converted to Islam, most conceded he was not the messiah. When he died without fulfilling the prophecies, it was clear to all but a lunatic fringe.
Within our lifetime, some Jews believed the Lubavitcher Rabbi Shmeerson to be the messiah. When he died without fulfilling the prophecies, his followers admitted that while a righteous man, he was no moshiach.
By the time this happened, it was a politically expedient move, as Christianity had already become a dominant force in the waning empire. It isn’t as if Constantine took this tiny, oppressed religion and dragged it out of obscurity.
He received the majority of the popular vote as Messiah but lost the divinely electoral vote.
Read about Shimon bar Kosiva/bar Kokhba, a military leader who lived a century after Jesus and was proclaimed as the messiah by thousands of his followers including Akiva (one of the most important Talmud scholars of his time- his work is still considered important commentary). This may give you a better idea of who/what Jews of the time were expecting as the Messiah.
No, he was baptized shortly before his death. His mother had been Christian and he may have been secretly so from when he was a young man. But the story goes that he formally converted in ~312. He didn’t die until 337.
By the early Second Century, Christianity was a growing minority belief in the Empire. By Constantine’s time, including heretical groups, it was a majority.
Despite various nattering by radical revisionist Protestant groups, Constantine’s influence was limited to two things: giving Christianity official status, and convening a council (to which he did not dictate desired results) in order to put an end to public violence associated with theological dispute – which actually was a serious problem!
Why Constantine was baptized only on his deathbed relates to the custom of the time. It was believed that baptism washes away all sin – but that sin committed after baptism would place one out of a state of grace. According to the prevalent theory, you could be forgiven for sin after baptism once, after extended public penance.
Hence, human nature being what it was and is, people reasoned that the longer they put off being baptized, the better – since it would purge all sin up until the time of baptism. Deathbed baptism was fairly common at the time.
Not all of them- there are a devoted few who regard him as “hidden with God” until his return. Needless to say, this is viewed with great disdain by many other Jews who see this as little different from the Christian argument that Jesus will fulfill the Messianic expectations at his return.
To respond to the OP, Paul suggests in Romans 9-11 that most Jews didn’t accept JC because God wanted to give the Gentiles a chance, and once that reached a certain point, the Jews would also come to faith in Jesus, resulting in global blessing for Jews & Gentiles, including the Resurrection (which I believe may indicate that Paul believed that those Jews and Gentiles who had died without trusting Jesus would be raised to get that opportunity.)
As you say-- “quite a number of people” go around claiming to be the Messiah… so why would ANYONE AT ALL accept Jesus to be the Messiah rather than just another guy claiming to have SuperPowers? And get this: people *still *say they believe this stuff today! Grown men and women who seem to be otherwise sane!
How long, how long until the jig is finally up?
Now is there really any call for that gratuitous dig at people’s faith, ILM, V1? Up until this unprovoked jibe this has been a reasoned discussion in which I had learned some interesting tidbits. If you want another thread in which equally strident atheists and believers can lob potshots at each other, have at it, but please don’t poison this one.
Didn’t he also build (Old) St. Peter’s?
First, what DocCathode said. Although there is considerable discussion and dispute about exactly what will happen when the Messiah comes, there are some things that are pretty much generally accepted in traditional Judaism. When the Messiah comes, God’s Kingdom on Earth will be established, with Jerusalem as its center. The dead will be restored to life. There will be peace on earth, the lion will lie down with the lamb. None of that happened, hence the Messiah hasn’t come yet.
Now, the Christians say all those things will happen when Jesus returns (the Second Coming.) Jews say, OK, that’s possible, and when (if) it happens, we’ll accept him as the Messiah.
Now, second level is that we reject the idea of Jesus as God-incarnate. To Jews, the concept of a god being born from a human woman impregnated by a god is… well, pagan, if not downright silly. Greek myths abound with such stories. Jews reject the notion of God becoming human or impregnating a human woman.
And Jews certainly reject the notion of a trinity: monotheism is the core of Judaism. Christians argue that the trinity doesn’t conflict with monotheism, but (speaking frankly) Jews don’t buy that rationalization.
Finally, Jews believe that we have a covenant with God. We were told God’s laws, His rules of conduct, how to behave, how to repent and seek forgiveness when we err. And that covenant was eternal, for all generations. Christianity attempts to overthrow those rules, replace them with a new process (belief in Jesus instead of behaviors.) We don’t believe that God lied to us; hence, we reject the basic principle of Christianity.
So, in summary, Jews generally think:
(1) Jesus has not fulfilled Messianic prophecy
(2) the concept of God-incarnate is inconsistent with the nature of God
(3) the concept of a trinity is inconsistent with monotheism
(4) the notion that God would lie about the covenant is contrary to the nature of God.
There is always the possibility that Jesus never existed at all, having nothing written about him until decades past his supposed death.
Of course there’s always the risk that one will die suddenly or in one’s sleep and not be able to have a quikie baptism. 
Seriously, was Christianity already the majority religion when Constantine came to the throne? :dubious: I alway’s thought that Christians were still in the minority then.
This is not a Jewish expectation for the Messiah. The Jewish Messiah is not a redeemer of sins. In Judaism, everyone is resonsible for his own sins and no one else can atone for them.
I’m late to the party but everything else has been pretty well covered. I think the simplest answer is that Christians and Jews just have totally different definitions for the Messiah. Jesus did not meet any of the Jewish criteria. The definitions are actually opposed in such a way that no figure could logically meet the criteria for both Jews and Christians. The Jewish Messiah cannot be God. The Christian Messiah cannot NOT be God. That is the crux of this eternal theological impasse.