How do Jews regard Christians?

Great Debates
1

Given that this thread Jesus: Man or Myth was started by a Jew, I wonder how Jews regard Christians in general. Being brought up in the latter faith, I’ve heard polarizing opinions Christians have of Jews. Primarily, they’re God’s chosen people and it’s Christian duty to protect them. Also, they’re greedy misers who infuse their agenda upon Hollywood and liberal cultures.

So how do Jews feel about Christians? Do they consider them nice but hopelessly deluded? Are they glad to have such a powerful ally but wish they’d come to their senses about this Jesus meshuggah?

This article suggests that early Jewish thought regarded Christians as idolaters because they bowed to a cross, and thus equal to pagans, but this way of thinking eventually changed to “It’s OK for them. They’re Gentiles.” There was also some reservations about Christians worshipping a trinity even though they’re supposed to be monotheistic. Jews initially weren’t supposed to deal outside their tribes, but made an exception for Christians because they lived among them and couldn’t totally block them out of social interaction.

This jewfaq says that even though Jews call themselves Chosen of God, they don’t mean to brag about it. God actually bullied them into accepting the Torah when no other nation would. Jews would think they’re no longer special in the eyes of God if they strayed from the Torah, thus their “thanks but no thanks” attitude towards Jesus. Jews also think the Maschiach (anointed one, not savior) will be a man, not a diminished form of God. Jesus doesn’t fit their criteria for Messiah, most notably because he strayed from the original word of God and declared it null and void.

2

There’s… a certain amount of mistrust. Sure, some of them are acting friendly now, but if the last 2000 years have taught us anything, it’s that it might not last. Sorry.

Also, we have a hard time telling them apart. We know that there are Catholics and Protestants, but anything more specific than that and our eyes start glazing over.

3

You’ll get a million answers depending on who you talk to. One of my Hebrew school teachers said that Jesus could do his magic tricks because he snuck into the Holy of Holies in the Temple and saw the direct word of God.
But the Messianic prophecies are really pretty clear, and Jesus did not fulfill them. A descendant of David would be king again and lead Israel to the same position as the original David. Didn’t quite happen. And son of God stuff was a lot more like pagan beliefs (the Greeks and Romans had sons of gods running all over the place) than Jewish belief.
None of it would really matter, since gentiles can believe whatever gentiles want to believe, except that Christians decided that we should believe or die or, if we were lucky, just be oppressed.

4

It’s my understanding that atheists aren’t monotheists, because they lack a belief in any gods; that pagans aren’t monotheists, because they believe in multiple gods; and that Christians aren’t monotheists, but believe they are.

I understand atheists and pagans.

I don’t understand Christians.

5

[ol]
[li]Jews are not monolithic.[/li][*]I suspect that most Jews regard “Christians in general” the same way that they regard people in general.[/ol]

6

The argument is that, under the Trinity, there are three gods being worshiped. The subtlety of the Trinitarian concept eludes those who make this accusation.

Of course, any number of Christian theologians, including no few Catholics, have admitted that the concept of the Trinity is beyond human understanding. It’s a mystery.

Still, saying “they worship three gods” is not factually correct.

7

I married one.

8

Ask a million Jews and you’ll get at least a million and one answers.

I haven’t noticed that Jews spend that much time considering Christians as a monolithic group. Particular Christian sects get some attention, those who see Israel as part of a plan for the Second Coming or Armageddon, the Mormons who are baptizing dead Jews or something like that. Maybe my grandparents saw Christians as a single group of people but at least in this country the divisions within christianity are pretty clear these days.

9

If it is, from the outside, indistinguishable from polytheism, and the Christians themselves can’t meaningfully explain the distinction… that’s not much of a basis for pronouncements of “fact.”

I see (some) Christians venerating Mary and various saints, too. Even living Popes. And then there is Satan, who has all the general attributes of a god.

10

Many Jews I’ve spoken with don’t want the goyim (gentile) to marry their children, but they don’t BLOW THEM UP, CUT THEIR HEADS OFF, or SHOOT THEM.

11

I’m not a very good Jew, but I’ll chime in anyway. It would seem that if you don’t believe Jesus was the son of God, etc, you’d have to view Christians as quite delusional. And, ff you’re opened minded enough to realize they may be right and you may be wrong, then I don’t see how you can hold on to your own religion at all. But, as I said, I don’t really understand any of this.

12

Er, yes; I know. And, were I to catch my wife in bed with my brother, doubtless she’d claim that it looks like adultery, because, well, yes, in a sense, he isn’t me – but in a deeper sense, in a very real sense, he simultaneously is me, by dint of a concept that’s so subtle it eludes my silly simple brain.

That, yes, it would of course be adultery for her to have sex within anyone else who isn’t me – except for this one guy who obviously isn’t me, but also somehow is.

Sure, she’d say that, too: that, while he obviously isn’t me, the way in which he also simultaneously is me is, uh, a mystery beyond human understanding.

She’d likewise say, if I’d instead walked in on her killing someone, that, yes, in one sense it is what it looks like: simple murder. But in another sense – one which is beyond human understanding – she’s actually just committing suicide, even if the subtlety eludes me: unlike any other potential murder victim on the planet, the person she’s currently stabbing to death is mysteriously also her.

I realize that people could say such things; I just wouldn’t believe them, is all.

As far as I can tell, “they worship one god” is not factually correct.

13

From the Orthodox perspective, in the eyes of Jewish law, Christianity is considered idolatry for a Jew to worship. Two of the fundamental tenets of Judaism are that G-d is one, and that G-d is not corporeal. The first is at odds with the belief in the Christian trinity. Trinopus is correct that that does not mean that Christians believe there are three gods, but it does mean that they consider the diety to have three distinct components, not a simple fundamental unity, which is an important aspect of the Judaic belief in G-d as “one”. The second is at odds with the idea that G-d had ever existed in human (or any) form, which is (if I understand correctly) is what Christians believe Jesus was.

Also heretical about Christianity (in the eyes of Jewish law) is the idea that the New Testament has abrogated the need to observe the laws of the Old Testament. The supremacy of Moses’s prophecy versus other prophets is another fundamental tenet of the Jewish faith and no later prophet (if Jesus had been one) can override it. (I am aware that Paul had preached this to Gentiles rather than to Jews, and still felt that Jews should observe the original covenant, but I’m talking about the viewpoint of if a Jew were to adopt Christianity as a religion.)

14

While I’m currently agnostic, I was raised primarily Jewish in a mixed household, and attended both a synagogue and (protestant) church.

Though my identity was primarily Jewish, I rarely felt uncomfortable going to services with Christians. Most of the time, it felt like nearly the same belief system: praising and thanking God, helping the local and world community, joining together song and silent prayer. If anything, the difference between a very liberal and very conservative American Christian service was greater than a liberal Jewish and liberal Christian one.

That is, until the name Jesus would come up. That experience was like zoning out listening to a familiar song and then suddenly one of the notes is off, shaking you uncomfortably back to reality.
I tried, but could never get the Jesus thing. Sure, he’s clearly a brilliant prophet with many worthwhile and compassionate teachings. But raising a human man to the level of God? That never sat well with a monotheistic upbringing.
So from my Jewish experience at least, Christians are remarkably similar to us, but with a very strange almost idolatrous obsession with a 2,000 year old prophet named Jesus.

As far as Jewish Sunday school, Christians and Christianity were rarely mentioned. Most of the focus was on maintaining a Jewish identity, preventing another holocaust, and the importance of the state of Israel in relation to both.

15

Y’all are too fractured and fragmented for me to have an opinion on “Christians.” You aren’t a people like we are. You aren’t a tribe. You have no identity and no cultural memory. So I have no opinion on you aside from the one Alessan stated above - one day you might try to kill me.

Unlike him, I have more concrete opinions about different sects of Christianity.

16

For myself, I would liken the Trinity to Cerebus, the three-headed dog. Each head might have its own personality; one might prefer Milkbones while the second might like munching on greek babies. And the third might prefer to root around in hippopotamus poo.

But all the same entity.

17

Interestingly, Judaism is one of the few religions that specifically allows that non-Jews may be equally “righteous” to observant Jews, as long as they follow the Noahide laws:

As far as Christians go, it is now accepted that they can be “Noachides”:

In short, a “righteous” Christian = a “righteous” Jew, according to Judaism.

Some forms of Christianity have moved to this position, but only much more recently. See, for example, the December, 2015 statement from Pope Francis.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20151210_ebraismo-nostra-aetate_en.html

18

In the early OT, is not the term for the Deity a plural?

And I thought that only the Jews had to obey the various OT restrictions- the Gentile only the Noahide laws? The Apostolic Decree, in Acts 15, does bind Christians to those laws.

(I know this as I was a Shabbos goy for a Observant couple, they required I follow the Noahide laws, there was some terms for Gentiles who did, I forget)

19

For those unfamiliar with Hebrew that can be confusing but it means very little in and of itself.

20

For those unfamiliar with Christianity, the Trinity can be confusing. But it’s no more three divinities as lh*m saying “we” is referring to a pantheon.