Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I meant I was thinking about–we were thinking about, my friend and I–that aspect of the Jewish personality, as it were; that not-yet-ness, that promises-unfulfilled-ness, that patience-of-the-ages thing. I’m not talking about a personality trait that I insist, racistly, all Jews hold; I’m thinking of Jewishness as a concept; of the personality of the religion, if it can be said that a religion has a personality. Obviously, this is going to be, at best, highly debatable, and certainly nothing if not subjective, so I’m trying for any kind of agreement; just trying to make my totally abstract thought clear.
Ha. That probably comes closest to what I was thinking about.
Lissener, how about you take another shot at this.
Your position is that some Jews will refuse to accept an authentic Messiah. You base this on your claim that they have refused to accept authentic Messiahs in the past and will therefore do so in the future. Have I summarized your position correctly?
Now several of us have pointed out that your position is based on the premise that the Messiahs that Jews rejected in the past were authentic Messiahs. If these past Messiahs were not authentic Messiahs then their rejection does not provide any evidence as to how Jews will react to an authentic Messiah in the future.
So here’s the questions we’ve been trying to get you to answer. Can you provide an example of an indisputabley authentic Messiah that Jews have rejected in the past? Or, alternately, can you give a reason why the Jewish rejection of non-authentic Messiahs provides evidence of how authentic Messiahs will be received?
No. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in an authentic messiah. That doesn’t come into it, whether I believe or not. What I’m saying is, that for every messiah that pops up, there will be those who accept him and those who don’t. I’m saying that those who don’t will still want to be called Jews, even if they’re in the minority on that.
Sorry, incorrect. Authenticity is irrelevant; I’m only talking about belief.
Sorry, entirely the wrong premise. Not only is authenticity irrelevant, but I never suggested that past rejection is what “provides evidence” that future messiah-claimants (or whatever) will be rejected by some Jews. The only “evidence” I “provide” is human nature. Surely you agree with the likelihood that there will be some individuals who will refuse to acknowledge a messiah? Any messiah? Fine, they’re wrong, or whatever; they’re right. Irrelevant. Their belief will be that the messiah is still an event in the future. Now, I get from the helpful explanations above that there are concrete milestones that will, objectively, define the messiah for probably the vast majority of Jews. Still, I give you human nature: there will inevitably be a “sect”–who knows how many?–who will refuse to believe this, and who will still call themselves Jews. Surely no more idle thought was ever had by man or beast. I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment.
If the primary criterion for being Jewish is having yet to have recognized a Messiah, then atheists and Buddhists are also Jewish (which, of course, some are, but not by definition).
A less interesting but more accurate definition of Jewishness is a complicated intersection of ancient religious traditions and evolving folkways that add up to a heterogeneous worldwide community of people with varying degrees of cultural commonality.
It looks like most folks in this thread thought you were declaring a theological position and therefore, they replied with theological responses.
I guess you were asking a psychological instead of theological question?
That’s fine, but the scenario you’ve laid out is not unique (psychologically speaking) to Judaism. Every few months, somebody asks Christians variations on the question, “what sign would make you believe the Messiah arrived?” or the related question “what miracle could God do to make you believe He’s here?” (You can check SDMB archives for dozens of these God-is-here-pinch-myself-I’m-not-dreaming surveys.) Many “Christians” replied that “they’d first believe their brain was in a vat” (like the Matrix movies) or they’d been injected with an LSD drug trip — basically a psychological but not theological denial of God.
How is your characterization of Jews any different from that? Haven’t Christians become so jaded from everyday life, special effects from movies, knowledge of mind-altering drugs? Isn’t acknowledging the existence of God’s arrival on Earth indistinguishable from insanity even though they believe in God? How are these hardcore Christian “believers” who are also paradoxically “non-believers” different from your scenario?
Again, if I reinterpret your OP to be psychological scenario, it sorta makes more sense. But then you also sprinkled some theological word “blasphemy” into so the theological lawyers jumped all over you on it. If psychology is the debate then, I think “blasphemy” should be reword it as “jaded.”
Your OP was poorly worded so I’m not 100% sure what your angle is.
I’m still not sure if I understand what you’re saying. Are you saying that religious people in general would be doubtful if they were confronted with the actual arrival of some anticipated event that their religion predicted? Or are you saying that Jews in particular are prone to this?
Lissener, either you or your correspondent has badly misunderstood something. There is nothing about being Jewish that, even psychologically, correlates to rejecting the moshiach, when/if he comes. There is, however, a HUGE chunk of the Jewish experience during these days of Christian hegemony that involves rejecting the Christian Messiah, the Christian idea of a messiah, and all the complications that Christian theology has wrought on the concept of God. If another supposedly divine or semi-divine figure arises in conjunction with Judaism, you bet that any Jews who embrace him will be rejected by many Jews who don’t – I think that’s safe to say, because such a person is NOT the moshiach, he’s a heretic and a false god. And I think it’s very likely that a leader who could reasonably claim to be the moshiach will be greeted with hostility and suspicion by some Jews, who might fear that he’ll claim divinity, have it attributed to him, and/or loose another Jew-killing religion upon the world. But I don’t think that rejecting such a candidate would be as identifying for Jews as rejecting Jesus is.
Why? Evidence from the past is irrelevant, since it is unconvincing, as you surely agree. We have no idea what would happen if a totally convincing Messiah arrived.
And what about current Christians? What would they think if a Messiah fulfilled the prophecies, and clearly said that Jesus was a false messiah? Wouldn’t they be more likely to reject this Messiah than Jews?
Though you are an atheist now, I assume you began as a Christian. As FinnAgain noted, I don’t think with your background you can understand how trivial Messiahship is for most Jews (outside of Brooklyn that is. ) My Jewishness comes from my ancestry, my culture and my heritage, and has nothing to do with acceptance or rejection of a Messiah.
I mean, I’m not saying that “religious people in general would be doubtful if they were confronted with the actual arrival of some anticipated event that their religion predicted,” nor am I saying that “Jews in particular are prone to this.” Voila, no to both questions.
Let me see if I can straighten this out a bit. I think the missunderstanding here, is that people are expecting that lissener is putting a Christian filter on his thought process, but quite clearly he is putting an Athiest filter on his thought process. You see, lissener believes that ALL messiahs are false and that the Jewish messiah will never come because it doesn’t exist. This is very important in understanding what lissener is saying because to him there is no IF the REAL messiah comes.
But, as in the case of Jesus, many false messiahs will come and the Jews that go on to follow them will no longer be Jewish. This leaves the Jews as the ones that never accept a messiah. The Jews are therefore always waiting for a messiah that will never come.
The flaw in this is the supposition that any significant number of Jews routinely follow "false Messiahs. " They don’t. There have been a couple of notable historical examples of rabbis who convinced followers that they would become Messiahs, but their deaths ended those hopes. No significant number of Jews have ever continued to follow any Messianic claimant after his death (including Jesus), and it’s exceedingly rare that any particular group even gets excited about a possible candidate.
I meant my post as literally as possible.
) My Jewishness comes from my ancestry, my culture and my heritage, and has nothing to do with acceptance or rejection of a Messiah.