Because a person who believes that Jesus was the messiah is by definition a Christian.
The schism between Jews and Christians occurred over this very issue. That’s what makes Judaism and Christianity different religions, not just variants of the same religion, as the different sects of Christianity are. The break took place around 2000 years ago. If this was 50 A.D., there might be some merit in discussing “Jews who believe Jesus is the messiah vs. Jews who don’t.” But in 2001, anyone who says that it is possible for practicing, believing Jews to believe in Christ (which is what Jews for Jesus say) is deliberately ignoring 2000 years of history that says that Judaism and Christianity are two separate religions.
There have been numerous explanations in this thread of why Jesus did not fit the Jewish criteria for the messiah. But the most important one, the one that lead to the big break in the first place, is that Jesus was (according to Christian theology) the Son of God. The messiah as anticipated by the Jews is not. God does not have, and will never have offspring. Therefore, a person who believes that Jesus is the messiah is accepting Christian theology, and is a Christian.
I’m sorry, lestrange, I’ve been reading too many Jews for Jesus threads. The “numerous explanations of why Jesus did not fit the Jewish criteria for the messiah” weren’t in this thread, they were in the earlier thread linked by Zev. If you are interested in pursuing this topic further, it’s a great read.
That’s kind of a circular argument, and doesn’t answer my question. A hypothetical situation for you: Let’s say that next year a person appears on the scene who seems to fit the Jewish criteria for the messiah. Let’s say that some number of Jews decide that he is that very thing. They remain, however, observant of Jewish law in every point–the only difference is, they believe that Mr. Smith is the messiah, and other Jews don’t. Are these people no longer Jews because they’re Smithians? Or are they Jews who believe that Mr. Smith is the messiah?
Now lets say that a bunch of gentiles get on the bandwagon, but they don’t want to give up ham–perhaps some of them are even rabid anti-semites. These people aren’t Jews by any stretch of the imagination. They call themselves Smithians, and they have some wildly varying ideas about who Smith is and what he represents. And, in fact, some of their beliefs about Smith are directly opposed to Jewish beliefs. Now, because this group exists, does that mean the previous group is no longer Jewish, because they’re Smithian?
I would argue that the schism occurred over the question of admitting gentiles. Jews who believed Jesus was the messiah considered themselves Jews, and Jews who did not considered them Jewish heretics. But they were all Jews. The question of whether or not gentiles could convert to this new sect and if so, how, was, in the end, what made Christianity a different religion, and not just a sect of Judaism. It was a bitter and divisive issue, and the faction that wanted to let gentiles join and not have to be circumcised or follow dietary laws, etc. won out. People who don’t follow these laws are not observant Jews. So at this point, Christians were no longer Jews.
Yeah, ask a Southern Baptist if his religion is just a variant of Roman Catholicism. Be ready to duck.
This argument just doesn’t make sense to me. Okay, they’re two separate religions. Does that mean that one can’t believe anything that Jews believe and still be Christian? It’s flat out impossible. There are a lot of very deep differences, but there are also lots of places where Judaism and mainline Christianity agree. Their being two separate religions doesn’t preclude people from one holding beliefs in common with people from the other, especially since one religion has its origins in the other. The fact of the matter is, Christianity began its life as a variant of Judaism. The whole front half of the Christian Bible is made up of Jewish scriptures. The whole idea that Jesus was the messiah is based on interpretations of Jewish scripture, whether one agrees with those interpretations or not. Christianity owes it’s existence, much of its scripture, and a good deal of its ritual to Judaism. Judaism and Christianity may be two different religions, but they’re also two closely related religions. Two million years of history won’t change that, let alone two thousand.
And “believe in Christ” is a pretty non-specific phrase, even among Christians. It covers a whole lot of ground. I’m not asking why observant Jews can’t “believe in Christ.” I’m asking why observant Jews can’t believe Christ is the messiah. Two different questions.
And I have argued that some of them don’t make sense, and asked for clarification of others.
[quote] But the most important one, the one that lead to the big break in the first place, is that Jesus was (according to Christian theology) the Son of God.
[quote]
I’ve argued above that I don’t entirely agree with this, but I’ll go with you for now. It’s entirely true that according to (most) Christian theology, Jesus was the Son of God.
Okay. I’m with you so far.
See, this is what doesn’t make sense to me. Why does someone who believes Jesus is the messiah automatically also believe that Jesus is the son of God? Because anyone who believes Jesus is the messiah must be a christian? You’ll get dizzy going in circles like that. Seriously. Why must belief that Jesus is the messiah neccesarily include the belief that he was the Son of God?
Please understand, I don’t think it is neccesary or even desirable to convert Jews or somehow convince them to “accept Christ.” What I find most objectionable about Jews for Jesus is the idea that somehow Jews are poor deluded souls who’ve missed the boat, and now compassionate Christians, the true heirs to God’s covenant, must stoop to show them the error of their ways. Yuck.
I’m not trying to argue that Jesus was the messiah, either. Frankly, I’m not convinced of that myself. I’m trying to understand why he is somehow excluded from the list of possibilities. I checked into this thread out of sheer curiosity, and was frustrated when the reasons given to a previous poster didn’t make sense to me, and asked for clarification and instruction. I haven’t received it.
You’re right, SpoilerVirgin, it was an interesting read, and definitely confirmed my dislike of J for J.
I found lots of good examples of Christian beliefs that don’t agree with Jewish beliefs. I found lots of reasons why Jews for Jesus could be more realistically called converts to Christianity than Jews. But I only ran across one reason why Jews couldn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah that wasn’t circular. It was this:
So, does that mean that in my hypothetical situation above, the Jews who believe that Smith is the messiah are no longer Jews, regardless of their observance of the law, or their theology? What will happen when the messiah finally does come? Will all Jews suddenly not be Jews any more?
And when the messiah comes, how will you know him?
For that matter, do Jews believe that when that happy day comes, the laws will no longer apply? I’ve always assumed that this was part and parcel of the whole movement to ease up membership restrictions, and an excuse for how one could claim to be the inheritor of the Jewish Covenant but not actually do anything Jewish.
The thread you directed me to also demonstrated one of the reasons I’m somewhat morbidly intrigued by the distinctions of who’s a “real (whatever)” and who’s not. Being raised Catholic, it’s impossible not to know that whole segments of the population are convinced that Catholics aren’t “real” Christians. I’m severely out of practice as a Catholic, but I remain intrigued by where people draw such distinctions and why they draw them there, and not somewhere else, if that makes any sense. I don’t think that’s very clear–I’m now officially up too late. I’m referring to the poster who said that someone who believed the Jews were already saved couldn’t be a “real” Christian. Anyway, that’s why I’m so intrigued by this.
In case anyone’s interested, my organization, Christians Against Christ, has 150 metric tons of pamphlets and tracts loaded in the bomb bays. Prepare to be saved.
First off, I should point out that I don’t really have a dog in this fight. Me, I’m an atheist.
Seems to me that we have a problem of semantics. How do you define “Jew”? And perhaps as importantly, who gets to define “Jew”?
Jesus seemed to think that his teachings were a continuation of Judaism:
(Matthew 5:17)
Now why couldn’t someone call themselves a “Jew” and follow that line of reasoning? Who gets to decide that, well no, they’re not a Jew? Why couldn’t Christianity be considered a sect of Judaism for that matter? Isn’t that a fair description?
One more thought question: Weren’t Jesus’s twelve apostles “Jews for Jesus?”
Like I said, I think it’s all a matter of semantics, and who gets to create the definitions.
I could be wrong, but I believe there is a group called Messianic Jews, or rather, Jewish Christians, who believe in Christ, but still practice certain Jewish traditions.
It’s funny though-Jesus probably believed he was the Son of God, and so did his Mother, but they’re both Jews, so…
I guess you could call yourself a Christian, but who keeps Jewish traditions because you want to. Or something…
I don’t think that the doctrine of original sin is common to all Christian faiths, but neither is it restricted to the Roman Catholic church. This issue came up as a side-bar in this thread: Did Jesus Have Sisters?. It appears that Anglicans and Methodists continues to recognize the doctrine, but Luther, Calvin and Zwingli modified or denied the doctrine, as aspects of their doctrines of salvation by grace alone (Luther) or predestination (Calvin).
Have no idea where the Orthodox churches stand on this issue.
According to this site, the Eastern Orthodox Church does.
I would be willing to bet that the majority of Protestant denominations do subscribe to the doctrine of Original Sin.
Still, Orignal Sin doesn’t really have anything to do with Jesus’ eligibility for messiahood. The early church did not have such a doctrine. They held that the sin of Adam and Eve brought death into the world, and that Jesus had, by conquering sin, actually conquered death. Anyone saved by him would not die. Literally. As time went by, this idea seemed less and less valid, and Christians had to come up with a new interpretation. Christians still had to answer the question of what, actually had Christ saved us from, if not from literal, physical death? And why, if his arrival and departure were supposed to fix everything, did bad things still happen, often to people who one would think were entirely innocent–newborn babies, for example. Original Sin became the prevailing answer to those questions. It’s not the only way to answer the questions, as evidenced by those Christian sects that don’t embrace the doctrine. But belief in Original Sin is not neccesary for belief that Jesus is the messiah.
[Moderator watch ON]
This is a great discussion, but it’s not really a GQ any more (if it ever was). I’m moving it to GD.
[Moderator watch OFF]
Meanwhile, I’m left wondering a few things. First off, why are religions necessarily mutually exclusive? I realize that there’s some which are opposed on key, defining features, but that’s not the case for all. As I understand it (as explained by several of the orthodox Jews on this board), Judaism is a religion defined not by beliefs, but by practices: If you keep the Mosaic Law, then you’re a Jew. Christianity, meanwhile, is a religion defined by belief: If you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then you’re a Christian. If a person follows the Mosaic Law and believes that Jesus is the Messiah, then it seems to me that that person meets the criteria for both religions. It’s sort of like a dual citizenship. I will admit, though, that it rather says something about the “Jews for Jesus” organization specifically, that it wasn’t founded by a Jew.
By the way, and this is a bit of a quibble, but it’s not really meaningful to ask whether Christ was the Messiah. The question is whether Jesus was the Christ, since of course, “Christ” is just the Greek word for “Messiah”, or “Annointed One”. It seems to me that in a debate like this one, it’s best to keep one’s terms precise.
Wow. This will mark the second time that a point or points made in a debate here have caused me to change my opinion. Chronos, thank you. Your argument seems unassailable.
I don’t know that believing that Jesus was the messiah is considered the sole criteria for Christianity, though, Chronos. I think you’re also supposed to believe He was God and He died for your sins. That last one seems to be losing favor with some more liberal Christians, but it seems you absolutely gotta believe at the very least that He was God to be considered “Christian”. I don’t think any Jew who believed that God could be a man would be considered in good religious standing by even the most liberal Jews. It is possible for someone born a Jew/converted to Judaism to believe in J.C. as the Son of God and messiah, but then they would be an apostate Jew practicing Christianity, not someone practicing Judaism and Christainity simultaneously. (And as an aside, following the mitzvot does not make you a Jew. I could practice all the mitzvoh perfectly, but I would still be a gentile. And in fact there are some gentiles who do follow the mitzvot–I forget the name of their group–but they’re not Jewish. You have to be born Jewish or convert to Judaism so that you have the obligation to follow the mitzvot to be a Jew, you can’t just start following the rules and poof you’re a Jew.)*
[sub]*IANAJ, as everybody probably well knows, so forgive me for any errors.[/sub]
I really like the phrase “Poof – you’re a Jew.” I’d like to be able to sneak up behind people and say “Poof – you’re a Jew,” and have them transform right before my very eyes. I would select people who were about to eat a ham sandwich or pork rinds, and they’d turn around and say, “Dammit, why did you do that? Now I can’t eat this!”
lestrange – this is what I was trying to answer when I talked about the 2000 years of Jewish history, although perhaps I didn’t make my point as clear as I might have. Were the situation you describe to occur, there would absolutely be a crisis in Judaism. I don’t know what the result would be. There might be two communities of Jews, a messianic one and a non-messianic one, or one of the two groups might ultimately end up thinking of themselves as Jews, while the other group would go on to form a fundamentally separate religion.
The question of whether Jesus was the messiah has been decided by the Jewish religion. The answer is no. Can an individual Jew believe this? Of course – we don’t have a Jewish thought police. But what drives me absolutely to the brink of insanity about Jews for Jesus is that they present the idea that Jesus is the messiah as a reasonable tenet of Judaism, which it is not. We’ve already been there and done that. The decision was made centuries ago – Jesus is NOT the Jewish messiah. If you believe that Jewsus IS the messiah, you’re not a Jew in the way that the religion has been recognized and practiced all this time.
Yes, but here’s the key. Can any church that does not believe in the divinity of Christ call itself “Christian”. How about a “Christians for the Invisible Pink Unicorn” that denies the existence of God, but still calls itself Christian. How would you feel about such a group handing out pamphlets and claiming that Christians who believe in Christ are merely poor unenlightened folks, while the real way of Christianity is to be atheists?
As Chronos pointed out, “Christ” by definition IS the messiah. The terms “Jesus” and “Christ” may be interchangeable for Christians, but for Jews they have very specific and different meanings. When I say “Jesus” I’m talking about the man (whom, btw, I do believe in, at least as far as I believe that such a historical person probably existed). When I say “Christ”, I’m talking specifically about Jesus as the messiah. Thus when I say “Jews can’t believe in Christ,” that is exactly the same as saying Jews can’t believe that “Jesus is the messiah.”
I’ll buy this. If someone wanted to make a reasoned argument for Jesus being the messiah as defined by the Jewish criteria outlined in the other thread, they might have an argument, if, as I said before, this possibility hadn’t been dismissed by Jews for 2000 years. But of course, we all know that Jews for Jesus are doing no such thing. They are trying to convince people that it is possible to be Jew (not just ethnically, but as a part of the Jewish religious community) and to simultaneously believe the Christian concept of Jesus as messiah, that is, as the Son of God.
There are enough areas of difference within the Jewish community without these wolves in sheeps clothing trying to convince Jews and non-Jews alike that Judaism is something that it is not.
There is actually very little mentioned about Jesus in the Talmud. He lived in the times of the Mishna, and there is not one mention of him in the Mishnah. There are a few possible references to him in the Talmud. One famous one has him being killed by the Jewish elders for heresy. There are, however, two problems with identifying him with Jesus. One is that the time period is wrong. This person lived about 150 years before Jesus lived. The other is that this person is recorded as having five desciples, not twelve.
In any event, Jesus (as recorded in the NT) advocated eating non-kosher food. He also violated the Sabbath. I highly doubt he would have been highly respected in the Jewish community of the day.
There are various reasons why Jews don’t accept Jesus as the messiah. Among them are:
Lineage
Was Jesus the Son of God? If so, then he can’t be the messiah. The messiah must come from David. (Note: Claims that Mary descended from David are discounted. Even if true, it does not matter. All lineage in the bible is paternal).
If you say he’s Joseph’s son, then he might qualify. (He may, however, get into trouble being descended from Jechoniah). But saying that he’s Joseph’s son (as opposed to God’s) sort of takes away the bluster from Christianity’s claims.)
Acts
Jesus, very simply, did not fulfill the acts that a messiah is supposed to fulfill. The Jews are still in exile, there is a distinct lack of world peace, not everyone is worshipping God, etc. In addition, there is no provision for a “second coming.” The messiah’s got to get everything right the first time around.
Personal behavior
Jesus advocated eating non-kosher food and violated the Sabbath. The messiah is someone who will observe Jewish law.
Ruling
The messiah will be a king. Jesus, clearly, was not a king. He ruled over no one and had no temporal authority.
In any event, lestrange since Jesus was deified by Christians, Jews cannot believe in Jesus as the messiah, since doing so would involve believing in the virgin birth, trinity, etc. (all of which run counter to Jewish teaching).
And, lestrange, of course once the messiah comes, that particular Article of Faith of Maimonides will be dropped. That should be obvious!
