The Scotsman fallacy does not apply to Messianic Jews. The Jewish Messiah is not God, therefore the worship of Jesus contradicts the most basic monotheistic tenants of Judaism. It’s not a small thing. It’s like saying you’re a Muslim but you think the real Prophet was Elvis and that he died for your sins and his spirit still lives at Graceland. You have now left Islam behind and become something else.
No. It would, however, qualify as a belief in a false messiah. Since the messianic age has clearly not arrived (even most Christians would agree on this, no?), then it is obvious that according to Judaism, Jesus was no more the messiah than Shabbatai Tzvi, Bar Kochba and others were.
Zev Steinhardt
Susma,
Firstly, I want to apologize if I came off sounding a bit harsh to you in my last post. That certainly wasn’t my intent. And I thank you for your kind comments.
If you want to learn about Judaism, that’s fine and well. Feel free to ask questions and either I or one of the other Jewish Dopers on these boards will answer you to the best of our abilities. However, you tend to have a habit of posting “facts” that you believe are true even if they aren’t.
I don’t know much past thing one about Hinduism. However, you won’t catch me posting two or three paragraphs about it and then adding the disclaimer “If I erred, please correct me…” If I want to know about Hinduism, I’d ask, rather than posting paragraphs about it.
WRT your “fact:” I’m not certain that it is true. I am certainly open to the possibility that it may be true, but I will ask you to provide better substantiation to it.
Zev Steinhardt
Dio:
I see your point. But are people Muslim by birth?
I guess I would consider the Elvis branch of Islam to be “Unorthodox Muslims.” 
Zoe, I’m drawing a distinction between ethnic Jews and religious Jews…and trust me, Islam decidedly would NOT accept an Elvis worshipper as a Muslim.
But does it matter if Islam actually accepts you? There are Christians here who do not accept me as a Christian. That doesn’t mean I’m not one.
But I acknowledge that I am stretching things a bit.
I guess you can say you’re whatever you want but the difference between Messianic Jews and Jews is greater than that between liberal and conservative Christians.
I don’t know what else to say but that Orthodox, Conservative anf Reform Jews all reject Messianic Jews as being Jewish. Messianic Jews are also not allowed citizenship in Israel under the Law of return. I think if basically 100% of the faith is saying you don’t gibe with their doctrines then maybe you should seriously consider that they’re right.
Messianic Jews are Christians, by definition. They worship Jesus.
How far away from Christian doctrine would someone have to get before you would say that they’re not Christian? What if they don’t think Jesus was God or the Messiah? What if they think the crucifixion was meaningless? What if they think Jesus was an alien? At what point do you say, ok they’ve gone into a different realm at this point. What to you defines a “Christian?”
DtC- I guess the bare minimum belief-standards for being a Christian IMO (& I think the NT backs me up on this) are - that Jesus is the Anointed/Messiah, the unique Son of God (the fullest revelation of God made in human life, whether or not one believes JC is God or just the Next Best Thing to God- as the JWs do), that he died to somehow save us from our sins, & that he really did rise from the dead to give us Eternal Life. Oh yeah- and that Jesus’s Father-God is the God of the Hebrew Scriptures (thus eliminating the anti-OT Gnostics & Marcionites).
Thus, for example, while I differ with them a lot, I think JWs & original Unitarians (even Arians) can be considered C’tians, but many modern Unitarians aren’t.
Behaviorally, striving to follow the Two Main Commandments, the Ten (with varied interpretations of the Sabbath one), & the Noahic Laws are the main criteria. (And since sexuality is the most controversial moral issue today- I think the minimum standard is committed monogamous behavior- with the ideal being heterosexual marriage or abstinence.)
Regarding Messianic Jews, I do believe they are Biblical Jews & definitely ethnic Jews- however, I have to concur that they are not Rabbinic/Talmudic/post-70CE religiously Jewish. I will defend this on the basis of the Hebrew Scriptures in that there is no passage that actually says “Messiah will defeat Israel’s enemies & raise the dead & bring world peace” just as much as there is no passage that actually says “Messiah will be God incarnate, die for the sins of humanity & rise from the dead”. We both take various passages of the Tanakh & apply them to Messiah when they actually say that the Lord or David (in Ezekiel) or the Lord’s Servant (in Isaiah) will do thus & so. Of course, Daniel 9 does say that 69X7 years from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem that a Messiah Prince will come, be cut off, & that afterwards (with a 70th 7 year period concluding the process) the City will be destroyed & the Sanctuary desecrated- which I regard as a definite reference to Jesus & the aftermath of the Priestly rejection of him & his apostles.
No, they’d just be wrong.
No, seriously, they would. I’m not as up on some things as I should be, but even I’m aware that the Jewish Messiah is a king and a general type, who will lead the Jewish People back to their kingdom, rebuild the temple, and so forth.
(Zev? Oh, hey, Zev, had a question a while back you never answered… Can an Orthodox Jew work in a bank, as he will be charging interest to people of various religions, including, presumably, other Orthodox Jews?)
I think that Friar Ted’s definition in the first paragraph of his post above is a pretty fair first cut at writing doctrinal minima – bearing in mind that there will be people who will have non-standard interpretations even of those; whoever is prepared to give assent to them, even with understood reservations, would fit my concept of what is a Christian. Not that FriarTed, His4Ever, the Pope, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Franklin Graham, or any other human being has any business judging who is or is not a Christian – the Good Shepherd knows his own sheep, and we may all be very surporised at who goes to which hand at the Last Judgment!
If the good Friar has no objections, I’d suggest one emendation: “…Son of God in a unique way…” since in a quite real sense, founded on Paul, all baptized Christians are “sons and daughters of God by adoption and grace” and the point was that Jesus was the One Sent whose Atonement paved the way for others to be adopted into the Body. To quote one of the Fathers, “He became was we are that we might becomes as He is.”
Oh, and Zev and Diogenes? Obviously, the folks who believe that “There is no god but Allah, and Elvis is His prophet” would be Presleytarians! 
( ;;; sings “Goin’ down to Gracland, Graceland…”)
Hey!
Don’t you people know that this is NOT a religious debate?
So cut it out.
About the differences between Catholics and Protestants and all other Christians combined, as requested by Inari:
There is only one big big difference, and that one is the Rule of Thumb for all others, and it is this:
Catholics believe that the Pope in the Vatican is the successor of St. Peter, therefore he is the Vicar of Christ, Who is God; and consequently, the Pope is the sole agent of God on earth. Everything he says is from God, although some of them are not infallible unless he speaks from his seat also called his * cathedra*.
All other Christians don’t accept that number 1 doctine of the Vatican Roman Catholic Church of the Latin Rite. Orthodox churches in communion with Vatican Rome also accept that belief whatever they maintain of their other beliefs and observances; so that when push comes to shove, they have to submit to the Pope.
Susma Rio Sep
Dear Zev:
About Jews in Israel claiming territory on the basis of the promise from God to Moses and Abraham, or even generally religious Jews having that kind of a claim, I thought that’s the general stock knowledge of most people reading current events in journalistic media. You as one versed in the true picture of Jews can disabuse us of that fallacy if fallacy it be, at least you can enlighten me.
And Zev, however much people like to say that they are talking from ‘facts’, the fact is that everyone talks from what’s in their understanding, it can’t be otherwise; and you and me, at least we know that to talk from one’s understanding of ‘facts’ is to talk opinions essentially. Now, I for one also talk from ‘facts’ as I know them from bona fide reading, always of course with a cup of skepticism, but then what else is there . . .
And that is why I am always at least implicitly looking for corrections or disabusement of my “facts-opinions”. And as a curious learner I get to know more and more of how other people understand their ‘facts’ which do appear in many instances to be more factual than mine, and I am happy for myself and for others here who are true seekers of knowledge.
So, do I get your explanations on the issue that Jews claim territory on the basis of the promise of God to Moses and Abraham? And please don’t ask me for cites; because there are people here who will then dismiss the cites and dismiss more cites . . . You have heard of that allegation, I am sure. You will do all of us here a good job of disabusement, as one versed in facts of Jews. And I assure you that I have nothing against Jews, if anything for all their persecutions, they are still some of the best minds of mankind.
Susma Rio Sep
Y’know, Susma, you keep refering to yourself as a “postgraduate Catholic,” but the more you post on Catholicism and its teachings, the more you simply look like a dropout. (I have no problem with dropouts; if a person finds himself or herself at odds with the church, I truly believe they are better off looking elsewhere, but postgraduate implies that you mastered the material, to begin with, and you have not.)
There is no teaching, belief, understanding, or tradition that claims everything the pope says is “from God.” There is simply not. In the same vein, there is simply no place where the RCC has ever claimed that “the Pope is the sole agent of God on earth.” This is simply not true (and is as silly as your repeated implication in other threads that the RCC teaches that one must rigidly follow Catholic doctrine to enter heaven).
There are no Orthodox churches (where Orthodox refers to one of the three great divisions of Christianity) that are “in communion with the Vatican.” What I suppose you are claiming is that the Eastern Rite Churches of the Catholic Church (where Catholic refers to one of the three great divisions of Christianity) do accept the primacy of the Pope in matters of Faith and Morals and also as the ultimate arbiter of religious discussions. The Eastern Rite churches would include the Maronites, the Greek Catholics (not Greek Orthodox), the Chaldean Rite, and a couple of others. They are not, however, identified as “Orthodox.”
A Jew … working in a bank …
I’m not gonna touch this with a 10-foot stereotype!
Dear Tom:
I will get back to you as soon as I have checked my old college notes, about the Pope being the exclusive agent of God on earth and the Orthodox churches, the ones that submit to the Pope.
Thanks for your reprimand, it serves a very constructive purpose for my continuing education, or re-education (he he he).
But I want you to know that I don’t now subscribe to the teachings of the Catholic Church – not really oppose, as that I am indifferent to them; I just claim to know or to remember what I learned from Catholic magisterial mentors, who were doctors of all stripes from duly authorized pontifical universities and weighty secular seats of learning having histories of almost over a thousand years.
Best regards,
Susma Rio Sep
PS: Don’t lose your composure, though.
**
Susma, I wasn’t arguing with you on the fact that we base our claim on a Biblical promise. I was arguing with your claim that the Jews are the only people in the world who base a claim on a similar idea.
Have you tried to enter Mecca lately? You can’t, you know. Muslims believe that it is for Muslims only, based on the Qu’ran.
**
Yes, but you’ve been consistenly wrong on your “fact-opinions” of Judaism…
Zev Steinhardt
Please email me, E-Sabbath.
Zev Steinhardt
\
Tracer, you should know better than that. The reason for the money-grubbing stereotype is because both jews and christians were forbidden to practice usury on co-religionists. In practice at the time was the definition of usury meaning any interest at all. Thus, you have the great jewish bankers lending money to christian kings… who tended to scapegoat them after the debt got too large, but that’s another story. Zev mentioned that orthodox jews… one moment, getting other thread…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3610088#post3610088
have not neglected the prohibition. I’m just curious what that means in today’s financial world. I like knowing how rules work. It’s the wargamer in me.
Mailed and topic dropped.