From RE classes at school the difference between Judaism and Christianity is that for Jews the bible stops at the end of the Old Testament and although Jesus was a prophet he was not their Messiah, Judaism’s Messiah being a warrior who would lead them to victory or something.
Now since the creation of Israel there have been some pretty spectacular military acts to save their nation (although a lot of it came form the US.) Are Jews any closer to saying “Hey he must be our Messiah because of his warrior attributes” or is he meant to stay a metaphorical figure for ever?
Rambam said WRT Messiah:
Ergo, no Israeli military or political figure having yet appeared may be consider Messiah.
**
I’m afraid you’re misinformed. There is no branch of Judaism that holds that Jesus was a prophet at all.
**
As you can see from Akatsukami’s quote from the Rambam (Maimonides), the messiah will be a military and religious leader. There is no one, to my knowledge, who currently fits this bill
According to Orthodox beliefs, the messiah is not a metaphor at all.
Zev Steinhardt
… he’s a very naughty boy!
(sorry, just couldn’t resist!)
Without getting into too much detail about Judaism’s messianic beliefs, there is a kabbalistic idea that there is a Messiah the son of Joseph and a Messiah the son of David. The SoD is much more the classical Messiah, and the SoJ is more of a political leader.
From what I remember, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel eulogized Theodore Herzl as the Messiah son of Joseph.
<< There is no branch of Judaism that holds that Jesus was a prophet at all. >>
Agreeing with Zev on this, but feeling the need to expand or nit-pick. The term “prophet” in Judaism is limited to a fixed number of people, generally those included in the section of the Jewish Bible called “Prophets” – folks like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, etc. “Prophecy” for Judaism ended when the Bible was closed; there are no further prophets, not since (say roughly) 500 BC.
Thus, there is no major branch of Judaism who holds Jesus to have been a prophet. (Nitpicky exception: There are some very tiny sects of so-called “Messianic Jews” who try to merge Judaism with a belief that Jesus was the Messiah., I’m not sure whether they classify Jesus as a “prophet” or not.)
Many Jews accept that Jesus was a preacher or teacher who repeated (and sometimes re-interpreted) many ideas stated by the prophets.
The use of the word “prophet” in a non-religious sense (or a sense of future-predicting), however, has broader interpretation, and so one can speak of someone being
a prophet of the stock market, say.
On the broader question, Akatsukami has cited the reasons that no one has been accepted as Messiah, even though the state of Israel has been re-established after about 1900 years. A minor nit-pick is that there are tiny sects who think one religious leader or another is the Messiah; a Hasidic rabbi had a fairly strong following, which has (I think) continued even after his death a few years ago. However, such beliefs are far from mainstream.
Nitpicking your nitpick, CK, but if there is one thing that Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews agree on, it’s that “Messianic Judiasm” is not Judaism at all. The only people who recognize MJ as Judaism are the MJs themseleves.
Zev Steinhardt
Yeah, Zev, I thought of that before I added the comment, but… some/many of the soi-disent “Messianic Jews” are Jews by birth. Hence, I thought they deserve inclusion in the general category.
I’ve run into this before. A lot of folks confuse Judaism with Islam. They know some other major religion “sort of” believes in Jesus but can’t remember which one. In Islam, there are messengers and there are prophets. Messengers bring the word of Allah only to their people or a specific area. Such as Ezekial, Jeremiah, Isiah. Prophets bring Allah to the world, they’re for everybody. Jesus (otherwise known as Issa) is considered a high prophet in Islam. On par with Abraham, Moses, Adam, etc. But not as great as Muhammad - the last and greatest prophet of them all.
Popular Judaism really doesn’t have an opinion on Jesus one way or another. They’re still waiting for their Messiah. No one fits the bill yet…but for a short while in the early 80’s I was almost positive it was Freddie Mercury.
So to sum up. Judaism - no Jesus. Islam - Jesus is a prophet. Freddie Mercury - not the Messiah.
Yes, zev is correct. Some Jews do accept JC as a “rabbi”*- but the last “official” Prophet was long before JC’s time, which is when the made the division between the Torah and the Apocrypha. Thus, altho Maccabees is good solid & important Jewish history (and out of which comes the tradition of Hannukkah) it was after the time of the Prophets so it is not in the Jewish canon.
I have opined, that if not for the “Jesus=Messiah” rift, that JC would have gone down as a quoted rabbi, much like Hillel (altho not as great).
- but some consider him a “heretic”. The difference is whether or not JC actually claimed personally to be the Messiah, or whether he simply accepted the claim made by others. The first makes one a “heretic”, the second- you just join a long list of charismatic Rabbis who had such claims made for them- such as the Lubbavichers. (and i thought Hillel, but I can’t find my source. However, some did think that the line of Hillel would produce the Messiah)
Yes, Daniel, but as I told you before, neither Hillel nor Shammai (nor anyone else in the day) would have advocated breaking the Sabbath to eat (unless there was a danger of starvation, which, from the story, does not appear to be the case. Some of the positions that Jesus is said to have taken are clearly not halachic and as such, I highly doubt he would have gone down as a rabbi in the Talmud.
Zev Steinhardt