Jesus himself was of course Jew, and a Christian.
that was supposed to be A Jew, and a Christian
But- won’t, in theory, the Jewish Messiah come SOME day? Then, when He does, will not the waiting end? You can’t keep waiting for Him after he has come, ne? And, I think saying that the Messiah will never come also places one outside orthodox Judaism.
And, yes- Orthodox Jews would not accept someone who beleives Jesus was/is the Messiah- but some/many of them also refuse to accept those Reform Jews who converted into the faith. But, most everyone else would call them Jews, however.
I thought there were some odd Jewish sects that do think that the Messiah has come- wasn’t there one that thought their Rabbi was the Messiah? Are they not still “Jews”?
The line is a fine one. For me, I woudl say that if there was some sect that accept Jesus as the promised Jewish Messiah, but kept Kosher and all the other Laws- then they could be called “Christian Jews”. But that would be misleading & confusing to some.
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Correct on all counts. One day, he (and note the use of a lower case h) will come. Obviously then, that Article of Faith will be dropped. Likewise when the ressurection of the dead occurs, the one that says that one day God will revive the dead will be dropped as well.
The upshot, however, is that Maimonides had 1200 years of history to evaluate whether or not he thought Jesus was the messiah and he obviously rejected that notion. I am not about to start arguing with Maimonides on the subject.
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Not necessarily. To the best of my knowledge, Reform is the only major branch of Judaism that recognizes their own conversions.
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The only one that I can think of that you might be referring to is the Lubavitchers. However, it is a minority of them who so believe and those who do are in fact, “skirting the edges” so to say.
In any event, believing someone to be the messiah is not altogether a bad thing (provided there is grounds to believe so). Rabbi Akiva (one of the most famous and respected sages of the Talmud) thought that Bar Kochba was the messiah. However, when Bar Kochba was killed, he dropped the idea.
It depends on what accepting Jesus entails. If a Jew maintained that a fully human Jesus was the messiah, then he’d simply be mistaken. If, however, he maintains that Jesus is a part of the Trinity and the literal Son of God, then he’s completely out of the ballpark.
Zev Steinhardt
I think it’s fair to say that the idea of Jesus as the Son of God and a Divine part of the Trinity is violative of the First Commandment - at least, of the Jewish understanding of the First Commandment. G-d is G-d – there is no other.
That’s not what I said. What I meant was that if he walks around using the term “Jewish Christian” about Jews that have converted to Christianity, he should expect not to be taken seriously. I’m not saying we cannot discuss the topic, and frankly I can’t even see how the sentence I wrote can be construed that way.
OT figures performed miracles as a matter of course.It was understood that the power came from God. Parting the Red Sea dod not prove that Moses was God. As to the “authority” claimed in Mark, Jesus claims that authority not for himself, per se, but for the “Son of man.” The phrase Ben Adam (Adam means “man”) was not a titular reference to the messiah (although the authors of the gospels may have taken it that way) it was an Aramaic idiom for all mankind. Referring to “The son of Adam” was just a way of talking about human beings in general, which is why Jesus always uses it in the third person. The visions in Ezekiel is a metaphor for "man."Jesus was saying that humans had the authority to forgive the sins of others.
There is nothing in Hebrew scriptures which identifies “Son of man” as synomous with “Messiah” or “son of god.”
A discussion of “Son of man” from Jewish Encyclopedia.
A discussion of “Son of Man” in the Hebrew Bible.
I disagree. Dr. Pheme Perkins (professor of theology at Boston College) in her work Reading The New Testament explains that in the Jewish apocalyptic literature in the two centuries leading up to Jesus’ work, “son of man” was the chic term for “messiah.”
UnuMondo
Perkins is projecting a wishful Christian interpretation into the Hebrew scriptures. There is no Jewish scholarship which identifies “Son of Man” as the Messiah.
From the Jewish Encyclopedia linked above:
The term was just not used to refer to the Messiah in Jesus’ time. It had a centuries long tradition of being used as a generic reference to mankind as a whole. Jesus did not use the term as a titular reference to himself as the Messiah, but to express ideas about humanity as a whole. You can find Christian theologians who will try to reinterpret Hebrew scripture to force it to fit a pre-ordained Christian conclusion, but they are outside the mainstream of credible scholarship.
Gahh!! The Greek phrase above should say [symbol]Nios tou Anqrwpos[/symbol].
I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with Zev on this. Judaism is a religious system founded on the concept of keeping the Law out of love of a God who is wholly other, Creator to our created nature, and thereby of living a righteous life. And the unitary nature of that God, proclaimed originally against the idols, is key – see the Shema.
Christians, on the other hand, are convinced by honest introspection of the impossibility of keeping the Law in full, and of a God who expects them to do so, but recognizing the impossibility of it, has Himself paid the penalty for their offenses against it, taking their sin upon Himself and redeeming them (the Jewish concept of redemption is one that both faiths fail to pay attention to in these debates). He did this by taking upon Himself the nature of a human being. And while any statement regarding the Holy Trinity is either wrong through incompleteness or incomprehensibly paradoxical in its formulation, at rock bottom the Christian message is this: In Jesus, we see God, living and dying as one of us, that we might be reunited to Him.
For a Jew, to say that the Shem ha-YHWH became a human being is very much equivalent to saying that it resides in a Golden Calf, or Mount Sinai, or a burning bush, or in the Debir. There is in some ways a fundamental disconnect between the two belief systems.
Just to let everyone know, the Shima is probably the most important section of the Torah (If you could pick one line from the Torah to summarize Juadiam this absolutely is it). It is in Deuteronomy 6:4.
It says: “Hear oh Israel: The lord our god, the lord is one”.
Obviously any type of trinity would go directly against the Shima. We believe god is one, not three. Or two, or 25.
By the way, I came across this article from JfJ’s web site. Maybe Zev or someone else could explain why their reasoning about the trinity is wrong. It talks about how god’s name is often used plurally, and how the word “echad” (From “Shima echad”, “God is one) is used unionally (I don’t really buy that part. In English words like “bundle, family, and couple” are still singular”.)
Rico you speak the truth. Whenever someone ask me (who is Jewish) what do Jews think of Jesus, my reply is “He was an awesome Jew” Pretty much everything Jesus taught (love they neighbor, etc), Jews also believe in. It’s the stuff his apostles said that we don’t believe in.
On other point: An important piece of Judaism is the Torah (the 5 books of Moses). Jews believe (and in varying degrees depending on the sect, orthodox, conservative, reform, etc) that the Torah was given to Moses and is to be followed. No other books come before or after. Thus, Matthew, Luke, John, et al aren’t included.
Jews for Jesus is a group created and funded by one of the Baptist groups to convert Jews to Christianity without “freaking” them out. They such things as Passover sedars where the wine (which in Judaism represents the tears of slavery) is described as the blood Jesus shed on the cross. It is a pretty sick and evil group preying on (unfortunatly) the Jews who never learned about their religion.
A good book on the subject is <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0960475419/qid=1048963406/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_4/102-7907182-1542536?v=glance&s=books&n=507846”>You Take Jesus, I’ll Take God</A>
and a good person to hear talk is Tovia Singer, a rabbi who has a website: http://www.outreachjudaism.org/ , a radio show: http://www.toviasinger.com/ArchiveFrame.html and an FAQ: http://www.outreachjudaism.org/response.html
One more thing:
Jews are 1% of 1% of the worlds population. We have been attacked, degraded, rejected and ridiculed more and more often than most other groups.
Why do you want us to join your group so much?
:j
Although I agree with Polycarp’s assessment, I have to add that there is a dichotomy of faith within every Christian. Obviously our faith is founded upon Hebrew beliefs(And one assumes such a faith would extend to Judaism), however, in our belief that Jesus was the Messiah we differ. This belief is founded (Scripturally) on the idea that a) Jesus said He was, and b) He rose from the dead to prove that He was telling the truth.
You can argue the validity of the claims, but if ever a Christian lost their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, we would expect the first branch of faith to reinstate itself. IOW, if Jesus != Messiah, it does not follow that there is no God. So, we would be expected to walk into a synagogue, and return to mainstream Judaism, having been wrong in our choice of Messiah. Should this ever become necessary, I thank God that I was circumcised at birth.
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Perkins isn’t projecting a Christian interpretation onto anything. The most striking thing about this book is it isn’t written from a Christian viewpoint, but rather from a detached sociocultural view, much like scholars today write about Rastafarianism.
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Perkins isn’t talking about Hebrew scriptures as such, she’s talking about Jewish apocalyptic literature which was a split-off scene from mainstream Judaism. She sees Christianity as just another development of the apocalyptic beliefs of groups like the Essenes, who used “Son of Man” to mean “messiah”.
UnuMondo
But doesn’t the usage of “Son of Man” in Ezekiel refute this? Ezekiel was not the messiah, nor could he ever have hoped to have been (he was a kohen, and a kohen, not being a direct male-line descendant from David, could not be the messiah).
If “Son of Man” = “Messiah” then please explain it’s usage in Ezekiel.
Zev Steinhardt
Sometimes the meaning of words change. “Son of Man” meant something to mainstream Jews of the time from Ekzekiel, but something else to apocalypic communities who began to use the term for their own special meaning.
UnuMondo