Judahism and the Messiah

[Bookworm4Him]

I've always wondered why Jews are so adamant on Jesus NOT being the Messiah. Every prophecy in the Old Testament, which they Do believe, points to Him, and scientists found out mathmatically that the chance of Him fufilling every one of those prophesies is mathmatically impossible. So dont they believe in Him? I was told once that it was b/c they thought He would come and become King of the the World physically, and wipe out the Romans, and set up rule with the Jews, instead of being humble, and setting up rule spiritually. Does anyone have any other explanations?? I look forward to ya'lls feedback!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I've always wondered why Jews are so adamant on Jesus NOT being the Messiah. Every prophecy in the Old Testament, which they Do believe, points to Him, and scientists found out mathmatically that the chance of Him fufilling every one of those prophesies is mathmatically impossible. So dont they believe in Him? I was told once that it was b/c they thought He would come and become King of the the World physically, and wipe out the Romans, and set up rule with the Jews, instead of being humble, and setting up rule spiritually. Does anyone have any other explanations?? I look forward to ya'lls feedback!

I can't answer this in the theological way you would wish, but I hope you can enjoy this:

A stranger came to visit someone in the city of Chelm. Outside the gate to the city he noticed a man sitting patiently. Several days later, when the stranger left, the man was still sitting there.

“Excuse me,” the stranger asked, “but what are you doing here?”

“I’m paid by the city to watch for the Messiah,” said the seated man.

“Really? Do they pay you for that?”

“I get three herrings a year,” said the seated man.

“That’s not very much,” said the stranger.

“Maybe not, but it’s steady work.”

[Redzeppelin]

The simple answer:

Jesus didn't do what the Jews wanted him to do - which was overthrow the Roman government and establish his kingdom on earth. As well, Christ's submissive death went against this image of the Messiah as the conquering King. And - the religious authorities of the time (Pharisees) rejected him.

[Mr. Dr. Ralph]

I don't think Jews adamantly claim this; I am under the impression that he simply isn't very relevant to their beliefs.

[aabbcc]

(NB! Disclaimer: I am not a schooled theologist, and some things I say may differ from the 'official' Jewish doctrine)

Longer version of the explanation would require a thesis, so here is the shortest elaboration possible.
Let us translate the concept of 'Messiah' to modern terms. There are some 'prerequisites' needed for you to 'qualify' for a Messiah. (Sounds cooler this way. :D) From the Jewish perspective, the person known in history significantly after his supposed time as Jesus of Nazaret, did not qualify because not all of the prerequisites were fulfilled, just as myriad of other supposed 'Messiah's throughout history did not.

0*) At the time we speak of, the territory we speak of, known as Judea, was Roman province. And as well all know from elementary school, both Jewish and Roman were very literate civilisations. Not only in sense of writing literate and religious works - both civilisations had written descriptions with lists of places and rather accurate maps, yet ...
OT in certain places (I think it is Joshua, but don't have next to me any of my Bibles to check) lists conquered places, Nazaret nowhere.
Jewish sources list towns and cities of Galileia, Nazaret nowhere.
The Romans were rather meticulous birocrates, yet Nazaret nowhere.
Old geographers and historians, despite their detailed descriptions, what a surprise, do not mention Nazaret.
In fact, you cannot find any track of it in any reliable source till... fourth century AD? Something of the kind.

Let us assume Nazaret was some miniature village in the middle of nowhere nobody cared about, so that it could have been missing from those sources. Yet, if you think it through, you come to a conclusion that it could not have been an insignificant little village and thus not be mentioned. To start with, it had to have a synagogue, from which Jesus was expelled (only this in fact would make it appear in those sources). When somebody who dwelled in such a small place used to tell people where he was from, he certainly was not telling that he was "of Nazaret", because that would say nothing to people, he would mention the nearest greater city; so by declaring somebody as "Jesus of Nazaret", his biographers assume Nazaret as not so tiny. Furthermore, an interesting detail I came across being pointed once on one Croatian forum - when he was thrown off the cliff, it must have been a rather big walk, given that the nearest cliff is some... four chilometers away? Distant even for our standards, let alone the standards of the time.

So, even before addressing prerequisites for Messiah, we come to conclusion that something here does not really look promissing.
And the prophecy of the man from Nazaret which Matthew refers to, cannot be found in OT. As that same poster who noted the 4-km curiosity mentioned, the only place possible Matthew refers to is the episode with Samson who was Nazaren, which cannot possibly be the prophecy for Messiah, if you read it, so it is more likely that Matthew didn't know Hebrew and wrote nonsense.
And all we do know about the historical person of Jesus of 'Nazaret' comes from sources of similar 'reliability'...

But alright, let us assume them as reliable sources and see what Yehoshua does - or does not - fulfill...

1) Messiah is primarily supposed to be physical leader, a political leader to say so.
No raising the dead, walking on the water, or similar miracles are required; Messiah is 'only' supposed to bring together all Jews in the land of Israel [nb: some consider the times we live in to be Messianic times... :D], make out of them a good society and role model for the rest of the world to 'copy', and bring world peace.

Did it happen? Well... not really.
Are all the Jews brought to the land of Israel, told which tribe they belong to, etc? Well... not really.
Is the land of Israel a peaceful place? Well... you do watch the news, don't you?
Is the world a peaceful place? Well... you said you watched the news.

2) Messiah is supposed to rebuild the Temple to the so-called Third Temple.
Well... The Temple is still there, some of its walls at least. Not really rebuilt, and my friends from Israel haven't mentioned there are regular services led by some King. :D

3) What Jesus of 'Nazaret' did was to replace the concept of physical Temple with the concept of spiritual one. Just as he replaced the concept of chosen nation and national religion with multi-culti all-are-invited missionary religion. In other words, he was changing the doctrine, which is not supposed to be done by Messiah.
Messiah is supposed to come to fulfill doctrine, not to change it in the least points - especially the crucial ones as those are.

4) One of the 'prophecies' Christians love to bring as an example of the fulfilled one - Messiah is supposed to be born by virgin mother?
Yeah, those kind of things tend to occur when you aren't careful enough about translation... That's an error in Greek translation, which has been repeatedly appearing in other translations, Greek-derived ones, and which is taken as a fact today. However, the original Hebrew does not mention 'virgin' mother, but young girl.

5) Messiah is not supposed to be G-d; he is supposed to be another entity. No G-d/Man/Spirit trio, nor only G-d/Man trio.
G-d is one, and Christians changed this fundamental doctrine of judaism by proposing a concept of Messiah who is of divine as well as human nature.
MESSIAH IS NOT G-D.

What Christians and Jews both agree is that G-d is unique, in sense that there is not other creature as G-d; what they don't is G-d's oneness. I won't go into the tracks of paganism and other cultural influences in the doctrine of Trinity (which was considered heresy by the church for a long time, btw!), but the doctrine of Trinity beats the monotheism in its full sense of One G-d.
Messiah isn't G-d, nobody is.

---
I could write many more things, but let's say that these few concepts are enough to get a general albeit simplified idea of what's behind it, or, in shortest terms, what Redzeppelin said.

I hope it helps.

[hellsapoppin]

A while ago I read an article about this issue though for the life I cannot remember its source. Briefly, some Jews did not accept Jesus as messiah because he did not reestablish the Kingdom as was expected.

In Acts 1:4, 6, we see certain new converts who were anticipating the ''fulfilled promise of the Father'' ask, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

The reply was not what they expected as they were anticipating an immediate restoration. Several times throughout the New Testament, the apostles repeat what appear to be assurances that the Kingdom was at hand. Yet, it was never fufilled. Since Jesus failed to fulfill that promise, he was not accepted as messiah.

Please note how the Bible indicates that only the messiah can reestablish that kingdom in Daniel 7:13 and II Samuel 7:11-16. It cannot be done through human agency.

[Drkshadow03]

Classical Judaism believes the Messiah will come only once and there will be peace on Earth, all disease, war, famine ended, and our suffering relieved. This particularly reflects the Orthodox view and some Conservative forms of Judaism.

Since that hasn't happened yet most Jews do not believe the Messiah has arrived. That's what most people have pointed out thus far in the thread, but there is much more to it than that.

I should add Reform Judaism believes more in Tikkun Olam (fixing/healing/repairing the world). In other words, that the kingdom on earth can be achieved through human agency and that we each have the potential to be Messiah, and that there have been a lot of Messiahs throughout history (this will be explained a bit further below when I talk about the Hebrew word for Messiah)

Secondly, prophets and prophecies are understood differently in Judaism. The prophets as understood in most forms of Judaism were divine political rabble-rousers rather than soothsayers who could see the future. Christians view many of the prophecies as literal prophecies referring to some far-off future (the time of Jesus), while Jews view the prophecies as ethical exhortations, divinely inspired truth-telling as a social virtue, especially referring to their specific cultural moment under Babylonian/Assyrian/Roman rule. So a lot of lines supposedly referring to Jesus read differently when read from a Jewish perspective, not referring to some far off king to come necessarily, but the historical period at that moment and the unethical behavior. They are more ethical and historical for Jews than future prophecies that needed to be fulfilled.

Third, if you have ever read both the translations of King James Bible (or some other variant) and the JPS Tanakh side by side, and you compared Isaiah chapters 7 and 53, both filled with "Messiah" references you'd find they read extremely differently in both books because of translation differences. It's almost like reading two entirely different books, that's how different the word choices are from each other, which of course will lead to very different readings (it would be extremely hard for me to read the lines in King James and not take the prophecies as blatantly referring to Jesus even though I'm a Jew, likewise in the Tanakh the lines don't seem to refer to Jesus or sometimes even a future king at all, but often the land of Israel in general).

So it's not exactly a matter of reading the same prophecies and coming to different conclusions. It's even trickier than that. In many ways even though we're reading the same book it's almost like we're reading entirely different books because of how they are translated.

Fourth, Messiah comes from the Hebrew word Moshiach, which literally means "anointed one." The word appears in the Bible multiple times referring to King David, Saul, some of the Priests I think (pretty much any time you see the word 'anointed'). The word was never meant to initially refer to some specific being, but was always just a Hebrew word that referred to the chosen one(s) of God during different time periods. In all fairness, certain Jewish strains particularly Orthodox have taken up this concept of a literal Messiah, a literal figure that will show up one day and bring peace on Earth, but really it still needs to be seen in the context that it is just a Hebrew word referring to lots of different figures in the Bible.

Fifth, Judaism has a very different cosmogony than Christianity. An important part of Christian cosmogony is Original Sin (which is part of explaining the necessity of Jesus who died for those sins). Jewish cosmogony centrally focuses on Genesis 1. (Let there be light, and it was good. Let there be earth and water, and it was good. God created man, and it was good.) The world, the order of things, is centrally good. Since human beings are a part of the order of things they too are centrally good. This is almost a complete antithesis from Christian Original Sin doctrine. One says humans are centrally good, the other that humans are centrally sinful. This is not to say that Jews do not believe in sin at all (we do, otherwise you wouldn't need a Messiah would you if everything was always peachy keen), or that Christians don't believe that human beings can be mostly good despite the taint of original sin. The belief refers instead to what each believes is at the core of human nature. More importantly this cosmogonic differences has implications on the cosmological spiritual structures of the universe.

Christianity tends to believe that this life is a sort of practice run until Christians get into heaven through the belief in Jesus and expiation of their sins through that belief. Belief in Jesus is central for getting into heaven, but mostly it emphasizes the religion's focus on getting into heaven. The Jesus ressurection story is central for understanding how this all works, and what awaits.

Judaism isn't centrally concerned about an afterlife, but is centrally concerned with this world and making it a better place. Instead of internal faith, Judaism also focuses on mitzvot, good deeds (this is how we express our faith concretely and loyalty to what we see as God's vision of the world). You can see in this why our conceptualization of Messiah would be very different from a divine savior that dies for our sins. First, we don't believe in Original Sin. We believe if we sin we can make a direct appeal to God for our sins (during Yom Kippur, and in private prayer), not to mention a great deal of what would be called sinful in many forms of Christianity in the first place wouldn't be considered sinful in Judaism. Second, since there isn't an emphasis on getting into heaven or necessarily a belief that there is a heaven where souls go after they die, such a religion doesn't centrally need a savior who acts as a direct route to a place they aren't very concerned about. In fact, there are many Jews who do not believe in afterlife at all (though, there are many who do). Even when resurrection is believed by Orthodox and Conservative Jews it is a wordly resurrection, literally your dead body will rise up from the ground and be healed. What Jews believe about the afterlife is a tad complex because there is no central dogma about it (mostly because it's not a central focus), so every Jew has there own opinion/view/interpretation about what happens when you die.

Jews believe we need to make a paradise of this world in the image of God, in peace and prosperity and love for all who suffer where followers of all religions and even atheists will have a piece of the world to come.

Another major part of Genesis for Jews is the repeated theme that human beings shall not be like God (Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, various times people try to mate with angels, etc.). More important to Jewish central beliefs is that Jews shall not worship false idols (the Golden calf story, the literal laws saying exactly that in Exodus and Deutoronomy, the repetition of this central sin in the Book of Kings and later books that leads to Israel losing the protection and favor of God for a little while). You combine this idea that human beings shall not be like God and do not worship false idols law, you have the exact explanation why it is very difficult for Jews to believe in Jesus as Messiah or God in the flesh.

The very idea of man as God would border on the sacrilege for Jews. It would be literally incomprensible for Jews to understand or believe in the trinity (in many ways it would go against everything they believe). To worship a man like Jesus as God in the flesh would be the equivalent to worshipping a false idol for the Jews--one of the worst possible sins a Jew could possibly commit.

When and if a messiah ever comes he will just be another human being, not divine in any way, only annointed by God.

This is not in any way an attack on Christian beliefs, but I'm trying to answer your question as straightforward as possible why it would be impossible for Jews to believe in Jesus. It would quite literally go against our core beliefs at the heart of Judaism.

Does that answer your questions?

[blazeofglory]

In point of fact there are nuances of doubt and in spirituality in the argument. Spirituality must be clean of doubt. We all, Jews or Christians or Hindus or Muslims or any other faith holders all come from the same source. Why disputes as religions are human inventions and let us rise above all these limitations and feel at one with all.

[hellsapoppin]

Another sterling post by Drkshadow. I do not believe I have ever seen more insightful posts by anyone in any forum in such a short time frame.

I would just like to add that from my past readings of the Old Testament, the messiah was slated to emerge some time around the birth of Jesus who was called Yahshuah in his time. There could not have been a "Jesus" since the person who is commonly called by this name was a Jew and there is no letter "J" in the Greek or Hebrew language. Therefore, he could not have had this name.

I have my doubts as to whether Yahshuah was Messiah because his miracle workers do not exist or have never been manifestly presented to me. Moreover, he did not reestablish the Kingdom as was promised in the Bible.

[aabbcc]

There could not have been a "Jesus" since the person who is commonly called by this name was a Jew and there is no letter "J" in the Greek or Hebrew language. Therefore, he could not have had this name.

On the contrary, Yehoshua, which is Jesus' name in Hebrew, was a rather widespread name. And the letter "J" exists both in Greek and Hebrew - ever heard of jota and jud?

I agree with your point, though.

[El Viejo]

Are there any of the Jewish faith here? Of any sect?

The times I've talked with Rabbis about the Messiah I got the sense that they were far less certain about the scriptural facts than Christians.

[aabbcc]

Are there any of the Jewish faith here? Of any sect?
I am Jewish by halacha (Jewish law), because my mother is Jewish, but I am not religious (nor is my mother, we are both Jews only because halacha says so), my father has nothing to do with judaism, and I never lived in Israel or a community where the majority of people around me were Jewish (I lived in Catholic and Orthodox Christian countries), so I grew up almost entirely without any contact with judaism. It was only in my teens when I started being curious about it, but purely academically, and when I started talking to rabbis, asking questions, learning about it, etc. Prior to that, I was primarily exposed to Catholicism, and that was religion I knew the best (I even attended Catholic RE as a child for a while), even though I was not baptised nor religious in that religion.

So technically, I am Jewish who does not consider herself Jewish (I always declare myself as Italian, in accordance with my father's culture and nationality) and is not religious, but knows a few information about those stuff.

[hellsapoppin]

On the contrary, Yehoshua, which is Jesus' name in Hebrew, was a rather widespread name. And the letter "J" exists both in Greek and Hebrew - ever heard of jota and jud?

I agree with your point, though.



Article: There’s No “J” in Hebrew, Greek or Latin!

http://www.remnantofyhwh.com/Backup%20of%20No%20J%20in%20Hebrew.htm


I have no expertise on these languages and rely on what I have read in the past. There are many article that discuss the matter. But at least we agree on the subject.

[aabbcc]

... And still we agree. ;)
I read the link, and figured where was the misunderstanding - when speaking of jota and jud, I automatically supposed you would know I meant their reading 'value' of "Y" in "yes", not of standard English "J". I also write Jahweh (actually I write Jahve...), but I always read that "J" as "Y", and it is so normal for me, that it never really crossed my mind that in English it is read with J.
From your post I thought you simply meant that there could not have been Hebrew variant of the name, I didn't figure you were speaking of phonetic values of letters. My bad, sorry. :D

[Drkshadow03]

I'm Jewish.

[El Viejo]

I'm Jewish.

Thank you, Anastasija and Drkshadow03, for your thoughtful and informative replies.

Antiquarian, do you have anything to add? I'd be interested in reading it.

[El Viejo]

Thank you for asking. :) Most of it has been said in previous posts.

:)

EV

[Wintermute]

. . . and scientists found out mathmatically that the chance of Him fufilling every one of those prophesies is mathmatically impossible.

Hi Bookworm,

What scientists found this out mathematically? Please point to your source, I'd love to read the journal. Was it a peer-reviewed journal?

Also, if you don't mind, provide a list of these prophesies. If you don't want to type them out, can you give me a link to them and hopefully how Christ fullfilled them. If you can, it would be nice to have a more concise, enumerated list, rather than just pointing to a portion of the bible. I'm sure the scientists must have had such a list in order to make the calculation that it was mathematically impossible.

Anyway, thanks in advance for the material I have requested.

Peace,
Doug

[hellsapoppin]

"Are there any of the Jewish faith here? Of any sect?"


My ancestry on both parent's sides is Sephardic Jewish converso. This means they were forced into Catholicism by the Inquisition.