These were learned Jewish Rabbis. It proves that the acceptance of Christianity is not based upon ignorance of Jewish scriptures and teachings.
You believe Jesus was the Messiah and was resurrected- and that is fine- whatever floats your boat. But it does not validate it for us…
It should not be my personal belief in Jesus that validates that He is the true Messiah but the testimony of the Apostles who were eye-witnesses to His teaching and Resurrection and who gave their lives for what they proclaimed. I notice that you always avoid this topic. No amount of wishing that it is not so can take away the strength of their testimony. Added to this, as I have said, is that God Himself has shown that the Mosaic covenant is no longer operative by destroying the Temple two thousand years ago, a Temple that has yet to be rebuilt despite the return of the Jews to the land of Israel.
… and when you proceed to tell us what our own scripture means, when it was written for Jews, by Jews, concerning Jews, and you can’t even read, speak, write or translate the Hebrew correctly, and the very sources you read it from are not translated correctly, it strikes us as being a tad idiotic.
These are just as much our scriptures as yours. As I have pointed out before, Christianity is a product of Judaism. It might comfort you to believe that it is merely a misguided product of the goyim, but this is not so. Jesus was a Jew; the Apostles were all Jews; Paul was a Jewish Rabbi trained by Gamaliel himself; many of the first generation of Christians were Jews, including priests from the Temple in Jerusalem. Try as you will, you cannot separate Christianity from its Jewish roots. Nor can you denigrate Christian understanding of the Scriptures by claiming we do not understand Hebrew. There are numberless Christian scholars that are well trained in Hebrew.
You know more about Judaism and Jewish scripture than a Rabbinic sage or scholar???? Now, that is very, very doubtful.
There are generations of Christian scholars who have dedicated their lives to the study of the Scriptures; and yes, though you can try to deny it, even in Hebrew. Jews do not have any special gene that allows them, and them alone, to understand the word of God. God is the Father of us all and does not hide Himself from any of His children. I do not cede any special prowess to Jews in the study of Scripture because they are Jews.
When we try to explain to you “ why” it or where it is incorrect, and what the mistranslations are, you completely ignore it.
No, you have tried to explain nothing; all you have done is insisit that your views are correct because this is what Jewish Rabbis teach and that I cannot possibly understand or respond because I am not a Jew. Nor have I ignored what you have said. I have tried to respond to your points. It is you who have ignored what I have said. Your attempts to badger me to accept the teachings of Jewish Rabbis because they have some sort of greater insight because they are Jews will gain you nothing.
The Mosaic Covenant is no longer operative??? The fact that Israel was reborn, the Jewish people have survived, and thrived as incredibly well as they do, and the nations who come against Israel are receiving judgments, is proof enough. My, my you are aare are a revisionist- replacement theorist, aren’t you....????
If it wasn’t operative, then the prophecies would not be taking place, and indeed they are.....like clockwork, and exactly as written. The Temple will be rebuilt when the true Moshiach comes. That is what was originally written in the original Hebrew.
There are 304,805 letters (approximately 79,000 words ) in the Torah. In the over 3,250 years since Moses received the original Scripture from Mt. Sinai and wrote the 13 copies (twelve of which were distributed among the Tribes), spelling variants have emerged on a total of nine words, with absolutely no effect on their meaning.
“There are numberless Christian scholars that are well trained in Hebrew”.
If they were so well trained, there would be no mis-translations. The fact is, there are, and they are numerous. Perhaps you can’t see what they are, or just don’t want to, but any Jewish person can- even our children. It is a matter of going to Hebrew school to study Judaism under a Rabbi, and to learn to read, write and speak Hebrew. And, anyone, Jew or gentile, who avails themselves to this education, can see them too. They are that obvious.
Glad you mentioned Paul. It was Paul who confessed to using deception and lies to make converts:
• Corinthians 9:20-22: To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law — though not being myself under the law — that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law — not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ — that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.
• Romans 3:7: If through my lies God’s truth abounds to His glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
• Philippians 1:18: In every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Jesus is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. The veracity of everything that Paul stated and wrote is called into question by the fact that these quotes are found in the books he himself authored. Or, did he?
It is very curious to us that there is no reference to Jesus’ resurrection by the noted scholars, historians, politicians and writers of his time. There is no mention of the crucifixion at all. John E. Remsburg’s “The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence”, lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:
• Josephus
• Philo-Judææus
• Seneca
• Pliny Elder
• Arrian
• Petronius
• Dion Pruseus
• Paterculus
• Suetonius
• Juvenal
• Martial
• Persius
• Plutarch
• Pliny Younger
• Tacitus
• Justus of Tiberius
• Apollonius
• Quintilian
• Lucanus
• Epictetus
• Hermogones Silius Italicus
• Statius
• Ptolemy
• Appian
• Phlegon
• Phæædrus
• Valerius Maximus
• Lucian
• Pausanias
• Florus Lucius
• Quintius Curtius
• Aulus Gellius
• Dio Chrysostom
• Columella
• Valerius Flaccus
• Damis
• Favorinus
• Lysias
• Pomponius Mela
• Appion of Alexandria
• Theon of Smyrna
Enough of the writings of the authors named in the above list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, according to Remsburg, “aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus.” Nor, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles. One would think that G-D showed up in human form, these folks would have written a great deal about it.
All this aside, Judaism, unlike the Christianity, does not believe that the Messiah is Jesus. The noun moshiach (translated as messiah) annotatively means “annointed one;” it does not, however, imply “savior.” The notion of an innocent, semi-divine being who will sacrifice himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins is a purely Christian concept that has no basis in Jewish thought or scripture.
In the Tanach, Moshiach is used exactly 38 times- 2 patriarchs, 6 high priests, once for Cyrus, 29 Israelite kings such as Saul and David. Not once, is this word used in reference to the awaited Messiah. Even in the book of Daniel, the only time Moshiach is used is in connection to a murdered high priest. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, and Apocrypha never mention the Messiah.
The man destined to be the Moshiach will be a direct descendant of King David (Isaiah 11:1) through the family of Solomon, David’s son (1 Chronicles 22:9-l0). He will cause all the world to serve God together (Isaiah 11:2), be wiser than Solomon (Mishnah Torah Repentance 9:2), greater than the patriarchs and prophets (Aggadah Genesis 67), and more honored than kings ((Mishnah Sanhedrin 10), for he will reign as king of the world. The missions that the Moshiach will accomplish in his lifetime ( Isaiah 42:4) are to:
• Oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem, including the Third Temple, in the event that it has not yet been rebuilt (Michah 4:1 and Ezekiel 40-45)
• Gather the Jewish people from all over the world and bring them home to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 11:12; 27:12-13)
• Influence every individual of every nation to abandon and be ashamed of their former beliefs (or non-beliefs) and acknowledge and serve only the One True God of Israel (Isaiah 11:9-10; 40:5 and Zephaniah 3:9)
• Bring about global peace throughout the world (Isaiah 2:4; 11:5-9 and Michah 4:3-4).
There are over a dozen additional prophecies which the Messiah will also achieve (there is no mention of any “second coming” in the Tanach. or even in your the “New Testament”).
In order to avoid identifying the wrong individual as Mossiach, the Halacha- the Jewish Code of Law, dictates specific criteria ( Mishnah Torah Kings 11:4):
“If a king arises from the House of David who meditates on the Torah, occupies himself with the commandments as did his ancestor King David, observes the commandments of the Written and Oral Law, prevails upon all Israel to walk in the way of the Torah and to follow its direction, and fights the wars of God, it may be assumed that he is the Messiah.
• If he does these things and is fully successful, rebuilds the Third Temple on its location, and gathers the exiled Jews, he is beyond doubt the Messiah. But if he is not fully successful, or if he is killed, he is not the Messiah.”
Finally, over 1,000 years before the attributed birth of the historical Jesus, it was recorded in the Tanach:
• Numbers 23:19: God is not a man, that He should be deceitful, nor the son of man, that He should repent. Would He say and not do, or speak and not confirm?
No where in any of the original Jewish scripture- and that includes prophecy- does it state that the Moshiach will die or be crucified, or that he will be raised from the dead any more than anyone else. The Torah will be strengthened by the teachings and practices of the Messiah. It will not be weakened nor changed in the slightest.
The Messiah is merely G-d’s messenger and vehicle for the Redemption. We do not await the Messiah. We await our redemption from exile, and an end to all human suffering in this world. The Messiah’s purpose is not to make it possible for us to go to Heaven. The Torah teaches us how to do that already.