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To: onedoug
I found an online copy of the work you referenced Jesus and the Jewish Resistance. I take issue with the author almost from the start as he misrepresents events in an effort to criticize Jesus Christ and, by association, all Christians. Here is an example:

    At the same time, a Jew reading the Gospels is immediately aware of aspects which do not seem authentic; for example, the accounts of Pharisees wanting to kill Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath. The Pharisees never included healing in their list of activities forbidden on the Sabbath; and Jesus's methods of healing did not involve any of the activities that were forbidden. It is unlikely that they would have disapproved, even mildly, of Jesus's Sabbath-healing. Moreover, the picture of bloodthirsty, murderous Pharisees given in the Gospels contradicts everything known about them from Josephus, from their own writings, and from the Judaism, still living today, which they created.

    So here we have a contradiction in the Gospels between those passages which seem authentic and those which do not. To a Jew studying the Gospels the contradiction is manifest, and ... the issue widens as he considers the religion based upon the Gospels, Christianity itself, with its mixture of Jewish, non-Jewish, and anti-Jewish elements.

The Pharisee's "beef" with Jesus WRT healing on the Sabbath was NOT because he accused them of making healing on the Sabbath a wrong, but instead his showing them to be hypocrites and this incident being but one of many reasons why they plotted to kill him. Here is one telling of that incident:

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’a you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. (Matthew 12:1-14)

Another incident was told in Luke 13:10-17:

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

I will continue to read this work and give my comments as time permits, but I hope you don't think I would change my views about my Savior, Jesus Christ. Myriad works have been composed the past two millenia that endeavor to disprove Jesus the Christ and Christianity based upon belief in and following Him. Mr. Maccoby is but one of many whom, I believe, are flailing against God and will not prevail. Christianity is a FAITH - the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

96 posted on 02/25/2014 3:37:39 PM PST by boatbums (Simul justis et peccator)
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To: boatbums

Heck no, I wouldn’t expect it to change your views on your Savior, but am gratified that a Christian would even give it a look. Would it deepen your faith even further would be cause for great celebration to my thinking.

‘Sorta like me with Christian radio. There are enough appeals to The Father and solid ethical foundation to keep me listening about 85% of the time. I may be agnostic with respect to Jesus and nitpick occasionally about his various approaches to The Law, but basically, I like him. To paraphrase Eric Blore in ‘The Road To Zanzibar’: “I bet he’d be fun to know.”


99 posted on 02/25/2014 4:36:32 PM PST by onedoug
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