Posted on 06/08/2014 8:26:19 PM PDT by Phinneous
Jews defending Judaism with the best defense...
I'll take a whack at it...
Yeshua was necessarily Torah observant, else he cannot be the perfect sacrifice. As the great prophet too, as you know, or he would be a false prophet. But I will draw a distinction you probably won't like - Torah observant wrt Moses - The written Word. At every turn he was against the oral law.
He did call Himself 'I AM', and accepted others who called him God... So I don't think the case can be made that he didn't call himself God. And I think he necessarily had to be God:
Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. == 'God has Appointed that Mortal man shall Sorrow... but The Blessed God, Came Down, Teaching... His Death Shall Bring, Strength and Comfort.'
Torah declares it.
As to the apostles, prove them in Torah, and I think you might change your view. I am by no means expert, but I read the NT as Yeshua's disciples continuing to be Torah observant.
They continued to worship in a Jewish traditional style, but clearly recognized Jesus as the incarnated God.
As Jesus began to appeal more and more to non-Jewish people, and existing Jews mostly went back to rabbinism partly out of force of habit and partly out of fear of persecution, those traditions were dropped in the associated Christian congregations.
New Testament scripture itself identified those traditions as obsolete (in the context of Christian observance). They survive in non-Christian Jewish observance, of course.
In fact there are no exclusive rights on who is allowed to own God. For all our rationalizing, I think he has a mind of his own.
The "oral traditions" came from the Pharisees, who started what is today called modern Rabbinic Judaism. There was a reason why Jesus had so little affection for the Pharisees.
The Pharisees allow their academics to interfere with their education.
Very sophisticated arguments might be levied against identifying Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but won’t prevail when attempting to convince God Himself.
Instead, one might ask themselves, “Why do I want to argue Jesus Christ isn’t identifiable with God?”
The answer is simply arrogance and ignorance.
Many thanks for your response!
Some questions:
1)
In the section of the zohar below, the responder was talking about Adam...
What is your take on this? What is the responder talking about here?
From whomever answered rabbi chizkiyah:
“... . But because he produced offspring only from the side of the Evil Inclination,all the offspring of mankind are born from the side of the Evil Inclination. They have no permanent existence therefore,because the Other Side has been mixed with them. ....”
2)
Phinneous wrote:
“It doesn’t follow for Jews. We believe that we are deputized and consecrated by G-d to bring Him “down” into the world through the commandments. See prior posts regarding sin. As for “original sin” ie,we are all doomed...(if not ‘saved’) we simply don’t believe it. We have our rules of repentance,long before JC. “
What quotation is most referred to, that speaks of the deputization and consecration?
3)
What is psalm 14:1-7 (and reiterated in Psalm 53:1-6) referring to?
Psalm 14:1-7
1The fool hath said in his heart,There is no God. They are corrupt,they have done abominable works,there is none that doeth good.
2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men,to see if there were any that did understand,and seek God.
3 They are all gone aside,they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good,no,not one.
4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread,and call not upon the LORD.
5 There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous.
6 Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor,because the LORD is his refuge.
7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the LORD bringeth back the captivity of his people,Jacob shall rejoice,and Israel shall be glad.
Yes, just as there were many eyewitnesses of Moses going up to Har Sinai and bringing back the Torah, so there were for Yeshua dying, rising from the dead, and ascending to heaven. Even Eliyahu had a witness of his ascendancy into heaven in the fiery chariot.
Do you believe the Tanakh without the oral law/commentaries, or is your belief system predicated on having the oral law too so that you cannot understand or believe the Holy Scriptures in and of themselves ?
Organizations like Jews for Judaism are intended to keep Jews from embracing Christianity. That’s because Jews have a role and are needed in that role, and have souls with powers to fulfill that role.
The Jewish soul doesn’t turn to Christianity for rational reasons, so rational refutations of Christianity, while useful, don’t really address the underlying problem.
More Jews are lost to secular humanism than any other "ism" ; now why would that be and where is the organization to combat Jewish intermarriage ? Face it; in general, only the Orthodox are going to produce more Jews (in the Galut something like 90% survival rate after two generations IIRC). In medinat Israel it is a different matter; there the secular Jews and observant Jews would probably separate into two countries if they did not have so many enemies to force them into a common defense for the most part.
Amen.
Jews for Judaism and other similar organizations to indeed spend most of their time trying to prevent intermarriage. They’re not primarily websites.
A secular humanist Jew is not lost to the Jewish people the way a Jew who embraces Christianity is.
Yep. Projected demographics don’t look good for non-religious Jews:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/WillYourGrandchildrenBeJews/
...Or heresy and spiritual excision of the soul, if one is Jewish.
I believe the Jews were given, 3326 years and five days ago, 2 sapphire, square (not like the rounded and oft-depicted ones Charlton Heston brought down) tablets upon which were written the 10 commandments for Jews (ahem, in Hebrew,) and then 40 days, one highly misunderstood golden calf incident (and broken aforementioned tablets,) and another 80 days later... a complete written and oral Torah via Moses our prophet...and a brand new set of sapphire tablets to boot, this time carved by Moses and engraved by G-d Himself.
The Books of Moses absolutely cannot be understood by themselves. Here is a link to some collated proofs of this fact, but in broad brush, there are many life-death (sentence) situations where G-d commands us to do or not to do something and then doesn’t explain it. (ie, “work” on the Sabbath.) Wouldn’t our benevolent Creator bother to tell us what He is talking about— with great, exacting detail? Can I light a fire on the Sabbath? No, it says so explicitly. Great. Can I move a sofa in my living room? It’s life or death— I better have a ready-answer...
http://www.aishdas.org/student/oral.htm
That's nonesense. The Jewish audience who heard him say it clearly understood him to be claiming to be God and were getting ready to stone him for it. "You, being a man, make yourself out to be God" Jn 10:33
Like God creating the heavens and the earth by means of 22 Hebrew letters, for instance. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made," "For he spake, and it was done," Psalms 33:6, 9, the "word of the Lord," and "he spake," in this passage Kabbalist Judaism interprets to mean God uttering the 22 Hebrew letters.
Maybe the Kabbalists on this thread will care to tell us which Hebrew letter God spoke to create the land, which one the seas, the vegetation, etc.
Such a great question! You’re right—it is exactly a kabbalist’s job description.
I’ll answer (though not a kabbalist myself) with an example of Man. Man in Hebrew is adam. In our Yeshaya, 14:14, we find (in Hebrew) ADAM-EH L’ELYON, (I will be like the Most High)
ADAM-EH means “to be similar (to)” This is the basis of the etymology of Man being “in the image” of G-d. He created our existing spiritual and physical worlds with the Holy Tonge (Hebrew) and the Torah can only be understood, in plain meaning and in contextual meaning, with an understanding of Hebrew.
...if you remain unconvinced, I won’t be offended.
For graduate Jewish study, here is a chapter of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, ZT’L, the innovater of the Lubavitch chassidic movement’s “Shar haYichud v’Emunah” (The Gates of Unity and Faith” talking about your question:
http://www.chabad.org/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=6/5/2014
It’s hard to convey the meaning in a linked interlinear (with one language being illegible to the other party) website. If you really want to understand more PM me please.
IN BRIEF ANSWER TO YOUR LAST QUESTION-— (which Hebrew letter...) it was actually the words, the combination of the letters (each with its own energy) that counts.
There, I believe, is the great deception, born many years ago.
Sounds good to me. Thanks Hi-Tech! Good compromise.
If “great deception” it is in universally recognized New Testament canon.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
There are, were, and always will be until Christ’s return, “Judaizers.” Who will insist the Jewish style is the only valid Christian style.
“The great deception” is not about various styles of worshiping Christ. It’s about pushing Christ out of the picture altogether. Once Christ has actually been encountered it is unmistakable who He is, and this is not now a God that stands on ceremony.
Not exactly sure what you are getting at... but if you are getting the idea that Christians are saying that non-Jewish Christian practice has a valid place... some in fact do. I believe it does. It carries a witness about the purposes and character and desires of God. It is a love story writ large in history. To lose memory of it would impoverish the world.
Spiritual “technicalities” — if we can call it that — are what Christians like I proclaim that the coming of Jesus into the world was and is about. We affirm that no man is fit for heaven in this world, and that God has purposed to get whoever is willing into heaven. Worship in this world can furnish an echo of heaven, but it’s in a creation that is “subject to frustration.” Christians affirm that God stooped to take on bodily form, waiving many of His privileges while in that mode, in order to visibly suffer the burden of human sin. You don’t have to know that immediately in order to be able to accept the salvation, but if you do accept it, God will sooner or later show you how He did it. There are going to be a lot of saved Jews who will see the suffering on the Cross for them and they’ll say God are you meshugah? And God will say yes, I was meshugah for you.
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