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However, in all fairness, neither Mo nor Joe (hmm... they could be a comedy team, Moe-Joe!)claimed to be God.

However, to take Kostka's line -- if someone does not acknowledge the Bible as true, then one cannot quote scripture to prove Christ is God, because that person (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist say) would say "I don't acknowledge your scripture"

BUT -- both Islam and Mormonism claim that the Bible is one of their Holy Texts and is true (but, according to them distorted). This is an error on their part rather than claiming to be a completely fresh religion.

If one takes it coldly, logically, and first acknowledges the OT as true, then one reads and finds proof in the OT for a Christ, a Messiah. One can find statements in the OT that prove to us Christians that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah (of course, Jews state that He didn't fulfill Eze 37:26-28, Is 43:5-6 -- they also claim He didn't fulfil Is2:4 (world peace) but I would argue that since Christianity the world was definitely more peaceful than in pagan times, all until WWI or that He didn'tfulfill Zec 14:9 -- but you and I would argue contrary on that point as He did spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel)

Anyway, I digress -- The Moslems and Mormons both say "Oh, the Bible is true but mistranslated/misunderstood/distorted. "

And this brings it out of the belief realm to historical, factual. And factually, checking even non-Christians like the Essenes we see tha the basic gospels and epistles are the same as they were first written. Ok, the canon of what is accepted or not did fluctuate, but not in the distorted way they claim.

Furthermore, in the Koran, they make a number of gaffes:

Claiming that Ishmael was due to be sacrificed by Abraham, not Isaac (a clear pandering to the Nejd Arabs who claimed descent from Ishmael) -- this was never heard of for 2600 years, not even breathed about
Claiming that Jesus was born to Mary in the desert, which shows that Mo didn't read the NT but heard fragments of it -- he's projecting the Revelations imagery

And it's the same way in quite Mormonism claims that polytheism was practised by Early Christians and/or by Jews -- quite historically and factually wrong.

Saying "it's down to an encounter with Christ" is good, but that's the same what every religion would point out or say in different ways. Christianity holds up to facts far better than the branches of Islam/Bahai'ism or Mormonism. Against pure Buddhism (not Mahayana but Hinayana) and Arya Samaj it still holds logically true. I would argue that Zoroastrianism is one that holds up in comparison to Christianity, but the older variants not the ones since 50 BC.

If one takes it coldly, logically, and first acknowledges the OT as true, then one reads and finds proof in the OT for a Christ, a Messiah. One can find statements in the OT that prove to us Christians that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah (of course, Jews state that He didn't fulfill...

There are many reasons why Jews reject Jesus as the messiah. For one, the Jewish messiah is no God. The title "son of God" is a royal title and the title given to angels, as well as to Adam (for obvious but literal reasons). Secondly, Jewish scriptures used by the Christians, especially those crucial to Christianity, contain numerous changes that support Christian doctrinal claims, but are not found in the Tanakh (Hebrew sciprutres).

The Christian Old Testament, even the one use by the Protestants, is a mixture of Hebrew and Septuagint (Greek OT translation) verses, even though Protestants claim their OT is the same as the Tanakh.

Subtle changes (mistranslations?) such as in Isaiah 53:5,8 change the whole meaning of verses. Thus, in verse 5, Christian translators say "he was wounded for our transgressions" and Tanakh says "from our transgressions."

Verse 8 says "for the transgression of my people was he stricken" in the Christian versions, whereas the Tanakh reads "for the sins of my people were they stricken." The Jewish sages say "mi" (they) not "lih" (he) [the Hebrew letter m and l don't look alike)

More importantly, Christianity literally turned some OT stories upside down. For example the Passover Lamb. Lambs were considered sacred animals in ancient Egypt. Killing the Passover lamb and smearing its blood on the Israelite homes was a way if telling the Egyptians that their god was nothign but a stinky animal, and wa sno god of any consequence. The lamb was clearly not killed to "atone" for any iniquities, as the Christians teach.

Likewise, the shedding of the blood for atonement applied only for unintentional sins. In Judaism the sins of willful commission could not be atoned by animal sacrifice, but only through repentance. Obviously the Christians "corrected" that too!

Besides, the sacrificial animal had to be killed on the altar, and its blood sprinkled. Crucifixion was no altar sacrifice and Jesus bleeding all over the place from Roman torture and being nailed to the cross was hardly ritual "sprinkling."

So, obviously the "correct" interpretation of the OT depends on a lot of things, liturgical, theological, translational, doctrinal, etc. Usually the Jewish rejection of Christanity is assumed to be their "blindness" whereas reading a little deeper reveals that the blindness can be relative, and sometimes even intentional.