abeles@mhuxm.UUCP (J. Abeles (Bellcore, Murray Hill, NJ)) (03/19/86)
>> If you really want to return home to the true faith, then do read the >> Jewish Scriptures, especially those prophets like Isaiah who promise >> the coming of the Messiah who would also be a "light to the Gentiles". >> Yes, the Messiah has come, He is Jesus, and all who accept Him have eternal >> life and are following a genuine faith based on ALL the Scriptures. >> David E. Lindsay > > the Jewish Messiah is to be judged by his actions and not by who he is. > Jesus did not provide for national redemption to Jews. National redemption > was the action the Jews were looking for very badly at the time of Christ; > this he did not deliver. What Jews wanted in the first century A.D. is > a messiah that would free them from Roman oppression. A task Jesus did not > accomplish. Since Jesus did not redeem the Jews from the Romans, he was > not qualified as a Jewish Messiah then (and now). [Y. Hoshen] Furthermore: In case anyone is interested, Lindsay's remarks regarding prophesies of Isaiah are also complete bunk. Christian theology has depended on demonstrably biased translations and interpretations of a number of the Prophets to claim that, e.g., it was prophesized that a savior would be born to a virgin. These are the subject of technical and ancient disagreements between the Christians and the Jews. Such things are never addressed in attempts to improve relationships between the two religions for obvious reasons. --J. Abeles
hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) (03/23/86)
My own feeling on the matter is that Judaism and Christianity have now split irreversibly, and that not all the king's horses nor all the king's men are going to put them back together, short of the End, when Christians believe Christ himself will do so. In general I agree with Yosi Hoshen that Jesus did not meet the typical Jewish definition of the Messiah. Yosi's summary of the situation is essentially the same as the normal Christian view: that the 1st Century Jews were expecting someone to defeat the Romans, and when Jesus didn't, they did not see him as the Messiah. However I should at least point out that 1st Cent. Judaism had a bit more variation than is implied by that. There were those who expected a king like David, who would throw out the Romans in battle. Others expected an angelic figure, as described in Daniel. Some even expected two Messiahs, a king and a prophet. So it's very hard to say that Jesus was completely outside the realm of acceptable interpretation in the 1st Cent. Indeed some Jews obviously did accept him as the Messiah, since Christianity started among Jews. But it is clear that Jesus was not what most Jews expected. Yosi emphasizes national redemption. There is no question that this was important to 1st Cent. Judaism, as it is to Jews now. However there are certainly places in the OT where the Messiah is seen as someone who will redeem the entire world. Remember that in the 1st Cent., there were actually Jewish missionaries, and conversion to Judaism was encouraged, at least in some circles. Again, the range of views acceptable within Judaism was wider than it became after 70 C.E. Christianity did not invent very much out of whole cloth. It emphasized certain aspects of Judaism, and reformulated other things in light of the fact that the Messiah had come. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity and Judaism finally parted in an irrevocable way. Several things seemed to lead to this. For one, Christians had not participated in the defense of Jerusalem. This may go back to something Jesus himself said. "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that she will soon be destroyed. Then those who are in Judea must run away to the hills; those who are in the city must leave, ... For those will be 'The Days of Punishment,' to make come true all that the Scriptures say." (Lk 21:20-22, TEV. The OT reference is to Ho 9:7) This led the Jews to consider the Christians to be traitors. But in addition to this, it seems clear that the attitude of Christianity towards the Law, and the Church's decision to admit Gentiles without requiring circumcision, was bound to cause trouble in the long run. For some time, around the period of the destruction of Jerusalem, there was a sort of "battle of prayers" in Judaism, as the standard Jewish prayers were reformulated several times to come up with something that no Christian could possibly say. This was the period during which the last remnants of Jewish Christianity were forced out of Judaism. What came out of the destruction of Jerusalem was a Judaism that was somewhat more unified, and whose narrower range of variation could no longer accept Christians. After this point, I think it is fair to say that Jewish Messianic expectations had as one component the idea ".. and whatever else may be true, he *won't* be like that Jesus fellow". Over the following centuries, Judaism was willing to accept a number of very strange new movements, but Christianity they already knew, and rejected. There were enough persecutions to prevent any tendencies that might have led towards relaxing this rule. My own opinion is that there are enough differences between Christianity and Judaism that a split of some kind was inevitable. After all, Christian prayer is in the name of Jesus, something that a Jew is bound to think at least peculiar, and certainly will not want to participate in himself. At the heart of Christian life, we have Baptism and Communion, acts which can have no significance to a Jew. So even a Jewish Christian is going to have to do his primary worship somewhere other than the Synagogue. In the long run, this is going to make the status of his membership in Judaism at least problematical. I mean, what would Christians think of someone who had grown up as a Christian, and continued to worship with us, though in fact he believed that Christ had come to earth in John Ubizmo, and this person went off every Monday to participate in Ubizmist sacraments. Even if Ubizmism didn't contradict Christianity in any specific way, one would wonder whether Christ was really at the center of his life any more. My own opinion is that Christians and Jews repect each other as part of the people of God, and that we should be able to worship together. The community in which I go to church has community-wide Thanksgiving services which include Jews as well as Christians. It rotates among the churches and synagogues in town, with all of the priests, ministers, and rabbis participating. I think this is a good thing. I also think it is healthy for Christians to join their Jewish friends for Passover seders and other religious celebrations. When I was in high school, I joined a group of Jewish friends who needed one more person to form a minyan for a prayer group. I would hope that a Jewish Christian would still be able to join his Jewish friends for services. But I think we have to be realistic about the meaning of such participation. No matter how much good will is present on both sides, it is naive to think that Jews will accept a Christian as a Jew who just happens to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. We should also understand that the amount of acceptance you can expect is going to depend upon your attitude towards Judaism. If you believe Jews are bound to go to Hell unless they accept Jesus, it is going to be sort of hard to expect to participate fully in the life of the Jewish community.
hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) (03/24/86)
from J. Abeles, abeles@mhuxm.UUCP: > ... Christian theology has depended on demonstrably biased > translations and interpretations of a number of the Prophets to claim > that, e.g., it was prophesized that a savior would be born to a > virgin. These are the subject of technical and ancient disagreements > between the Christians and the Jews. Such things are never addressed > in attempts to improve relationships between the two religions for > obvious reasons. --J. Abeles There are still plenty of things separating Christians and Jews. But Biblical scholarship is not one of them. During the last century or so, Biblical scholarship has undergone major changes. It is now trying to be a scientific discipline, with objective criteria controlling its judgements. Of course there are limits to how far this can succeed, but I think it has done remarkably well. I believe you will find that there will be few cases where there will be any difference of opinion over the original meaning of a passage based upon whether the interpreter is Christian or Jewish. By and large, Christians and Jews are well integrated in the Biblical scholarly community. The relevant professional societies and scholarly journals contain both. New Christian Bible translations generally include at least one Jewish scholar on the translation team, to protect against inadvertent bias. In reference to Is 7:14, which in the King James says "a virgin shall conceive". What translations are you looking at? I hope you do not consider the King James version to represent the state of the art in Christian scholarship! I would consider the current "official" Protestant translations to be the Revised Standard Version, which is sponsored by the National Council of Churches in the USA, the New English Bible, which is sponsored by a variety of denominations in the UK, and the Today's English Version (or Good News Bible), which was done by the American Bible Society. The Today's English Version probably comes the closest to representing the concensus of the current scholarly community. (The Revised Standard is now a bit dated, and its original charter required it to keep the words from the King James where it could. The New English Bible has a tendency to do completely off the wall things now and then.) All three of these translations use "young woman" in place of "virgin" in this case, and in general try to find the best translation of the OT, independent of its use in the NT. Of course there is going to be some level at which Christians and Jews do disagree. Few religious people are content to leave the Bible as a subject of scholarly study. Once we know everything possible about the historical context, we still need to appropriate the passage into our spiritual life. Obviously this step is going to be somewhat different for Christians and Jews. In the OT, there is a tendency for Christians to apply passages to Jesus even when the original author no doubt did not intend them that way. For example, consider the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. I think we may all agree that the original author did not have Jesus in mind here. Probably he meant them to refer to the nation of Israel as a whole, though it is certainly possible that some sort of messianic figure was meant. Nevertheless, Jesus used these passages to help understand his own role. I think this is legitimate. He saw himself as taking all of Israel's suffering on himself. So I can see how he could appropriate to himself passages that apply to Israel's suffering and the salvation that it brings. Similarly, it is perfectly appropriate for Christians to apply these sections from Isaiah to Jesus. Similar things can be said of Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted from the cross, and many other parts of the OT. Jewish midrash, not to mention more far-out things such as kabbalah, also did this sort of reinterpretation. However I think we have to realize that this is a reappropriation of the original, and keep this carefully separate from our scholarly attempts to recover the meaning of the original author. In general, I believe that modern Biblical scholarship does this. This means that it is probably a mistake for Christians to say that the OT "proves" that Jesus is the Messiah. The OT certainly has plenty of material that we can apply in retrospect to Christ. Christians find that faith in Christ brings new meaning to much of the OT. But I think we need to realize that this happens in retrospect, once we have come to accept Jesus' role. There is nothing in the OT that is going to prove to someone that Jesus in the Messiah, unless he already has some reason to believe it. Only the Gospels are going to provide that reason. So much for the good news. Now for the bad news. The above views do not by any means represent a Christian concensus. A very large number of Christians are what I call "fundamentalist", though that may not be the best term. They believe that the Bible is without error, that God is directly responsible for its content (though most fundamentalists allow for a real human role in writing it), and that all portions of it are in total agreement. They may find the distinction between original meaning and Christian reappropriation to be offensive. At the very least, they will consider the the Holy Spirit had the Christian interpretation in mind from the beginning, even if the human author did not. They will certainly have a tendency to want the OT and the NT to be consistent. I should not overstate this. Fundamenalist scholars are competent and honest scholars. They do not intentionally change the text. But where there is any sign of ambiguity in the OT, they will tend to construe it in a way that is consistent with the NT. There is some ambiguity in the word translated "virgin" or "young woman" in Is 7:14. So translations done by fundamentalists will have "virgin" here. A Jew will no doubt regard this sort of thing as creating bias. (So do I.) Generally fundamentalist translations are quite clear in declaring their principles. E.g. the preface to the NIV says "... the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form." This clearly announces this as a fundamentalist translation. (The critical word is "infallibility". Almost all Christians are committed to the authority of Scripture in one sense or other.) So in summary, my answer to your comment is that you are not seeing a disagreement between Christians and Jews over what the Bible says. Rather, you are seeing a disagreement between fundamentalist Christians and those who take a more "liberal" view of what it means to say that the Bible is inspired by God. This may or may not make you feel better about the situation, but at least I thought you'd like to know what it is. PS: the original mistranslation in Is 7:14 was done by a Jewish translator. When the NT quotes the OT, it often quotes the Septuagint, which was the common Greek translation at the time. Since the NT was written in Greek, this seems to make sense. The Septuagint was a Jewish translation. (How could it be otherwise? There were no Christians when it was done.) The Septuagint has "virgin" in Is 7:14. This is how it got into the NT in the first place. There are a number of other cases in the NT where disagreements between the NT and the Hebrew OT turn out to be caused by the Septuagint.
abeles@mhuxi.UUCP (Joe Abeles (Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ)) (03/26/86)
> ... I also think it is healthy for Christians to join their Jewish friends > for Passover seders. It is against Halacha for a non-Jew to be present at a Passover seder.