rblack@shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu (Roger Black) (01/07/91)
In article <Dec.24.03.24.49.1990.15671@athos.rutgers.edu>, dragon!cms@gatech.edu (Cindy Smith) quotes: > Hertz's Haftorahs has this to say on page 202: "The most passage of > this class [favourite texts of Christian missionaries in attempting to > convert illiterate Jews or those ignorant of Scripture -- two > paragraphs up from this one] is the Fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. > For eighteen hundred years Christian theologians have passionately > maintained that it is a Prophetic anticipation of the life of the > Founder of their Faith. An impartial examination of the chapter, > however, shows that the Prophet is speaking of _a past historical > fact_ (emphasis Hertz's), and is describing one who has already been > smitten to death. Consequently, a reference to an event which is said > to have happened many centuries later is excluded. These three > instances may be taken as typical [reference to Psalm 2:12 and Isaiah > 7:14]. Modern scholarship has shattered the arguments from the > Scriptures which missionaries have tried, and are still trying, to > impose upon ignorant Jews." The problem with this argument is that it cuts both ways. Prof. Jacob Neusner, one of the most distinguished Torah scholars alive today (and himself an orthodox Jew), has this to say in his excellent article "How Judaism and Christianity Can Talk to Each Other" in the December 1990 issue of Bible Review: "In general, the Jewish approach to a theory of Christianity is to treat it as 'the daughter faith,' ... or, even worse, to look with condescension on Christianity as a religion 'for the gentiles' ... "Moreover, this modern Jewish apologetic rests on the premise that Judaism understands the real historical meaning of the Hebrew Bible, while Christianity obviously does not. That is to say, Judaism finds it difficult to imagine that Isaiah really had the Virgin Mary in mind when he spoke of a virgin--or a young woman--who would conceive and bear a child (Isaiah 7:14), although Matthew's Gospel tells us that is precisely what Isaiah had in mind (Matthew 1:22-23). Nor would any Jew suppose that Isaiah spoke of Jesus Christ when he prophesied about the suffering servant ... "According to the Jewish apologetic, since the prophets did not prophesy about Jesus Christ, Judaism conveys the authentic faith of ancient Israel. The beam in the hermeneutical eye of this 'inauthenticizing' of Christian interpretation is that the same hermeneutic used in Matthew is also used in the Midrash, the collection of ancient Jewish expansions of scripture that impart a rich contemporary meaning to the already ancient text, the result being that the ancient text has no more the plain sense of the ancient writer in the Midrash than in the Christian interpretation supplied by Matthew." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Black rblack@shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even know I have any opinions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------