I must say, Ghost, I'm a bit disappointed, as I was hoping you'd bring us some of your own personal objections and difficulties that you have with the idea of Yeshua as Messiah. It is rather difficult to respond to such a voluminous post with expediency, since I would have to do quite a bit of research to be able to fully & adequately respond to many of the points raised. Nonetheless, I'll try to respond as best I can at the moment to the issues that I feel prepared to address, and will simply have to skip some and hold off on others until I am adequately prepared. That said, here's what I comment on at the moment:
Originally posted by Ghost
The Trinity
The Christian idea of a trinity contradicts the most basic tenet of Judaism - that G-d is One. Jews have declared their belief in a single unified G-d twice daily ever since the giving of the Torah at Sinai - almost two thousand years before Christianity.
...The trinity suggests a three part deity: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
...In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry; one of the three cardinal sins for which a person should rather give up his life than transgress.
...The idea of the trinity is absolutely incompatible with Judaism (Elohim, let us make, etc.).
We also declare that God is One. The fact that he is "God in three persons, blessed Trinity" (as the song says) is a Divine mystery that we cannont fully explain or understand in our finite human state. However, it is certainly indicated by the Jewish text in that even way back during the Creation, God said "Let US create man in OUR own image" (emphasis mine), and the fact also that God is referred to in the OT as "Elohim", which is most definitely the PLURAL form ("-im") of the word. This is not some Christian invention (as your source seems to imply), it is the actual phrasing of the Hebrew text. There are other such instances too, but I can't recall 'em specifically at the moment. And notice that the source states "three part deity" (singular, indicating that the 3 are One, not "deities", which is of course plural...).
Christianity believes that G-d came down to earth in human form...
The Torah states that G-d cannot not take any form.:
"You will not be able to see My face, for no human can see my face and live"
"You did not see any form on the day G-d spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of fire"
As little as we may know about G-d's nature, Judaism has always believed that G-d is Incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. G-d is Eternal, He is Infinite; above time and beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die.
This is just plain incorrect. The bottom line the source is referring to is that God has no "native" physical form, and cannot be confined to a physical body as we are. In other words, it's not that God CANnot take any physical form, it's that He DOES not do so (meaning, his normal state of being is to not be constrained to a fleshly body). Moses wasn't allowed to see God's "face" per se, but the text speaks of God allowing Moses to glance his "back parts" as He passes by the cleft in the rock. Yet elsewhere, it is said that Moses spoke with God "face to face, as one speaks with his friend". How is that reconciled by your source's explanation?... Christianity likewise holds that God is Eternal, and in His essence, never was born nor can die. This, however, does not at all limit his ability to be physically "born" in a human form for, say, 33 years, and to have that body physically be "killed" on a cross. The fact that the infinite God intervenes through Human "time" and in our human "space" at ALL (by revealing Himself through the Patriarchs, priests, kings and prophets over thousands of years) indicates His explicit *willingness* to do so, for the sake of mankind's/Israel's redemption.
Christianity denies the eternal relevance of Torah Law, basing the concept of the New Testament on a mistranslation of a verse in Jeremia.... the Hebrew states:...They translate: "Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new Testament with the house of Israel "
..."Brit" does not mean Testament. Throughout Scripture "Brit" means covenant.
...It is a fundamental principle of Judaism that the Torah received at Sinai will never be changed nor become obsolete. This concept is mentioned in the Torah no less than 24 times, with the words:
..."This is an eternal law for all generations"
...It is absurd to accept the Divine origin of the Torah yet deny it's eternal relevance...To dispense with the legal body of the Torah and reduce it to a book of morals would cut it down to less than half it's size. Can this really be the meaning of those words an eternal law for all generations?
Again, your source is mistaken. There is no mistranslation here. For one, the language of the Christian Bible ALSO translates that word as "covenant"...makes me wonder where your source is getting their information. Secondly, Christ Himself states that He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it, and that "not a jot or tittle" of the Law will be altered or invalidated until "everything has been accomplished" (Matthew 5:17-19). Paul later states that the Law has not been negated by Christ, and has much to offer mankind to this day. Thus it is seen that neither Christ nor Paul views the Law as being "merely a book of morals", and thus its eternal relevance as a "law for all generations" is not negated. In brief, the whole dynamic of Christ's earthly life & ministry is not to deny the relevance/importance of the Law, but to establish that aforementioned "New Covenant"
Originally posted by Ghost
An analisys of Isaiah:
...For example, after Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah (Matt. 16:16), he is informed that Jesus will be killed (Matt. 16:21). His response: "G-D forbid it, lord! This shall never happen to you" (Matt. 16:22). See, also, Mk. 9:31-32; Mk. 16:10-11; Jn. 20:9. Even Jesus didn't see Isaiah 53 as crucial to his messianic claims - why else did he call the Jews children of the devil for not believing in him before the alleged resurrection (Jn. 8:39-47)? And why did he later request that G-D "remove this cup from me" (Mk. 14:36) - didn't he know that a "removal of the cup" would violate the gentile understanding of Isaiah 53?
Jesus was mainly referring to the Pharisees as "devils", whose strict legalism was enforced upon most of the rest of Jewry at the time, and prevented many from believing him (at least publicly, since we know that many even of the Sanhedrin believed in him, though only Joseph of Aromat is mentioned by name). He asked the Father about the cup because he was in angony of emotional anguish over his pending physical suffering. He was, after all, a human being, and most of us are afraid of death, esp. such a torturous death as He was about to endure. The key thing to remember (and that this source conveniently ignores) is that the question was but a momentary one, followed immediately by surrendering the "cup issue" to God, and accepting His will in the matter.
ALSO: Given the Christian view that Jesus is G-D, is G-D His own servant?
That question relates to the concept of the Trinity, which I've addressed elsewhere. Briefly, though, Jesus and God (and the Holy Spirit) are One, but having three personas. JC was God in human form, and as such, was His servant while down here.
52:15 tells us explicitly that it is the nations of the world, the gentiles, who are doing the talking in Isaiah 53. See, also, Micah 7:12-17, which speaks of the nations' astonishment when the Jewish people again blossom in the Messianic age.
Pardon me, but has the Jewish nation not "blossomed" since being regathered/restored in Israel c. 1948?... And the nations are most certainly astonished (not to mention their neighbor nations, mostly Muslim, who are quite vexed at their return/restoration!...). And, this is the "Messianic Age" if you believe in Yeshua as Messiah, in that He has come & established the Church, and until the End Times are here, this is generally known as the Era of the Church, which (for us) is fairly synonymous with the "Messianic" Age.
"And to whom has the arm of the L-rd been revealed?" In Isaiah, and throughout our Scriptures, G-D's "arm" refers to the physical redemption of the Jewish people from the oppression of other nations (see, e.g., Isa. 52:8-12; Isa. 63:12; Deut. 4:34; Deut. 7:19; Ps. 44:3).
As I said above, they HAVE been redeemd from the oppression of other nations. Doesn't mean they don't have troubles (from their neighbors especially), but they are not collectively in bondage under exile to some foreign power, and are all (the vast majority of them who wish to be, anyway) regathered in Israel today.
"Despised and rejected of men."...it cannot be reconciled with the New Testament account of Jesus, a man who was supposedly "praised by all" ..and followed by multitudes... who would later acclaim him as a prophet upon his triumphal entry into Jerusalem... Even as he was taken to be crucified, a multitude bemoaned his fate... Jesus had to be taken by stealth, as the rulers feared "a riot of the people"...
I'd make a strong argument here that someone who gets strung up on a cross is a pretty "despised" person. Also, it must be remembered that essentially the same crowd who hailed His entry into Jerusalem were the ones also who cried "Crucify him" less than a week later. Most of the common folk loved him, whereas most of the rulers hated Him. In the end, the common folk were so intimidated by the rulers that they got sucked in to crying for His death. Thus it is seen that their loyalty was greater to their rulers than to Christ. Sure they took him by stealth, but once he was run through the gauntlet of 7 kangaroo court trials, they no longer feared the crowd's reaction, as they were then sure they could incite the crowd to hate Him, too.
"Surely our diseases he carried and our pains he bore." In Matt. 8:17, this is correctly translated, and said to be literally (not spiritually) fulfilled in Jesus' healing of the sick, a reading inconsistent with the Christian mistranslation of 53:4 itself.
This simply comes down to a matter of belief. Jews may not believe that it was spiritually fulfilled, but anyone who believes Christ was Messiah knows quite well that it WAS fulfilled in his passion & death.
"But he was wounded from (NOTE: not for) our transgressions, he was crushed from (AGAIN: not for) our iniquities." Whereas the nations had thought the Servant (Israel) was undergoing Divine retribution for its sins (53:4), they now realize that the Servant's sufferings stemmed from their actions and sinfulness. This theme is further developed throughout our Jewish Scriptures - see, e.g., Jer. 50:7; Jer. 10:25. ALSO: Note that the Messiah "shall not fail nor be crushed till he has set the right in the earth" (Isa. 42:4).
What kind of doubletalk is that?... The wounding "from" vs. "for" is irrelevant, in that the net meaning is the same. And, this source says it wasn't for their sins, but for their "actions and sinfulness". That's like me saying I didn't drive to work in my car, I transported myself in my automobile. Duh!.
