www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ A NSWERING J EWISH O BJECTIONS to J ESUS Volume 2 Theological Objections MICHAEL L. BROWN © 2000 by Michael L. Brown Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Michael L., 1955— Answering Jewish objections to Jesus: theological objections / Michael L. Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and indexes. ISBN 10: 0-8010-6334-5 (paper) ISBN 978-0-8010-6334-3 (paper) 1. Apologetics. 2. Jews—Conversion to Christianity. 3. Jesus Christ—Messiahship. I. Title. BV4922.B76 2000 239—dc21 99-046293 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NTV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Emphasis in Scripture quotations is the author’s. Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture marked NJPSV is taken from the New Jewish Publication Society Version. © 1985 by The Jewish Publication Society. Scripture marked RED is taken from The Revised English Bible. © 1989 by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Dedicated to my fellow Jewish believers in Jesus around the world Joshua 1:9 2 Corinthians 13:8 Hebrews 13:11–14 www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ Contents Preface Part 3 Theological Objections 3.1 Jews don’t believe in the Trinity. We believe in one God, not three. 3.2 If you claim that Jesus is God then you are guilty of making God into a man. You are an idol worshiper! 3.3 God doesn’t have a son. 3.4 According to the Law (Deuteronomy 13), Jesus was a false prophet because he taught us to follow other gods (namely, the Trinity, including the god Jesus), gods our fathers have never known or worshiped. This makes all his miracles utterly meaningless. 3.5 The Holy Spirit is not the so-called Third Person of the Trinity. 3.6 According to Isaiah 43:11, God alone is our Savior. We don’t need or recognize any other saviors. 3.7 We are righteous by what we do, not by what we believe. Christianity is the religion of the creed, Judaism the religion of the deed. 3.8 Scripture clearly tells us that “to do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice” (Prov. 21:3). 3.9 The prophets indicated clearly that God did not care for blood sacrifices. In fact, they practically repudiated the entire sacrificial system, teaching that repentance and prayer were sufficient. The Talmudic rabbis simply affirmed this biblical truth. 3.10 Even if I accept your premise that blood sacrifices are of great importance in the Torah, the fact is that our Hebrew Bible—including the Torah itself—offers other means of atonement, not just the shedding of blood. 3.11 According to Proverbs 16:6, love and good deeds make atonement. So who needs sacrifices? 3.12 It’s clear that you misunderstand the entire sacrificial system. Sacrifices were for unintentional sins only. Repentance was the only remedy for intentional sins. 3.13 Even if I accept your arguments about the centrality of blood sacrifices, it only held true while the Temple was standing. The Book of Daniel teaches us that if the Temple has been destroyed and is not functional, prayer replaces sacrifice. In fact, the Book of Ezekiel is even more explicit, telling Jews living in exile—and therefore without any access to the Temple, even if it were standing—that repentance and good works are all God requires. 3.14 The Book of Jonah shoots down all your arguments about sacrifice and atonement, especially with reference to Gentiles. When Jonah preached, the people repented, and God forgave them—no sacrifice, no blood offering. 3.15 Even if I admit that we need blood atonement, I still won’t believe in Jesus. God wanted the blood of a goat or a lamb, not a person. He doesn’t want human sacrifice! www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ 3.16 I can’t believe the death of Jesus paid for my sins because the Torah teaches that for blood to be effectual, it had to be poured on the altar in a specific way. This obviously does not refer to Jesus. 3.17 If the death of Jesus was the fulfillment of the sacrificial system, why do the prophets anticipate sacrifices when the Third Temple is built? 3.18 The Christian concept of salvation is contrary to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Jews don’t need saving. 3.19 Jewish people don’t need a middleman. 3.20 Jews don’t believe in original sin or a fall of man. We do not believe the human race is totally sinful. 3.21 Jews don’t need to repent. 3.22 Jews don’t believe in a divine Messiah. 3.23 Jews don’t believe in a suffering Messiah. 3.24 Jews don’t believe the Messiah will come twice. 3.25 Judaism is a healthy religion. Jews don’t see the world as intrinsically evil or denounce marriage or call for self-renunciation. Christians, on the other hand, see the world as evil, advocate celibacy, and say, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and suffer.” 3.26 Christianity calls on its followers to exhibit unnatural emotions and feelings such as love for their enemies. This is contrary to the Torah as well as human nature. 3.27 The only thing that keeps many people in the Christian faith—including Jews—is a fear of hell. 3.28 I find much beauty in the teachings of Jesus, and I think there are some good arguments in favor of Christianity. But I find it impossible to believe in a religion that condemns all people to hell—including many moral, good, kind, and sensitive people, not to mention countless millions of religious Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists—simply because they don’t believe in Jesus. I can’t follow a religion whose God tortures people in flames forever for not believing in someone they never even heard of. Glossary Subject Index Index of Ancient Writings www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ Preface In November of 1971, as a rebellious, proud, heroin-shooting, rock-drumming, Jewish sixteen-year-old, I discovered something that I was not looking for and the course of my life was completely altered. I found out that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah! I learned that he was the one spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures, that he was God’s way of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike, and that through faith in him my life could be transformed—even though I didn’t want it to be transformed. I loved my sinful ways! But God’s goodness overcame my badness, and in a matter of weeks, I was a brand-new man. My parents were thrilled—and relieved—to see the tremendous change in my life. I had fallen so far, so quickly, since my bar mitzvah at age thirteen, and my parents had been deeply concerned. But the positive transformation was more radical and dramatic than was the fall. The only problem for my parents—especially for my father—was that in their opinion I had joined a foreign religion. So my father, thrilled with the change in my life but very much wanting me to come back to our traditions, brought me to the local Conservative rabbi in early 1972 (I was still not yet seventeen). But rather than attacking my beliefs, this twenty-six-year-old rabbi befriended me. He told me that in his opinion he was not as spiritual a person as I was, although his beliefs were right and mine were wrong. In his view, Judaism, meaning traditional, Orthodox, observant Judaism, was the only true faith for our people, and he felt that the key for me would be to meet some very religious—and zealous—traditional Jews. And so the journey began! In the summer of 1973, the rabbi brought me to Brooklyn to spend an afternoon with some ultra-Orthodox rabbis. It was a real eye-opener for me! I was impressed with the devotion and kindly demeanor of these men, and I was challenged by their scholarship. How could I, just eighteen years old and barely able to read the Hebrew alphabet, tell them what our sacred Hebrew texts meant? They had been studying the Scriptures all their lives; I had been a believer less than two years, although by then I had read the Bible cover to cover roughly five times and memorized more than four thousand verses. But they had memorized the original; I was dependent on English translations. What business did I have telling them that Jesus was actually the fulfillment of the prophecies of our Hebrew Bible? This was my predicament: I was sure that my faith was sound and that Jesus really was our Messiah, but I could find almost no literature (and almost no people) to help me. When I did find solid academic works by Christians dealing with Messianic prophecy and related subjects, they tended to be insensitive to the traditional Jewish objections I was hearing. On the other hand, the few books (really, booklets) I found specifically addressing Jewish objections tended to be popular, short, and nonscholarly in their approach. I was in a quandary! www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ How could I effectively answer the questions of the rabbis and refute their objections? And what about my own conscience? Could I really be at peace with myself without being able to provide intellectually solid responses to my own people, especially when the rabbis told me that if I could read the original texts, I would never believe in Jesus? So it was that I began to study Hebrew in college, ultimately making it my major and continuing with graduate studies until I earned a doctorate in Semitic languages. And all through my college and graduate years, I was constantly dialoging with rabbis and religious Jews, sometimes in public debates, other times one on one. I wanted to understand exactly why my own people rejected Jesus—Yeshua—as Messiah, and I wanted to answer them with truth as well as with love. In the providence of God, I became somewhat of a specialist in Jewish debate and dialogue, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my Messianic Jewish friends and colleagues began to ask me, “When are you going to put all this in writing?” In fact, one friend in particular, Sid Roth, lovingly badgered me for years, asking me almost every time we talked, “So, Mike, when are you going to write the book”— implying that everything else I was writing was of secondary importance! Finally, in 1996 I felt the release to begin the work in earnest, and as word started to get out, I was amazed at the level of interest expressed by many of my Christian friends: “I want to read your book and then give it to one of my Jewish friends who doesn’t believe in Jesus! When is it coming out?” At last I can answer, “Now,” with only one caveat. It’s no longer a book; it’s a series of three books. There was simply too much material to cover, and after all this time—especially given the fact that no comparable work exists—I felt that it was better to be too thorough than not thorough enough. Volume 1 dealt with general and historical objections (covering thirty-five objections in all, numbered respectively as 1.1–1.19 and 2.1–2.16) and was released in December 1999. The current volume deals with theological objections (twenty- eight in all, and numbered here 3.1–3.28). Volume 3, scheduled for release in 2001, will deal with objections based on Messianic prophecy (thirty-nine total), objections to the New Testament (thirty-four total), and objections arising from Jewish tradition (eighteen total). If there is sufficient reader interest, these three volumes will then be combined into a one-volume reference edition, with some special studies and further notes added. The table of contents in each volume lists the specific objections covered in that specific volume, enabling the reader to get an overview of the material at a glance and also making it easy to locate each individual objection. To briefly summarize the material treated in this series, general objections boil down to the perception that “Jesus is not for Jews! Our religion is Judaism, not Christianity. No true Jew would ever believe in Jesus.” Historical objections tend to be more substantial and deal with the very purpose of the Messiah (in other words, www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ the claim that the Messiah was to bring peace to the world) or the alleged failure of the church (“Christian” anti Semitism; the state of the “church” worldwide, including divisions and scandals). The heart of these objections is, “Jesus cannot be the Messiah because we are obviously not in the Messianic age.” Theological objections, treated at length in the current volume, cut to the heart of the differences between traditional Judaism and the Messianic Jewish/Christian faith. They revolve around the nature of God (the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, the person of the Holy Spirit), the nature of man and the need for salvation, and sin and the means of atonement. In sum, these objections claim, “The religion of the New Testament is a completely foreign religion that is not only un-Jewish but is also unfaithful to the Hebrew Bible.” The objections based on Messianic prophecies arise from traditional Judaism’s rejection of our standard Messianic prophetic “proof texts,” either denying that they have anything to do with Jesus, claiming that they have been mistranslated, misquoted, or taken out of context by the New Testament authors or traditional Christian apologists, or arguing that none of the real Messianic prophecies—the so- called “provable” prophecies—were ever fulfilled by Jesus. In short, these objections say, “We don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah because he didn’t come close to living up to the biblical description of the Messiah.” Jewish objections to the New Testament can be broken down into several categories: The New Testament misquotes and misinterprets the Old Testament, at times manufacturing verses to suit its purposes; the genealogies of Jesus given by Matthew and Luke are hopelessly contradictory (at best) and entirely irrelevant anyway; the New Testament is filled with historical and factual errors (especially Stephen’s speech); the teachings of Jesus are impossible, dangerous, and un-Jewish (and Jesus as a person was not so great either); and the New Testament is self-contradictory. To sum up rather bluntly: “Only a fool would believe in the divine inspiration of the New Testament.” Finally, objections based on traditional Judaism are founded on two key points: (1) “Judaism is a wonderful, fulfilling, and self-sufficient religion. There is no need to look elsewhere”; and (2) “God gave us a written and an unwritten tradition. We interpret everything by means of that oral tradition, without which the Bible makes no sense.” (For further background to the history of these objections, see the introduction to volume 1.) Each of the volumes follows a similar format. I begin with a concise statement of the objection, followed by a concise answer to the objection, which is then followed by an in depth answer, including citations of important sources as needed and consideration of possible objections to the answers. For those interested in more detailed discussion, substantial notes have been provided. Other readers may choose to skip the notes and concentrate on the main text. www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ In dedicating this volume to my fellow Jewish believers scattered around the world, it is my hope that the material provided here will strengthen your faith and provide you with a needed resource that will, at last, silence many formidable objections that have been raised against our beliefs throughout the centuries. I am also confident that interested Christian readers—including theologians and biblical scholars—will find much here of value as well, including important Jewish concepts that provide background and illumination for doctrines that you cherish. And to every Jewish reader who does not yet believe in Yeshua (Jesus), I ask you to study this volume carefully with Bible in hand (especially a Hebrew Bible if you have one). And as you read, pray a simple prayer that the psalmist prayed more than twenty-five hundred years ago: “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your Torah” (Ps. 119:18). God will answer that prayer! Every word that follows speaks directly to you, my Jewish friend, and if I can be of help to you in your search for truth, don’t hesitate to contact me. Let the journey begin! Note on citations and sources: Rabbinic literature is cited using standard conventions (e.g., the letter “m.” before a rabbinic source means “Mishnah” while “b.” stands for “Babylonian Talmud”). When there is a difference in the numbering of biblical verses between some Christian and Jewish versions, the Jewish numbering is in brackets (e.g., Isa. 9:6[5]). Bear in mind, however, that the actual verses are identical; only the numbering is different. Also, in keeping with the stylistic conventions of the publisher, all references to deity are lowercase. However, in keeping with traditional Jewish conventions, other words (such as Rabbinic, Temple, and Messianic) have been capitalized. Unless otherwise noted, all emphasis in Scripture quotations is my own. PART 3 T HEOLOGICAL O BJECTIONS 3.1. Jews don’t believe in the Trinity. We believe in one God, not three Just as Messianic Jews probably misunderstand some of the things you believe, I think you misunderstand some of the things we believe. We do not in any way believe in three gods. Our God is one, and his name is the LORD (or Yahweh, known to Orthodox Jews as HaShem). He revealed himself to us through his Son, the Messiah, who is the very image and reflection of God, and he touches us and speaks to us by his Spirit. These are deep, spiritual truths. Later theologians labeled this relationship the Trinity—God as a triune One. But the word Trinity is not found anywhere in the New Testament, and it may confuse the issues for you. Christians and Messianic Jews emphatically believe in one God and only one God. This is expressed clearly in the doctrinal confession signed by Church of England clergy: “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.”1 As noted by some contemporary Christian theologians, “One thing Christians are not willing to give up is their full acceptance of the Bible’s teaching that God is one. This is simply not negotiable. It is a fact firmly entrenched in Scripture.”2 And again, “The unity of God is, in fact, one great pillar on which the whole Christian faith is built. We do not and cannot deny that God is one.”3 Would any religious Jew have a problem with such statements about the unity of God? But the God we worship and adore is far greater than anything we can fathom with our natural minds. In Jewish mystical literature he is called the Eyn Sof, the Infinite One (literally, “without end”), and traditional Jewish thought recognizes that there are different aspects to his being. You could say that he is one and he is more than one. Our Lord has many different dimensions! We can’t put him in a little box and subject him to mathematical analysis.4 There are mysteries about the eternal nature of God, as all monotheistic believers would gladly admit, and we in our finitude can hardly describe God in his infinitude. As one Jewish intellectual once said to me, “With our own minds, we know as much about God as a fly does about nuclear science.”5 As always, though, the question is, What does the Hebrew Bible say? The opinions of Christians and Jews carry weight only if they agree with the Word of God. So we need to start at the beginning and build our understanding from the foundation up. And remember, the concept of the Trinity came about when followers of Jesus looked at all the pieces of the puzzle and tried to put together the evidence of the Scriptures. We need to look first at that evidence before drawing any kind of conclusion, negative or positive. 1 Cited by A. Lukyn Williams, A Manual of Christian Evidences for Jewish People (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 1:95. 2 Jack Cottrell, God the Redeemer (Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1987), 135. 3 Robert Crossley, cited in ibid., 136. 4 According to S. Daniel Breslauer, “The central concept in Jewish theology is monotheism.” However, he immediately adds, “Affirming God’s unity and oneness is more than a numerical claim. Monotheism claims that God is unique, that the divine transcends all experienced pluralities.” See “God: Jewish View,” in A Dictionary of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue, ed. Leon Klenicki and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 73. For Breslauer’s explana(cid:415)on of Judaism’s problems with the Trinity, see below, n. 14 . 5 Similar to this is the statement of Charles Spurgeon, one of the most dynamic preachers of the nineteenth century: “As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God.” www.DIFA3IAT.com(cid:2219)(cid:2219)(cid:655)(cid:1700)ﺎﻓﺪﻟا(cid:2219)تﻮ(cid:632)ﻼﻟا(cid:2219)ﻖ(cid:648)ﺮﻓ The fundamental Jewish confession of faith, called the Shema, is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4. As traditionally understood, it reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (we will discuss other possible translations below). Messianic Jews often claim that the Hebrew word for “one” that is used here, , ʿechad actually means a compound unity, while traditional Jews often argue their case as if the word meant an absolute unity. Actually, simply means “one,” exactly like our English word “one.” ʿechad While it can refer to compound unity (just as our English word can, as in one team, one couple, etc.), it does not specifically refer to compound unity. On the other hand, certainly does not refer to the concept of absolute unity, an idea expressed ʿechad most clearly in the twelfth century by Moses Maimonides, who asserted that the Jewish people must believe that God is , an “only” one.6 There is no doubt yachid that this reaction was due to exaggerated, unbiblical, “Christian” beliefs that gave 6 Gerald Sigal, The Jew and the Christian Missionary: A Jewish Response to Missionary Christianity (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1981), 126–27, cites verses such as Exod. 9:7; 2 Sam. 13:30; 17:12, 22; Eccles. 4:8, all of which, he claims, use ʿechad in the sense of “absolute one.” So, e.g., when 2 Samuel 13:30 states, “Absalom has slain all the king’s sons, and there is not one of them le(cid:332),” Sigal finds support for his contention that, “the word ‘one’ used in these verses means an absolute one and is synonymous with the word yaḥid, ‘the only one,’ ‘alone.’ ” To the contrary, as already stated, ʿechad simply means “one” just as our English word means “one,” with nothing further implied, being the simple and logical word to use (in either English or Hebrew) in any of Sigal’s examples. In fact, it is quite easy to expose the fallacious nature of Sigal’s argument. To apply his logic to the English language, we could deduce from the sentence, “All the other couples left, and just one couple remained,” that the remaining couple was an absolute unity! Also, it can be argued, that Ecclesias(cid:415)es 4:8, “There is one, and he has not a second; yea, he has neither son nor brother,” which Sigal finds to be of “special interest,” actually militates against his position, since ʿechad here requires two further modifying clauses to indicate that it was speaking of only one individual. But the worst is still to come. Without telling us how he knows this, Sigal states, “It is in this sense [i.e., “the only one, alone”], with even greater refinement, that ʿechad is used in Deuteronomy 6:4: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.’ Here, ʿechad is used as a single, absolute, unqualified one.” Says who? How does Sigal know that ʿechad has that meaning here—and “with even greater refinement”—and not that of compound unity? This is a classic example of circular reasoning: reading one’s doctrine into the text and then pointing to that text to prove the doctrine!