Q&A: Jesus, Judaism, and Messianism
Jesus, Judaism, and Messianism
Question
In honor of Rabbi Michael, greetings,
In one of our exchanges you wrote to me that it is not recommended to enter a church, because they invented a religion of their own, even according to opinions that Christianity is not idolatry.
And I wonder, with some anxiety, whether they really did “invent a religion of their own,” or whether the Messianic Jews, at least those from the beginning of Christianity, are in fact the authentic continuation of Judaism.
In the Torah, in the book of Deuteronomy, it is written that in Moses’ absence God will give us a prophet and place His words in his mouth. The sign of prophecy is miracles. This teaches that God assumes in advance that if you hear about a miracle done publicly, that counts as grounds obligating you to heed the prophet’s voice. It cannot be that the prophet would be required to perform his miracles before each and every individual. This is similar to what the honorable rabbi often mentions: that if God gave the Torah, He took into account that it would be interpreted through the Oral Torah. It cannot be that God set up miracles as indicators of a true prophet and yet left ambiguity regarding people who were not present when the miracle was performed. We do not read about miracles done by Jeremiah and Isaiah and every prophet before all of Israel.
So then, it is told of Jesus that he performed many repeated miracles before large crowds, and therefore
(apparently?) from a halakhic perspective, we are commanded to listen to him.
In fact, a state of existence without a prophet is almost a contradiction of Moses’ promise to the people—what are we to do without a prophet? And furthermore it says, “a great voice that did not cease”; if the voice of God stopped beating within us, how can it continue?
Jesus commanded his disciples not to omit a single letter from the Torah. He said that he came to fulfill, not to diminish. He said that whatever the Pharisees tell you should be done, because the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. So he did not contradict the Torah.
It is only that he said not to act as the Pharisees act. “Do not do according to their deeds.” And he did not rebuke his disciples who plucked grain on the Sabbath, nor those who ate without ritual hand-washing. But all these stories could easily be interpreted as an instruction to his disciples to cling to the Holy Spirit, which by way of a temporary ruling can prophesy against Jewish law. The Holy Spirit is not necessarily such a remote thing. In the past few weekly Torah portions we read about “wisdom of heart,” through which the Temple was built. This is the Holy Spirit: an inner intuition for understanding what is good and right. After all, our intuition is a voice that God plants in our soul, and therefore it is His command to us. Jesus says that the Sabbath was given for man, not the other way around, and in this he connects us to human intuition, by virtue of which one may violate Jewish law as a temporary ruling. Therefore, “Do not do according to their deeds”—follow the instructions, but in your own way, while understanding the essence of the Pharisaic instruction.
Eldad and Medad also prophesied not from the spirit of Moses; they too prophesied and did not cease, and from them came the promise that all of God’s people would be prophets. The knowledge of God will be like water covering the sea. Even the male and female slaves. The Holy Spirit is not bound by the laws of Moses’ Torah. It is above them, as a temporary ruling. An instruction pulsing every single hour. Every moment.
This also makes more sense—that God asked us to listen to the nature He implanted within us. After all, He is the giver of the Torah and the creator of man in His image. That makes more sense than Jewish law given thousands of years ago being the guide for the present, without inspiration of the spirit at every moment.
It should be remembered that any opposition to Jesus on the basis of later halakhot contains an absurdity, since he preceded the Mishnah and the Tosefta.
In fact, it seems that a key figure in shaping the Mishnah, Rabbi Akiva, who was called “a full storehouse” by Rabbi as the initiator of the shaping of the Mishnah, is mainly a figure shaped out of stories about Jesus. Jesus was the one who placed “Love your neighbor as yourself” as the great principle in the Torah after “Love the Lord your God.” Jesus said not to abolish even a jot from the Torah, just as Rabbi Akiva expounded the decorative crowns on the letters; he said that he followed the path of tradition, and preceded Rabbi Akiva, who needed the midrash about Moses entering his study hall and hearing “a law given to Moses at Sinai.” Rabbi Akiva too spoke about God in highly anthropomorphic terms, as in Song of Songs, and thereby also placed love at the center of religion like Jesus. Rabbi Akiva was called “ben Yosef,” like the name of Jesus’ father (stepfather?), to be considered Messiah son of Joseph. After all, he accompanied Bar Kokhba. Rabbi Akiva also taught that one should fear flesh and blood—the Torah scholars—as one fears God. He too died while justifying the divine judgment, as Jesus died out of a sense of mission, and about him too it is told that he died as atonement for sins, as the central figure in the Ten Martyrs.
And regarding the incarnation of God in Christianity, it seems that it is a continuation of the Hebrew Bible, which expressed itself in anthropomorphic terms. Clearly Christianity went overboard, just as there were Jewish kabbalists who went overboard. I am speaking about the early Christians, the Messianic Jews, who did not claim that Jesus is God. Jesus is a prophet and messiah according to that view, and is not God. Jesus never said that he is God, and at most he was compared to the Logos in the Gospel according to John. After all, it is clear that in rabbinic Judaism too there is a Logos that serves as a divine mediator. In the language of the Sages: the Shekhinah.
So in practice, does not all this obligate us to investigate our Jewish roots in the New Testament? Practically speaking, is there not here a call to listen to Jesus, who calls on us to listen to the Holy Spirit pulsing within us beyond the written word—literally as a temporary ruling of the wisdom of our heart at every moment? Are we not obligated to prepare ourselves for the coming of the messiah by strengthening faith in Jesus, because—as the Chabad people say—there is no king without a people?
I am truly asking in order to understand, and I hope it will not sound as though I am being provocative, Heaven forbid. I feel an obligation as a human being to search for the truth, certainly for the will of God, even though I was educated as a religious Jew and studied in hesder yeshivot (Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva). I study Torah and delve deeply, and I want to observe Jewish law even if Jesus is the messiah, and I do not believe that a prophet can violate the Torah. I am not connected with missionary activity, and I am in fact very puzzled by Messianic Jews who show contempt for Jewish law.
I would be happy to hear your opinion!
Many thanks for all the wonderful answers!
Answer
A., hello.
The discussion sounds a bit bizarre to me. According to Jewish law, there is certainly no obligation to listen to Jesus or to be a Messianic Jew. After all, the laws regarding a prophet are that even if he performs miracles, one must not listen to him if he comes to uproot commandments. Beyond that, I am not convinced that Jesus performed miracles. If you are convinced, then perhaps you should follow him.
In the end, Jesus’ teachings—even if originally they were meant to preserve the Torah—are not today’s Christianity and not today’s Messianic Jews. With them we are talking about a “New Covenant.” If you want to be an early Christian and you are convinced that it is true, and you also understand/know what that means—go for it.
Discussion on Answer
Shai — although I agree with your conclusion, your words are not an argument.
As for A.’s actual points, there are several things worth noting:
1. The Mishnah was already formulated in the Greek period, long before the time of Jesus, although it was later edited and expanded. See the scholarly literature on this (there are various proofs for it, and this is not the place).
2. It is true that the Torah says to listen to a prophet, but it also says to listen to a religious court… The same religious court that sentenced Jesus to death for heresy is the same court that, according to the Torah, is supposed to execute a prophet who leads people away from the God of Israel. True, we do not know completely what the reason was for which he was killed, but that is what it ruled, so the situation is not at all simple—namely, that in such a case one should listen to the prophet and not to the court.
Now, even if we say that we are in a state of doubt, and that it is not clear from the Torah what to do in a case of conflict between a court and a prophet, we should add to that 3 facts:
– The evidence for the very existence of Jesus’ miracles is extremely dubious. In fact we know nothing about him, and he could have been no different from any number of “babas” living in the land. That is, not only is there doubt whether one should listen to a prophet whom the court sentenced to death, it is not even clear whether that person performed miracles at all.
– It is known to us today that after Jesus’ death he had very few disciples; most of his believers sat in the pagan diaspora in the Galilee. This teaches us that the people dwelling in Zion were not particularly impressed by his words, his prophecy, or his credibility. This is admittedly not conclusive proof, but the fact that those who lived in his time were not impressed greatly weakens the claim of his prophecy itself, since those who knew him, it seems, were not very impressed by his prophecies.
– It should be remembered that Jesus and his miracles are suspiciously similar to several other deities (though not absolutely identical). Deities who are born on December 25 through a virgin birth with a star announcing their birth, who had 12 disciples, performed miracles involving bread and wine, were executed, and rose from the dead. True, in our tradition too there are things similar to other mythologies, but there is a difference between the story of the flood, where you could say that everyone is documenting the same event, and the case where the life cycle of the founder of a religion is identical to the life cycle of other idols—and think carefully about that.
These facts—that the court which received the Torah’s authority ruled that he should be killed (and then it is not at all clear whether according to the Torah one should listen to him), that we have no real evidence that he performed miracles (and then it is not clear that he even meets the conditions of a prophet), that the people of his own time were not impressed that he was a messenger of God, and that many miracle stories about him are suspiciously similar to pagan deities—should, in my opinion, make one stop and think.
P.S. — “ethical monotheism,” the concept that elevated the importance of commandments between man and his fellow as the foremost priority, is attributed in scholarship to the prophets long before the time of Jesus and Rabbi Akiva.
P.S. 2. If you doubt the theological reliability of the New Testament (for according to your words, you say he was at most a prophet and not God as is claimed in the later literature there), then it is not clear to me why you are looking to investigate your roots there… You can hold that he was a prophet, but everything else written there should, according to your own position, be presumed unreliable.
Death*
What goes through the head of an intelligent Israeli that makes him want to convert to Christianity??