Q&A: The Proof for Christianity
The Proof for Christianity
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
I’d be glad to hear what you think about the following argument in favor of Christianity, an argument I’ve upgraded a bit:
If we look at the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), we see that an inherent part of the messiah is a figure (in principle a king, but let’s set that aside for the moment) in whose time life will be good for the Jewish people, and the nations will be on their side.
Now if we take Christianity, then one could say that if the Jews had “accepted” Jesus (a somewhat Christian word), then the nations would have been enthusiastic about them, as happens with some American gentiles who behave like Jews. And therefore Jesus has the potential to be the messiah if they had accepted him. And to this day a considerable portion of the nations are Christian.
What does the Rabbi think of this proof?
Answer
A brilliant argument. Yet another wonderful example of my claim that nothing can be derived from the Hebrew Bible.
And I haven’t even spoken about this bizarre circularity, where a system is defined as true because it helps promote itself. By that logic, I suggest that the mathematician switch to literature because it’s more popular, and now we’ll say that literature is truer than mathematics.
If this is the best Christians can produce, their situation is dire.
Discussion on Answer
I explained. It makes no sense to change belief x to y in order to increase popularity. If anything, one wants popularity for the true belief. Anyway, this hair-splitting really isn’t worth discussing.
With God’s help, 2 Tammuz 5780
The idea that a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity would lead to the abolition of antisemitism was tried in Western Europe, especially in Germany. Tens of thousands of Jews converted to Christianity, and even those who remained Jewish declared themselves “Germans of the Mosaic faith.” And astonishingly, it was דווקא the mass conversion and the Jews’ assimilation into gentile culture that increased hatred of Jews beyond measure, and that is what led to the Holocaust.
As for the Christians’ claims about the messiahship of “that man,” Nachmanides already responded that the messiah promised in Scripture is supposed to bring the world to a state in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,” and Christianity did not bring peace to the world, but rather filled it with wars, riots, and cruelty.
If anything, perhaps one should argue that the Jewish-American physicist Professor Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the atomic bomb development project, is the messiah, since the atomic bomb brought about a “balance of terror” between the powers, which really does prevent wars in the world.
So maybe the inventor of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, is the messiah? 🙂
Best regards, Eizel Boridansky
This argument is utter nonsense. It doesn’t say in the Bible that if they accept him, things will go well for them. Rather, that things will go well, period. And things were not good for the Jews because of Jesus. On the other hand, if you read whatever you want into the verses, then this prophecy has no meaning anyway.
By the way, if you already go by the plain meaning, this is a refutation and not a proof. But that’s exactly why they make distinctions and invent the second coming and all that nonsense, which is just one of 300 different things you can read into the texts.
Honestly, every single time I’m amazed all over again at how stupid they can be / how much contempt they can have for the intelligence of the people they’re talking to.
Dear K, if these are the proofs after you upgraded them, it’s scary to think what they were before…..
Eyal — this isn’t really an argument, so there’s no need to refute it. But if we’re already refuting it, then Hitler is not relevant. According to Holocaust researchers of recent years, the assumption is that he hated Jews because he hated communism [which is the system that scrambles the whole idea of racial superiority, etc.], and as is well known communism was conceived and led by many Jews, especially those who tried to bring communism into Germany.
M — it’s hard to say they’re that stupid when we know they had many wise people throughout the generations. At most, they’re mistaken.
I wasn’t talking about Christians in general, but about the missionaries in Israel.
I don’t completely agree with the Rabbi that this is circular reasoning of the problematic kind. Because if the messiah is measured by how much he will cause the Jewish people to become popular (in the sense of “and all the nations shall flow to him”),
and so, insofar as the nations “accept” him and in the end he has succeeded in causing them to accept him, then if the Jewish people accept him as well, the nations will love the Jewish people and see them as exalted, etc. etc.
So in such a case, insofar as there is room to say that the popular one is the correct one, what prevents using a circular argument of this kind?