With palms together,
There is an interesting article in the N Y Times today about a stone tablet found amid the Dead Sea Scrolls. Apparently it suggests that the notion of a suffering messiah who would rise in three days was a common belief in the century prior to the Christian Jesus.
The article suggests:
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
Hmmm. The death and resurrection myth prior to Jesus' birth? It would seem this adds to the notion advance some decades ago by a Jewish scholar suggesting this whole Jesus script was a scheme to get Jesus recognized as the Messiah, that Jesus was aware of the things that needd to happen before they happened in order to meet the criteria.
And later:
Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.
But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.
“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”
Strange.
Link
Be well
Lula posts: First of all, it should be known to all that the Jewish religion as practiced today has virtually NOTHING in common with the religion of the Israelites of the Old Testament, the religion practiced by Jews during the time of Christ. This is the Judaism from which Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Apostles came who transmitted to us the Word of God and the gifts of faith, hope and charity. The Hebraic religion of the Israelites came to an end with Our Lord's death on the Cross by which He established a New Covenant that made the Old (Mosaic)Covenant obsolete. The ceremonies and rites officially ended in 70AD when Titus' army destroyed Jersualem and overturned every stone in the Temple. The present day Jewish religion is primarily based upon man-made works called the Kabbalah and the Talmud, and not on the Old Testament. The centrality of the Talmud in today's Jewish religion is without doubt.
Sodaiho: The Judaism of today, as Leuki says, has evolved. With the destruction of the Temple, rabbinic Judaism arose, converting sacrifice to prayer. The same Torah is studied daily, recited weekly in synagugue in a yearly cycle. The same holidays are celebrated and honored in yearly cycle. Jews identify with the patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets, with God and Moses. The Talmud includes Mishnah and Gemara, commentaries on the Torah discussing how to apply God's commandments to everyday life, as life changes. It is a living document and continues to evolve today with the Responsa of rabbiic assemblies addressing questions from congregations.
Kabbalah is not a text, per se. There are kabbalistic texts, but no "kabbalah" as a text. Kabbalah is a mystical aproach to understanding how to approach God. Many very saintly rabbis have taken this approach. It is incredibly deep, very spiritual, and quite beautiful.
Lula, I really don't believe you are a stupid person or an anti-semite, but your unwillingness to explore original source materials, reliance on clearly distorted and extremely slanted source material, would suggest otherwise. To not accept Jesus as God is hardly a sin in the view of people from other faiths. Its time you come to terms with this. God is much too large for the human imagination, including those divinely inspired texts you refer to. He cannot be boxed and sold like Proctor and Gamble's soaps, regardless what the evengelicals say. God is larger than Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhaism, etc. Infinite is infinite.
Be well.
Sorry I'm jumping in late to the discussion but I just got home from being away a couple of weeks.
This is not news Sodaiho. I could have told you that the suffering Messiah was written down long before the reality happened. You just have to go to Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 or other passages written well before Christ died on the cross. Isaiah wrote 700 BC and predicted quite plainly on the suffering Messiah. So?
Your article is from the NY Times is just another attempt by the loony left to place doubt in the minds of those who are not HIS anyhow. When you know the truth these lies are not even a blip on the Christian radar screen.
There are many biblical OT references to the future life, death and burial of the Messiah to come. The Jews would not and could not understand the whole suffering Messiah thing and totally rejected him. They wanted a conquering Messiah not a suffering one. They totally didn't read their own OT scriptures because they were totally engulfed in their own religious ways not taking the time to examine the scriptures like they should have.
Nothing new under the sun there.
If you go back to Abraham, which was a picture of the death and resurrection of Christ, you'd understand that even Abraham thought his son would rise again as he went up Mount Moriah (the same mountain Christ was crucified on) to take his son's life. His faith was that strong.
God was saying to Abraham...."not your son......my son!"
KFC, Please read or re-read the article. I provided a link. The biblical scholars are not the "looney left" but are from many universities examining this tablet. From the article:
“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”
Clearly this (the tablet and its message) might lead one to believe Jesus staged the whole thing so that he would be proclaimed the One.
I am well aware of the cherry picking distortions and manipulations of Torah and the Prophets which Christians have made in order to support their belief that Jesus was the Messiah. In the context of the times, messiahs were sorely needed and Jesus was one among many false messiahs rising to the occasion. Modern Judaism, especially, thank God, the Reform movement, has moved away from undestanding the messiah to be a person and more an age.
My sense is this is far more in keeping with a loving God, rather than the wrathful, vengeful God understood in Christian circles. So, whereas Judaism has evolved, Christianity, in some sects, has remained primitive in its understanding of the divine choosing to believe in an apocolyptic conflageration, rather than an evolving, beautiful universe.
Lula writes: A "good" Jew is to hold the life of the non-Jew as nothing more valuable than that of any other animal, as these quotes from the Talmud demonstrate: Sanhedrin 58b. If a heathen (gentile) hits a Jew, the gentile must be killed. Sanhedrin 57a. When a Jew murders a gentile ("Cuthean"), there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a gentile he may keep. Yebamoth 98a. All gentile children are animals.
This is a series of stretches. I have before me a copy of Tractate Sanhedrin. The section deals with the relations between heathen and Jews in the time of Torah.
"Rabbi Hanina said: If a heathen smites a Jew, he is worthy of death for it is written, And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw there was no man he slew the Egyptian. "
Talmud is incredibly complex. It is a dialogue between rabbis over several centuries regarding the Torah and how it is to be applied. Like fundamentalists of today, they took the word of God seriously and literally. Who was the slayer of the non-Jew? Moses.
How are we to understand it was OK for Moses to kill an Egyptian?
Because, as the tractate points out, the Egyptian struck an Israelite.
The rabbis go on:
Rabbi Hanina also said, He who smites an Israelite on the jaw, is as though he had thus assaulted the Divine Presence, for it is written, "one who smitith man (i.e. an Israelite) attacketh the Holy One".
Moreover, the "worthy of death" clause refers to "by the hand of God" not by Jews.
Now, as times changed, so did our way of understanding. Yet the written record of how the rabbis wrestled with the text remains with us today. One cannot take a line from Talmud and wrestle it from its context and times. Just like one cannot tale a law from the 1700s and apply it today without due consideration to the context of the times.
Lastly, Lula, don't forget, Christians took Jews lives, property and rights away for millenia. To say that Jews don't consider Gentiles as humans is a bit of reverse projection of the historical record on your part.
and I am well aware of the cherry picking distortions and manipulations of Torah and the Prophets which NON Christians have made in order to support their belief that Jesus WAS NOT the Messiah.
Clearly huh? Then how can you explain that Isaiah wrote 700 years before the fact that Jesus would died EXACTLY as he predicted and it came to pass?
For instance, he wrote:
"Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness" Isa 52:14
This clearly speaks of the severe beating he took before he took to the cross. How did Isaiah know this 700 years before the fact? According to your logic the only way this could have happened as you say is if Jesus, knowing the scriptures arranged for this to happen. Did he have himself beaten this severely for others to follow him? Beaten so badly it almost killed him...just not quite?
Isaiah goes on to write:
Surely he tok up our infirmaties and carried our sorrows yet we considered him sricken by God smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities...and by his wounds we are healed.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Isa 53
How did he arrange the whole death and burial scene after he died? We know he died a common criminal placed between two common thieves. We also know he was buried in a rich man's tomb. Did he arrange this as well? How did Isaiah know this?
How about his legs? They were not broken as the other two criminals were to quicken the death process. Instead, he was pierced in his side. Scripture prophetically mentions his legs would NOT be broken. Do you know why? Are you familar with a shepherd who breaks the leg of a wandering lamb? Christ totally submitted himself to the will of his father. How about the Passover Lamb? Did you not know that the lamb's leg was specifically said NOT TO BE BROKEN? How would a Roman Centurian know this? Why would he care if he did?
How about David? Do you believe in his writings? He wrote a very desciptive section on the horrible aspects of the crucifixion in Psalm 22 including thirst and the mocking of the priests and soldiers hundreds of years before. The startling prophetic words "they have pierced my hands and my feet" describe a method of execution that was NOT known until the Roman occupation several centuries later.
What about his clothes? How did he arrange for the soldiers to gamble for his clothing as he lanquished on that cross?
Hundreds of years before David "saw" this and wrote it down:
"My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. Psalm 22
But I guess he went back to the writings of David and staged the whole thing.
Ridiculous. The more you examine the FACTS surrounding the BIRTH of Christ, including the exact location of his birth, the more ridiculous your claims are.
Lula, This is so far from the truth its ridiculous. Your knowledge of Judaism and its practices is practically nil. Rabbinic Judaism saved Judaism in a time of tremendous upheaval when the Temple was destroyed. The priests were essentially replaced by the rabbis and these are the people who studied closely the Bible to understand how we are to live. Jewish life is biblically based...it is biblical life in partnership with God.
Your faith suggests on the one side that the New Covenant fulfilled the old. By this you sometimes mean that you are now exempt from following God's law. But not always. You cannot commit adultery, but you can eat pork. Goodness...talk about cherry picking. Instead of throwing the Torah out with the bathweater, we Jews chose to try to understand how we could live according to God's commandements in a changing world. Our lives are always God centered.
Hello KFC, Slippery. Nothing replaces God's contract. Its a contract and God is as bound to it as the Jews. We can and do keep God's laws. You do, as you understand them. God does not require an intermediary like a Jesus. Nor would God accept a sacrifice from an innocent on behalf of others. It doesn't make sense. Jesus was not the "Passover Lamb" That's a Christian understanding, but it doesn't make it so. Matza was the unleavened bread, even in Jesus time and continues through today. Frankly, there is absolutely no evidence whatsover that Jesus rose from the dead. We have only the word of his band of fellows who had a vested interest in proclaiming him the messiah and even that is a redacted version I'm sure.
If the New covenent replaced the old, why do you still follow some of the rules and not others? You still consider what you call the "Old testament" the bible? It is a sacred text, no? And on what basis do you think you can pick and choose?
Reform Judaism stands by reason, the history of application, context, ethics and morality, to assist in making such choices.
]
Moses never mentioned Jesus.
There are no references in the Torah or the Prophets to Jesus. Some of the references Christians cite are about a possible, longed for, unnamed messiah, a King or Warrior who would defend the Jews, not some idolotrous man-God.
Jews do understand this and live by it. You know the hallmark of Jewish faith and life is the sh'ma, "Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One". Not two, or three...
This does not make sense to me. There was no single Jewish leader who represented anything. If you knew anything of the times, and Jews, you would certainly know this. There wrere indeed several attempts by Jews to defend themselves against the Romans. You call it revolutionary. Perhaps. Religious freedom is revolutionary, don't you think? And worth defending?
See ya.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
