Judaisms view on Jesus
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Judaism's view of Jesus
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Judaism generally views Jesus as one of a number of Jewish Messiah claimants who have appeared throughout history.[1] Jesus is viewed as having been the most influential, and consequently the most damaging, of allfalse messiahs.[2] However, since the mainstream Jewish belief is that the messiah has not yet come and the Messianic Age is not yet present, the total rejection of Jesus as either messiah or deity has never been a central issue for Judaism.
Judaism has never accepted any of the claimed fulfillments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus. Judaism also forbids the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, since the central belief of Judaism is the absolute unity and singularity of God.[3][4] Jewish eschatology holds that the coming of the Messiah will be associated with a specific series of events that have not yet occurred, including the return of Jews to their homeland and the rebuilding of The Temple, a Messianic Age of peace[5] and understanding during which "the knowledge of God" fills the earth,[6] and since Jews believe that none of these events occurred during the lifetime of Jesus (nor have they occurred afterwards), he is not a candidate for messiah.
Traditional views have been mostly negative, although in the Middle Ages Judah Halevi and Maimonides viewed Jesus (like Muhammad) as an important preparatory figure for a future universal ethical monotheism of the Messianic Age. Some modern Jewish thinkers have sympathetically speculated that the historical Jesus may have been closer to Judaism than either the Gospels or traditional Jewish accounts would indicate, starting in the 18th century with the Orthodox Jacob Emden and the reformer Moses Mendelssohn. This view is still espoused by some.
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[hide]Background[edit]
The belief that Jesus is God, the Son of God, or a person of the Trinity, is incompatible with Jewish theology. Jews believe Jesus did not fulfill messianic prophecies that establish the criteria for the coming of the messiah.[7]Authoritative texts of Judaism reject Jesus as God, Divine Being, intermediary between humans and God, messiah or saint. Belief in the Trinity is also held to be incompatible with Judaism, as are a number of other tenets of Christianity.
Judaism's worldview and Jesus[edit]
Oneness and indivisibility of God[edit]
In Judaism, the idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical — it is even considered by some polytheistic.[8] According to Judaic beliefs, the Torah rules out a trinitarian God in Deuteronomy (6:4): "Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one."
In his book A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson describes the schism between Jews and Christians caused by a divergence from this principle:
Judaism teaches that it is heretical for any man to claim to be God, part of God, or the literal son of God. The Jerusalem Talmud (Ta'anit 2:1) states explicitly: "if a man claims to be God, he is a liar."
In the 12th century, the preeminent Jewish scholar Maimonides codified core principles of Judaism, writing "[God], the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity."[10]
Some Jewish scholars note that the common poetic Jewish expression, "Our Father in Heaven", was used literally by Jesus to refer to God as "his Father in Heaven" (cf. Lord's Prayer).[11]
Judaism's view of the Messiah[edit]
Judaism's idea of the messiah differs substantially from the Christian idea of the Messiah. In Judaism, the messiah's task is to bring in the Messianic Age, a one-time event, and a presumed messiah who is killed before completing the task (i.e., compelling all of Israel to walk in the way of Torah, repairing the breaches in observance, fighting the wars of God, building the Temple in its place, gathering in the dispersed exiles of Israel) is not the messiah. Maimonides states,
Jews believe that the messiah will fulfill the messianic prophecies of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.[13][14][15][16] According to Isaiah, the messiah will be a paternal descendant of King David.[17] He is expected to return the Jews to their homeland and rebuild the Temple, reign as King, and usher in an era of peace[5] and understanding where "the knowledge of God" fills the earth,[6] leading the nations to "end up recognizing the wrongs they did Israel".[18] Ezekiel states the messiah will redeem the Jews.[19]
Therefore, any Judaic view of Jesus per se is influenced by the fact that Jesus lived while the Second Temple was standing, and not while the Jews were exiled. He never reigned as King, and there was no subsequent era of peace or great knowledge. Jesus died without completing or even accomplishing part of any of the messianic tasks, instead promising a Second Coming. Rather than being redeemed, the Jews were subsequently exiled from Israel. These discrepancies were noted by Jewish scholars who were contemporaries of Jesus, as later pointed out by Nahmanides, who in 1263 observed that Jesus was rejected as the messiah by the rabbis of his time.[20]
Moreover, Judaism sees Christian claims that Jesus is the textual messiah of the Hebrew Bible as being based on mistranslations[21][22] and Jesus did not fulfill the Jewish Messiah qualifications.[23]
Prophecy and Jesus[edit]
According to the Torah (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and 18:18-22), the criteria for a person to be considered a prophet or speak for God in Judaism are that he must follow the God of Israel (and no other god); he must not describe God differently from how he is known to be from Scripture; he must not advocate change to God's word or state that God has changed his mind and wishes things that contradict his already-stated eternal word; and the things he does speak of must come to pass.[24] There is no concept of the Messiah "fulfilling the law" to free the Israelites from their duty to maintain the mitzvot in Judaism, as is understood in much of Christianity.
There are two types of "false prophet" recognized in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh): the one who claims to be a prophet in the name of idolatry, and the one who claims to be a prophet in the name of the God of Israel, but declares that any word or commandment (mitzvah) which God has said no longer applies, or makes false statements in the name of God.[25] As traditional Judaism believes that God's word is true eternally, one who claims to speak in God's name but diverges in any way from what God himself has said, logically cannot be inspired by divine authority. Deuteronomy 13:1 states simply, "Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you; neither add to it nor take away from it."[26][27][28]
Even if someone who appears to be a prophet can perform supernatural acts or signs, no prophet or dreamer can contradict the laws already stated in the Bible.[29][30] Thus, any divergence espoused by Jesus from the tenets of biblical Judaism would disqualify him from being considered a prophet in Judaism. This was the view adopted by Jesus' contemporaries, as according to rabbinical tradition as stated in the Talmud (Sotah 48b) "when Malachi died the Prophecy departed from Israel." As Malachi lived centuries before Jesus it is clear that the rabbis of Talmudic times did not view Jesus as a divinely inspired prophet. Furthermore, the Bible itself includes an example of a prophet who could speak directly with God and could work miracles but was "evil",[31] in the form of Balaam.
Jesus and salvation[edit]
Judaism does not share the Christian concept of salvation, as it does not believe people are born in a "state of sin".[32] Judaism holds instead that a person who sins can repent of that sin and, in most cases, have it forgiven.[33]
Authoritative texts of Judaism that mention Jesus[edit]
The Talmud[edit]
Various works of classical Jewish rabbinic literature are thought to contain references to Jesus, including some uncensored manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud (redacted roughly before 600 CE) and the classical midrash literature written between 250 CE and 700 CE. There is a spectrum of scholarly views on how many of these references are actually to Jesus.[34]
Christian authorities in Europe were largely unaware of possible references to Jesus in the Talmud until 1236, when a convert from Judaism, Nicholas Donin, laid thirty-five formal charges against the Talmud before Pope Gregory IX, and these charges were brought upon rabbi Yechiel of Paris to defend at the Disputation of Paris in 1240.[35] Yehiel's primary defence was that Yeshu in rabbinic literature was a disciple of Joshua ben Perachiah, and not to be confused with Jesus (Vikkuah Rabbenu Yehiel mi-Paris). At the followingDisputation of Barcelona (1263) Nahmanides made the same point.[36] Rabbis Jacob ben Meir (12th century),[37] Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin (17th century) and Jacob Emden (18th century) support this view.
Not all rabbis took this view. The Kuzari by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (c.1075-1141),[38] understood these references in Talmud as referring to Jesus of Nazareth and based on them believed that Jesus of Nazareth lived 130 years prior to the date that Christians believe he lived, contradicting the Gospels' account regarding the chronology of Jesus. Profiat Duran's anti-Christian polemic Kelimmat ha-Goyim ("Shame of the Gentiles", 1397) makes it evident that Duran gave no credence to Yehiel of Paris' theory of two Jesuses.[39]
According to some[who?] the oppression by King Janneus mentioned in the Talmud occurred about 87 BCE, which would put the events of the story about a century before Jesus. The Yeshu who taught Jacob of Sechania would have lived a century after Jesus. There are also differences between accounts of the deaths of Yeshu and Jesus. The forty-day waiting period before execution is absent from the Christian tradition and moreover Jesus did not have connections with the government. Jesus was crucified not stoned. Jesus was executed in Jerusalem not Lod. Jesus did not burn his food in public and the Yeshu who did this corresponds to Manasseh of Judah in the Shulkhan Arukh. Jesus did not make incisions in his flesh, nor was he caught by hidden observers.[original research?]
In the Toledot Yeshu, the name of Yeshu is taken to mean yimach shemo.[40] In all cases of its use, the references are to Yeshu are associated with acts or behaviour that are seen as leading Jews away from Judaism to minuth (a term usually translated as "heresy" or "apostasy"). Historically, the portrayals of Jesus in Jewish literature were used as an excuse for antisemitism among Christians.[41]
Modern scholarship on the Talmud has a spectrum[42] of views from Joseph Klausner, R. Travers Herford and Peter Schäfer[43] who see some traces of a historical Jesus in the Talmud, to the views of Johann Maier, and Jacob Neusner who consider that there are little or no historical traces and texts have been applied to Jesus in later editing, and others such as Boyarin (1999) who argue that Jesus in the Talmud is a literary device used by Rabbis to comment on their relationship to and with early Christians.[44]
The primary references to Yeshu are found only in uncensored texts of the Babylonian Talmud and the Tosefta.[citation needed] The Vatican's papal bull issued in 1554 censored the Talmud and other Jewish texts, resulting in the removal of references to Yeshu.[citation needed] No known manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud makes mention of the name, although one translation (Herford) has added it to Avodah Zarah 2:2 to align it with similar text of Chullin 2:22 in the Tosefta.[citation needed] All later usages of the term Yeshu are derived from these primary references.[citation needed] In the Munich (1342 CE), Paris, and Jewish Theological Seminary of America manuscripts of the Talmud, the appellation Ha-Notzri is added to the last mention of Yeshu in Sanhedrin 107b and Sotah 47a as well as to the occurrences in Sanhedrin 43a, Sanhedrin 103a, Berachot 17b and Avodah Zarah 16b-17a. Student,[45] Zindler and McKinsey[46] Ha-Notzri is not found in other early pre-censorship partial manuscripts (the Florence, Hamburg and Karlsruhe) where these cover the passages in question.
Although Notzri does not appear in the Tosefta, by the time the Babylonian Talmud was produced, Notzri had become the standard Hebrew word for Christian and Yeshu Ha-Notzri had become the conventional rendition of "Jesus the Nazarene" in Hebrew. For example, by 1180 CE the term Yeshu Ha-Notzri can be found in the Maimonides' Mishneh Torah (Hilchos Melachim 11:4, uncensored version).
In Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a states that Jesus was sexually immoral and worshiped idols.[47]
Mishneh Torah[edit]
Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon) lamented the pains that Jews felt as a result of new faiths that attempted to supplant Judaism, specifically Christianity and Islam. Referring to Jesus, he wrote:
Nonetheless, Maimonides continued, developing a thought earlier expressed in Judah Halevi's Kuzari,[49]
Epistle to Yemen[edit]
Jesus is mentioned in Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen, written about 1172 to Rabbi Jacob ben Netan'el al-Fayyumi, head of the Yemen Jewish community
In the context of refuting the claims of a contemporary in Yemen purporting to be the Messiah, Maimonides mentions Jesus again:
Positive historical reevaluations[edit]
Considering the historical Jesus, some modern Jewish thinkers have come to hold a more positive view of Jesus, arguing that he himself did not abandon Judaism and/or that he benefited non-Jews. Among historic Orthodox rabbis holding these views are Jacob Emden,[52][53] Eliyahu Soloveitchik, and Elijah Benamozegh.[54]
Moses Mendelssohn, as well as some other religious thinkers of the Jewish Enlightenment, also held more positive views.[55] Austrian-born philosopher Martin Buber also had Jesus in a great regard.[56] A positive view of Jesus is fairly represented in the mainstream of modern Progressive Judaism[57] in the currents of Reform (Emil G. Hirsch and Kaufmann Kohler), Conservative (Milton Steinberg and Byron Sherwin), and Jewish Renewal (Zalman Schachter-Shalomi).
Some Orthodox rabbis today, like Irving Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks, also hold positive views. Shmuley Boteach takes this even farther, following the research of Hyam Maccoby.[58] These views have been challenged by the majority of the wider Orthodox community.
However, despite some reevaluations from a historical perspective, it is still considered outside the bounds of normative Judaism of all streams to consider Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah.[citation needed]
See also[edit]
- Christian–Jewish reconciliation
- Judaism's views on Muhammad
- Jesus in Islam
- Milhamoth ha-Shem of Jacob Ben Reuben 12C
- Opposition to Christianity in Chazalic literature
- Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer
- Sefer Nizzahon Yashan or Nizzahon vetus 13C
- Sefer Joseph Hamekane of R. Joseph hen R. Nathan l'official 13C (Paris MS)
- The Touchstone of Ibn Shaprut