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Why the Followers of Christ are not Jewish
Wed, 04/02/2008 - 18:21
There is always controversy in Religion. There are many different opinions around and I understand that many believe what they think is fact. Therefore, my explanation on this topic isn’t me telling you this is fact. This is just the best answer I found to explain the reason.
Yes, Jesus was Jewish and he practiced the religion until his death. What he preached was Judaism but he also called for change within the Jewish religion. His intention was to unite the people, not to create a new religion that divided the people. After Jesus died it was his followers that developed his teachings and there was, as we all know, resistance to Jesus and his teachings by the leaders of the Jewish faith.
Emperor Constantine also sought to promote the new following of Jesus to help unite the Roman Empire. Christianity spread rapidly because of his support and some elements of Pagan faiths were also included in the religion to help spread the unity further. At this point Christianity was already moving further away from it’s Jewish roots.
Decades after his death Jesus was deified and that was the ultimate breaking point of Christianity from Judaism. In the Jewish faith it is blasphemy to state that G-d ever takes human form and Jews were forbidden to worship any human. Therefore Jews cannot embrace Jesus.
Jesus could also not be the Jewish Messiah because he did not fulfill any of the Jewish Messianic prophecies in his lifetime. The Jewish Messiah has only one “normal” human lifetime in which to fulfill all the prophecies.
This may seem like it is the Jewish perspective of this topic but that is the only perspective that really matters. If the leaders of the Jewish religion decided to accept the teachings of Jesus and alter the religion then this whole thing would have been a different story. Christianity became it’s own religion because of the stance the Jewish religion took and thus there was no choice for the followers of Jesus to separate themselves from Judaism.
First of all, especially when speaking of religion, it is very dangerous to declare what you are writing as fact. And strangely after you did this you also said that “This is just the best answer {you} found to explain the reason.” Well you made an opinionated choice among many possible answers, therefore the things you said are not fact. True you threw in some facts but your inferences and conclusions are not facts.
It is absolutely true that Jesus was Jewish. He was born Jewish, raised Jewish and he remained Jewish until the day he died. It is impossible for him to have been born Christian because Christianity did not yet exist. This is not a unique fact Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the patriarchs of the Jewish religion) would not have called themselves Jewish because that religion had not yet been founded. So there is nothing strange about Jesus not calling himself Christian, there were no Christians.
Had every Jewish person living at that time accepted him as the Messiah things would have clearly been quite different, in fact there was a point in time when it probably appeared as though the religion now know as Christianity was going to be another sect of Judaism. In Acts 5 a Jewish Pharisee named Gamaliel ordered that the Jewish community leave the apostles alone and not persecute them. His rational was that if they were liars they would die out and if not it was pointless to fight them because that would be fighting against God. At this time there were several different Jewish sects that believed vastly different things so it would not have been that weird for Christianity to form their own sect. However the problem arose because the early Christians were not interested in only outreaching to other Jews they believed that the Messiah was also sent for the Gentiles. This is where the conflict arose. The Jews were God’s chosen people and they viewed the Messiah as someone who would liberate them from their oppression under the Romans. Jesus own disciples believed this up until he died. The message that anyone who believed in Jesus, Jew of Gentile, could become one of God’s chosen people just did not fit into the Jewish mindset of the time.
You made the statement that “Jesus could also not be the Jewish Messiah because he did not fulfill any of the Jewish Messianic prophecies in his lifetime.” This is not fact this is opinion. Christians obviously disagree. Lee Strobel wrote, “Isaiah revealed the manner of the Messiah birth (of a virgin); Micah pinpointed the place of his birth (Bethlehem); Genesis and Jeremiah specified his ancestry (a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from the tribe of Judah, the house of David); the Psalms foretold his betrayal, his accusation by false witnesses, his manner of death (pierced in the hands and feet, although crucifixion hadn’t been invented yet), and his resurrection (he would not decay but would ascend on high); and on and on.” All of these prophecies come from the Jewish scriptures and they are all used by Christians to support his messianic claims.
“This may seem like it is the Jewish perspective of this topic but that is the only perspective that really matters” WHAT?!? Why would the Jewish perspective be the only one that really matter? Since when are Jews the only ones qualified to speak on Jesus?
Obviously I write all these things from my own perspective that is very influenced by my own beliefs and I say them with love and with the intention of trying to make you think a little harder about the things that you are posting.