Jesus
SOURCE: Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, Ph.D: Judaism and Christianity: The Differences
(Middle Village, New York: Jonathan David Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 1997, Jonathan David Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved)
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In recent years there have been sounded numerous direct and indirect appeals by Jewish literati, ranging from Sholem Asch, the erstwhile Yiddish novelist and now the most zealous propagator of Christian ideas, to John Cournos, the literary critic and convert to Christianity, to reclaim jesus as a faithful son of the Jewish people and their religion. The argument advanced is that although Judaism may not be able to recognize the Christian claims of Messianic potency and Divine perfection for Jesus, still it could and should accept him as a prophet, a teacher, or as a great rabbi, at least.
Before proceeding to the detailed refutation of these suggestions, we must pause for a moment to consider Jesus' plce in Christianity. Of course, the various Christian denominations differ in ther interpretation of the founder of their faith. yet even the most liberal Protestants, provided they have not left the ground of the Church, would hardly be rady to admint that Jesus was nothing else but a teacher, a prophet, or a rabbi. It is therefore mistaken on the part of certain Jews to assume that their endorsement of Jesus as a teacher, prophet, or rabbi will be instrumental in bringing about better relations between Christians and Jews. On the contrary most Christian deeply resent to have their Son of God and Messiah acclaimed as a mere mortal teacher, prophet, or rabbi. The attitude of the vast majority of Christians toward Jewish attempts to reclaim Jesus for the Synagogue is pithily summarized by Dr. Otto Piper in his God and History: "The Jews may be willing to acknowledge the greatness of Christ, but they only seek thereby to emphasize the greatness of Judaism, for they vindicate Jesus as their greatest son. If they would recognize him as their Messiah and Savior, they would no longer be able to be Jews."
To Christians Jesus is infinitely more than a great prophet and techer, for as Crawford H. Toy aptly observed in his Judaism and Christianity: "Both branches of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, have followed the currents of modern thought; there is not a phase of science, philosophy, or literature but has left its impression on the body of the beliefs that control Christendom. But in all this freedom of movement the person of Christ has maintained its plce as the center of religious life. hatever the particular construction of the theology, whether he be regarded as substantially divine or ony as a profoundly inspired man, whether his death or his life be most emphasized, whether Church or Bible be accepted as infallible guide, he is ever the leader and model of religious experience."
To Christians, save for an insignificantly small group of modernists, Jesus is, first of all, the Son of God and Messiah. He is to Christendom the revelation in the flesh of the perfection of God. To quote Dr. A. Lukyn Williams in his The Modern Doctrines of Judaism Considered: "To us Christians, I repeat, Jesus of Nazareth appears to be absolutely faultless, without spot or blemish, and as such to be the one perfect revelation of the character of God. What God could not do in any book however good, He was able to do in a living person.... When a Christian man is asked about the character of the invisible God, he points out in answer "Jesus of Nazareth", meaning that Jesus shows us what God realy is like and loves us to do. The thought recalls Jesus' own saying reported in the Fourth Gospel - "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
Christianity is predicated on the doctrine of the incarnation, that is to say, on the believe that "God was in Christ - not in writing or doctrines or miracles or subjective experiences or sacramental forms, but in a historic person, in Christ's spirit, his word, his life, his death" (Harris F. Rall, Christianity). As a result, Christian virtue and perfection consist in "the imitation of Christ", whereas for the Jew goodness is bound up in the attempt to imitate by approximation the perfection of God, because Judaism knows of no incarnation of the Divine Being. Judaism therefore rejected, and rejects, Jesus as the Son of God and as an incarnation of the Divine Being. The Jewish God idea...is the very negation of the Trinity and its underlying doctrine of incarnation.
But to Christians Jesus is not only the incarnation of God but also the Messiah and Redeemer whose future advent is announced in the books of the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament is therefore to a very large extent the concerted effort to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah for he did not fulfill the Messianic hopes. The defenders of Judaism in the "Religious Disputations", arranged by the mediaeval Church and forced upon the Jews in the hope of defeating their spokesmen, invariable stressed that not one of the Messianic promises was fulfilled through Jesus. He neither established universal peace and social justice for all mankind nor did he redeem Israel and raise the Lord's mountain as the top of the mountains. As far as the Jews are concerned, their own exile and homelessness and the continuation of war, poverty and injustice are conclusive proof of the fact that the Messiah has not yet arrived, for his coming, according to the prophetic promises, will usher in the redemption of Israel from exile and the redemption of all the world from the evils of war, poverty and injustice.
It has been argued that Jesus did not regard himself as the Messiah and that this role was subsequently ascribed to him by the authors of the Gospels. We are not concerned here with new Testament criticism and it is beyond the scope of our theme to attempt to ascertain which utterances ascribed to Jesus are authentic, and which are not. What realy amtters are not the exact words that Jesus uttered but the spirit that informed them. There can be no doubt, however, that "in the Gospels we possess the ipsissimus spiritus of Jesus" (Prof. W. J. Lowstuter, New Testament Studies, edited by E. Prince Booth). Ostensibly, the tradition connected with Jesus must have provided the authors of the Gospels with sufficent grounds to stress his messiahship - otherwise it would be inexplicable that all the Gospel accounts stress Jesus' own emphasis on his messianic role and mission. Jesus' answer to John the Baptist's query whether he was the one promised by the Prophets, clearly shows that Jesus did regard himself as the Messiah (Matthew 11:2-6). Also his reply to Simon Peter (Matthew 16:13-20) and, even more so, the admission at his trial before the High Priest to be "the Christ, the Son of God" (Matthew 26:63-66; Mark 14:61-64; Luke 22:67-71) conclusively prove that Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah, and, more than that, as the Son of God. These two pretensions placed him inevitably in eternal opposition to Judaism, which cannot recognize Jesus as the Messiah because of his failure to usher in the messianic era, and which rejects the very idea of a "Son of God" as an infringement upon pure montheism.
Can Jesus then qualify, at least, as a "Prophet" from the Jewish point of view? The answer is negative for he did not live up to standards of Hebrew prophecy exemplified by the early and later Prophets. The Hebrew Prophet was first and last the mouthpiece of God. None of the Prophets of Israel ever taught in his own name and on his own responsibility. The "I" of the Prophets is God; the "I" of Jesus, however, is he himself. He taught on his own authority, frequently in opposition to the authoritative teachings of the Rabbis of the time, and he stressed his own personal opinions beyond anyting that had ever been heard in Israel. For no prephet or teacher ever prophesied or taught on his own authority. On the contrary, they endeavored to find justification for new teachings in the Torah. According to Jewish conviction, sounded by the Sages of the Talmud and authoritatively summarized by Maimonides, "A prophet must not 'add or diminish', that is to say add or abrogate any of the Torah commandments." Jesus, however, did precisely that. His exaggerated overemphasis on ethics and his deliberate violation of the ritual law disqualified him as a prophet. For if the Prophets demanded justice rather than sacrifices as pleasing to God, they did not say that sacrifices are superfluous, but only stressed that God will not accept the offerings of the evil doers. Jesus, however, as we shall yet see, claimed the right to abrogate or change certain ritual laws and practices.
Jesus' emphasis on his own teachings, most of which are contrary to the very spirit of Hebrew prophecy, culminated in his claim to possess special nearness to God, a nearness not shared or even approximated by any other human being. Thus he declared: "Everything has been handed over to me by my Father, and no one understands the Son but the Father, nor does anyone understand the Father but the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all of you who toil and are burdened, and I will let you rest. Let my yoke be put upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble minded, and your hearts will find rest, for the yoke I offer you is a kindly one, and the load I ask you to bear is light" (Matthew 11:27-30).
No such words had ever been uttered by a Jewish prophet or teacher, for the claim contained in them is contrary to the Jewish democratic conviction that all men are equal before God, and that there is no particular "Son of God" who is nearer to the Father in Heaven than all the rest. The idea that one specific person should have the power to reveal, or not to reveal, as he "chooses" the understanding of God must have come as a shock to Jesus' Jewish contemporaries who were taught to regard God alone as the source of all truth.
The Gospels are studded with Jesus' claims to stand in a very special relation to God and with prmooises that those who believe in him will be rewarded by God. Thus we read:
Everyone who will acknowledge me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father in Heaven, but anyone who disowns me before men, I will disown before my Father in Heaven. (Matthew 10:32)
If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. If anyone believes in me, streams of living water, as the Scripture says, shall flow forth from his heart. (John 7:37)
I have come into this world to judge men, that those who cannot see may see, and that those who can see may become blind. (John 9:39)
I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not have to walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:11)
As long as I am in the world, I am a light for the world. (John 9:5)
I myself am Resurrection and Life. He who believes in me will live on, even if he dies, and no one who is alive and believes in me will ever die. (John 11:25)
I am Way and Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you knew me, you would know my Father also. From now on you do know Him and you have seen Him. (John 13:6)
Do you not believe that I am in union with the Father, and the Father is in union with me? (John 13:10)
Whoever hates me hates my Father also. (John 16:23)
There are many more utterances by Jesus couched in a similar vein. ostensibly, they present an eternal and unbreidgeable negation of the Jewish convictions and teachings which know of no special, privileged position of any person before God. God, as the Jew knows Him, is equally near to all men, His nearness dpending upon how near they want Him to be to them, and how closely they wish to approach, by unrelenting ethical effort, His perfection. No Jewish prophet, not even Moses, "The Master of the Prophets", ever claimed to be nearer to God than any other man. The Prophets regarded themselves as servants of God, and they strove to discharge their call faithfully - but they kept their own personalities, their own loves and hates and ambitions, as much as it is possible for human beings to do so, apart from their mission. They were the mouthpieces of God, who had to proclaim His message, whether they wanted it or not, for the fire of the Divine inspiration was consuming their innards. The call was so all-powerful that under its impact the personality of the Prophet was all but crushed and he became nothing but the chosen instrument of God - an instrument to be played upon by his Maker, but not to play on [it] his own life's melody....
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