Thursday, October 13, 2011

Why did the Jews reject Jesus

According to David Klinghoffer the Jews denied that Jesus was the Messiah.
This was due to the prophecies in the Old Testament which proclaimed that the promised Messiah had been advertised as being destined from Daniel back through Ezekiel and Isaiah, "Let him rule as a monarch, his kingship extending over all peoples, nations and languages."
"Let him return the exiles and rebuild the Temple and defeat the oppressor and establish universal peace as the prophets also said.
Zechariah 14:9: "the Lord will become King over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one"
This is the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; of Jesus and Paul; of Christians and Jews.
A British journalist William Norman Ewer wrote: "How odd of God/To Choose the Jews."
Leo Rosen responded:
 "But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God
Yet spurn the Jews."
Ogden Nash retorted:
"Not so odd/the Jews chose God."
An anonymous pundit said:
"How strange of man
To change the plan."
Jim Sleeper quipped:
"Moses, Jesus, Marx, Einstein and Freud;
No wonder the goyim are annoyed."
I set out a few months ago to try and grasp why the Jews didn't accept Jesus as the Messiah.
First I read "The Source" by James Michener which gave me a wealth of historic background about the Jews.
Then, I read "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" by Herman Wouk which details the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler and the background of the Jewish experience preceding and following the Holocaust.
Then I read "The Hope" by Herman Wouk which documents the partitioning of Israel and proceeds to sweep through the Six Day War when Israel wiped out the Egyptian air force in one fell assault and help off the Arabian aggressors.
Finally I'm reading "Why The Jews Rejected Jesus" by David Klinghoffer.
Jews have long been blamed for Jesus's death and stigmatized for rejecting him.
But Jesus lived and died a relatively obscure figure at the margins of Jewish society.
It's difficult to argue that the Jews of his day rejected Jesus, since most Jews had never heard of him.
The person they really rejected, often violently, was Paul, who convinced the Jerusalem church led by Jesus's borther James to jettison the observance of Jewish law.
Paul thus founded a new religion.
If not for him, Christianity would likely have remained a Jewish movement, and the course of history would have been changed.
Had the Jews accepted Jesus, Klinghoffer speculates, Christianity would not have conquered Europe, and there would be no Western civilization as we know it.
So, I'm still baffled about the original premise, "Why don't Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah?"
I guess I'd have to be a Jew brought up reading the Torah and the Talmud to really understand that enigmatic philosophy.
All we can do is read the Old Testament and New Testament and try and fulfill God's commandments and Jesus' new covenant.

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