The following things run through my mind, and especially after reading answers from a few who claimed to be actual Christian clergy. I hope very much that they also lied about that. I know they lied egregiously about Judaism and history.
I often wonder how many Christians believe that they have entitlement to use their New Testament to redefine the laws of all other people? Is it considered ethical in Christianity to disrespect the laws of another religion and claim that the other people do not have a right to their own laws?
Do Christians believe that the world's Jewish people do not have a right to Jewish law that Jews have always and still believe is eternal? Do Christians believe that if Jews state that worship of anything other than God violates it we are "persecuting" those who hold to those other beliefs?
Then tell me why statements such as the following remain unchallenged or uncorrected by so MANY other Christians?
"So to answer your question, yes, of course Messianic Jews believe in Christ, and are therefore part of Christendom---but that in no way negates nor abrogates the fact that those who were a part of the house of Israel (I.E. were Jews) continue to be a part of the house of Israel after coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Messianic Jews (as well as other Jews who believe in Jesus) are simply standing their ground and refusing to allow their detractors to define who they are FOR them---they are refusing to allow themselves to be disenfranchised and run out of the Jewish community---and more power to them for doing so!"
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It isn’t up to Jews to determine who or what defines a Christian. It isn’t up to Jews to define the laws of other religions or other peoples. However, I often see Christians claiming with authoritative speech that they support people who wish to negate or redefine Jewish law in opposition to it.
First of all, what determines identity as the "house of Israel" the Jewish people, is Jewish law.
If or when a Jew adopts a belief in another entity other than the incorporeal, indivisible singular God/Creator of the Torah, according to unalterable Jewish law recognized by every movement of Judaism across the world and for more than 3500 years, that renders that Jew as apostate and estranged from membership in the covenant nation people Israel (the Jewish people) unless they repent and return.
That paragraph up there I quoted reflects what Jews the world over are experiencing from some evangelical Christians who demand and insist that Jews accept as Judaism, aspects of dogma that God directly prohibits FOR the Jewish people. When Jews say this we aren’t running anyone out of the community. A Jew who has chosen to worship Jesus left Judaism of their own free will. Judaism has never permitted worship of anything other than God and never will. People can freely join or leave Klal Yisrael (the community of Israel)To add insult, as that paragraph indicates, they're telling others that Jews are hateful to apostates because we refuse to permit forms of worship that are forbidden by unalterable, eternal law from the Holy Scriptures of Judaism, the Torah. Not to mention that the apostates among them worldwide number about fifty thousand out of the approximately 400,000 to 500,000 Gentiles call themselves “messianic Jews”. It is only because of massive media and evangelical campaigns that such a small group has so much attention and because of their outspoken antisemitic claims while claiming to be the “real” Israel and “real” Jews.
Why is this unchallenged by Christians when statements like this are said daily and now taught with evangelical campaigns on television and at churches? Don't Christians also follow the commandment,"You shall not bear false witness"?
Why are Christians falling for this new form of antisemitism from people who claim to love Jews while they simultaneously demonize Jews for simply speaking to the truth of what Judaism has always been about?
I quoted a small portion of a much longer answer that was really so over the top with lies about Judaism I think I’ll share it here to show just how desperate and how intense the hatred in this individual must be. If someone spends a great amount of time and effort to fabricate some really absurd lies about another, you know they’re not doing it out of love.
NOTE: I will comment at the < mark from time to time below: * Now, read on to show some real “Christian love” for Jews from that same individual: “This issue gets confounded by a few false premises that are vocally promoted by some Jews today. The first is the silly notion that being Jewish is merely a matter of religious belief. This idea is a ludocrous farce because the original Jews were the physical descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While the scriptures plainly teach that God's covenant was established with Abraham and "in Isaac shall thy seed be called", and while it used to be universally recognized that Jacob (Israel) had twelve sons, whose descendents were the ancestors of the Jewish people, we're being told today that any reference to Jewish peoplehood constitutes adhering to "Nazi propaganda" and saying that Jews are a "race".” < What a way to try to pervert what Torah says and Jews have explained. NO, Jews say we are a *people*, and those of Abraham’s “seed” who passed along the covenant were only those who accepted the covenant. Not all his descendents according to the Torah were the Jewish people. Only his descendents through Sarah. It is a non-Jewish and Nazi propaganda notion of Jewish identity being based on "blood" or "race" rather than determined by law. This particular person has had this explained in detail previously, too. Not all Jews follow Judaism or are all Jews “good Jews” but if they follow another religion or god they’re definitely no longer being Jewish, and more importantly, they have estranged themselves by their own free will according to God's commandments in the Torah.
“Obviously, there is no Jewish race, but there IS such a thing as Jewish peoplehood. Others can JOIN them (I.E. convert and become Jews), but in doing so, they are becoming an entire part of the Jewish people, not just adopting a new religion.” < They key word there where he self-contradicts is *not just adopting a new religion* he actually admits despite himself they must adopt the religion to convert. To JOIN they MUST adopt the “new religion” and that’s been a part of the process of BECOMING a member of the Jewish people since the time of Abraham. You can't convert to Judaism if you believe in other deities. You can't convert to Judaism if you don't make affirmation of faith in God to the exclusion of anything else and the convert affirms to uphold Torah.
“Besides, the entire line of thinking that being a Jew is merely a matter of religious belief is a nonsensical yarn from git-go. Even FULL-BLOWN ATHEISTS can be considered Jews (so much for it just being a matter of religious belief)! “ < Jewish identity is based on Jewish law. Jews don’t say that it is “merely a matter of religious belief” to be considered a member of the Jewish people. We say Jewish identity is based on Jewish law that God gave us. JUDAISM..the religion, IS a belief and the laws DEFINE that belief and the membership criteria of who and what is permissible for the Jewish people. An Atheist can’t CONVERT to BECOME a Jew since affirmation in the faith of Judaism is required to convert *just* as this preacher even admitted a couple of sentences earlier. His lack of consistency rears its head again.
“There is even one major, recognzied, so-called branch of Judaism that won't even affirm for sure that there is a God in Heaven--and they focus almost ENTIRELY on Jewish peoplehood! There are totally secular Jews, and Jews whose defiance of the Torah is absolutlely shocking." < He is histrionic in overstating the numbers and significance and calls a controversial small group of "Humanistic" Jews a "major branch" of Judaism. Why such deception? Their focus is upon living the ethical precepts of Torah. That is not nearly as defiant of Torah as worshipping a man as God incarnate in violation of the affirmation of faith , or the abomination of human sacrifice forbidden and condemned many times in Tanakh in the harshest of terms. Again, if they were born members and are simply following ethical precepts of Torah, they are sinning in not worshipping God, but they are still fulfilling many Torah obligations to strive to righteousness, justice and mercy. A secular Jew has not committed idolatry. Many non Jews fail to grasp the significance of the strict obligation placed upon a Jew to NEVER worship anything other than God.
"There are Jews who practice witchcraft ("Jewitches"), homosexuality, even Buddism (Jew-Bu's), yet their Jewish status isn't even questioned.” < He knows this is a lie. The Torah says no other gods, it doesn't name every false god out there. This preacher knows that Jews have told him this claim was a lie every time he'd said it formore than a year. I note he also slips the sin of homosexuality in there among belief systems as if it is the same thing as the idolatry of worshipping a Buddist goddess or Jesus or a Wiccan goddess. Homosexuality is a sin in the Torah but it isn't one that separates the Jew from his people as God commands foreign worship does.
“Some Jews pick and choose which commandments from God they find personally "meaningful"--and flatly reject the rest--yet they are considered Jews.” < Isn’t this interesting, someone who wants Jews to IGNORE the core commandments from God in the Torah for Jews complaining about cherry picking Jews! He's clearly not consistent especially when he insists upon ignoring direct commandments from God for Jews nor does he observe concern over ",Do not bear false withess!
“But you let a God-fearing, Torah-observant son of Israel--circumcised on the eighth day, Bar Mitzvah'ed, and reared on synagogue life study the evidence and reach the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah, and Presto-Chango, merely for this belief alone, he has supposedly lost his Jewish status and has morphed into a gentile. Could a bigger bunch of hogwash possibly exist? “< First of all, I’ve never met or seen such a person who knew Judaism and followed it as a "God fearing, Torah observant" Jew who would decide that everything about it was wrong and then leave it for another religion. On the remote possibility that such a person did exist who would leave worship of God to worship Jesus, if they were an honest person they would certainly know that worship of Jesus is not Judaism. His notion of a God fearing Torah observant person is someone who believes God lied to every man, woman and child at Sinai who affirmed God is ONE. God told all Israel that God does not become a man. The prophets all echoed that and said that no man becomes a god, either. Yet, the core of Christian dogma, the New Testament, is that God either created a demigod through impregnating a human, OR became incarnate "in the flesh". There is no more egregious way to violate Torah POSSIBLE than to worship a man as a god or believe God became a man.
That is a sin that separates a Jew from God and from the purpose of the covenant of Israel.
Honest converts to Christianity from Judaism would not claim he’s still following Judaism. IF a previously Torah observant Jew were to decide to follow Jesus and rely on his sacrifice for atonement of sin rather than follow the Torah's and Judaism's precepts regarding these things that person would certainly know enough to realize he can’t follow contradictory belief systems. God calls human sacrifice an abomination and since we know that if someone "believes Torah" they would not believe in a human as a deity. Therefore, Jesus sacrifice was a human sacrifice, an abomination. Deicide is not possible since God does not die, God is not incarnate TO die.
Anyone actually raised to know a whit about Judaism who would reject it for Christianity would hopefully be a person HONEST to remember that God declared human sacririce is an abomination for Jews, and know that worship of a Jew or through a Jew is an egregious violation of Torah to do based on even a rudimentary knowledge of Torah.
“And what's even more laughable (and so ridiculous that it leaves one reeling) is when you realize that JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF was a JEW! He never lost HIS Jewish status." < Who knows? Nothing was written about him until more than a generation after his death. If Jesus was not a Jew he couldn’t have even been a messiah potential. That he finds his extreme perversions of what he's read from other Jewish posters,(Rabbis included) and his misrepresentations of Jewish law and history enough to make him “reel” in laughter, is revealing of the glee he takes in trying to create hatred and animosity to Jews by bearing false witness. I don’t want to sidetrack here so I’ll get back to addressing his absurd perversions of Judaism and history..
“In fact, the entire early Christian movement was simply an outgrowth of Judaism. The historical reality is that Jesus, the original apostles, and the entire original church were all Jewish. There were literally THOUSANDS of Jews who believed in Jesus, they were a part of the Jewish community, and they didn't somehow "stop being Jews" when they recognized Jesus as the Messiah." < Hmm..how is it that somehow these “thousands” of Jews never wrote down anything during Jesus’ lifetime about him? We’ve got librarires full of Jewish writings contemporary to Jesus lifetime. Historical record indicates that rather than an outgrowth of Judaism it was an attempt of the colonizers and conquerors to assimilate Judaism into their Empire.
“This is the reason why the Jews lost the Second Jewish Revolt---Rabbi Akivah tried to acclaim Simon Bar Kokhba as the Messiah--which caused all of the Jews who believed in Jesus to have to step down rather than march under the banner of a false messiah. Rather than placing the blame on Rabbi Akivah for proclaiming a false messiah or on Bar Kokhba for BEING a false messiah, they blamed the Jews who believe in Jesus!!!! It was only after this point that this foolishness of trying to somehow renounce the Jewish status of believers in Jesus got started. It continues to this day“. < This is an extremely absurd and bizarre attempt to pervert history. Christians had refused to ally themselves with the Jews against Roman persecution long before the Bar Kochba Revolt and were already considered a separate religion group by both Jews and Romans before this time.
BEFORE the Bar Kochba revolt and before Rabbi Akivah ..Rome had already considered Christians a separate group because the early Christians petitioned the Emperor to do just that, recognize that they were not Jews. The objective historical evidence for this fact is that the emperor Nerva (96-98 C.E.) freed the Christians from paying the Fiscus Judaicus, the Jewish capitation tax decreed as a punishment for the revolt of 66-73 C.E. The tax was placed upon anyone who was said to be "living a Jewish life".
Clearly, the Romans already regarded the Christians as a separate religion group prior to this time. The Temple treasury was raided in 66CE by the Roman governor of Judea, Florius and a massacre of Jews in Jerusalem by the Romans took place.
The early Christians did not take part in the FIRST revolt triggered by this massacre. THEY separated from the customs, beliefs and from the Jewish people themselves by this time and the Romans recognized and rewarded this!
Christianity has never been a unified belief, from the earliest days of the Didache (instructions to the apostles on how to conduct church affairs) there were conflicts on how much Judaic influence should remain (was Jesus a god or not?) and it was often a very nasty affair. The Gnostics were largely killed off by their fellow Christians, but some Gnostic aspects do remain. A study of the Nag Hammadi library (translations from the Coptic are online) can help you discern this. Christianity really has little to do with Judaism. It's a mixture of Roman and Greek mystery religions and focuses on death with Hebrew names and mistranslated texts.
Things that I once thought must have been fabricated outright I later discovered were beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This was the longstanding battle for souls going on..the Hellenized Jews, those who had become apostate to Judaism, desired to entice other Jews to worship as the Greeks that they believed superior in philosophy and knowledge, so they created texts that tried to say..see this is what it was supposed to have been all along. However, reality was that those beliefs were identical to the beliefs and practices that the Torah demonized and prohibited for Jews.
Once one begins an in-depth study of the religious practices and beliefs of all the peoples surrounding the Jews in the centuries just preceding the beginning of Christianity, one can see these developments take place. It was a concerted effort to do away with Israel and Judaism.
A large percentage of the early church fathers who became martyrs did so at the hands of their co-religionists of competing sects of Christianity when Christianity was not so clearly defined as a tool of the Roman empire.
Any entity that would threaten Roman authority would be persecuted by the Romans. Perhaps the earliest Christians (a band of followers of a messiah hopeful would threaten Roman rule, since the prophetic vision of Judaism of "the messiah" is of a RULER, a king, who breaks the yolk of political oppression and persecution for all and brings about universal brotherhood, peace and knowledge of God) would most certainly have been a threat. But once the doctrine of the New Testament gelled, that changed the Tanakh concept of messiah meaning an anointed king, to mean a sacrifice for sin and a "kingdom" not of this world, this had effectively changed the Christians from being enemies of Rome to tools of Rome.
Thus began the conversion of the Romans!
Emperor Hadrian later attempted to wipe out Judaism after Jews revolted against the previous Emperor, Trajan. He built a Roman temple to Jupiter on top of the ruins of the old Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed in 70 CE, and is said to have burnt the Torah on top of the Temple Mount in 135 CE .
He then renamed Judea, Palestina, a Latinized version of the name of the Philistines, to insult the Jews and eliminate the history of Jewish presence.
The early followers of Jesus who had been awaiting his reincarnation separated themselves publicly from the Jews once again in the time of the 2nd revolt, and once again refused to ally themselves with the Jews and allied themselves to the Romans. This time instead of simply passively ignoring the plight of the Jewish people, early Christians took up arms with Romans against the Jews. This led to another messiah hopeful, Simeon Bar Kochba to view them as the enemies of Israel, thus, after the defeat of the Jews and the murder of Bar Kochba, the Chistians were not expelled along with the Jews. Rome rewarded them a SECOND time for their refusal to be allied to the Jews.
Simeon Bar Kochba's revolt that saw to the Christians allying themselves in arms to murder Jews, was a generation AFTER they had successfully petitioned Rome to be recognized as NOT being Jews, because they did not live a Jewish life.
After Constantine - First Christian Emperor of Rome (285-337 CE) the Roman empire was Christian.
That poster knew all of this *before* he concocted his revision of the history. I know he knew this because he’d read these things in answers I’d written before and I'd previously pointed out to him when he tried to claim that both the Roman expulsion and the Holocaust were punishment from God for “rejecting” Jesus.
How’s that for love, eh?
If these perversions are the kinds of things that are becoming commonplace in churches is another Holocaust soon to follow?
I did not alter any portion of the other person's words.
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