Judaism’s Position Regarding Jesus as the Messiah

The basis of Biblical Messianic prophecies pointing to the Messiah of Israel did not originate with the Christian faith. Jakob Jocz states,“The method of finding the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament is not a Christian invention. It belongs to the ancient tradition of the Synagogue. The Rabbis held that ‘all the prophets prophesied only of the days of the Messiah’.” 2.

The search for the Messiah within Judaism has been a long and sorrowful endeavor. Jewish scholar Raphael Patai says concerning this,“The number of men, who in the course of the long Diaspora history, claimed to be the Messiah is unknown and cannot even be estimated for those who left their traces in historical records can only be a fraction of the many who arose, created a stir, gathered a following and then met a violent end or disappeared.” 3An example of this is found in the greatest Messianic movement in the Diaspora history which took place under a Sephardi Jew, Shabbatai Zevi (1626-1676).

After accumulating a large Jewish following, he was forced to convert to Islam, and abandoned all of his Messianic expectations.For traditional Judaism, the Scriptures and tradition form the all-important key in understanding the coming of the Messiah. Some by reading the Scriptures have set time periods for the date of Messiah’s appearance. The great Jewish scholar Maimonides (1135-1204) succumbed to this and dated the Messiah’s arrival at 1210 AD. Maimonides died in 1204 at the age of 69, just six years before the date he had set. 4

Even though Judaism has failed to produce the Messiah, the search continues and the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures and tradition form the basis upon which the identification of the Messiah rests.When Judaism is faced with the abundance of Messianic prophecies and Scriptural pictures which have found fulfillment in Jesus, the typical response is to affirm that Christians do not have a proper understanding of these passages of Scripture. Judaism has historically stated that the Christian interpretation and exegesis and the Hebrew Scriptures is fallacious. They affirm that Christians read the passage incorrectly and take it out of its context. Jewish scholar Daniel J. Lasker elaborates on Judaism’s historical approach regarding the Christian understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.“Even when Jews and Christians agreed on the text, they disagreed on its exegesis. One important point of difference centered on the question whether the text was to be understood literally or figuratively, the Jews usually opting for the former, the Christians for the latter.

Another important issue concerned the question whether or not the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible were indeed fulfilled by the advent of Jesus. Disagreements arose also as to the exact meaning of specific terms, e.g., “almah” in Isaiah 7:14 or whole passages, e.g., the identity of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.” 5There would be some real questions among Christians regarding the correctness of Mr. Lasker’s appraisal of the Christian and Jewish methods of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures. Nevertheless, this does affirm the general approach that Judaism has taken toward the Christian understanding of the Scriptures.Jewish writer Gerald Sigal in his book The Jew and the Christian Missionary says,“Missionary Christianity starts with the thesis that the Jewish Bible is the revealed Word of God, but that Judaism went astray two thousand years ago. The missionaries claim that Christianity then became the true continuation of the Jewish spiritual past. To support that contention, they cannot attack the Hebrew Bible.

Instead, in order to arrive at the theological concepts they desire, missionaries propose their own radically altered constructions of the meaning of biblical verses. These altered constructions bear no relation to any of the beliefs taught by priest and prophet, the authentic teachers in ancient Israel.” 6He goes on to say,“…. the Hebrew Bible is used and misused, by today’s Christian missionary movement……” 7 Throughout the history of Jewish polemics against the Christian faith, Jewish polemicists have appealed to the exegetical argument that Christianity errs in its understanding and interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). See Note #2.