How Reading Jewish Interpretation Of Scripture Is Helping Me To Have The Courage To Critique Christianiity

[HelloWorld]

I have found that reading about how Jewish people interpret scripture, particularly those passages referencing the moshiach, gives me greater courage to question the claims of Christianity. They have some really interesting points to offer.

 

It kind of makes me wonder how Christianity can consider itself the expert in interpreting scripture. After all, the scripture (by this I mean the OT) were written, interpreted and read by Jewish people for thousands of years before Christianity was even introduced. Surely Jewish scholars should be considered the authority on the OT since after all they have been reading and studying them for much longer than Christianity has even existed.

 

In church we would always pray for the Jewish people who "failed to recognized the time of their visitation". But no wonder the won't accept Jesus as the moshiach. They have always understood scripture as saying that the moshiach would be a MAN (not Man-God) who would be a great military leader and do a bunch of stuff to restore the kingdom of Israel. Clearly Jesus did not do this. I was always told that the Jewish people just misinterpreted these scripture passages and that they were sort of tricked into thinking that he was supposed to be a military leader. But it seems pretty obvious that the Jewish understanding of what the moshiach is supposed to be like is much more scripturally sound that the Christian understanding. And why would God allow his chosen people to be tricked like this?

 

Thought that I might mention this to those who are still struggling to break away like myself.

[Evolution_beyond]

you are right.

 

Your words exactly echo what i've often thought.

 

Anyone who looks into these things can quickly realise that the christian interpretation of the OT is completely false. Jews themselves would know better about what it all means because it's their scripture really and is written in Hebrew, which is their language.

 

When you realise this then the New Testament seems to be founded on a big mistake.

[Jeff H]

Bingo - you hit the nail right on the head.

 

The real problem is that the "prophecies" that Christians use to say Jesus is the Messiah are not real Messianic prophecies at all. Some are prophecies taken out of context (such as Isaiah talking about the virgin birth and Emmanuel), and others are passages reinterpreted to be a "foreshadowing" of Jesus (like David's psalm about being broken, forsaken, etc.). The real Messianic prophecies are the ones the Jews use - talking about a leader, a military warrior, etc. Mind you, those didn't seem to come true either, but oh well...the point is that Jesus didn't fulfill those ones. Christians just say "Oh He'll fulfill those ones at his second coming." Right.

[bush country]

After deconverting I spent a lot of time reading through the pages at Jews for Judaism. Gave me a whole new perspective on why the Jews don't buy xian claims.

[Guest Melodramy]

I did the same thing. It finally occured to me that if anyone was going to be able to offer a correct view of the 'messianic prophecies,' it was going to be the people who came up with them. Not some other cult which came around and overlayed an entirely new god / religion on top which actually fits the roman / pagan hero-god archetype better than the jewish god Yawheh. It is the height of arrogance that Christians think they have "the correct interpretation" of another religion's writings, and the jews are entirely correct to view the Roman / pagan virgin-birth-dying-resurrecting-god hero arechetype as a blasphemy.

 

And both religions are equally founded on the imaginary. (Lest anyone think I'm suggesting that because Jews have the complete right to view Christianity as a horribly plagiarized aberration, "Judaism is the one true religion").

 

Whenever someone comes on this site and starts squealing about all the fulfilled messianic prophecies, I think we'd all be well-served to immediately send them off to read the jewish literature about those prophecies, and why they do not remotely mean what they think they mean. Then they can just go ahead and debate the jews...not us.

 

And geez...how difficult is it to understand, then when you want to invent a character to "look" like "something special," you can pen any story about him that you want which make him "look" like he "fulfilled" well-known ancient prophecies. Therefore, absolutely nothing written about Jesus in the new testament making him say/do things perceived as "old testament prophecy" is proof of a darn thing, except that the writers were familiar with the existence of the "prophecy." The author of the book of Matthew strains so hard to do this he makes an actual circus act of it with his mistakes and gives it all away.

[Amethyst]

Hi,

 

It's good that you're reading up on other religions. Reading about other religions is one of many things that cause people to think about their assumptions. Please don't think you have to limit your reading, but it is a good first step in the learning process.

[hereticzero]

Christians are full of themselves! They read every scripture in the belief that the holy ghost whispers the correct interpretation in their rear, er, ear. They have this assumption because they believe they have been chosen by god over the Jew and that 'true' Jews come to Jesus and at that time even a Jew can interpret their own OT scripture correctly, so long as that interpretation sounds like good christian doctrine.