posted on Aug, 17 2005 @ 02:20 PM
I think that one needs to look at the complete set of passages not read after these "haftarah" days before one can make any speculation about why.
Also, the issue seems to be that the passage that isn't read is a passage that states, amoujng other things:
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me"
Why
would anyone want to read something like that? The article states that the implication of jesus reading it was him saying that he is the
"annointed" one refered to, the messiah. So why wouldn't the jews make a habit of not reading someting that is rather incidiary and
revolutionary??
the article also notes:
Generally speaking, Jews excluded from the haftarot those verses on which Christians based the principles of their religious faith. Thus, all
of the customs related to the haftarah readings omit the passage in Isaiah whose focus is the well-known verse, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and
bear a son" (7:14), because it is the foundation of the Christian belief in the concept of the Virgin Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus.
It seems like this would be a sensible thing for them to not read during their big holy readings, especially since they lived in communities of
christians (in europe anyway). And the article notes that in egypt and the balkans, where the rulers were muslim, that the jews there did read these
exerpts, because it didn't cause problems with the rulers.
An organized conspiracy is ruled out, because the verses are selected by each community, not be a central source. It seems that, simply, jews in
christian dominated lands tended to not read these controversial texts, which seems rather reasonable. A jew in a muslim country probably wouldn't
want to run around calling the muslim rulers 'ishmaelite bastards' either.
Most of the concern also seems to be other not talking about the messiah. Which would be sensible, considering that the last time the jews were
concerened about the messiah their entire country was destroyed and they were dispersed across the known world as quasi-exiles. And the article also
notes that these passages were all part of the religious discussions, they simply tended to not be read at these holy communal readings.