The Jewish and Jesus. Why didn't "they" believe

Originally posted by LadyV

This is something I have wondered about also. Back then, and today, the religious community would, if someone were to do such feats, be accused of being possessed by demons.....

Or crazy, A prophet today wouldnt be able to happen.

I chanced across this just the other day, and gave it a quick read, it is quite large.

It covers a lot of material quite concisely, and details some of the sociological aspects of the times, some of which may directly assist your research in this area as this question was raised if memory serves. Very compatible with a lot of other historical material on the times which I have read.

freespace.virgin.net...

I have heard some extreme "Did Jesus really exist?" arguments over the years. Often based on the lack of historical record and the fact that the generally cited external source - Flavius Josephus is thought, by some scholars, to have been edited after the fact (conspiracies - everywhere). This might also answer to your question, but I don't know all the external sources that support the existance question.

www.josephus-1.com...

Second link is also perhaps interesting in regards to your question never the less, and other pages on the second link would seem to counterpoint/balance the first.

Other deities fall on the SO call "messiah" description but they have never been taking seriously due to the fact that they are not from Christian�s beliefs.

In my opinion the Jews know more about the Jesus of the bible that meets the eye and if they don�t worship him as the �messiah� is because he was not their messiah.

Hi USS Eldrige 1943:

The so-called "Testimonium Flavium" of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, chapter 8 paragraph 3) is regarded by serious schoals are highly suspect (i.e. in certain patches) because it contains various short interpolations in the Greek which are not part of his (or his assistant-editor's) regular normal flowing Greek style and when these interpolations are removed, what remains is a much smoother and normal Josephean Greek:

The FAKED INTERPOLATIONS by Christian scribes ARE IN CAPITALS:

If you remove ALL the words in CAPITAL LETTERS you get back to Flavius Josephus' original Greek text ( he wrote an earlier one in his native Aramaic):

Here is the text in ENGLISH:

QUOTE

�Now there was about this time Iesous ,a wise man IF IT BE LAWFUL TO CALL HIM A MAN AT ALL AS HE WAS A DOER OF WONDERFUL DEEDS and a teacher of such men as expect the miraculous with eagerness, who drew to himself many of the Jews and also many Greek God fearers who regarded him as HE WAS [the] Christ.

And when Pilate, at the behest of the very highest men amongst us, had condemned him to the Cross, those that had revered him from the beginning did not forsake him at the end:

FOR LO HE APPEARED UNTO THEM ALIVE ON THE THIRD DAY AS THE DIVINE PROPHETS HAD SURELY FORETOLD , YEA THESE AND TEN THOUSAND OTHER WONDROUS STORIES CONCERNING HIM.

And this tribe of Christians, which are named after him, are not extinct even unto this day.�

END QUOTE

JOSPEHUS may have been a Jewish turncoat who betrayed his fellow Israelites when the chips were down (they didn't stand a chance against Rome and he knew it) but he was no Christian and reading the rest of his works shows that he strongly disliked (and was very distrustful) of the numerous Messianic-Apocalyptic movements current in his day in Israel--and on whom he blamed the loss of the country during the War (AD 66-72)

Even linguistically we can see that the CAPITAL LETTERS that were added to the text were a later Christian forgery which affected most of the later copies of the Greek texts of Josephys in order to make "Iesous" appear in a less political and more divine (read: later Chrsitian Orthodox) light.

So try and bear this in mind: references to "Iesous" in Jospehus may contain authentic kernels, but they are not necessarily flattering.

Here is what the text would have sounded like "in modern English" without the sticky interpolatory fingers of all those the Christian copyists:

"Around this time arose a man named Iesous, teacher of proverbs who surrounded himself with such persons who were forever looking for the miraculous, who was able to draw in both Jews and Greek God-fearers who called him the Christ. And when Pilate, at the behest of the highest authority among us [Jews] had him condemned to the Cross [for sedition], those who had followed him from the start did not desert him in the end, and this Tribe of Christians, who were so named after the [him], has not completely died out, even to this day..."

This would be the historical "kernel" that was later doctored up into more "christian orthodox" wording by all the interpolations, which vary in scope and wording from MSS to MSS ...

line 3 above should read: "is regarded by serious scholars as highly suspect..." --sorry I type too fast..!

Originally posted by LadyV
The Jewish and Jesus. Why didn't "they" believe

Because the leaders of the Jewish faith at the time knew that their religion, like all religions, was a scam so, Jesus couldn't be the messiah. That's just my opinion.


edit=grammar

[edit on 9/16/04 by NotTooHappy]

Quote: "I think the clue to the whole rejection idea here is "Galilean" (from the Heb. Ha GilGal Ha Goyim = "circle of Gentiles"). The southern Judaean Jerusalemites did not think the Galileans were full fledged "Jews" (too much mixed Assyrian and Greek blood up there, you know, after all those pesky invasions!)"

Excellent!!! Amadeus - I admire your courage in making this statement. It is acknowledged that Judaism is a Religion (Like plenty of other Religions) based foremost on RACE. Simply Racism & Dogma!!! When is Humanity going to drop this & Evolve to Science & Reason?

Before the whole Mel Gibson Controversy - when I was a Boy I saw Zeferelli's
"Jesus of Nazareth" and was Touched. I remembered at the time that a lot of Jews/Orthodox Christians complained because the Actor who played Jesus in that Movie had "BLUE EYES"!

There was a thread that I stumbled across when I first Discovered ATS - the Name of the Thread was called "Jesus was a Black Man" - it got so out of control that the Moderator had to turn it off. Plenty of people said "It doesn't matter what color Jesus was" - but to a lot of Thick Headed types out there it DID - you see it messed with the Racial Superiority Brainwashing of their Religion. Most of Today�s Modern Jews are WHITE because the CONVERTED to Judaism. Originally the Jews had Brown skin i.e. they were
DESERT PEOPLE - like what we associate with an "Arab Moslem" today!!! But don't try to point that out Publicly because you will be called
"Anti-Semitic"!!!


[edit on 16-9-2004 by Seraphim_Serpente]

Originally posted by LadyV
Though I am not a Christian, I have often thought of this. Surely the Jewish wanted their Messiah to come. They were there during these times and surely they scrutinized everything happening at the time, and yet, they decided that no, Jesus was not the Messiah they wait for.....Why? I know part of it was he was challenging their religious authority, but there had to be some that felt different....just something I have thought about before.

Messianic expectations were not consistant.

He told them their 'physical gods" aka as Elohim were imposters and endorsed that the Universe instead was the FATHER who sent him ....

For this they killed him .....

That simple ...

Jesus told why: Jews expected a King on Earth; Jesus was a king in the heavens.

"Jesus was a Black Man"

Speaking of movies - I just remembered - there was also that scene in the movie "Dogma" (Which was also Protested by the Orthodox - as was the "Last Temptation of Christ" because in that one Jesus got it on with Magdalene) - were Chris Rock's Character was the
"Black Apostle" & he says "Jesus was Black" & he points out that it was OK for Eurocentric Americans to have a Black Man as a Slave but not as their Savior. He points out that this is HIPOCRACY!

From the movie, (spoof) "A Man Called Sarge"

Jesus was a black dude
He was a very special man
Jesus was a black dude
Not some white guy with a tan

Jesus was a black dude
And everybody knows
Jee...sa....us,
He called everybody "bro".

The Jews didn't believe in Jesus because he didn't fit the attributes of the Messiah. The "attributes" listed by Christians are later additions and not at all in line with the Torah.

www.ohr.org.il...

He was not descended from the House of David. According to Jewish law, tribal identification comes from the father's side, being Jewish, from the mother's side. According to Matthew 1, Joseph was descended from David (Although there are many contradictions between his genealogy there and that listed in Luke, however according to the same text, Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary, therefore Jesus was not related to Joseph, and not a descendant of King David.

In other words, the Jews were looking for a human. Not an adopted demigod. Not someone whose lineage was from David through his mother. A human, sired by a human.

The main predictions concerning the Messiah are that he will bring peace to the world, gather the Jewish people from their exile to the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. After Jesus' appearance, the Temple was destroyed, the Jews were exiled all over the world and we have not even had one day of peace in the past 2,000 years. (Many of the wars in fact were started and fought by followers of Jesus) These events are enough to show that he was not the messiah.

He didn't rebuild the temple, in the first place. Nor did he usher in a reign of a thousand years of peace as the Rabbi has pointed out. Nor did he gather the scattered Jews to Israel.

One large final point -- the Jewish messiah would be there to enforce and hold up the traditional Jewish law. If you'll recall, Jesus broke a number of these laws, including gathering grain on the Sabbath.

This alone was proof enough that he was not the great leader of the Jews; the messiah.

Gazrok - that was funny the first time I read it in said Controversial Thread!



[edit on 17-9-2004 by Seraphim_Serpente]

Nice to see some of you have been going to church, listening to the rubbish the church has been feeding you. Jesus never regarded himself as the messiah, it was his brother who made him what he is today, many years after his death. He did not want to make a religion, he wanted to make a modification of Judaism if you like. The religious Jews did not like these modifications of the laws, these jews were a minority. You'll notice that your "bible" was obviously written by man, thus he could write whatever he wanted. Our bible was given by g-d. Our heritage comes from way before anyother religion. Christianity was the result of a greedy man, Jesus' brother. The reason we didnt believe in Jesus as the messiah, was that he did nothing of what the messiah is supposed to do. It says in our prayers that the messiah will only come when there is total world peace, and when he comes, he will raise the dead, and the world will forever live in peace. Oviously Jesus cant be the messiah because, well, loook at the world today, alot of good your messiahs done! All he has done is been used as an excuse to convert and kill people!!! Judaism has never gone out to hurt anyone, we are a peaceful nation, unfortunately people have taken advantage of our peaceful nature, and have expelled us and tried to kill us.

Quote: "Our heritage (Judaism) comes from way before any other religion."

Oh yeah even before the Sumerians & Zoroastrianism? Did the Jews not Adapt their Religion when they were Enslaved by the Egyptians & Babylonians & Assyrians - That Pesky Paganism was inserted in there. Do you think that you have finally succeeded in "Removing Defilement" so that you can continue being "God's Pure & Chosen People"? Is that why you Modern Jews follow the Talmud, which openly
Slanders TRUE Christians as "Pagan Idol Worshipers"

- You Zionists DISGUST ME!!!

P.S. the Hindu Vedas are OLDER than anything written in Hebrew!!!

[edit on 21-9-2004 by Seraphim_Serpente]

David Ben Gurion came closer to fulfilling the Biblical prophecy of Messiah than Jesus ever did.

It's for the same reason people are still rejecting Him today. He came to free us of sin. That is an internal change. People want to still be able to do whatever they want, including sin. So they choose to reject Him. They don't realize that God has a timetable, that has on it His return, and an eternity with Him for those who chose to receive Him.

Hi GhostRider:

You seem to me to be a little naive about the origins of your "religion." Clearly you have begun to believe too deeply in all the propaganda your religious leaders have been feeding you all these years...

But remember this: both Christianity and Judaism are (in the end) MAN MADE RELIGIONS with a very awkward (and dubious) textual history to support any claims of "chosen-ness"...or even "ancient-ness" ...

READ: THE BIBLE UNEARTHED by Israel Finkelstein (a practicing Ashekanzi Jew and titular Head of the Archaelogy Dept at Tel Aviv University) and co-written Neil Asher Silberman (also an Ahkenazi Jew)--I figured you should start with your own people and work your way outwards...!

This book is written for the layman, so don't panic: it brings up a variety of useful points which should enlighten you about various points of fact about your religioin, including the tenet: (as Lily Tomlin used to say) HISTORY CAN BE MADE UP IF YOU KNOW HOW...

Most of the raw material in the various collections of Hebrew "Scriptures" have been borrowed and adapted from other older and more sophisticated cultures in the ancient Middle East (Read ANET ed. Pritchard for a taste of some of the evidence that might enlighten you on that point) that the Israelite priests came into--mainly by forced exile into foreign lands and cultures e.g. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Syria, and finally under the brutal Roman Occupation (BC 63 to AD 72 and later in AD 138 when Israel was finally ground to powder and the survivors shipped off into slavery in the Roman Empire where they became extinct as an identifiable race.

Judaism is far from an early "religion" : in fact, post Exilic "rabinnic" Judaeism is very very late on the scene---and the many "Judaeisms" being practiced before 587 BC (the time of the Babylonian Captivity) would not even be recognised today as Judaiesm----since many of the shrines were dedicated to YHWH and his ASHERAH, or YHWH and BAAL and HIS ASHERAH...i.e. the Jews were NOT even monotheistic until the time of EZRA---long after the time of Moses !!

So much for your "jews are more ancient than thou" theory.

You tout the Hebrew Scriptures as "coming from G-d" (presumably you mean Yahweh the vicious clan god of the now extinct Israelites, who wanted to exterminate the Jebusites and genocide all the Amalekites), but are you not aware that there are several contradictory versions of the Hebrew Scriptures that have now been disicovered over the past 200 years in existence, especially since the discovery of all those DIFFERENT versions of the Torah among the Dead Sea Scroll community??

I refer to such major text families as Hebrew "Vorlage" which underlay the LXX Septuaginta Greek found at Qumran? or the older-than-the Masoretic vcersion Greek LXX itself which the early Christians used as the basis for their Vulgate?

And how these text families differ in content more than 20% of the time from the very late Masoretic Text of AD 890 in Leningrad?

Or all the vast textual differences between the MT and the LXX Vorlage and the Samaritan Pentateuch?

Or all the differences between the LXX Vorglage and the MT and the Dead Sea Scroll versions they found copied out side by side? What about the Syriac Pe#ta? What about all those Aramaic Targums?

Can you even READ unpointed paleo-Hebrew ?

NEWSFLASH YOUNG MAN:

NONE OF YOUR CONTRADICTORY HEBREW TEXT VERSIONS of the socalled HEBREW SCRIPTURES MATCH EACH OTHER VERY CLOSELY

(I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this uncomfortable little fact--- I'm quite certain your Rabbi won't tell you !!)

Do yourself a BIG favour: Why don't you read one of your brother's books e.g. WHO WROTE THE BIBLE By Richard Eliot Friedman? Now in paperback !

Eliot is a practicing Ashkeanzi Jew just like you ---lucky enough to study under the great Frank Moore Cross of Harvard----but as a thinking scholar can STILL SEE ALL THE TECHNICAL LITERARY merits of the Graf- Wellhausen SOURCE CRITICAL Hypothesis of the Torah (1883) etc. which even after nearly 130 years of careful scrutiny by the whole world of scholarship display irrefutable SCIENTIFIC PROOFS THAT THE HEBREW TORAH (thought to have been written by Moses) WAS COMPOSED AND EDITED BY SEVERAL GROUPS AFTER THE EXILE INTO BABYLON---containing many internal contradictions and "doublets" etc. reflecting A MUCH LATER TIME IN ISRAELITISH HISTORY THAN MOSES ON A MOUNTAIN----and moreover contain VERY VERY LITTLE THAT COULD BE ATTRIBUTED TO ANYONE LIVING AT THE TIME OF MOSES--and certainly NOT from any clan god who tells people like "Moses" to make pagan copy-cat Jebusite bronze snake idols and stick them up on poles for "his" people to fall down and worship in the desert!

And as for that golden calve thingy that "holy" Aaron was supposed to have made out of spare earings... well....really!

So much for the 10 commandments and all the prohibitions about making pagan molten idols...why don't ask your Rabbi about that one before claiming your "religion" is so holy !

Time to open up the mind, young man, before it's too late !

Ha - take that Ghostrider! Amadeus threw that "Chosen People" Elite Snobbery Crap back in your face with some FACTS and a Little TRUTH! How does it feel?

You see the thing that I don't understand is this - the Jews always complain about how bad the Nazis were - don't get me wrong I do think that Hitler was Deranged & Evil. Hitler spouted his Propaganda that the Germans Aryans were in fact the
�Chosen Race� & truly "God's Chosen People". All of the ideas that Hitler got for Genocide he pulled straight out of the Old Testament ("God" Commanded that the Canaanites be Killed & their land taken over). In fact Hitler even had some Semitic Blood in him (Ironic). So you see all he did was to turn the table of your own Propaganda back on you! I guess that you guys are not learning � back to your old tricks again! You Complain about the Nazi�s (now the Moslems are the New Nazi's) & in the same breath you proclaim:
"The Jews are God's Pure and Chosen People. Judaism is the Oldest & True Religion. Jews are the Superior Master Race" -> HIPOCRACY!!!!!!


[edit on 19-9-2004 by Seraphim_Serpente]

[edit on 19-9-2004 by Seraphim_Serpente]