Does the term "Jewish Christian" make sense?

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If so, why?
If not, why not?

Please stick to facts, and cite referrences to support your facts.

Is there anything fundamentally natural about a Jew accepting Yeshua (or "Jesus", in English) as his Messiah ("Savior", in English)?

Is there anything fundamentally unnatural about a Jew accepting Yeshua (or "Jesus", in English) as his Messiah ("Savior", in English)?

When Yeshua of Nazareth, a fully practicing Jew, was asked by a Gentile woman to follow her to her village to heal her daughter, he replied, before his 12 fully practicing Jewish disciples in Israel, saying, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt 15:24).
From this, would you conclude that Yeshua was:
A) Sent to be the Gentiles' savior
B) Sent to be the Jews' savior

If you picked B, then would you say that it makes sense for a Jewish person to accept Yeshua as his savior?

Even today, there still persists a notion that Jews and Gentile Christians have some kind of invisible wall between them that cannot be crossed. Even when I've asked some people to explain why they believe this, many act as if this concept of separation is so blindingly obvious that it warrants no explanation at all. And yet, they can think of no actual answer. They will cite European church history as being at odds with the Jewish people, but that is a red herring; it does not address why a Jew, supposedly, would naturally not trust in Yeshua -- the man who was both of the Jews, and by his own words sent to them.

It seems plain to me, from both the Old Testament and the New, that if there was one people that Jesus belonged to the most, it would have to be the Jews, of which he was one, and whose customs, feasts, and festivals he thoroughly kept and practiced. It therefore seems that the invisibility of the wall of separation between Jews and Gentile Christians is precisely the invisibility of nothingness -- for it does not actually exist.

Last edited by Ragtime on 18 Mar 2008, 3:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I voted yes, but "complete Jew" or "full Jew" would be more to correct.

It makes sense if you define "jew" as an ethic group and not a religion.

Christianity is a form of Judaism.

If we're talking religiously, absolutely not. For Jews, the Christian treatment of Jesus is idolatry. ("thou shalt not worship false idols.") Christianity may be based on Judaism to some extent, but they're two different religions which tend to emphasize different aspects and have different religious traditions. Hinduism and Buddhism are not the same religions either. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I think it's significant that actual Buddhists and Hindus feel this way. Frankly, as a Jew I find it somewhat suspect that someone else would tell me that the distinction between Judaism and Christianity is not "real." Who are you to make this determination? How much Judaic theology have you studied? Why shouldn't people's own self-determination be accepted? Why do you think you know more than 2000 years of Jews? It's almost like people trying to say that Barack Obama isn't "really" black even though he identifies as such.

You ask why a Jew wouldn't trust in Jesus, but the question is a red herring. The real question is, why would Jews unblinkingly accept Jesus as messiah? The Jews in Jesus' lifetime didn't. There have been other Jewish prophets, or Jews with prophet-like qualities, who were not believed to be the messiah. There's no reason why Jesus should be seen any differently by Jews, except that a group of people has elevated him. The whole "son of God" thing is not necessarily consistent with Jewish thought. It's irrational to assume that anyone who comes along and says he's the messiah actually is. Lots have people have claimed to be special religious figures. What makes Jesus any different from Mohammad? (Actually, Judaism has at least as much in common with Islam as with Christianity.) Yes, Jesus was Jewish, but that in and of itself doesn't make him a figure worthy of special attention to Jews.

The "Jews for Jesus" movement or "Messianic Judaism" was an invention of Christians who wanted to trick Jews into converting. Their presentation of the religious issues at stake are fundamentally dishonest, and it kind of sounds to me like you've bought into them. Try reading actual Jews discuss the subject.

Furthermore, the traditional Christian treatment of Jews is not just a side issue. Christians have used their belief in Jesus to oppress Jews for 2000 years! Now you expect Jews to forget about all of this and love Jesus just as much as you do? Sorry, I don't think so.

Why not a religion? Why not a Jew who is religiously Jewish of the sect that existed in the first century AD? Yeshua fulfilled all the necessary requisite prophecies to be the Messiah, so why would belief in him not be considered merely the opinion that it is, rather than some sort of defection from Judaism? It makes no sense, from a logical perspective, to say, "Well, we don't know who the Messiah is, but you can't say it's him! We won't allow it! You can say it's Rabbi Schneerson of Brooklyn, who never claimed messiahship, but not Yeshua!"

Why could not a Jew who subscribes to first-century Judaism believe Yeshua was the Messiah, without being called meshumed ("traitor"), as many Jews consider Jewish Christians? Jews have throughout history accepted many other men as Israel's Messiah -- yet those offshoot sects were still called Jewish in the religious sense by all other Jews. Why, then, are the Jewish believers in other men than Yeshua of Nazareth still considered Jewish, but a Jewish person who believes in Yeshua is called "no longer Jewish"? Why the double standard?

Last edited by Ragtime on 18 Mar 2008, 4:03 pm, edited 9 times in total.

I'm just saying that for me it depends. If you define "Jew" as being an ethnic group and not as a religion, it's possible to have a Christian Jew. A Jew who's of jewish descent and worships Jesus as a non jewish christian does.

In reality I don't know enough of this subject to comment, it's just the first thing that popped into my head.

Show me where the Tanach states that the Messiah will not be devine.



Modern Judaism (i.e. elevation in importance of modern rabbinic thought over the Hebrew Sciptures themselves) and Christianity are different religions, yes. But Christianity itself is nothing other than a specific, honest interpretation of the prophecies in the Tanach, as preached by the most famous Jew in history. Who is to say that one group's interpretation of the Tanach is "not Judaism"? Especially when many Jews adopted it in Yeshua's time, and did so because of his and his Jewish disciples' preaching and writings.



I'm not sure what is meant by this statement. On different occasions, 4,000 and 5,000 Jewish men and their families gathered in the wilderness to hear Yeshua preach. Jews also greeted him with shouts of "Hosanna!", Hebrew for "Save us!" Gentiles weren't looking for a Messiah, so this was a uniquely Jewish plea, which confirms both their identity as Jews, and their open-armed acceptance of Yeshua as their Messiah.



Moishe Rosen, founder of "Jews for Jesus", is a personal friend of mine. He was raised and educated as an Orthodox Jew. Messianic ministries and congregations are mostly started by Jews who were raised in modern Judaism, and who later discovered through study that Yeshua and the Jews simply go hand in glove, and that everything to the contrary has been an elaborate deception by the devil throughout the centuries. How brilliant of the devil to instigate all this grief between the Jews and Gentile Christians, in his attempts to alienate Jews from their true Messiah.



Well, see, here we are again. Trying to define "actual Jews".



Don't use an emotional display to side-step the original question.

But what if they didn't think that there was any such person, anyone called Jesus to be messiah?
Or, if his existence was accepted by them, what if they did not agree that he was a messiah?
That is what is written in the Christian Gospels as happening. There is no record of such an event outside christian texts. It is a purely christian narrative.

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Mar 2008, 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A false choice based on a false premise. You're assuming a lot to get to the conclusion you want. It doesn't say that the Messiah will be divine or the "son of God" either. Now you expect me to do mental contortions to accept Jesus as a God-like figure when the Torah clearly says not to worship false gods? To a Jew, Christianity is idolatry. Why can you not accept that belief, surely as valid as any other?



Oh, come on. Christianity added considerably to Judaic texts, and they also chose to interpret things quite differently. For instance, Judaism has traditionally interpreted "Satan" as merely metaphorical, not an actual being.



And how much do today's Christians read the Tanakh (proper spelling)? I'm guess not much. Look, I might be persuaded that the original Christians were Jewish. After all, it wasn't until much later that Christians began believing the "Jesus as son of God" idea. I vehemently dispute the idea that today's Christians are in any way Jewish. Think of it this way: The two religions may have started out in a similar kind of place, but took different paths in the past 2000 years. Christianity today is not presented as an interpretation of Judaism, but as an entirely separate religion which barely even mentions any of the Jewish ideas which you discuss.



Well, I've just told you that many Jews don't even believe in the devil the way you do. Your argument really strikes me as quite irrational and insulting, to be frank. So any Jew who doesn't believe in Jesus' messianic qualities is somehow a victim of the devil's plan? It couldn't possibly be that Jews have legitimate reasons to doubt these things! Again, you're not really telling me what makes Jesus all that special. There have been Jewish prophets before, and they're not the messiah in much of anyone's minds. Besides, the modern Jewish Reform and Conservative movements have re-interpreted the whole idea. They believe that a time of peace will come but it will be the result of tikkun olam (repairing the world), not merely the actions of a single man. I'm reform, and I find this a whole lot more palatable and reasonable than either Orthodox Judaism or your theology, personally. To me, it makes a whole lot more sense to try and do something to change the world rather than sitting around waiting for a messiah to come around.



Not easy to do, of course. I distinguish between ethnic and religious Jews personally. I define a religious Jew as anyone who believes the basic tenants of the religion and either grew up with the tradition or officially converted. I realize not everyone agrees with me, but to my mind there's already a word for a Jew who believes in Jesus. Christian.



I wasn't side-stepping the question, I was pointing out that your question isn't occurring in some kind of philosophical vacuum where we can discuss things on a purely intellectual level. All questions of this nature are rooted in a social and historical context, as you should have realized.

Last edited by srriv345 on 18 Mar 2008, 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you are a jew that accepts christianity, then you are christian. Even though you have a jewish background. Vise versa. Jews for jesus are really christians who add jewish traditions and such to their faith to attract and convert jews to jesus. It's kinda a skeeem in a sense. It almost seems like that want to turn all the jews christian. Even so, whatever they believe is fine as long as they don't push it on others.

According to Peter Schafer's recent acclaimed book, "Jesus in the Talmud", there are no reliable or serious references to the person of Jesus in Jewish texts other than those clearly copied/lifted from the New Testament, 500 years after it was written, and these are not historical proofs, but literary parody ( like Scream takes pee of bad horror films, that sort of approach) as counter measure against the new religion.

I call BS on this statement. Care to back it up?

Quite true, and the Jewish Messiah has called you to Himself, causing you to fulfill your Jewishness all the more!



This is the imaginary dividing wall I mentioned: it doesn't exist, but you pretend that it does. Paul warned the first Christians not to "boast against the branches" (Israel) through which their faith consists. The little branches grow out of the bigger branches, yet they are one, and intrinsically so; it is only our imposed classifications which differentiate between the two; in reality, they are one seamless whole. (Try not seeing walls that don't exist. It's easier than you think! And it leads to due unity. )


Labels, labels... C'mon, every Jew in the world knows that, as a Jew, he or she has the right to search for Israel's Messiah. And further, that Israel's Messiah has not yet been identified by modern Judaism. So no Jew is commiting any kind of heresy by believing a certain person to be the Messiah, if that person fulfills all the prophesied requirements, which Yeshua does. He may be in error, but he is not "no longer Jewish" simply because of his opinion of who the Messiah might be.

Uh, no. It just doesn't work that way. If a jew becomes christian, they've converted. Having a 'jewish background' doesn't matter--you convert, the end. You either believe in jesus or you don't, nothing to argue about there.

I would, actually, and thanks for the invitation!

Check out these 45 Messianic prophecies which Yeshua fulfilled, and then get back to me:

Messianic Prophecies and Yeshua's Fulfillments

And here's a more convenient table of them:

Table of Fulfilled Messianic Prophecies