And Why Again Could Yeshua Not Be the Messiah?

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Sep 17, 2014 at 19:14

Please pardon the the side bar here.

To start, thanks for bringing the AISH site to the forefront, for it helps in understanding the times in the past where Jewish friends would try to understand my take on a relationship with the Eternal Sovereign in a way that they themselves would not. As mentioned elsewhere, this reader is of the goyim; there are, as far as can be genetically determined, no Hebrew roots.

Yet, I am as an ardent disciple of the Holy One of Israel as any of the goyim can be; and I have discernment that my faith (the same faith as Abraham) is answered by Him in prayer. But in your response to Michael S., there are those who have flirted with a 'messianic' revelation, just as many 'Christians' have done with Christianity; yet something was missed and it is this presumption here that it was not the Eternal Sovereign's fault that any went back on a confession of belief.

That being said, item for item, let us look at the AISH list (Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because:

1. Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.
2. Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.
3. Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.
4. Jewish belief is based on national revelation.

….is the same that has been told for the ages, its tenacity bearing a truth about the sons of Jacob that has in its roots many of the reasons as spoken of by Moses in the Debarim.

That being said, is it not possible that what is being handled as a truth for Judaic consumption might be coming from a more human approach rather that a more detailed search of the Scriptures (let us stick with the Tanach(sp)), for indeed the Anointed One is spoken of there so many times. Only in the interpretation of how the fulfillments come to pass are there significant changes of perception.

1. As is correctly observed, not just any one will be able to fulfill messianic prophecies; but the specifications of which prophecies are to the fulfilled must include all the prophesies, not just the ones that fall for a mere human to accomplish, for no mere mortal can fulfill Isaiah 9:6. Tehn, what of the Psalms, like the 2^nd, or the 110^th, in which the throne at the Temple can only be occupied by He whom the eternal designates? But what of the pre-kingdom attributes, like that mentioned in Isaiah 49:5, 6, 7; are we to gather that [And now the LORD says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him ] comes from a circular argument in the mind of the Eternal? Is the idea that the messiah being a servant first before being a king is all that repugnant? Was not David a shepherd before being anointed king?
2. Presuming that it is acknowledged (as some will say not) that Yeshua was, indeed, an actual historical personage as attested to by Josephus, then we can move to whether he actually bore the qualifications that meets messianic standards or if there was any evidence that might have disqualified him from Jewish perspective. From the disciple's perspective, it is the Jewish view that led to his crucifixion, so we shall not debate this; but neither can a disciple of Yeshua take away all that is the basis of a believing salvation. Jewish believers of that time knew how he fulfilled the prophecies and that is the witness that survives the unbelief.
3. This is the one that seems to be the basis for many of the arguments that Yeshua could not possibly be the messiah and it is the one that is the easiest to understand from a Jewish perspective; Isaiah 14, even Ahab the king did not believe it, so how would one expect his successors to? But Isaiah 53 is traced further back than Isaiah 52; the disciple goes back to chapters 48 and 49. Then the question: how does Zechariah say for the future: ["And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn"]; this will be a fact of the third Temple's dedication.
4. The fourth assertion is the hardest, for at the first, the children of Israel DID NOT believe, and spent 40 years in the desert before Joshua, not Moses, began leading them into Canaan. Further, elsewhere it is asserted that some of the prophetic indications of messianic import is set out as being fulfilled in Israel. Yet, the messianic prophesies are mostly masculine in reference, where Israel is many times referred to in the feminine.

In the long run, as long as Scripture can be manipulated from a pure human perspective, the debate will never be solved in this mortal lifetime, as nearly two thousand years can attest to. Even as the Christian witness was compromised by such debating for almost six or seven hundred years, Islam found its way into the argument; and strangely, some of what is said there attempt to mimic the proposition of denying the validity of Yeshua's claim. That being said, like elsewhere, the proof is in the belief; judgment comes for unbelief.

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