Scholarship
Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus
Christian response series engaging Jewish objections to Jesus.
- Author
- Michael L. Brown
- Publisher
- Baker Books
- Tradition
- Christian apologetics
Citation
Michael L. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Baker Books, 2000-2007.
Where this source is used
- Jesus did not bring world peaceThe peace the prophets promised has not come, and Christians do not say it has. Their claim concerns the order of events, and it turns on the resurrection.
- The Messiah cannot die before reigningThe Tanakh and the rabbis both speak of an anointed one who suffers or is killed. The Christian claim joins suffering and reign in one person, and rests on the resurrection.
- The New Testament misuses the Hebrew BibleSome citations fail as predictions. Read as the pattern-reading Jewish interpreters also practiced, they make a different claim, one you can test against the Hebrew.
- The suffering servant is IsraelIsaiah does call Israel his servant. Isaiah 53 describes an innocent individual struck for "my people," who dies and then lives, a profile that strains the national reading.
- The Torah covenant is everlasting"New covenant" is Jeremiah's phrase, promised to Israel and Judah with the Torah written on the heart. Christians claim Jesus fulfills it, not that God replaced Israel.
- The Trinity and incarnation violate monotheismChristians confess one God, not three. They claim Jesus belongs within the identity of Israel's one God, a claim argued from the Hebrew Bible, not polytheism.
- The virgin birth mistranslates almahAlmah means a young woman, and the Jewish translation is fair. But "virgin" was a Jewish rendering before Jesus, and the doctrine rests on the Gospels, not one word.
- Daniel 9 and the Messiah before the Temple's destructionDaniel 9 is difficult and its arithmetic is disputed, but its sequence is clear. An anointed one is cut off, and then the city and sanctuary are destroyed.
- Jesus and messianic prophecyIsolated proof texts do not settle the question. A pattern of suffering and reign runs through Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, Micah, and the Psalms.
- The new covenant promised in the prophetsJeremiah, not the church, coined the phrase "new covenant." He promised it to Israel and Judah, with the Torah written on the heart and sin remembered no more.