Customer Reviews

Judaism's Truth Answers the Missionaries

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Moshe employs many old standby arguments and a puts a novel twist on several of them as well. She manages to recontextualize the Christian Scriptures, rightly or wrongly, into a Jewish frame of mind. Personally, I am not certain how much of the Christian scriptures were written in a Jewish setting or even how much of them were not created out of whole-cloth.

However, unlike certain other reviewers, I have never been terribly impressed by Michael L. Brown's book. The responses he has offered fall flat when examined for historical or even rational cogency. He offers nice apologetics to missionaries when their feelings have been hurt by a bad encounter with a well-read Jew, but they are not terribly useful beyond that. I am fortunate to have a decent library of my own and access to some great facilities with endless resources and I was really not impressed when I did fact checking on Michael L. Brown's responses.

In any case, Beth Moshe, does a fine job of putting together rational arguments. They are not entirely new, but it is an interesting take and worth a read.

Besides, Christian arguments have not changed much in the past 2000 years. Why should the refutations change?

The author writes in the Introduction to this 1987 book, "This book is a Jews for Judaism guide, written primarily to counter the thrust of the Christian missionary, directed to the Jew. It is aimed at the mind and heart of the Jew who has an interest in or an attraction to Christianity. Every person of Jewish heritage who is a convert to Christianity or is contemplating conversion should read this book---now. In addition, it is meant to be read by Jews steadfast and devoted to Judaism, who nevertheless have wondered about Jesus... Christians who would like to know Biblical Judaism as Jews understand it will also find this book of interest. They will see that Christianity's Messiah and Judaism's Messiah have nothing in common, nothing at all!"

Here are some quotations from the book:

"The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6(-8) is phrase by phrase a compilation of Hebrew thought in Bible, prayers, and Talmud." (Pg. 19)

"While reading (the New Testament), ask this: Why would Jesus be immersed in the laws and customs of Judaism if his alleged mission was to extinguish them?" (Pg. 25)

"Jesus, as well as his followers, considered that he was in the category of a prophet. Ask this: Can you envision the person who considers himself sent by God to be the Messiah calling himself merely a prophet? Although both are holy, they are worlds apart in function." (Pg. 117)

"Again we see (Ex 7:1) the confirmation that the plural 'elohim' can refer to a single entity. And so it does in our subject verse in Genesis (1:1,26)." (Pg. 134)

(About Daniel 9:24-26) "The dates authenticating Jesus as the Messiah are based on translation errors and Biblical misunderstanding... Christianity ignores punctuation separation between the seven 'weeks' and the sixty-two 'weeks.' They do this in order to make the time fit Jesus in their calculations. It is clear in the original Hebrew that the time periods are separate, and it would be meaningless to separate the time periods if they were together, and that is why they are not stated as a full sixty-nine 'weeks' by Daniel... 'One anointed' is to come in seven 'weeks,' as written, not in sixty-nine 'weeks,' as joined. Then, after sixty-two 'weeks' of the upbuilding of Jerusalem, another one anointed will die and Jerusalem's Temple will be destroyed... The second major error of Christianity is the fanciful use of Nehemiah 2:1, 7-8 as the counting base towards Jesus... Nehemiah's date was not a date of the 'going forth of the word' or 'commandment' for the rebuilding of Jerusalem... Nehemiah is only getting letters of communication for safe passage and wants timber to be used for the gate and walls and other general house building. The purpose was to make Jerusalem safer and less in disrepair.... What happened to the last of the supposed sixty-nine 'weeks' plus one, totaling seventy?... This extra 'week' cannot be advanced to a second coming, for it deals with the supposed first coming's 'cut off.' Recall that Daniel says that after sixty-two 'weeks' an anointed one will die and the city and sanctuary will be destroyed. Certainly Jesus' death in 33 C.E. and the Second Temple's destruction in 70 C.E. did not occur at the same time." (Pg. 199-201)

"Now look at this Biblical match---Cyrus is our anointed one. He issued a proclamation in 537 B.C.E., the first year of his reign. This proclamation, from the anointed one, did come seven 'weeks,' forty-nine years, after the commandment to build Jerusalem... The forty-nine years added to 586 B.C.E. is exactly 537 B.C.E.... It's a perfect fit, of course, because it is just Biblical word fulfilled." (Pg. 202)

"Isaiah's prophesy (in 52:12-53;12) is not about Jesus Christ, but is actually about the nation of Israel. It is not about the Hebrew Messiah, but about the Chosen Hebrew People... The vagueness and literary style of Isaiah here make misinterpretation easy for Christianity... for the words presumably could be interpreted as the foreshadowing of Jesus' suffering and vicarious atonement... Israel is Biblically described as a personification in the form of a servant. We have presented verses to prove that Israel is described as suffering and afflicted. And we have shown that the Hebrew Scriptures depict the Messiah as successful and powerful, never afflicted...." (Pg. 213-217)

Ah yes, the critics yowling and accusing Beth Moshe of using the "the old standby arguments." Wake up out there, the Torah is indeed very "old," and the Prophets have quite a few centuries themselves. Just exactly what arguments would you like Ms. Moshe to use....her own? If the Torah and the Prophets are not enough to convince the reader why Jesus is neither the Messiah nor G-d, well then all hope is lost. Her book is excellent. I read it when it first came out. At that time she was bombarded with criticism in every christian chatroom...(not a surprise). I was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family and one day I decided to find out why the Jewish people do not accept Jesus as the Messiah to come, or the false teaching that he is G-d. Her book is just one of many out there to help anyone who sincerely wants to know the truth, and yes, to reiterate, she used the TANAKH and her work is easy to understand.

This book is possibly the most interesting of the Jewish antiChristian books because the authors have seen things in the New Testament that others miss. I say authors, because I am assuming that "Beth Moshe" [= "House of Moses"] is actually a group of Orthodox Jewish scholars (possibly rabbis), who collaborated on this project. In so doing, this work radically contradicts other Jewish polemical works which try to deny the Jewishness of the New Testament.

They acknowledge the Jewishness of Jesus (ch.2), the Jewishness of Jesus' ethical teachings (ch.4), the importance of Jewish Law (ch.5), and that Jesus' God is Judaism's God (ch.7). They also discuss the role of the Law in salvation (ch.6) and whether there is salvation through Judaism (ch.9). However, the interesting insights so gleaned are pushed to an extreme in order to make them appear to contradict other New Testament data. Thus, they argue that the people can be saved by keeping the Law (ch.10), and try to show that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah (ch.12).

Throughout the New Testament runs a subtle dialectic between continuity and discontinuity in relation to the religion which God commended Moses to transmit to the Israelites. Some aspects continue, whereas others are altered or superseded. Sadly, however, present-day Judaism has been formulated by rabbis who follow the Talmud. Because the authors of this book see their role as defenders of this Talmudic Judaism, their aim is to draw a line between what appears to agree with that religion and what appears to differ. Having divided the material by wrenching it out of context, they assign everything in the New Testament to one of these two categories, and then argue that the material in one of their categories contradicts the material in the other category! Thus the subtlety of the New Testament is totally obscured. So, having acknowledged Jesus as a faithful Jew, they are obliged to suggest that he (or the accounts) undergo a "switch" at the end of his ministry (p.126).

Many of the nuances in the New Testament Gospels narrative are lost on the authors because they are viewing the material through a 20th-century lens. For example they devote an entire chapter (3) to the notion that Jesus did not show sufficient respect to his mother and family. They write: "This irreverence casts great suspicion on the veracity of Christianity's remarkable story of Jesus' birth" (p.16). Really? It leads me to the opposite conclusion: Jesus could not allow human family commitments to deviate him from his heavenly Father's mission. In contradiction to the authors, Jesus' birth is not "Christianity's story". It is the world's story, and especially the Jews' story!

They wrongly assume that the doctrine of the Trinity originated at the Council of Nicaea (in 325). They scapegoat the apostle Paul for the changes which Jesus introduced: "Paul shaped the Church in a manner which stripped away all links to Judaism and cursed it at the same time" (p.3) and accuse him in one place of contradicting Jesus (p.36).

They also worry that Christianity supplants Judaism. The New Testament certainly does not negate the Torah, although it does modify it in important ways. In fact, there is a line of Rabbinic teaching which affirms that the Messiah will make changes to God's Law, so this should not be surprising. They write: "keep in mind that Christianity is based on being the `New Israel, supplanting the People of the Book as well their religion" (p.151). But there is nothing in the New Testament to contradict the fact that Jews do have a specific purpose in God's purposes ["l'dor vador"]: note especially Romans 11:11-36).

The authors worry that the New Testament teaches hatred of Jewish people (p.3), yet this is not the case. All of humanity share responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion. They think that the New Testament teaches that God has no love for Jews and that this explains why the medieval Roman Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches scapegoated Jewish people (p.3). In fact, this scapegoating of Jews has nothing to do with the New Testament, as many genuine Christians have a love for the Jewish people simply because of the New Testament and knowing that Jesus himself identified with the Jewish people by *choosing* to come into this world as a Jew. Furthermore, such Christians themselves have been persecuted by the larger religious organizations calling themselves "Christian", which exalt their "traditions" over and above New Testament doctrine. Accordingly, genuine Christians have suffered, too. These problems are not caused by the New Testament, but are actually the result of opposition to it.

The authors write: "Christianity owes Judaism kindness" (p.3). It depends what you mean by "Judaism". If the author had said "Christianity owes Jewish people kindness", then I think all genuine Christians would agree.

The later chapters (14-20) examine the Biblical texts which Christians often use in presenting the New Testament Message to Jewish people. The authors invariably try to show that they have non-Messianic meanings. Then, despite their earlier disclaimer that their book "is not intended to prove Christianity wrong", the authors try to demonstrate contradictions in the New Testament (ch.21). However, these contentions are based on common misunderstandings of the New Testament. Such misunderstandings are to be expected because most of which is difficult to understand for people who do not ask God for help in understanding the New Testament, especially some of the letters, which are written in a highly compact style that has to be unzipped.

Finally, the authors tell us that all explanations of the TaNaKh should confirm Judaism's eternal validity (p.249). But which "Judaism"? This book assumes that the TaNaKh is complete. However, any reader of the TaNaKh should be able to see that it is crying out for future fulfilment. Why do Orthodox Jews believe in an "Oral Law" if the Torah really is complete in itself?

The authors' conclusion is that Jesus has nothing to say to Judaism. This is based on the assumption that whatever in Jesus' teaching they agree was already there in Judaism and whatever seems new should be rejected. What a tragic loss!

Most of the more detailed arguments about the interpretation of specific Bible verses have been rebutted by A. Lukyn Williams in his work, "A Manual of Christian Evidences for Jewish People" (volumes 1 & 2).

Overall an interesting and stimulating book, but also misleading, which is why I have rated it as worthy only of a single star.