Question regarding Dr. Michael Brown?

He doesn't bother explaining why he thinks sages who teach something don't aply it to Jesus- evidently he thinks the standard Christian response that "Jews are blind" should cover it. Of course he doesn't actually present what Jews believe and why they object to Jesus- he give what he THINKS are the Jewish objections to Jesus and then tears downt he strawman he built up i the first place while ignoring what the actual Jewish objections are!

As to why he tries to use jewish sources, he is tryign to convert Jews! Thus he wants to try and claim that Jewish sources support Christianity and very carefully doesn't address the fact that NONE of those sources support Christianity, none of those sources were written by Jews that saw any validity in Christianity. The opposite is the truth- that for all his attempts to try and claim that these sources support Christianity, NONE of authors of them saw any validity in Christianity and they universally rejected Christianity and were 100% Jewish and faithful to the Torah and how Torah ahs been practiced and believed in by Jews. 100% of them rejected believing in Jesus and none of them accepted any of the claims of the Christians or of Christian churches!

You can be assured that if any of the sages of the Talmud or of any major Jewish works had converted, the Christian authorities would have made the most of that and recorded that it had happened, but no records exist of any of the sages of the Sanhedrin converting, not near the time of Jesus or even in any of the hundreds of years it existed after the time of Jesus.

edit: You can see in the answer of the unkosher one tryign to defend Brown where they come from

QUOTE: "We are absolutely convinced that they (the Jewish scriptures) point us to Yeshua (Jesus). "

So they start off convinced they are right and then they feel justified and correct in reinterpreting and presenting things to support their initial assertion without bothering to check why others do not interpret it the wya they do. They start with the conclusion and then desperately try to rearrange and reinterpret everything to suit their pre-determined conclusion!

1

By his own admission Michael Brown is a former drug abuser who found Jesus. OK, so why does that make him an authority on Judaism?

He was from a Conservative Jewish home (marginally religious) had a Bar Mitzvah at 13, and then started getting into sex drugs and rock & roll.

Are those qualifications credible to be an authority on Judaism?

He is not a Rabbi, never studied in Jewish institutions, just Christian ones. And now he makes a living peddling his books and running his ministry.

That makes him someone with a clear financial motive to say whatever he does. So why should he be taken seriously when he contradicts THOUSANDS of Rabbis over the past 2,000 years who REJECTED the claims of Christians?

Why are THOUSANDS of Rabbis wrong and this Michael Brown, former drug addict and now book peddler, is right?

Michael Brown makes a good living telling Christians exactly what they want to hear, that they can worship their pagan man-god and still be Jews.

The issue at hand is that anyone can twist texts to make them support any position they like, but where is their support from their fellow academics?

That's a principal in science, that other people must be able to reach the same conclusions you do based on the same evidence. You can't be the only one who claims something when everyone else says the opposite.

The most OBVIOUS proof that Jesus wasn't the Messiah is that MILLIONS of Jews have been persecuted in his name by Christians and his own Church. That alone speaks volumes, you can disregard every piece of Scripture and just examine this one fact alone.

IF Christians were "filled with the Holy Spirit" then it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for them to have persecuted Jews in the name of Jesus and blamed them for his death when those Jews were not even alive in his time. Remember Jesus himself said "Forgive them Father they know not what they do."

Therefore just using common sense we can conclude that Christians could not have been filled with the "Holy Spirit" and therefore the claims about Jesus are proven to be false.

he represent himself

as for your reply:

"Another day, another time someone takes the example of some extremist and uses that to claim that it is symptomatic of an entire side of the political spectrum.

i.e. this is not even something NEW, and it happens elsewhere as well. "

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you avoided the question. there are no "pure state" ask hit ler

answer: Investigate the leading arguments of Christian "scholars" - there's your answer. The basic claim is that Jews don't understand our scripture without the help of Christians. That G-d "blinded" us (ever realize how ridiculous that belief is?)

Brown has nothing to do with Judaism, he can't even order coffee in Hebrew. He wasn't raised observant and his knowledge of Judaism is from the Christian views he was taught in the absence of any knowledge of Judaism.

There are no references to Jesus in the Talmud - the two cited don't match up to the timeline nor to the myth surrounding Jesus. Both were executed after being found guilty by a Jewish court and sentenced to death. Jews didn't have that power during the timeframe when Jesus was said to have lived.

Twisting the Talmud and Hebrew scriptures to their own viewpoint has been a foundation of Christianity. Their concept of the Messiah is vastly opposed to the Jewish one and verses were back engineered and things twisted to be revealed as "prophetic" when they aren't. It's common.

Ask a Christian how many prophecies of Jesus there are and you'll get the answer of hundreds - some even say 365 of them. Right.....

Ask a Jew what prophecies there are concerning the Messiah and you'll get a very small list, none of which Jesus fulfilled at all. Hence the reason Jesus was declared divine by Christians, there has to be a reason to explain why he needs a 2nd coming (or 3rd if you get technical). For example, you'll see a lot of "prophecies" from Daniel concerning the Messiah according to Christians. You won't see that in Judaism, which is why Daniel isn't grouped with the books of the prophets in the Tanakh.

The actual prophecies about the Jewish Messiah

* The Sanhedrin will be re-established (Isaiah 1:26)

* Once he is King, leaders of other nations will look to him for guidance. (Isaiah 2:4)

* The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:17)

* He will be descended from King David (Isaiah 11:1) via King Solomon (1 Chron. 22:8-10)

* The Moshiach will be a man of this world, an observant Jew with "fear of God" (Isaiah 11:2)

*****In other words - this must all be accomplished in a human lifetime*****

* Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand before his leadership (Isaiah 11:4)

* Knowledge of God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:9)

* He will include and attract people from all cultures and nations (Isaiah 11:10)

* All Israelites will be returned to their homeland (Isaiah 11:12)

* Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah 25:8)

* There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease (Isaiah 25:8)

* All of the dead will rise again (Isaiah 26:19)

* The Jewish people will experience eternal joy and gladness (Isaiah 51:11)

* He will be a messenger of peace (Isaiah 52:7)

* Nations will end up recognizing the wrongs they did to Israel (Isaiah 52:13-53:5)

* The peoples of the world will turn to the Jews for spiritual guidance (Zechariah 8:23)

* The ruined cities of Israel will be restored (Ezekiel 16:55)

* Weapons of war will be destroyed (Ezekiel 39:9)

* The Temple will be rebuilt (Ezekiel 40) resuming many of the suspended mitzvot

* He will then perfect the entire world to serve God together (Zephaniah 3:9)

* Jews will know the Torah without Study (Jeremiah 31:33)

* He will give you all the desires of your heart (Psalms 37:4)

* He will take the barren land and make it abundant and fruitful (Isaiah 51:3, Amos 9:13-15, Ezekiel 36:29-30, Isaiah 11:6-9).

Grabbed from Mark S, tweaked by myself (Aravah), Plushy Bear, What Jews Believe, MP

This sort of thing has been attempted regularly from the early middle ages.

For example -- the debate between Nahmanades and Pablo Christiani was largely premised on Pablo Christiani claiming that he could prove Christianity from Jewish sources including the Talmud.

The dispute in Paris a little bit later was based on a different idea -- to condemn any Jewish source that in any way differed from the Christian Old Testament as a blasphemy and part of an affirmative Jewish conspiracy against Christianity.

This approach is also quite common among so-called "Messianic Jew" missionaries.

Jews DO NOT believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.Messianic Jews are Christians,they are no Jews. Yeshua in the Talmud does not refer to Jesus Christ.Yeshua a form of Jesus was a Jewish common name centuries ago

Before I answer your questions, let me comment on Dr. Michael Brown and other Messianic scholars. Dr. Brown is certainly not the only Messianic Jewish scholar out there, but he is the most well read with over 25+ books to his credit. Additionally, he is so well respected in the scholarly world that Newsweek magazine (Jan 2015) just published his multi-page response to their cover story on whether or not the Bible was trustworthy.

Here is what I recommend to anyone who is interested. Dr. Brown’s excellent and scholarly series called "Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus." Dr. Brown has written over 1,400+ pages on these things.

He really is a very thorough scholar. (He has a B.A. in Hebrew from Queens College, his M.A. and PhD. degrees are in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from New York University) He debated his friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach about the compatibility of a belief in Jesus and Judaism more than 15 times since 2004. He also debated Tovia Singer, Moshe Otero, J. Immanuel Schochet and David Blumofe on the same issue. In addition to his own publications, he has contributed to several publications including Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion and Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.

Dr. Brown writes to the very point. His answers are clear, free of emotional bias except a heart for Israel and the Jewish people, and based on Scripture. Anyone who dismisses him without reading him is very ignorant.

To answer your questions in a sort of combined answer…

In his 5 Volume (1,500+ pages) set “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus” , Dr. Brown takes to task the most common statements that we get from the traditional Jewish community about messianic prophecy. Namely “That is not a Messianic prophecy” they say. So what Dr. Brown has shown (for instance) is that Isaiah chapter 53 is clearly and repeatedly looked at in the ancient rabbinical writings as being about the Messiah. Even here on YA you will get people who will swear up and down that Isaiah chapter 53 has nothing to do with the Messiah. Yet scholarship (which is what I want and teach) is clearly not on their side.

And he does this with many other passages as well. As to why the rabbis looked at it as Messianic and yet do not consider it referring to Jesus – it is simply not in their realm of possibilities. For instance – if a crime was committed in your area and the police were looking for a man who was 6’2’’, 180 lbs and bald. And your neighbor was 6’2’’, 180lbs and bald. Most people would say “Yes, my neighbor fits the description, but I just KNOW it is not he who you are looking for.”

The same thing hold true with Yeshua and the Rabbis. “Yes, Isaiah 53 is Messianic (Dr. Brown proves they say it) but we refuse to entertain the idea that ‘that man’ could be the Messiah.”

Also – with five volumes (1,500+ pages) there is way more that he talks about, (he answers about 20 questions per volume) but space is limited with what I can write here.

The point is this – Dr. Brown's books show that many modern Jewish arguments against Jesus contradict Scripture or historic Jewish interpretations or both.

The value of this all is to show that we are not making things up to suit our own imagination. We are not liars and we are not deceivers. We are honest Jewish people who radically – vet lovingly - differ with our own people as to what the Jewish scriptures teach about the Messiah.

The accusations and hatred we face from the traditional Jewish community has further driven honest seekers to us as they say “I can’t believe what they say about you.” We nod in agreement and seek to give them scriptural answers to the questions they have.

We are absolutely convinced that they (the Jewish scriptures) point us to Yeshua (Jesus).

May I recommend that you Google him and see his website. And also Google other Messianic Jewish authors and read them as well.