Questioning the Impact of Yeshua

I have recently been discussing via email some NT issues with a close friend and former Christian who has converted to Judaism. I thought I would share some of her challenging arguments, along with some of my responses. You may also like to consider how you would respond and add your thoughts.

Firstly her thoughts on Yeshua as a person:

“When I compare the lives of Moses, Aaron, David, Isaiah, Abraham, Jacob or Judah – all great life spans of massive responsibilities, challenges and experiences to arrive at greatness.  They worked with people. 

Yeshua’s brief life and death are in stark contrast. He is a solitary figure in isolation whom his own disciples do not understand.  He never remotely performed any responsibility associated with High Priest and in fact left a fractured society still in captivity and in exile until 1948. 

It is further enigmatic because Yeshua never preached to any other nation apart from Israel so the Gentile world in general was unaware of his existence apart from NT writings.  Perhaps the proof of his resurrection would have been conclusive had he reappeared to those who condemned him to death - both the Roman authorities and Jewish religious hierarchy.  For example, God clearly demonstrated His power to Egypt and to the surrounding nations as evidence of His actions in the world when he chose His firstborn.

What God wants is for us to raise our awareness by internalizing his Testimony and each of us growing to meet our latent potential.  The Christian concept of the need for perfection probably differs from the Judaic concept due to the original sin (doctrine) ... 

Yeshua is depicted as a “perfect” human from birth which no one in their natural state could have achieved.  In fact, I would contend this is not the role model human being to which most people would aspire.

He never married, never a father, was basically homeless, estranged from his family and materially probably more aesthetic.  He is a figure which depicts separation from the norm. 

So - because we can never aspire to his lifestyle in a way this leads a “socialist” type mentality.  I can’t do it without Jesus. 

Yet God challenges us that “Yes, we can” Genesis 4.6 we can resist and rule over sin.  It is a life long struggle of transformation it’s not in the mistakes we make but how we deal and grow in character.  Stunning examples are King David and the evil King Manasseh.  We have the life examples of the struggles of the Patriarchs and the Israel to which we can relate and aspire in a meaningful way.

For instance, Why not steal?  Is it obedience or is it understanding that these testimonies are to reconcile us to each other on a deeper level.  Blind obedience is dangerous, hence the use of the word SHMA throughout Tanakh – never obedience.  It is as the NT says the reconciliation to the mind of God.  It is a process of transformation but it is our experience of the negative that most conclusively teaches us the benefit of the other way.  Instant perfection is not the solution.  We have to do the hard yards, not the bedside confession.  As they say experience is the best teacher and God gives us the record of others through Scripture – both the successes and the failures.

Perhaps Christians’ inability to reconcile how the world will be “saved” with human beings living from the dawn of history is a conundrum.  The sacrificial system didn’t fail any more than what happened in the Flood or Sodom and Gomorrah ...  It was mankind who went astray. 

God gave his festivals and Sabbaths as a means of connection and meeting with the mind of God.  These are certainly mandatory for Jews but not for others as they did not covenant to the same.  However, those wonderful prophecies of ultimate reconciliation in the Messianic Age seem to suggest that this is exactly what will be instituted, much to the horror of most Christians and some Jews. 

Yeshua’s ministry was so brief maybe 1 – 3 years at most and so very localised that historians generally miss it.  Unfortunately, Yeshua wrote nothing.  He never experienced marriage, children and the challenge of close relationship which are the most challenging aspects of life.  

The authors of the gospels are not known and written perhaps 40-60 years after the event.  Christians must rely on the testimony of Paul who was never part of the original 12 and had disagreements with them.  The debate within NT writings has caused such diverse Christian belief that it is hard to reconcile what the faith entails and how God is viewed. 

 Most Christians do not even know Yeshua was a Jew!”

Some of my reply:

I don't think you can blame Yeshua for the exile (as you subtly imply here). I think you mis-characterize him - while his life was brief, he was clearly a man of great authority and understanding, and in speaking to many thousands all through the land (whether for 1 or 3 years), I can't see how you can call that 'solitary'.

True, his very own disciples did not always understand him, but surely that is to be expected, if he was as Prof Klausner (Hebrew University) argues, the greatest Jewish ethicist ever - his thoughts were a little higher than their thoughts - his intimacy with Hashem, who he called his 'Father' (a reference found in the Tanakh, yet not commonly used at the time), was clearly much deeper than those around him, so perhaps he learned wisdom much quicker and without needing as many trials, test, challenges, as most of us do.

 King David was a 'slow learner', but it appears that Yeshua was a child prodigy. As it appears that Yeshua's father Yosef died before Yeshua was 30 (and perhaps much earlier), Yeshua perhaps had to become a 'father' to his siblings - again, this could have been a very full-on learning experience. As for responsibility, he demonstrated the greatest responsibility of all in freeing giving up his life for his friends and nation.

So I think it not really wise to assume we know the fullness or lack thereof of his character. In a sense the opposite could be truer - Moses lead his people, as did King David. So we would expect their memories to live on (and perhaps to even be 'enhanced' and exaggerated). In comparison, the fact that Yeshua is perhaps the best known figure in all history, despite all his apparent lack that you mention, and having written nothing and seemingly achieved nothing, raises a profound question. And an even bigger one if it's all a lie. Instead, I very much see the hand of the Almighty. I address this at some length in my 'Jewish Scepticism' article – see https://goo.gl/pxSENu

Striving for perfection and total obedience is really the out-working of that 'listening' (Shema/Sh’ma/SHMA – Deut 6:4 …)- few actually achieve it. And also, I would not argue that Yeshua was sinless - he may have been, and he most likely did achieve the state of being a 'perfected’ or ‘Completed Tzaddik'[1], but that doesn't mean he was not a normal child and young man first.

I think we have evidence from the NT where we read that  Yeshua ‘learned obedience’(Luke 2:51, Heb 5:8), and that he therefore grew into righteousness rather than remaining sinless. 

Again, I think you are mis-characterising him here -any 'separation' is more 'holiness', and in this respect a setting of a standard for us to aspire to. He was actually less 'separate' (to his people) than the majority of the Pharisees - he demonstrated his inclusiveness - see the Zaccheus story for example. Given the many accusations made by the leadership and Pharisees that Yeshua associated with sinners and tax-collectors (essentially Roman stooges), etc., he was clearly more ‘involved’ with the general population than the religious elite and much, much more so than the ultra-exclusive Dead Sea Yachad (the Essenes community).

Your argument regarding the fairly secretive nature of the Resurrection is based on assumptions that I don’t think are warranted. While there may only have been some 500 who saw Yeshua after his crucifixion (compared with the many tens of thousands or more who were at Mt Sinai), that number was enough given the power of this miracle to be remembered and recounted down to this day.

The impact of the Mt Sinai event was and is very powerful and long-lasting as I discuss in this blog post - https://luke443.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/600000-traditions-that-establish-truth.html. I think a similar effect occurred with the Resurrection of Yeshua, though the horrors of 70 CE would have possibly limited this impact.

Regarding “The authors of the gospels are not known and written perhaps 40-60 years after the event.”:

While it is true that we can not be sure who the authors were there is a lot of evidence that the Book of James may have been written within a decade of the Resurrection, and most of Rav Sha’ul’s epistles between 45 CE and 60 CE and thus within 3 decades rather than 60 years. Also, there is good evidence that Revelation was written before 70 CE (https://goo.gl/6JePIa).

However, the redacted version of Matthew (and extensively discussed by Prof. David Flusser) that we have appears to have been written after 70 CE and thus in your 40-60 year timetable.

Given though that in those days much was passed on orally (even within the Jewish culture which was far more literate that the rest of the peoples at the time), a 10-60 year timeframe is not as big a problem as may be thought, especially given that many eye-witnesses would still have been alive and able to refute or deny any writings that were not accurate and factual.

Also, while the testimony of the Apostle Paul is an important source of testimony and teaching, when we understand how consistent his work was to the teachings of the proto-Judaism of his day (the Oral Torah), this is not a serious problem either. As for his disagreements with some of the other disciples, these were far from divisive and in-fact led to a more Torah centric approach than might otherwise have been present. I discuss some of these ‘disagreements’ in my book on the Apostle Paul (Defending the Apostle Paul).

The great diversity of Christian opinion and doctrine is more a proof of the degree of redaction and interpolation that has occurred and really further evidence for how Hellenistic rather than Hebraic Christendom has become. This divergence is not necessarily an argument against the validity and authenticity of the autographs. 

And finally the fact that “Most Christians do not even know Yeshua was a Jew!”, is again an indictment of the Hellenisation of the NT, not an argument against the authenticity of Yeshua himself.

My Jewish friend further stated:

"... I cannot relate to the proposition of the necessity of Yeshua’s sinless life and suffering (and that it) reflects the mind of God as exemplified through the writings of Tenakh.

In terms of all mankind who have ever lived what has Yeshua achieved? 

Probably in the broadest terms more of the world became aware of monotheism and that a future Messiah will come (though many Christians or Jews are not convinced of that either).  However, when the Messianic era does arrive, perhaps the world will finally come to its AHA moment.

My reply:

You stated: "Probably in the broadest terms more of the world became aware of monotheism" - in other words the world become aware that there really was a God and only One God and that that One God was the God of Israel - what could be more important and foundational than that!  - see http://circumcisedheart.info/DoesGodExist.pdf

Possibly the whole purpose of human existence is understanding that we are made in the image of God, and are sons/daughters of God. 

The importance of the world's knowledge that there is a God, that He is a moral agent (the 10 Words); that he has dealt with a people (Israel) to show and highlight His desire to deal with an entire humanity; that he has designed us to be His Image-Makers, to make the world as He desires it (tikkun HaOlam).

In the Talmud, there is a very famous statement that:

‘The world rests upon three things: Upon Torah study, upon Divine service (i.e., prayer and sacrifices), and upon the practice of chesed (grace). - Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 1:2

It appears that the third of these pillars is derived from Ps 89:2, so that we can say “And upon the practice of chesed (grace)” – as it is written, “The world will be built through kindness (grace)”. That is, it is man’s practice of grace in his dealings with his fellow man that truly creates and sustains the world. It is man’s practice of grace that most perfectly embodies his being made in the ‘image of God’.

- see more on grace in this article https://goo.gl/ef0rgl

Who has demonstrated grace better than Yeshua? Yeshua demonstrated great Torah study - 'no man speaks like this with such authority' (see for example, Matt 7:28-29); he prayed often and with much power demonstrated through his miracles and the growth of his following; and what greater demonstration of grace than to lay down your life for your friends and people.

While there were zealous Pharisees who sought adherents throughout the known world, as we understand the historical records their impact was very minor (despite some 10% of the world being Jewish around that time). Despite the flaws and the inconsistencies brought into the NT writings through redaction and interpolation, there is no question that a great many Gentiles have sort and found the true God of Israel through the NT.

And this includes those who have gone on to reject Yeshua and convert to Judaism!

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[1] Defintion of a Completed Tzaddik (or perfectly righteous person):
A tzaddik is a person who engages chiefly in studying Torah and performing mitzvos(commandments of God) and does not do any sins. The Completed tzaddik has either killed his yetzar hara (the evil impulse or desire to do evil) or has it so completely controlled that it may not harm him.