Supplement to Contra Brown A Critical Review of “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus” By Rabbi Yisroel Chaim Blumenthal Introduction The underlying premise of Brown’s work is that if all the pertinent information were to be put on the table, the human sensitivity to truth would choose Christianity over Judaism. These five volumes serve to confirm the exact opposite. Brown has spared no effort to put forth the best arguments on behalf of Christianity. Ten years of work and 1500 pages should have provided Christianity with a platform to substantiate her claims. Yet when we boil down the arguments it becomes apparent that there is no logical basis for Christianity. Some of Brown’s arguments are based on false premises, others are internally inconsistent, and the rest of them are simply flawed. With these brief comments I hope to make clear why Brown’s book deserves no consideration. The following criticisms begin with the title, and proceed in order along the pages of the book. Each comment will be preceded by the relevant quotations from these five volumes, so that the reader need not constantly turn to the book and back to the comments. May it be clearly understood that these comments constitute but a small portion of the criticism that these books deserve. My goal here is to bring to light the more salient errors and the most glaring inconsistencies contained in these volumes. My silence on any one point should in no way be considered an agreement to the arguments that I did not critique. Volume I I. 1. The title of the book “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus” is misleading. The title suggests that Jesus and Christianity are the defendants, while Judaism is the accuser. Brown is trying to give Christianity the advantage of being “innocent until proven guilty”. The reality is quite the opposite. The burden of evidence rests solely upon the shoulders of the Christian. Until Jesus was born he was not a proven prophet. Before Jesus was born he could lay no claim to being the Messiah. (The truth is that he still is neither a prophet nor the Messiah, but even Christians can agree that before Jesus was born there were no grounds for such a claim.) The status quo is Judaism. It is Christianity that is trying to introduce new concepts. It is not necessary to “object” to Jesus. Until conclusive evidence is brought forth, there is no reason to consider Jesus. This is not merely a legal issue (“innocent until proven guilty”), but this is also a moral and ethical issue. Let us look at a hypothetical situation where one cannot decide if the Jewish interpretation of Scripture is correct or if it is the Christian interpretation that is correct. This person is in a state of doubt. Which of the two belief systems should this person follow until he or she comes to a final conclusion? Should he or she follow Judaism or Christianity? It is clear, that from a moral standpoint, this hypothetical person cannot accept Christianity. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be than devotion to him is the greatest rebellion against God imaginable – it is an act of idolatry, an act that Scripture describes as spiritual adultery. It is clear that from a moral and ethical point of view, the burden of evidence rests solely upon the shoulders of the Christian. I. 2. Page xx of the introduction. “Sadly enough, the more religious a person is and the more time that person spent learning in a Yeshiva (a school for traditional Jewish studies), the more biased and distorted that person’s views will be concerning who Jesus is, what he taught, and how he and his followers lived.” The argument that Brown is advancing is that knowledge of Judaism from within Judaism (Yeshiva study) will distort a person’s view as it relates to Jesus’ claims for divinity. The inconsistency of the argument is apparent. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of Judaism. In other words, Christianity admits that Judaism was here first and that their only claim is that Jesus is a fulfillment of Judaism’s Messianic expectation. The only way Christianity can make that claim is by transforming the meaning of God, of Messiah, and introducing new doctrines on the issues of Law and atonement. The issue is not “who Jesus was”. The issue is – What did God teach us about worship of the Divine, about the Law, about Atonement and about Messiah, through Judaism. If a person does not study in Yeshiva, that person will be unaware of some very important information. If a person rejects Judaism without seeing the inside of a Talmud, that person is making an uneducated decision. He will never appreciate the Jewish connection to God, and he will have a difficult time understanding why Jesus’ claims contradict Judaism as established by God through Moses. Brown’s statement is not only flawed, it is actually hypocritical. One who spends time studying in a Yeshiva will hear very little about Jesus and his followers. The traditional Jewish texts have almost nothing to say about the early Christians. Throughout the entire 2700 page Talmud, there are three paragraphs that some understand as a reference to Jesus. On the other hand, the authors of the Christian scriptures spent a lot of time presenting their readers with a warped view of Judaism. The Christian scripture has poisoned the mind of Western civilization against Judaism and continues to do so to this day. People who read the Christian scriptures come away with a very negative understanding of Judaism that has no basis in reality. The key issue in this discussion is: what is the belief system established by God through Moses? The Christian scripture presents inaccurate information on this foundational issue. Yet Brown is “concerned” that Yeshiva study will distort people’s view of Jesus! I. 3. “The real question is, What do the Hebrew scriptures teach? Which Jewish expression follows the Bible? That must be the rule of Jewish faith and practice.” I believe that if we follow the criteria that Brown set forth the doctrines of Judaism will be vindicated, and I will substantiate my position in the following pages. But it is in place to note that the Brown’s question assumes a certain Christian principle that has no Biblical basis. Protestant Christianity posits that the only means God provided to discover His will is the Bible. This is both, not true and self-contradictory. God provided the living testimony of a nation to inform us of His will and to teach us of the Bible’s significance. I. 4. “…no Jew keeps the Torah as it was originally given.” This argument has no basis in reality. Although we were forced to discontinue many practices since the destruction of the Temple but the essence of our belief system has never changed. The Torah itself testifies to this truth. In Deuteronomy 30:2 Moses tells us that when we are in exile we will return to God through obedience of the Torah as he (Moses) taught it. It is obvious that many of the commandments of the Torah are not practically applicable in our exiled state. Yet that does not stop Moses from referring to our obedience with the words: “everything that I command you today”. The circumstances and the situations change, but the Law of Moses is the same. The original Law incorporated the possibility that our circumstances will change over time, and the methods of dealing with these new situations are already present in the original Law. I. 5. Objection 1.1 “…all of Jesus’ original followers were Jews” Fine, but were they Christians? An honest reading of Christian scripture will reveal that the early followers of Jesus did not subscribe to the Christian belief system. They viewed Jesus as a Jewish Messiah, and not as a god who dies for the sins of the world (as evidenced by their participation in the Temple rituals for the expiation of sin after the crucifixion of Jesus – Acts 21). They rejected Paul’s claims to prophecy (as evidenced by their discussion in Acts 15 without reference to Paul’s alleged prophecy on the matter), and accepted the rulings of the Pharisee Rabbis (as Jesus taught in Matthew 23 – see also Acts 15:5 – see below # IV. 11 and # V. 69). I. 6. “…within a few years after his death (and resurrection), thousands of Jews believed in him” This statement is based on the Christian scriptures. There is no reason to consider this testimony to be reliable. The same system that God put in place to teach us that the books of Esther, Ezra, Ruth and Daniel were written with divine inspiration, teaches us that the Christian scriptures were not. I. 7. “Since then, in every generation there has been a faithful remnant of Jews who have followed Jesus (the Messiah), numbering from the thousands into the tens of thousands.” This assertion is not even based on the biased words of the Christian scriptures. This is pure fantasy. Let us take the years 300 CE to 1300 CE. Who were these Jewish believers? Is there any record of Jewish believers from that era? Let us take this one step further. According to Dr. Brown (page 115) true believers love the Jewish people. Every historical document tells us that anti-Semitism was considered an integral part of Christianity for many centuries. We challenge to Dr. Brown to present evidence that could substantiate the claim that there were 1000 “true” gentile believers in the years 300 CE to 1300 CE.