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Christian missionaries to the Jews don't want to shock the Jew by handing out leaflets which proclaim Jesus is God. This belief is kept in the background, waiting for the potential convert to become interested by the declaration of Jesus being our own Hebrew Messiah. After all, if Jews are waiting for the Messiah (the Moshiach), maybe Jesus is he. But, Jews are not waiting for God. Consequently, the missionaries merely declare Jeshua ben Joseph is the Moshiach. His being God the Son of the Christian Trinity is advanced to the potential convert later. The full-page ads of the so-called "Jews for Jesus" organizations don't say a word about the Trinity, not a single word. Well, Jews need not contemplate this non-Jewish concept of a triune God.
If you are a regular reader of Bet Emet Ministries you know that we teach and have shown on many occasions that Jesus did not claim to be God incarnate and that he believed in the God of unity of the Hebrew Scriptures. The concept of the Trinity does not affect Jews, because it has no basis in the Hebrew Bible. Because of that it should not affect the Christian either, but sadly it does.
However, Jews are deeply concerned about the Hebrew Messiah. Christians don't seem to be concerned about the Hebrew Messiah because they have one of their own; namely the Christian Messiah. The both are not the same! The Jewish Scriptures are filled with words of Messianic expectation. Both Jews and Christians wait for him daily. The question which is of interest to us is whether Christianity's Christ is the Hebrew Messiah.
Answer for yourself: Have Jews neglected to recognize that Jesus is their Messiah, because Christianity has claimed him as God the Son?
Answer for yourself: If it were possible to separate the Christologic Christ from the Jewish Jesus, would we then be able to find the truth about the Moshiach of the Hebrews? In other words, let's put aside the claims of Christianity and discover if Jesus fits the role of the Hebrew Messiah, as Judaism understands him from our own Scriptures. Let's first look at the attributes of the Messiah and the Messianic Era expectations as presented in the Hebrew Bible. Then we can ascertain if Jesus fulfilled the Messianic requirements and if he, indeed, is the Moshiach of the Jewish people.
Clearly, if his role was not that of the Messiah, as expressed in the written word of God, the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christianity has made of the Messiah is not Judaism's concern. Instead, if such can be proved then it become a nightmare of unimaginable proportions to the Christian believer. However, it certainly would be of very great concern and importance to the Jews if it could be shown from the Jewish Scriptures that Yeshua's life and accomplishments were that of the expected Messiah.
Answer for yourself: Has the Hebrew Messiah already come? We must use traditional interpretation of Biblical Messianic passages to find our answer. What do you think we will discover?
Answer for yourself: Have the Jews been in error through the centuries in their refusal to accept Yeshua as the Hebrew Messiah?
Answer for yourself: When they refused to succumb to conversion, and instead suffered martyrdom for Kiddush Ha-Shem (sanctification of God's name), were they wrong?
Answer for yourself: When persecution, torture, and death could be avoided, were the Jewish leaders and people mistaken to remain with their Judaism? How easy it would have been to accept conversion to Christianity. They could have prospered socially, and economically, and obtained peace in a diaspora of disdain and degradation for Jews. Actually, it is surprising that so few were lost to Judaism due to conversion. It seems surely a "sign" that Judaism's remnant in dispersion remained steadfast, even when offered the choice of the Christian cross or the Christian curse!
We shall find in the following articles that Jews have rejected Jesus as the Hebrew Messiah because of their intimate and profound knowledge of the Jewish Holy Scriptures, together with their devotion to the God of Israel! Scriptural passages are the basis of Judaism's understanding of the Messiah and Messianic expectations. Much must be fulfilled. Much must be established. The Messiah's tasks are still to be accomplished according to the Jewish Masoretic Text.
But this is not the case with the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures? Why?
I can honestly say that one of the greatest revelations that I have had over the last 20 years of Bible study is the revelation that the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible is an abomination before God. Hundreds of Jewish Scriptures were butchered and purposefully altered by the Essene translators of Alexandria, Egypt, with the expressed purpose of giving "Scriptural authority" to the previously existing religious beliefs which can be shown upon study to be a mixture of Judaism and Egyptian Sun-worship. The Messiah of the Jewish Scriptures was cleverly altered in the Greek translation to where he is almost unrecognizable by traditional Judaism. This is why the Jews who knew the Hebrew Scriptures could and would not accept the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible back then as well as now. They know what billions of good Christians were never told; namely, that the Word of God was "added and taken away from" in an attempt to restructure the Jewish Messiah into a form more palatable to the Gentile nations of the world. Simply said, such destruction of Divine Revelation concerning the Jewish Messiah and the substitute of a man-made solar godman as the personification of Sun-Worship is the reason today that we have both a Hebrew Messiah and a Gentile Christian Messiah. If you take the Jewish Masoretic Bible and compare the "Messianic prophecies" within it with the Greek translation of them done in 200 B.C.E. or the later Christian Old Testaments in English which came from it, or the Christian New Testaments which came from the corresponding Christian Old Testaments which came from the Greek, you will be simply horrified at what you see. Hundreds of very important and critical passages in the Hebrew are purposely mistranslated, misquoted, and lifted out of context in order to give a sense of "fulfillment" to events that are connected with the life of Jesus in one way or the other. Other "fulfilled" New Testament Scriptures are simply just made up and given prophetic authority in order to pass them off to the unsuspecting Gentile audience of their day. Guess what? It still works today!
What you need to understand and do is two things:
This explains why the Jews of yesterday and today continually tell the Christian that there remains unfulfilled Jewish Scriptures that must be fulfilled before he can believe in anyone as "their Messiah." Christianity has tried to avoid the unfulfilled Messianic hopes by either minimizing them or changing them to fit their Christology. What I chronicled for you above was the "changing" of them to fit a pattern of sun-godmen both by the Essenes of 200 B.C.E. as well as Greek and Latin Church Fathers much later once they had possession of the documents from which the New Testament was to emerge.
When this could not be done, they advanced the time of fulfillment to a "second coming." Well, it must be understood that the Biblical foundation of Messianic hope cannot be disregarded or changed to suit Christianity's circumstances. It must be understood that belief that Jesus is the Messiah has to measure up to verses as written in the Hebrew Scriptures and not the forged and fraudulent Greek Septuagint (or the later Christian Old Testaments and New Testaments which quoted only from them). Expectations must be satisfied as written in the Hebrew and not the Greek (or English). After all, this is where the hope of the Messiah originated. If we find Messianic expectations unfulfilled in traditional terms, other terms will not do! What God says will occur is exactly what will occur. God said it clearly and repeatedly in His Holy Book and the Jews not only had it 2000 years ago but do so as well today. It is the Christian Community who has never read or seen this Jewish Holy Book. Literally, and I don't want to hurt anyone, but the Christian has never read the Word of God yet until he lays down his King James Bible (or other Christian translations that are tied to the abominable Greek translation) and buys and reads the Jewish Masoretic Text (called the Tanakh).
Moreover, what is to occur is to occur when expected, which is at the arrival of the Messiah. The Messiah's achievements cannot legitimately be placed forward to a future time, a "second coming," unless this is explicitly described in these holy verses. By now, it should be of no surprise to you to learn that no such double arrival, in order to accomplish the Messianic Era, is written in the Jewish Bible. The Scriptures do not describe a Messiah coming, dying, not achieving, leaving, returning, and then making the Messianic times a reality. Nowhere is it said that the Messiah is to return after having once failed in doing what the Messiah is to do. A "second coming" as well as Christologics, both, have absolutely no foundation in Judaism's Bible! Such a "second coming" is anticipated only in the New Testament, and we shall examine this error later in future articles.
Consequently, if the Scriptural expectations for the Messiah are unfulfilled and no "second coming" is propounded, it would appear that the Christian Messiah (Christ) and Hebrew Messiah (Moshiach) are two different entities! What I propose to do in this series of articles is present the Scripture as it was written in the Jewish Bible and understood by traditional Judaism as over against how it was later changed or altered and later viewed by the Greeks and later Gentile Christians. In so doing we can see together how the Messianic concepts once given to the Jews were altered and changed over time whereby we have ended up with a Hebrew Messiah (Moshiach) and a Christian Messiah (Christ).
I have not casually approached this subject. In fact the hours of study into these areas amaze me, let alone my wife and friends. Having taken this subject very seriously I am fully persuaded today on points that both the Jews and Christians will gladly accept and reject. I would ask you patience as you read the entire website and pertinent articles in these selected areas to fully understand both sides of this very delicate issue. So I will close with the reiteration of facts and not hypothesis. The facts are:
The Jewish Scriptures were altered in very important and sensitive spots by the Alexandrian Essenes in order to produce a "translation" that had Godly authority which just so happened to agree with their existing religious belief system which was not normative Biblical Judaism, but a mixture of Judaism and Egyptian Sun-Worship whereby the human messiah of Judaism became the personified solar Godman of the Greek Old Testament.
All subsequent translations of Christian Bibles, except the Latin, come from this corrupted Greek translation. Jerome could not use it because of it contained so many errors of which I speak when compared with the Hebrew. This means that among the pages of your English Old Testament [since taken from this corrupted Greek Old Testament] you are reading passages which you think God gave holy men of old concerning His Messiah which in reality God never did, and when these are compared line upon line with the Jewish Bible either do not exist as written in your English Bible or exist in a completely different wording or context. In fact Egyptian Sun-Worship has been personified in the form or a man with supernatural features and he is passed off by Alexandrian Essenes, the the Greek Fathers which were schooled under them in Alexandria, Egypt, as a Divine Revelation under various names of important Jewish Prophets and you, never suspecting this, read your English Old Testament as if inspired, infallible, and inerrant. The Jewish prophets never said much of which they are quoted for in the Greek Old Testament. I suggest you begin such a study to see this for yourself.
When reading your Christian Old Testament you read these "altered" passages and prophecies concerning this "anointed one" and they are burned into you mind and you recall them at a second's notice when asked about the Jewish Messiah; all the while not knowing that such was never written about the Jewish Messiah in the first place because you have never known of this corruption in the translations you both use in your personal life as well as in your church.
To compound matters you read the New Testament which quotes from your corrupted Christian Old Testament and again you never know what you are reading in Paul's name or in the various Gospels are nothing more than the rehash of forged, fabricated, misquoted, mistranslated, fraudulent and corrupted Jewish passages in the first place. The result of this whole deception is that you attribute to Jesus ideas and concepts that to you make him "your" Messiah but all the while the Jew who knows his own Jewish Tanakh stands in bewilderment at what you believe about Jesus and refused to accept such "good news" about Jesus. Any wonder now why?
But here is where it gets sticky and this is my personal interpretation after doing all the hard homework for 16 years. There are many reasons why the prophecies of the Jewish Bible COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FULFILLED in the first century no matter who might have been the Messiah in waiting. The failure of their fulfillment cannot be blamed on the failure of any one man, let alone Jesus. The failure of the Jewish Prophecies to be fulfilled lays at the feet of a holy nation and a royal priesthood who failed their calling. Failing such a calling guaranteed the Kingdom would not come and with it no King! Yeshua knew that and accepted the fate of his nation after the rejection of his Kingdom message which he had preached there for 3 years in Galilee. The Olive Tree had borne no fruit and Yeshua knew quite well that judgment was to come not only on the messenger but the nation as well.
That sure muddled everything now did it not? Here is a guy who tells you that you cannot believe your Christian Bibles and that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah but the Christian Messiah as based off fraudulent and forged Jewish Scriptures which make him so at the expense of truth as found in the Jewish Bible. But what both the Jews and Christians need to know is that the Messiah could not have been revealed in the first century in the first place. That means that there is just no way to know if Jesus/Yeshua was or could have been, or was not to be "the" Messiah in the first century. Funny though is that through his name 1/3 of the world has come to the knowledge of God and saving faith; although much of the teaching and theology connected with Jesus is wrong. For me personally this is something I still ponder and the thoughtful result is simply this: When Messiah appears I hope to ask him this: "Been here before" because it just might be Yeshua. But if not, I will gladly greet and welcome whoever comes in the name of the Lord. Please don't get mad at me straddling the fence on this one; it is a hard subject as I told you. I refer to a Hebrew scholar named David Flusser who said he will ask the Messiah when he comes the very same question. I feel I am in good company especially if you know of and have read any of Mr. Flusser's writings.
For me I don't know who the Messiah will be but I BELIEVE that there was a good chance, if everything had happened according to schedule, that the anointed of the Lord could have emerged in the first century and it just might have been Yeshua. But it did not happen that way. There is simply no way to tell who might have been the "anointed of the Lord" because the Jewish Scriptures were not fulfilled. Only through that way was the identify of the "servant" to be known. What I resent is that the Holy Word of God was altered and made to look like a sun-godman was written among the scriptures to validate the mixture of Judaism and Sun-Worship of the Essenes of 200B.C.E. and that these "solar" corruptions were later applied to Jesus in the New Testament as if they were "fulfilled Messianic prophecies" when they are not. There is a big difference saying "thus being fulfilled by the prophet" in the New Testament and the truthful prophet and what he said in the Hebrew! Trust me on that!
Giving millions of people, if not billions, a false belief about Jesus whereby many fall into idolatry because the religious documents that they trust are forged and they don't know it, is a crime of unimaginable proportions. But such has been done. Either Jesus fulfilled the Jewish Scriptures are he did not. But you have to know what they are and what they say before any belief about Jesus should be attached to any idea of Messiahship. To take the false and fraudulent corrupted passages in the Christian OT and NT and accept a belief about the Messiah and attach such a personal belief to Jesus is foolhardy to say the least; especially now since you have been altered to the fact of such a corruption of the Jewish texts. You have no other option but to study to find out the truth for yourself then no man can lie to you any longer; whether on purpose or by accident.
Just for your information it would be this very same "solar theology" which will be cherished by these Essenes some 200 years later and also later applied to Jesus following his death. Such oral traditions were soon fixed to his life and death and we have not been able to shake ourselves free from them some 2000 years later. Many of these "oral tradition" from astral-worship will find their way onto the pages of your "inspired New Testament." This is why when reading of Jesus in the New Testament you have a Hebrew Messiah and a Christian Messiah and both are at odds. Said another way that is why you have a human messiah and a Godman Messiah. The Essene religious solar belief system permeates the New Testament as Acts 6 states:
Acts 6:7 7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of thepriests were obedient to the faith. (KJV)
It would be these Essenes "priests" who would bring their corrupted Judaism, their Greek LXX and its adulterated passages into the Jesus Movement following his death since now identifying his death with that of their prior martyred Teacher of Righteousness.
Now, in the articles that follow I will attempt to study out the various passages and prophecies that are applied to Jesus as qualification and guarantee of his Messiahship. We must remember that if it can be shown that the Jewish passages never said such things then to build a belief that Jesus as the Messiah , or God no less, is not only wasted energy but an affront to God who alone deserves our worship. I firmly believe God is pleased when His children have and know the truth. I firmly believe that any lie that is cherished by overzealous and emotionally led individuals, when exposed as such, must be cast down since the knowledge of the truth has set them free from sin and destruction brought on by deceit and lies. God, and Jesus no less, receives no honor when we believer or propagate lies in their names. Baruch HaShem.