judaism and christianity?

Question

whats their difference and similarities?

dont give me a freakin link okay?

can YOU give me a long explanation? not just a SHORT asnwer...

dont answer this question if you're just ognna give me an immature answer...

Answer 1

I am so tempted to give you a "freakin link" anyway and I probably will, because I discovered that there is one really great place that Christian friends tell me is the best place they ever read to finally understand the differences between Judaism and Christianity from a BIBLICAL perspective. The answers are more succinct than many of the good ones found here and I think..Why reinvent the wheel when Rabbi Federow did such a great job. The REASON I think he did such a great job is that it addresses coming from the Christian perspective of WHY don't Jews believe things the way we do..Most Jewish people explain things from the perspective that the other's " understanding" won't get in the way. I know I often did that before I read the New Testament and then realized that it completely colors the view of our Tanakh to them in a very different light. I'll give you my own thoughts before I give the link but I STILL hope that after you read all these answers you will go explore the link I give you. I promise you won't be sorry. And I also promise it won't be proselytizing to you. It will just answer your question here better than anyone else will and if I were a gambling sort of person I'd BET on that!

Christians, (as you can see from the answers before mine)..almost always think that it is the issue of Jesus being the messiah that is THE difference. While that's a big one..it isn't the most insurmountable and irreconcilable difference at all. The concept of messiah is very different to the two religions. The Jewish concept of messiah ( it BEGAN and IS a Jewish concept ) is of an annointed human KING or ruler. It carries NO connotation of having a job duty of pardoning sin or being God in human form. There have been a GREAT many messiah hopefuls over the years and Jews haven't killed any of them for hoping or claiming they were the one because a messiah isn't going to be a threat to the Jews. Each messiah hopeful of the past was abandoned as messiah when they died without doing the JOB. No messiah would ever be worshipped or prayed through by any Jew. ( and there have been messiahs..King Cyrus was called messiah in the Tanakh..he was a non-Jewish annointed of God who saw to Israel's very survival and was blessed for how he ruled)

The notion of who and what God Is..and how humans connect to God is the big difference.

The similarities are that we each strive to connect to God, whatever our notion.

The wise and righteous of both religious traditions recognize the essential brotherhood of humanity.
Virtues of charity, justice and mercy are espoused by the wise of each religious tradition.


I could write for hours on the differences and on my own 360 blog I've written a dozen essays on many of them, but for succinctness and a MATURE and readily understandable way to "get it"..to see clearly the differences laid out side by side..I think the link next..will do it best. Why reinvent the wheel?
Shalom

Answer 2

Baha'i is really not a mix of religions. Baha'i is actually a whole new set of beliefs and values. If you go to a Baha'i temple you will see that they don't talk about the Bible, Torah, or Qur'an but writings unique to their following. The reason people use the term "Judeo-Christian" is because the Christian movement started out as a Jewish sect and has many of the fundamental beliefs that Jews hold. Including the exclusive worship of Yahweh. I am a Christian and a strict monotheist. We do not share the same beliefs or worldview as the Muslims do and Allah's attributes are actually different from Yahweh's. Plus, Islam begins to differ from Judaism very early on starting with Ishmael and Issac. In their practice and observance of their beliefs, that is their methods of worship Judaism and Islam are more in common.

Answer 3

Jesus was a practicing jew as well as the messiah !!!
There should be no difference between the two !!!
According to the New Testament many temple priests became messianic believers !!!
Persecution of the messianic followers continued until Constititian when he established Christianity it was done in such a fashion that antisemetism commenced against the Jews because in the minds of the people at the time they thought of the Jews as Christ killers !!! Obviously this is not the case because the priesthood was obligated to Rome and anyone who looked like a King of the Jews was a total affront to Caesar and the priesthood didn't like the way the people had followed Jesus and they wanted him out of the way lest they became a target by Rome [you know keep the peace] !!! My above conclusions will not be agreed on by many here but you will have to do your own bible study !!! Taking another persons answer is only good for the short term, but you will have to get your own handle on this if you really want to understand !!! We have 1700 years of total misunderstanding !!! Believe it or not !!!!

The following link is only added to refute above answers so you can check it out for yourself !!! http://bibleprobe.com/365messianicprophecies.htm

Answer 4

The Hebrew (Jewish) faith is a monotheistic religion which believes in a one being all powerful God, it recognizes certain patriarchal figures and, following the words of the Old Testament, believe they have a covenant with God (YWHW - Yahweh) to be his chosen people.
Their belief is that there WILL COME a Messiah to lead and protect the chosen ones when the world arrives at Armageddon.
They also believe in Prophets.
Christianity, originally had the same beliefs but then diverted from the Jewish path with the arrival and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ (be aware that Christ and Christian mean Leader or Disciple in ancient Aramaic)
Christians now take the prophet idea and call them Saints.
They no longer accept there is a Messiah to come but that their Jesus will come a second time (The second coming) and this will occur at the commencement of Armageddon .. without being partisan to one belief or the other .. it would appear that the differences are ideological and not religious .. perhaps the rise of the Christian church can be attributed, in some ways, to certain people being less than acceptable to the dogma of a Messiah always "coming ... "
Many people are convinced that true "Christianity" should be called "Paul-ism" but that's another hot chestnut

Answer 5

the primary difference is that christians believe that jesus is the messiah promised in the old testament, and jews do not. The new testaments is a holy book to christians but not to jews.

many other differences have followed. christians believe in sin, including original sin, and they believe that jesus died to make up for those sins. if you don't get saved from those sins, christianity says that you go to hell.
judaism doesn't believe in that kind of sin, doesn't believe in hell. you try to do the best you can, try to learn from your mistakes.
christianity puts a big focus on the afterlife. judaism believes in an afterlife but emphasizes this lifetime, doing the best we can to heal the world in this lifetime.

there are lots of other subtle differences, but those are some major ones.

lady suri and tehillim gave excellent answers.

Answer 6

What's amazing is that even though LadySuri and Tehillim V hit on some great points, they still did not cover all the differences between Judaism and Christianity. That's impossible in this format.

There are many, many books on the subject, though--one that I particularly enjoyed was on the Barcelona Disputations (a debate between a prominent 13th century rabbi and a Dominican (who had converted to Christianity from Judaism.)

Answer 7

Well--I may be uniquely qualified to answer this question. I am a former Christian fundamentalist who, as an adult, converted to Orthodox Judaism. So I KNOW what the differences are....

and they are many.

As other writers have said, it's true that their belief in a man-god is one of the major differences. There are lots of reasons why their man-god can't be messiah--much less G-d! He fulfills absolutely none of the requirements for messiah, for instance. The Messiah will usher in an age of world peace, return the Jewish people to their land, and will re-institute Temple worship. By contrast, the Christian man-god lived during a period of profound violence in instability; shortly after his death the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were dispersed throughout the world....

Kind of exactly the OPPOSITE of the prophecies.

The Christian Bible says that there are many prophecies that their man-god DID fulfill. It's interesting to note that many of these prophecies were misquoted...and sometimes the 'prophecies' weren't even there! They wre made up out of whole cloth...

But there ARE some prophecies that he appears to have truly fulfilled. How can this be?

The Christian books of the Bible were written many years after the death of their man-god. There were squabbles within the new religioius group from the first, and there was certainly time for revisionist history. I believe that the books that were written had the man-god 'saying' things he never actually said, and 'doing' things he never actually did.

There's a story: A man walked through the woods and saw tree after tree with round circles painted on them, and arrows in the very middle of each circle. He asked around: "How can anyone be such a good marksman?"

"It's simple," he was told. "The marksman shoots the arrow first, and then draws the circle around the arrow." I think that story explains a lot of the supposed fulfillment of prophecy.

Of course, the Torah itself says that we are forbidden to worship other gods...even if a prophet does miracles to "prove" that we should (Deuter. 13)

There are other reasons the man-god can't have been the Messiah. His genealogy, for one thing: By Christian accounts, on one side of his family, his genealogy is traced back to Nathan, son of David. But the Messiah must come through Solomon! On the other side, his lineage goes through Jeconiah, who was cursed never to have a descendent sitting on the throne of David. (Jeremiah 22:30). These two factors absolutely rule out the Christian man-god.

BTW--why do I refuse to use his name? It's not a superstitious matter; but in the Psalms, David clearly says that he will not carry the names of foreign gods on his lips.

Christians will insist that Jews are being stubborn not to acknowledge that their man-god is the Messiah. Please understand that the Torah is the most widely studied book in the world. Even today there are thousands of men who devote their entire lives to studying Torah. It continues to be studied ceaselessly, as it has been for millinia. Every tiny detail is discussed in detail...

For instance: Sometimes a word is spelled in a way that is atypical. Perhaps a word is spelled without a 'vav' in most instances, but is spelled with a 'vav' once or twice. You wouldn't believe the reams of paper that are expended on such questions: Why would G-d spell it differently in this instance? What does it mean? What is He trying to tell us? People write books about such things.

Jews don't gloss over what is in Torah. They study it incessantly. They want to understand. Their lives are dedicated to it. And if it lead to belief in the Christian man-god, they would embrace him.

But they don't, because it doesn't.

So: that's the most obvious difference between the religions. There are many others--in fact, there is very little similarity. Having been raised in a fundamentalist Sunday School, I can assure you that I thought I knew something about Judaism, but I knew nothing.

Jews don't believe in original sin. They believe that they must do their best to keep the commandments. We DON'T think we're damned if we don't, and our religion is NOT made up with rules and regulations. It involves a very personal--yet communal--relationship with a G-d who has vowed that we are His own people for all eternity. We know an awful lot more about our Torah than Christians do--even more than Christians imagine there IS to know.

And of course we do have 'rules'--called mitzvos. They are not burdensome and impossible to keep, as Christians would have you believe. They are joyful, and lead to happy and productive lives. We are "sanctified through mitzvos', say some of our prayers, and through practice, I've found that to be true.

Similarities? I don't see any. I know that Christians do. But I suspect....that they're just jealous.

Answer 8

Contrary to popular belief, there are actually MANY differences between Xianity and Judaism--Xians will say the only difference is J*sus because they don't know much about Judaism at all. I'm Jewish, so here is my answer:

Judaism believes that only you can be responsible for your sins. Nobody else can take them on or ask forgiveness on your behalf. Yes, we used to do animal sacrifices SOMETIMES, but most sacrifices were a mix of flour and oil. Still, sacrifice alone cannot atone for sin (and human sacrifice is ABHORRED by G-d). To atone for sins, a person must do teshuva, which includes: 1. recognizing the sin [knowing you did wrong] and feeling remorse for it 2. asking forgiveness of the wrong by the person you wronged (example: if you broke a Jewish law, you apologize to G-d, but if you broke your neighbor's favorite flowerpot, you must apologize to your neighbor for no one else can forgive you) 3. try to right the wrong you did--if you broke the flowerpot, either buy a new one or try to repair the old one sufficiently 4. actively resolve and try not to commit the wrong again--if you broke a law, create a reminder for yourself so that next time the opportunity comes up, you will remember.

Xianity believes to get forgiveness from your sins, you need to ask J*sus because he sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. Judaism thinks that this is crazy.

We do not believe in proselytizing because we believe that nobody has to be Jewish to warrant a place in heaven. A non-Jew has as much right to the World to Come as a Jew does--a Jew just has more rules to follow to get there. We do accept converts (we are NOT a race!!) although it is a hard road because Judaism is a hard life to live. [notice I say life, not religion. Judaism is a way of life, not just a religion.] It takes years of study to convert and the rabbi wants to make sure the convert is sincere because nobody wants to waste at least a year of the rabbi's life (or the convert's life, for that matter). Once you are Jewish you can never be a non-Jew again UNLESS you take on another believe system directly contrary to Judaism's. For example, you can be an atheist but still be Jewish because your believe system does not contradict with Judaism--you do not believe in G-d, but you don't believe in another false god either. But you cannot be a Jewish Xtian because Xtianity is contrary to Judaism. If you are a Jew and suddenly start to believe in Xtianity, you are an apostate and not Jewish unless you repent and come home to Judaism.

Xianity believes that you have to be Xian and accept J*sus as your savior to get into heaven.

(I'm sorry my sentences on Xianity are so short--the Judaism ones just require more explanation, I think)

Of course, Judaism does not believe in the trinity. The belief that G-d can be three gods while still being one doesn't make sense. Xians believe in the trinity.

Oh, and Judaism does not always take the Bible literally. For instance, the creation account. Most of us realize it is not to be taken literally. But in the writings of the prophets, however, they are to be taken literally in most places (unless the scripture says otherwise) because the writings of the prophets are what the prophets actually saw. Xianity does the opposite: takes the creation account literally and the prophets metaphorically (for example, it says that the messiah must re-build the Temple. Obviously, this has not physically happened yet. But Xianity says J*sus rebuilt the Temple in heaven.)

Similarities:
Our golden rules are similar, since J*sus took his "love your neighbor as yourself" from our Rabbi Hillel, who said "that which is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the law, all else is commentary."

I have more, if you need more.

Peace

Answer 9

we as Christians believe in the same God and the same revelation they do, plus the New Testament. As the Holy Father once pointed out, Christians are all "spiritual Semites" (spiritually united with the Jews and the faith of Abraham). Basically, Christians are what you could call "Messianic Jews", that is, we are "adopted" Jews who believe Jesus was the long awaited Jewish Messiah…the Savior. We have been grafted into the family tree. Of course, our faith has grown considerably from there as well. While we have significant theological differences with traditional Judaism (primarily revolving around Christ), our understanding of morality is of the same basic cloth.

We should never forget our roots. We should never forget that Jesus was a Jew (who attended synagogue), as were his mother and adoptive father, all the apostles and even the first pope (Peter). Almost all of the first "believers" were Jews, and they all attended synagogue as well. While it is true that some Jews called for His execution (particularly those threatened by Jesus as a potential leader who threatened their hold on power) , the Catechism reminds us that every human who has ever lived bears responsibility for his crucifixion. We are all responsible.

As Christians, we believe that, in rejecting Jesus, most of the Jews rejected their own Messiah, as prophecy foretold (Isaiah 53:3-4, Hosea 11:4). As the apostle Paul points out in Romans 11, this is part of a mystery, wherein God used their lack of faith-response in order to bring the Gentiles (non-Jews) into His family. While there continue to be Jews who come to accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah throughout history, we prayerfully hope for the day when the Jews will most fully come to accept Jesus and be "grafted back into the tree" (which St. Paul also writes about in Romans 11).

Answer 10

The basic difference doesn't require a long answer....it's very simple.

God promised to send a Messiah.

Christians believe that Messiah is Jesus Christ.

Jews don't believe that.....and are still waiting for a Messiah.