Why don't Jewish people believe Jesus was the Messiah?

Question

Someone was trying to explain this to me in class, but i thought ya'll could better :-)

for the record, i'm not being inflammatory...i need to know for classes :-)

AWESOME response time guys :-)

Answer 1

Because Jesus did not meet their expectations of the messiah. The Jews expected the messiah be a political and military leader who would liberate them from the Roman Empire. Jesus was a pacifist. The Jews in those days would consider it absurd that Jesus was the messiah.

Answer 2

1. Deut 18 and Jeremiah 28. How to spot a false prophet.

2. No where in the Tanakh (Jewish bible) does it say the messiah is going to need TWO ATTEMPTS and over 2000 years to fulfill prophecy.

3. Jesus weakened the golden rule as stated by Hillel. A true prophet or messiah would not take something and now only weaken it, but stick in a big fat loophole. (what if you are a masochist? With the Jesus version, it is OK to beat up on others as you would have them beat up on you.)

4. He was not in the line of David.

5. He was not an observant Jew.

enough??

Answer 3

Jews don’t believe the Messiah is to be crucified, but will die a normal death
Jews don’t believe the Messiah will be raised from the dead
Jews don’t believe the Messiah is to come twice. He would be a political warrior
Jews don’t believe the Messiah will be divine in any way, but a human sent by God
Jews don’t believe he will be the son of god
Jews don’t believe the Messiah saves individual people from sin
Jews don’t believe the Messiah will be born of a virgin or any special way, other than being from the line of King David
None of these things are relevant to the conception of Messiah in the Hebrew Bible and none are prophesied
Jews usually don’t care one way or the other about Jesus or claims made about him, because he is simply not part of Judaism and not relevant to the Messiah in any way

Answer 4

I'll just add a couple of things, based on the above responses: 1) There is **no such thing** as a "Jewish Christian", etc. "Jews for Jesus" or "Messianic Jews" are the **only** ones who consider themselves Jewish; 2) Many of the verses in my Bible (what is called by others the "Old Testament") have been mis-translated or taken out of context to support Christian claims that my Bible contains prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. For example, the word 'almah in Isaiah 7 that is often translated as "virgin" really means "young girl" in Hebrew; and the "suffering servant" mentioned in Isaiah 53 is clearly Israel, when taken **in context** with chapter 52.

Answer 5

The Jews rejected Jesus because He failed, in their eyes, to do what they expected their Messiah to do--destroy evil and all their enemies, in this case the Romans, and establish an eternal kingdom with Israel as the preeminent nation in the world. The prophecies in Isaiah and Psalm 22 described a suffering Messiah who would be persecuted and killed, but they chose to focus on those prophecies that discussed His glorious victories, not His crucifixion.

The commentaries in the Talmud, written before the onset of Christianity, clearly discuss the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and puzzle over how these would be fulfilled with the glorious setting up of the Kingdom of the Messiah. After the Church used these prophecies to prove the claims of Christ, the Jews took the position that the prophecies did not refer to the Messiah, but to Israel or some other person.

The Jews believed that the Messiah, the prophet which Moses spoke about, would come and deliver them from Roman bondage and set up a kingdom where they would be the rulers. Two of the disciples, James and John, even asked to sit at Jesus' right and left in His Kingdom when He came into His glory. The people of Jerusalem also thought He would deliver them. They shouted praises to God for the mighty works they had seen Jesus do, and called out "Hosanna, save us" when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:9). They treated Him like a conquering king. Then when He allowed Himself to be arrested, tried and crucified on a cursed cross, the people quit believing that He was the promised prophet. They rejected their Messiah (Matthew 27:22).

Answer 6

Here is why we don't believe that Jesus was the messiah in simple terms:
1) The dead were not resurrected
2) The Jews did not beome priests to the other nations
3) There is no world peace
4) The temple is not standing
5) There is no temple service
6) There is no parah adumah or its ashes to render us tahor
7) The messiah is from the House of David. your house/tribe is inherited from your father. Your father is your BIOLOGICAL father- there is no adoption in Judaisim to another father- if God is the father of Jesus- then Jesus cannot be from the House of David as God is not frm the House of David.
8) Human sacrifice is completely forbidden in Judaism- remeber God stopping the sacrifice of Isaac? The idea of a human being sacrificed is the opposite of anything from Judaism!
9) You have to atone for yourself! An essential part of the atonement process is being repentant. Someone cannot be repentant for you- you have to do it for yourself. ONly communal sins can be forgiven communally- not individual, private sins!

And no- the messiah does NOT proclaim himself- he will be recognised by his deeds- not by his claims- in other words, through doing the above he will be recognised as the messiah. On top of that- mashiach is a HUMAN being, with HUMAN parents- the idea of an anthropomorphised God going around and impregnating young woman is completely alien to Judaism- though it fits very nicely into the pagan religions of the time which had their heroes being fathered by gods (ala Hercules and his daddy Zeus)

Answer 7

The purpose of the messiah (human - not divine) is to bring peace on earth for all mankind. Have we ever had peace on earth? No? Then the messiah has not arrived.

For Jews, the belief that God would become human is the ultimate heresy.
.

Answer 8

Well, Jesus doesn't fit the bill of the Messiah. Here is a link that explains it all, and it is from the Jewish point of view.

Answer 9

We can read Hebrew.

Jesus just doesn't fulfill any of the Messianic prophecies and those long lists that the Christians come up with are all misreadings of the Hebrew.

It really is that simple.

Many Christians really don't like to hear about this -- be careful how you talk about it in class.

Answer 10

They are taught that Jesus was born of an illegitamate birth and went away to learn to become a magician.

From the Old Testament alone, more than 2000 specific prophesies have been fulfilled.
No other so called Holy book compares.Most of the 333 prophesies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled by the birth and life of Jesus Christ and the rest will be fulfilled at His second coming. A mathematician, Peter Stoner, had his graduate students calculate what the odds would be of any one person fulfilling just eight of these prophesies. He found the chance was one in 100,000,000,000,000,000 !Only a God who knows the future could have revealed these prophesies to those that He would have record them in His Word.

In spite of what is being taught today, the truth is we can reconstruct most of the life of Jesus Christ through non - Christian writers of the first century. Even Celsus who despised Christianity, never considered claiming that Jesus Christ did not exist.This is what can be learned from the writing of Celsus...

He was born of a virgin in a small village of Judea;
He was adored by wise men;
His birth was followed by the slaughter of infants by order of Herod;
He took flight to Egypt, where Celsus supposed Christ learned the charms of the Magicians;
After returning, He resided in Nazareth;He was baptized and the Holy Spirit descended on Him as a voice was heard from heaven;
He elected disciples;
He was a friend with publicans and other low people;
He cured the lame and blind;
He raised people from the dead;
He was betrayed by Judas;
He was denied by Peter;
In addition Celsus refers to several details of Christ's passion, crucifiction, and resurrection.

Twenty seven books of the New Testament, nineteen Pagan writers, and three Jewish writers testify to Jesus Christ's historical reality. When I hear people say that Jesus or the Bible is just a myth I just realise that they are simply unaware of the facts.I recommend The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel and or Skeptics Answered or The Gate Of Hell Shall Not Prevail by D. James Kennedy, and The Signature of God by Grant R. Jeffrey. May all your thoughts be taken captive by the Holy Spirit. Amen.