Adherents of Judaism do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah or a prophet, nor do they believe he was the Son of God. In the Jewish perspective, it is believed that the way Christians see Jesus goes against monotheism, a belief in the absolute unity and singularity of God, which is central to Judaism; Judaism sees the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, which is forbidden. Therefore, considering Jesus divine, as “God the Son”, is forbidden. However, early Jewish groups, closer to Jesus’s time, did see him as the messiah, specifically the Nazarenes.
Judaism's rejection of Jesus as the Messiah is based on Jewish eschatology, which holds that the coming of the true messiah will be associated with events that have not yet occurred, such as building the Third Temple, a Messianic Age of peace, and the ingathering of Jews to their homeland.
Judaism does not accept any of the claimed fulfilments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus.
More recently, particularly since the mid-20th century, Jewish views of Jesus have also been discussed within the context of increasing Jewish-Christian interreligious dialogue, despite their respective particularities, as Jews and Christians seek to recognize their shared spiritual heritage.
Background
The belief that Jesus is God, the Son of God, or a person of the Trinity, is incompatible with Jewish theology. Jews believe Jesus did not fulfill messianic prophecies that establish the criteria for the coming of the Messiah.Rabbi Shraga Simmons, , "Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus", Ohr Samayach - Ask the Rabbi, accessed March 14, 2006; "Why don't Jews believe that Jesus was the messiah?" , AskMoses.com, accessed March 14, 2006. Judaism does not accept Jesus as a divine being, an intermediary between humans and God, a messiah, or holy. Belief in the Trinity is also held to be incompatible with Judaism, as are a number of other tenets of Christianity.
Jewish theology
Oneness and indivisibility of God
In Judaism, the idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical – it is even considered by some polytheistic.The concept of Trinity is incompatible with Judaism: Response - Reference Center - FAQ - Proof Texts - Trinity (Jews for Judaism) The Trinity in the Shema? by Rabbi Singer (outreachjudaism.org) The Doctrine of the Trinity (religionfacts.com) According to Judaic beliefs, the Torah rules out a trinitarian God in Deuteronomy (6:4): "Hear Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one."
Judaism teaches that it is heretical for any man to claim to be God, part of God, or the literal son of God. The Jerusalem Talmud states explicitly: "If a man claims to be God, he is a liar."Ta'anit 2:1
Paul Johnson, in his book A History of the Jews, describes the schism between Jews and Christians caused by a divergence from this principle: To the question, Was Jesus God or man?, the Christians therefore answered: both. After 70 CE, their answer was unanimous and increasingly emphatic. This made a complete breach with Judaism inevitable.
In the 12th century, the preeminent Jewish scholar Maimonides codified core principles of Modern Judaism, writing "[God], the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity."Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Madda Yesodei ha-Torah 1:5 Some Orthodox Jewish scholars note that the common poetic Jewish expression, "Our Father in Heaven", was used literally by Jesus to refer to God as "his Father in Heaven" (cf. Lord's Prayer).
God is not corporeal Maimonides' 13 principles of faith includes the concept that God has no body and that physical concepts do not apply to him. In the "Yigdal" prayer, found towards the beginning of the Jewish prayer books used in synagogues around the world, it states "He has no semblance of a body nor is He corporeal". It is a central tenet of Judaism that God does not have any physical characteristics; that God's essence cannot be fathomed.
Jesus as the Jewish Messiah
Judaism's idea of the messiah differs substantially from the Christian idea of the Messiah. In orthodox Rabbinic Judaism the messiah's task is to bring in the Messianic Age, a one-time event, and a presumed messiah who is killed before completing the task (i.e. compelling all of Israel to walk in the way of Torah, repairing the breaches in observance, fighting the wars of God, building the Temple in its place, gathering in the dispersed exiles of Israel) is not the messiah. Maimonides states,
Jews believe that the messiah will fulfill the messianic prophecies of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.Nachmanides in his dispute with Pablo Christiani in 1263 paragraph 49.Simmons, Rabbi Shraga, "Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus" , accessed March 14, 2006."Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus", Ohr Samayach - Ask the Rabbi, accessed March 14, 2006."Why don't Jews believe that Jesus was the messiah?" , AskMoses.com, accessed March 14, 2006. Judaism interprets Isaiah 11:1 ("And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow forth out of his roots.") to mean that the messiah will be a patrilineal bloodline descendant of King David. He is expected to return the Jews to their homeland and rebuild the Temple, reign as king, and usher in an era of peace and understanding where "the knowledge of God" fills the earth, leading the nations to "end up recognizing the wrongs they did Israel". Ezekiel states the messiah will redeem the Jews.
The Jewish view of Jesus is influenced by the fact that Jesus lived while the Second Temple was standing, and not during an exile. Being conceived via the Holy Spirit (as espoused by orthodox Christian doctrine), it would be impossible for Jesus to be a patrilineal bloodline descendant of King David. He never reigned as king, and there was no subsequent era of peace or great knowledge.
Moreover, Judaism sees Christian claims that Jesus is the textual messiah of the Hebrew Bible as being based on mistranslations,Troki, Isaac. . given that Jesus did not fulfill any of the Jewish Messiah qualifications. Jesus died without completing or even accomplishing part of any of the messianic tasks, which Christians say will occur at a Second Coming. Rather than being redeemed, the Jews were subsequently exiled from Judaea, and the Temple destroyed (as of yet it has not been rebuilt). These discrepancies were noted by Jewish scholars who were contemporaries of Jesus, as later pointed out by Nachmanides, who in 1263 observed that Jesus was rejected as the messiah by the rabbis of his time.Nachmanides in the Disputation of Barcelona with Pablo Christiani in 1263 paragraph 103.
Prophecy and Jesus
According to the Torah ( and ), the criteria for a person to be considered a prophet or speak for God in Judaism are that he must follow the God of Israel (and no other god); he must not describe God differently from how he is known to be from Scripture; he must not advocate change to God's word or state that God has changed his mind and wishes things that contradict his already-stated eternal word.Mishneh Torah Madah Yeshodai HaTorah 8:7-9 There is no concept of the Messiah "fulfilling the law" to free the Israelites from their duty to maintain the mitzvot in Judaism, as is understood in much of Christianity or some Messianic Judaism.
Deuteronomy 13:1 says, "Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you; neither add to it nor take away from it."Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures, ©1985 by The Jewish Publication Society, 1st edition, p. 296; in christian bibles this verse is Deuteronomy 12:32Frankel, Rabbi Pinchas, "Covenant of History", Orthodox Union of Jewish Congregations of America, accessed March 14, 2006.Edwards, Laurence, "Torat Hayim - Living Torah: No Rest(s) for the Wicked" , Union of American Hebrew Congregations, accessed March 14, 2006.
Even if someone who appears to be a prophet can perform supernatural acts or signs, no prophet or dreamer can contradict the laws already stated in the Tanakh. and Buchwald, Rabbi Ephraim, "Parashat Re'eh 5764-2004: Identifying a True Prophet" , National Jewish Outreach Program, accessed March 14, 2006 Thus, any divergence espoused by Jesus from the tenets of scriptural Judaism would disqualify him from being considered a prophet in Judaism. This was the view adopted by Jesus' contemporaries, as according to rabbinical tradition as stated in the Talmud (Sotah 48b) "when Malachi died the Prophecy departed from Israel." As Malachi lived centuries before Jesus it is clear that the rabbis of Talmudic times did not view Jesus as a divinely inspired prophet. Furthermore, the Bible itself includes an example of a prophet who could speak directly with God and could work miracles but was "evil", in the form of Balaam.
Jesus and salvation
Judaism does not share the Christian concept of salvation, as it does not believe people are born in a state of sin. Judaism holds instead that man is born to strive for perfection, and to follow the word of God. Sin is then divided into two categories; transgression against God (through a failure to fulfill ritual obligations, such as not sanctifying the Sabbath), and transgression against man (through a failure to fulfill moral obligations, such as committing gossip). To gain absolution, a person can repent of that sin, regret the sin, and commit to never do the sin again. God will then forgive their transgression against Him, although one may still be punished depending on the severity of the sin. If a sin is committed against man, the person needs to gain forgiveness from the one he sinned against; it cannot be forgiven by God or another person.
Jesus in rabbinical literature
The Talmud
Various works of classical Jewish rabbinic literature are thought to contain references to Jesus, including some uncensored manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud and the classical midrash literature written between 250 CE and 700 CE. There is a spectrum of scholarly views on how many of these references are actually to Jesus.Delbert Burkett. The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. 2010. p. 220. "Accordingly, scholars' analyses range widely from minimalists (eg, Lauterbach 1951) – who recognize only relatively few passages that actually have Jesus in mind – to moderates (eg, Herford 2006), to maximalists (Klausner 1943, 17–54; especially Schäfer 2007)."
Christian authorities in Europe were largely unaware of possible references to Jesus in the Talmud until 1236, when a convert from Judaism, Nicholas Donin, laid thirty-five formal charges against the Talmud before Pope Gregory IX, and these charges were brought upon rabbi Yechiel of Paris to defend at the Disputation of Paris in 1240.Saadia R. Eisenberg Reading Medieval Religious Disputation: The 1240 "Debate" Between Rabbi Yechiel of Paris and Friar Nicholas Donin Yechiel's primary defence was that the Yeshu in rabbinic literature was a disciple of Joshua ben Perachiah, and not to be confused with Jesus (Vikkuah Rabbenu Yechiel mi-Paris). At the later Disputation of Barcelona (1263) Catalonian rabbi Nachmanides made the same point.paragraph 22. Vikuach HaRamban found in Otzar Havikuchim by J. D. Eisenstein, Hebrew Publishing Society, 1915 and Kitvey HaRamban by Rabbi Charles D. Chavel, Mosad Horav Kook, 1963