questiona1101

91. Doesn't Christianity borrow the story of Yeshua's death and resurrection from the pagan story of Attis?

Note that Attis was made a solar diety in the Roman Empire only in the 2nd century C. E., a century AFTER Yeshua. Note also that the stories of Attis and Yeshua are not at all alike. Attis was a beautiful youth who, when about to be married, was struck with a frenzy by his jealous, hermaphroditic grandparent Agdistis. As a result, Attis castrated himself and died. Agdistis repented and prevailed upon Zeus to see that Attis' body not be subject to waste or decay.
Not at all similar to the story of Yeshua, I would say.

(JE)

92. Doesn't the image of Yeshua also borrow a lot from the story of Krishna?

The general outline of Krishna and Yeshua are not at all the same. Krishna was a polygamous earthly warrior king, widely celebrated as a great lover. Krishna was killed in a hunting accident while he was grieving the loss in battle of his brother and son. Krishna was believed to have been the eighth incarnation of Vishnu. None of these general features in Krishna, the features that are most reliably dated to be pre-Christian, is shared by Yeshua.

(JE)

93. Aren't there a lot of similarities between the life of Yeshua and the life of Buddha? Doesn't this suggest borrowing, again?

     The stories of Buddha and Yeshua diverge in even the simplest elements. Buddha lived a long life and died naturally ( at the age of 80). Yeshua did not. Buddha taught that man can perfect himself. Yeshua taught that man must rely on G-d.
      Buddha found a man born blind, and healed him, telling him his disease 'originated in his sinful actions in former times'. Yeshua healed a mind blind from birth, and was asked, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? (John 9:1,2) And Yeshua answered them, 'Neither this man nor his parents. . . but this happened so that the work of G-d might be displayed in his life' (verse 3).
     Buddha began his public study when he was about 29 years of age. He found a monk whom he much admired, whose calmness, tranquility, and dignity much affected him. He decided to model himself after him, and become such a monk himself. At the time he was married, a rich prince, and a father. After six years of study, he claimed to have found enlightenment. Yeshua, on the other hand, didn't model himself after a monk or any other person whom he admired. Neither did he spend six years striving to attain such 'enlightenment'.
    Buddha found his enlightenment while meditating beneath a fig tree. There are fig trees in the New Testament, but Yeshua never meditated beneath one. (In fact, he cursed one.) .
      Buddha resisted evil and the devil by the power of his own resolve to overcome ten deadly sins. Yeshua defeated the devil by his reliance on, and loyalty to, G-d.
       In the Somadeva (a Buddhist holy book), an ascetic was once offended by his eye, so he plucked it out and threw it away. However, Somaveda was an 11th century C.E. Buddhist monk, whose writings could not possibly have influenced the writers of the gospels, a thousand years earlier. (If there is any such influence, it would have to have been the other way around.)
     Buddhism does not believe in a personal G-d. Likewise, Buddhists do not believe it is possible to sin against a supreme being. Ergo, there is no need in Buddhism for a savior to save one from one's sins. In fact, in most versions of Buddhism there is really no such concept as a 'god' at all. For those who DO deify Buddha, there is no prohibition against also worshipping other gods at the same time.
      The list can go on and on.

(JE)

94. Isn't the New Testament filled with contradictions?

     One could make the same claim about Tenach. In Genesis 1:11-12, trees are created before man is created. In Genesis 2:4-9, man is created before trees are created.
     In Genesis 1:20-21, 26-27, birds are created before man. In Genesis 2:7, 19, man is created before birds.
     In Genesis 1:31, G-d is pleased with His creation. In Genesis 6:5,6, G-d is not pleased with His creation.
          In Genesis 4:9, G-d asks Abel where Cain his brother is. Elsewhere, in many places (for example, Proverbs 15:3, Jeremiah 16:17, 23:24,25), it is stated that G-d sees everything; nothing is hidden from His view.
     In Genesis 35:10, G-d says Jacob is no longer to be called Jacob; he is to be known as Israel. In Genesis 46:2, G-d Himself is calling him Jacob again.
     And so on and so on and so on. The list is endless, if one is choosing to search for things which could be made to look like inconsistencies.
      The gospels are authored by four different writers. They give you four different viewpoints, but of the same subject. If you put them all together, one on top of the other, like transparencies, they give you the entire picture. Or, they are like the four recollections of four children who grew up in the same house. They are all 'true', no one is more true than the others, yet each has its own viewpoint and emphasis.
Nowhere, however, do they directly contradict one another.
     And, if in fact, as is alleged, the writers were merely making up fictions, why didn't they get together and reconcile their accounts perfectly? (Actually, the absence of ANY differences would be a far greater evidence of collusion than any other--witnesses seldom give EXACTLY the same accounts, stressing exactly the same details.) Or later Church writers could have eliminated any supposed contradictions. The fact that they didn't, again seems pretty good evidence that they didn't tamper with the text in any way.
                                                                             (RP)

95. Wasn't Yeshua 'elected' as a god by the Council of Nicea? This was many hundreds of years after his life!

The Council didn't adopt any new doctrine, nor did it 'deify' Yeshua. The belief in the divinity of Yeshua started in the New Testament (see, for example, Thomas' cry, 'My Lord and My God'), and continued with the letters of Paul and the other apostles. Next, the Church fathers, including Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaenus of Lyon continued with this belief. The purpose of Nicea was simply to write down what everybody already believed, in a doctrinal form. Ninety-five-plus percent of those in attendance were in agreement about the diety of Yeshua. On the other hand, there was a small faction (as there always is), which disagreed. These were mainly followers of Bishop Arius. They didn't lose because they were outvoted, so much as because they did not represent the views of the Christians. In fact, it is much more accurate to say that it was Arius who was rejecting 300 years of Christian belief, rather than that it was the council which was trying to introduce something 'new'.

96. Didn't Bar Kochba come a lot closer to fulfilling the messianic prophecies than Yeshua?

     Bar Kochba led a revolt against Rome. For three years he held sway over a portion of Judea, which he ruled indepedently of Rome. He probably had plans to rebuild the Temple. However, his revolt ended in failure. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and the whole of the land was pillaged. Dio Cassius, the Roman historian, says that 'Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those who perished from famine, disease, and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the whole of Judea was made desolate. . . ' Hundreds of villages were destroyed. Such was the destruction that the possibility of an independent Jewish state was eliminated; and such a state did not arise again for the next 1800 years.
     Bar Kochba was declared to be the messiah by R. Akiva. Akiva even applied the prophecy in Numbers 24:17 to him, 'a star shall rise out of Jacob' (Y.. Taan. 4.9; 68d(44); Lam R. 2.2, 51a). Many--perhaps a majority--of the sages agreed. The Sanhedrin itself moved to Beitar, Bar Kochba's headquarters, and so did the Patriarch and his family. At the end, however, there seems to have been a parting of the ways, with the sages perhaps attempting to bring the war to an end, and Bar Kochba insisting on retaining their loyalty (See, for example, the account if Gedaliah Alon, 'The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age'; and also the Encyclopedia Judaica listing for 'Bar Kochba').
     During this revolt, Bar Kochba severely persecuted the Jewish believers in Yeshua. These had refused to join the revolt, largely because of the insistence on Bar Kochba's messiahship. Justin Martyr notes (Apology I, chp. 31), that 'in the lately-ended Jewish War, Bar Kochba, the instigator of the revolt, caused Christians alone to be dragged to terrible tortures whenever they would not deny and revile Jesus Christ'. This action was entirely in keeping with his ruthless, practical, and 'imperious' nature.
     In the end the revolt failed. The Jewish followers of Yeshua who had refused to follow him were proven right: he had been a false messiah.In fact, had the Jewish people been willing to accept the notion of a kingdom of G-d which encompassed less nationalistic dreams, but was instead a kingdom of the spirit, that is, had they accepted the concepts that Yeshua gave them, neither this nor the earlier revolt (which ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.) would have occured. The subsequent exile might have been prevented, and Jerusalem would then have become the spiritual capital of the western nations--a far greater nation and dream, perhaps, than that envisioned by Bar Kochba.

97. Doesn't the New Testament give two different versions of how Judas hanged himself?

         No. In Matthew 27:5, we read, 'So Judas threw the money into the Temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.' In Acts1:18, it says, 'With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out'. There is no contradiction here. If a body is hanged, and then falls, it would not be unusual for it to burst open in its putrefying state. (The word for 'headlong' in Greek, can also have the lesser and rarer meaning of 'swollen', or 'distended').
     Judas is described as a 'thief' (John 12:6), and the one who kept the money for the disciples. Thus it is perfectly natural also, to assume that over the three years he had been associated with them he could have stolen away, or diverted, enough of a sum to have purchased a 'field' (the Greek word here could also mean, 'a farm, or smallholding, usually with buildings'). This would later become known as a 'blood farm' because of what happened there. Another field (described with another, different Greek word) was purchased by the priests with the money that Judas returned to them, and this, then, became known as the 'field of blood', since it had been bought with the money that had betrayed a life.
     On the other hand, it is also possible that Judas did not buy a field himself, but that the field was purchased by the priests with the money that Judas returned to them. The Temple treasury was not allowed to accept money which had been obtained in an illegal manner; if the owner of the money refused to accept it back, then it had to be used for some public charitable purpose, such as purchasing a field for the burial of the poor. So, by this legal fiction, 'Judas', the 'owner' of the money, could be said to have purchased the field, allowing the Temple priests to keep their hands clean of it.
     And thus were fulfilled the prophecies of Zechariah (11:12, 13) : I told them, 'If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.' So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the L-rd said to me, 'Throw it to the potter'--the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the House of the L-rd to the potter.' And also the prophecies of Jeremiah 19:1-13, and 32:6-9, in which the future use of these lands for burial purposes is described, are literally fulfilled. (One possible reason the prophet Jeremiah is named here and Zechariah is omitted, is that one version of the scroll of the prophets may have originally begun with Jeremiah, whose book is the longest (by word count) of the prophets; mentioning Jeremiah, then, might simply be another way of stating, 'according to the book of the prophets', and not of designating Jeremiah specifically.)

98. Where in Judaism do you find the concept of a divine messiah?

     Well, first there is Isaiah 9. Here there is a promise of a child to be given, whose name shall be called 'Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty, G-d, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace'. (This is the way the words read in the original Hebrew. There are no verbs present. Since some of the words in this list are nouns, all the remaining words ought to be read as nouns, also, according to the usual Hebrew practice.)
     And there is Zechariah 12:8-10: 'On that day the L-rd will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the House of David will be like G-d, like the Angel of the L-rd going before them. . . They will look on Me, whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son'. Here the head of the House of David, the king, will be like G-d, or like the Angel of the L-rd, the specific designation of the special Angel of G-d who, in Exodus 23:21, is said to bear the name of G-d, and to have the power to forgive sins. This Angel is also given the name 'Wonderful' in Judges 13, which is the same word as is used in Isaiah 9. And this Angel receives the worship of Joshua (Josh. 5:14,15), who bows down before him, and is told to remove his shoes, as the place where he is is holy ground.
     Daniel 7:13 speaks of a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven, who is given authority and sovereign power; and all nations and men of every language 'serve' him. The word used here for 'serve' is used 10 times in scripture, and on every other occasion it refers to serving a god; thus some translations render it 'worship'.
      Thus these can be seen as hints that the coming one is to be more than merely human.

99. Isn't Jerusalem, and not Bethlehem, called the 'city of David.?

The old portion of Jerusalem, which David captured from the Jebusites, is called the 'city of David'. However, in I Samuel 20:6, David asks permission to run to 'Bethlehem, his city'.

100. How can you claim there is a 'New Covenant'?

In Isaiah 48, the L-rd speaks to Israel. He says to them, 'Listen, O House of Jacob. . . I foretold the former things long ago, My mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass' (verse 3). . . Therefore I told you these things long ago; before they happened I announced them to you. . .' (verse 5).You have heard all these things; look at them all. Will you not admit them? (verse 6)' Can this mean, in other words, you, Israel, have the scriptures and the prophecies, will you not look at them and admit them all?
In verse 6 and 7 the L-rd continues, 'From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things, unknown to you. They are created now, and not long ago; you have not heard of them before today'. Thus, it would be expected that the L-rd has new things to reveal to Israel. In Jeremiah 31:31-32, the L-rd says, 'The time is coming. . . when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel, and with the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them. . . ' Can it not be that these 'new things' which they have not heard before today, and this 'new covenant', which will not be like the old covenant at Sinai, could be encompassed in the mystery of the New Testament, and the story of Yeshua?

101. Didn't Yeshua condemn the Jews? Didn't he hate his own people?

     There are many condemnations of Israel in the Tanach. Jeremiah, for example, asks, 'Have You utterly rejected Judah? Does Your soul loathe Zion?' (Jer. 14:19). 'All the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.' (Jer. 9:26) ''. . . Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the harlot?' (Jer. 3:6) Isaiah says, 'Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the L-rd, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged!' (Is. 1:4). 'How the faithful city (Jerusalem) has become a harlot, she that (once) was full of justice.' (Is. 1:21). In Hosea one finds, 'And the L-rd said to (Hosea), 'Call her name Not Pitied, for I will no more have pity on the House of Israel, to forgive them at all'. (Hos. 1:6)
    The Qumran community uses such terms as 'prophets of falsehood', 'prophets of deceit', 'hypocrites', and so on, to describe their opponents.
     However, by contrast, Yeshua commanded his followers to forgive, and even to pray for their enemies. In Luke 23:24 he prays himself that those who clamored for his death should be forgiven. He nowhere asks that G-d should deliver up to death the house of Israel. In fact, he warns that judgement is coming, and he weeps on account of it (Luke 19:41-44; 13:34, 23:28-31). Nor does he say that Israel has been rejected. Shaul/Paul, in his responsa letter to the Romans, say the opposite: 'I ask, then, has G-d rejected His people? By no means!' (Romans 11:1)
     There is a way in which the prophets will scold Israel for her sins. This is a mere corrective; it is born of love, not hatred; the message is:the wicked must turn from their way. No one accuses the prophets of being anti-semitic because of this. Likewise, any criticisms of Israel in the New Testament are similarly corrective. And the message is the same: the wicked must turn from their way. In the original setting, Jews are asking Jews to reform. There is no anti-semitism here.
     Later, however, when the gentile followers of Yeshua came to outnumber those who were born Jewish, the critical words were taken out of context. Instead of being seen as a call to reform, they were misinterpreted instead as words of rejection, of a condemnation of those who were opponents, outside of the faith, and who would not follow Yeshua. Those who misinterpreted these words also felt free to borrow texts from the Tanach, which they used as well, in order to vilify their opponents. By such means they perverted the original intent of the prophets, as well as the original intent of Yeshua and his talmidim.
     And it has become common for some scholars, on seeing the use to which these words were put, to conclude that, therefore, Yeshua indeed meant to condemn his people. However, to arrive at this conclusion they have to first ignore the first-century setting in which the words were spoken. They have to peer back through history as though they were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. In the succeeding centuries (especially our own), anti-semites have put these words to use for their own cause; therefore, when first spoken they must have also been spoken by anti-semites. But this is to impose beliefs and creeds on the speakers which they did not have. Neither Yeshua nor any of his early followers conceived of themselves as being outside of Judaism, or of founding another religion. They saw themselves from first to last as Jews, and were only interested in reforming Judaism and returning it to what they considered its proper practice and form.