Jesus Recognised as The Messiah by Jews?

DAv

Going to show my ignorance of Jewish Theology here but what would it take for Jesus to be recognised as the Messiah by the majority of Jewish people at his time? Would it take him essentially leading a successful Jewish rebellion against Roman rule?

And say if this happens (Handwaving the why and wherefore, meteor hits Rome or something at the right/wrong moment if you like), what would this do to Judaism? Would Jesus be made King and start a Dynasty? Would Judaism change if Jesus decided to enact reforms and make it slightly closer to what Christianity was in OTL? I'm honestly curious to what religion would have looked like if something like this would have happened.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

I think the consensus was (but I can be largely wrong) the Messiah would free the Jews spiritually but also temporally. "Simply" chasing the Romans could do it.
 

Mike Stearns

If Jesus does the Apostles initially expected Him to do; summon forth legions of angles and raise up miraculous armies and drive the Romans out of Judea.
 

katchen

Banned
There is a problem and a terrible paradox here. Jesus's lineage may be correct for him to be anointed King Moshiach of Israel, but whoever Jesus's father was, it was not Joseph. Even if, as seems most likely, Mary's conception was the result of a man using the mikveh (ritual bath) before her and ejaculating and the sperm remaining alive long enough to reach her and impregnate her even though she was virgin intacta (There is now a prohibition against men and women using the same ritual bath, but there was not such a prohibition then and I suspect that this may have been the precedent that led to the prohibition), the fact that Jesus was the issue of a man not Mary's wife Joseph made Jesus a momzer or bastard, unable to be counted as part of the community of Israel, much less be king. This is discussed in Talmud Tractate Avodah Zorah and in sections of Tractate of Sanhedrin that were censored out of Talmuds written in Christian lands (but not in Muslim lands).
That was Jesus's ultimate tragedy and one that would have torn Judaism apart if Jesus's act of rebellion over the Money Changers had really gotten off the ground.
If that was the case, then Jesus's Passion makes a great deal of sense. Getting himself martyred by the Romans was the best thing Jesus could do and the only thing he could do that would not ultimately discredit him. Which was why his betrayal and denounciation was planned by him. Jesus could not kill himself, for that would be the sin of suicide and he did not want Jews to kill him, which would be the result of getting stoned as a penalty imposed by a Jewish Court. So he arranged to be killed by Romans hoping, I think, that his Movement would pass to his brother James who also had Jesus's lineage but was born legitimately.
So to answer the question posed, the result of Jesus being successful is that James (or in Hebrew, Yacov) is crowned King Moshiach and leads a revolt against the Romans. Yacov will probably fail, but will go down in Jewish history as a failed Messiah on the order of Bar Kochba rather than a false Messiah.
 

SvoHljott

I think the majority of the ancient Judaeans did accept Jesus as Messiah. The reason Jews still exist is because a small amount didn't - and you can't prevent that without going into ASB territory.
 

Lindseyman

Being unduly cynical, if anybody had led a successful revolt against the Romans AND by some miracle had managed to keep them out of Judea afterwards ( and that result would be worthy of being called a miracle!) I don't think that any irregularities of birth would matter one iota.
 

Dilvish

Mike Stearns said:
If Jesus does the Apostles initially expected Him to do; summon forth legions of angles and raise up miraculous armies and drive the Romans out of Judea.
Click to expand...

Surely a carpenter could summon forth legions of angles? :)

I'm on vacation for a week, so I'm in a goofy mood for Monday.
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

SvoHljott said:
I think the majority of the ancient Judaeans did accept Jesus as Messiah. The reason Jews still exist is because a small amount didn't - and you can't prevent that without going into ASB territory.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty certain the opposite was the case actually. Converts among the Jews were minimal relative to among Greeks.
 
SlyDessertFox

SlyDessertFox

Well, I don't thin it would change Judaism that much- a few other prominent Jews claimed to be and were accepted as the messiah. For Jesus to be accepted, well for one, he has to not die shortly after entering Jerusalem and be crucified.

The end result: Jesus ends up like any other powerful "messiah" accepted by the Jews under Roman occupation-he leads an initially successful rebellion, the rebellion gets crushed when the Romans return shortly thereafter, Jesus is killed, and Judaism returns to Judaism.
 
SlyDessertFox

SlyDessertFox

SvoHljott said:
I think the majority of the ancient Judaeans did accept Jesus as Messiah.
Click to expand...
No, just no. A small minority, a very small minority (at least until Paul) did. That minority was shunned mostly by the Jews in Palestine. It was only when they branched out to the "Hellenized" Jews living in other areas of the empire, that they had any success getting converts.

Even then, the majority of converts to Christianity were not Jews.

edit: Also, I should point out that until the failure of the Great Jewish Revolt of 66-70, mainstream Christianity remained a sect of Judaism, not its own religion. It was only after the revolt was put down, when they tried to distance themselves from the (now hated) Jews, that Christianity started to become its own distinct religion (save for Paul, but he was more or less shunned by the Christian community back in Palestine lead by James).
 

DAv

slydessertfox said:
Well, I don't thin it would change Judaism that much- a few other prominent Jews claimed to be and were accepted as the messiah. For Jesus to be accepted, well for one, he has to not die shortly after entering Jerusalem and be crucified.

The end result: Jesus ends up like any other powerful "messiah" accepted by the Jews under Roman occupation-he leads an initially successful rebellion, the rebellion gets crushed when the Romans return shortly thereafter, Jesus is killed, and Judaism returns to Judaism.
Click to expand...

In the uterly hypothetical situation that the revolt is successful, for whatever reason, would Judaism change to be more like Christianity or follow along Jesus' teachings? Handwaving I knopw, I'm just generally curious to know what the long term effects could have been here.
 
SlyDessertFox

SlyDessertFox

DAv said:
In the uterly hypothetical situation that the revolt is successful, for whatever reason, would Judaism change to be more like Christianity or follow along Jesus' teachings? Handwaving I knopw, I'm just generally curious to know what the long term effects could have been here.
Click to expand...

None of the historical Jesus' teachings (Btw, for anyone who wonders, I am going off of Reza Aslan's book,, "Zealot") weren't far from actual Judaism. So I doubt much would change. Maybe he like Macabaeus he gets his own section of the Torah (though I wouldn't take my word on this part).

Btw, if anybody recognizes anything wrong with what I am saying, don't hesitate to point it out, I'm not an expert in this area, far from it.
 

katchen

Banned
What Jesus said and did could not change the fact of what Jesus was, in terms of birth. To most of us on this list, the entire concept of legitimacy or illegitimacy of birth is repugnant. As it is to me. :(
To really Orthodox Jews (and people living 2000 years ago) it was a big thing. As it is in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities to this day. Read
I Am Forbidden: A Novel by Anouk Markovits (Feb 26, 2013)


 

Mitchell Hundred

Is there any evidence at all of jesus actually being shunned due to the nature of him not knowing his actual father or his father not being known to anyone?

In the bible it's made to seem that it was just an accepted fact that his dad was god and that he wasn't ever considered a "bastard" by anyone. Unless i'm misinformed on that issue?
 

katchen

Banned
According to Bruce Chilton, Prof. of Theology at Bard College, there is indeed evidence to suggest that Jesus may have been a momzer. See:



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Chilton's argument is summarized here:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Chilton_Mamzer_Jesus_Birth.shtml Basically, Jesus always had his detractors who alleged that he was "born of fornication (porneia in Greek) John 8:41. and Jesus's identification in Mark 6:3 as Mary's son (a reference that was generally made when the person's paternity was not known). Chilton goes on to look at the different proofs of mamzerut in the Talmud in the rest of his article.




Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography by Bruce Chilton (Feb 26, 2002)



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jetpack

The Bible describes some scandal around the time of Jesus's birth, but it doesn't seem that anyone else was aware of unusual circumstances of his birth when he was an adult. I don't know of any case in the Bible where people criticize Jesus for being a bastard. As far as I can tell, his critics assumed he was conceived the normal way, and never heard otherwise. By the Gospel accounts, people thought of him as the son of a carpenter and not as a bastard.

And here's one criticism in Matthew 13
They said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and this power to do miracles? 55 Isn’t he just the son of the carpenter we know? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? 56 And don’t all his sisters still live here in town? How is he able to do these things?” 57 So they had a problem accepting him.
​
Here's are a couple more in John 7 showing that many people haven't heard of the notion that he was conceived out of nowhere and born in Bethlehem.

27 But when the real Messiah comes, no one will know where he comes from. And we know where this man’s home is.”

41...“The Messiah will not come from Galilee. 42 The Scriptures say that the Messiah will come from the family of David. And they say that he will come from Bethlehem, the town where David lived."
​
It doesn't seem that Jesus went around saying "Virgin birth, therefore Messiah" either.
 
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