Hot answers tagged judaism
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To be clear, most Christians do not celebrate "The Sabbath" on Sunday. Strictly speaking, Christians do not celebrate the Sabbath at all (although many Christians still refer to their "day of rest" as their "sabbath day", even though this has no direct relationship to the Jewish Sabbath.) Christians traditionally celebrate on Sundays because this is the day ...
18
The Sabbath will always be Friday night into Saturday. However, the celebration is not the Sabbath. Christians can worship God whenever and wherever they please in spirit and truth!
John 4:21-24 (NIV)
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ...
13
30 AD was a really bad time to be the Messiah of the Jews. They believed they were God's chosen people, but they were living in subjugation to the Roman Empire. (And apparently in a certain degree of denial about it; see John 8: 33.) They had prophecies about how the Messiah would come, sent from God, and deliver them. Unfortunately, the part they didn't ...
12
There is no consensus among Christians on this question. Assuming that the conversion is genuine and permanent, rather than momentary weakness, the three main schools of thought that apply to this issue are:
Conditional Security
According to this view, Christians can lose their salvation. Thus, a Christian who converted to another religion would be seen ...
11
Jews Before Time of Jesus [Late Addition]
As Stephen concludes his last sermon in Acts 7 prior to being martyred, he cites the Jewish history of continually rejecting and persecuting the prophets of God:
"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always
resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the
prophets ...
10
The Scripture isn't clear on why, but here are a few suggestions that make sense to me.
Choosing a specific people allowed God to demonstrate His power through all of the military battles, and possibly most dramatically via the release if His people from Egypt.
Choosing a specific people demonstrates His sovereignty - The fact that He can choose Whom he ...
10
First, actually, it was very likely that Jesus and His followers spoke no fewer than these three languages: Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. What language did Jesus speak?
Aramaic was the primary language of the land, Greek was the language of business, education, and for communication with foreigners (because it was a wide-spread language), and Hebrew was the ...
9
The Talmud "takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history." (Wikipedia) It was written by ancient Rabbis as discussions and interpretations of the scriptures of the Tanakh (Old Testament).
The New Testament teaches that Scripture must be given by inspiration of God. As the Talmud was ...
9
Find the most dedicated Jew or Muslim and you probably won’t find anyone more dedicated to God under his moral Laws than the Apostle Paul before he became a Christian. Paul said he was blamelessly devoted to God before knowing Christ but after becoming a Christian he counted all that devotion as mere rubbish:
If someone else thinks they have reasons to ...
8
This was a topic of dispute in early Christianity, between believers who had come from the Jewish faith, and gentiles. The issue relates to whether Christianity is part of Judaism - which would mean that converts had to be circumcised - or whether it is an independent faith. If it is not needed for adult converts, then it would not be applicable for children ...
8
At the time of Jesus, and even for many centuries before, Aramaic was the vernacular or common everyday language. The Tanakh is mostly in Hebrew (in particular, the Torah) but there are a few Aramaic sections - notably, in Daniel. Hebrew was therefore the "high" language of religion but Aramaic was the "low" language of normal life. (Hellenized Jews would ...
8
From Wikipedia:
The Dome of the Rock is located at the visual center of a platform
known as the Temple Mount. It was constructed on the site of the
Second Jewish Temple, which was destroyed during the Roman Siege of
Jerusalem in 70 CE. In 637 CE, Jerusalem surrendered to the Rashidun
Caliphate army during the Muslim conquest of Syria.
...
7
I'd say that the site itself is important but the Dome of Rock is not. This site is believed to be the place where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. But this is only a Jewish tradition and hence not all Christians would agree with its importance.
The Dome contains the following inscription (also from Wikipedia) -
"So peace is upon me the day ...
7
tl;dr> It began in the Council of Jersualem (55 AD), but was cemented by the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.
1. Gentiles were released from Jewish custom
The divergence is clearly articulated in Acts 15 - at the "Council fo Jerusalem," often pegged at 55 AD - roughly 20 years after the Crucifixion. Acts 15 sets up the situation as follows:
...
6
Clearly Jesus described himself as being within Judaism and not opposing or superceding it. Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill."
Perhaps the easy answer to your question is to turn it around: What did Jesus ever do or say that contradicted the Hebrew scriptures? What did he say ...
6
The short answer is that because the early Jewish converts to Christianity (the original Messianic Jews) maintained their Jewish identity after conversion (at least initially, if not for a considerable time), modern Messianic Jews also seek to worship Christ while maintaining a Jewish cultural identity as a continuation of this historical precedent.
A much ...
6
Jesus Himself said Abraham was in heaven, in the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus:
Luke 16:19-31 NIV1984 (I have highlighted the six references to Abraham.)
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell ...
6
The answer is yes. As well as the Old Testament accounts of Abraham's life he is also mentioned a few times in the New Testament - namely in Romans 4, Galations 3 and Hebrews 11.
It's in the first two of those that we find our answer:
What does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited
to him as righteousness.
(Romans 4:3, NIV)
...
6
God made a lot of choices throughout history and it helps to understand the broader perspective.
The First Man and Woman
He created Adam and Eve 1) in His image, 2) to populate the earth. The results were to be a world full of people in the image of God, worshiping Him, exercising dominion, ruling and bringing things to fruitfulness.
However, Adam and ...
6
Yes they were, in fact the problem was not that they were expecting something less than God in the flesh, the problem was they were not expecting a lowly appearance. They expected his return in glory and judgment when he establishes peace forever -- what we now understand will happen at his second coming. It was his humanity, not his divinity, that tripped ...
6
I have never previously heard anyone claim that Sabbath is on Sunday.
Rather, I think Sabbath is on Saturday and the reason (a lot of) Christians have Sunday as the holy day has to do with the early church. There are passages from which it could be deduced that the early church met on Sunday, the first day of the week, to remember Jesus's resurrection that ...
6
That's fairly straightforward.
Jesus Himself was Jewish. The divergence came from Him. Whether it was at His death, burial, and resurrection, immediately afterward, or when He began His ministry is up to interpretation and debate, but it was Jesus, and the New testament (New Covenant) established by Him that marked the split.
Those who recognized Jesus ...
5
The Old Testament day of rest was a prefigure for the rest we have in Christ. As the author of Hebrews says, we "cease from our own works" every day (see Galatians 5:19-21), not just on a particular day of the week.
Hebrews 4:8-10 King James Version (KJV)
For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have
spoken of another day. There ...
5
In Old Testament times, the Jewish people observed the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week because God rested on the seventh day when He had created the earth. After the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which occurred on the first day of the week, the Lord's disciples began observing the Sabbath on the first day of the week, Sunday.
Acts 20:7 (KJV)
7 ...
5
A major sticking point for Jews is Jesus' claim to be God. For example, here's the exchange between Jesus and the high priest after Judas had betrayed Jesus (NASB):
Mat 26:63 But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God."
Mat 26:64 Jesus said to ...
5
A short history of the Talmud
Jewish Law has it's foundation in the books of the Torah: the first five books of the Bible. Although there are something like 613 commandments (mitzvot) in the Torah, there are many areas of life that are not directly addressed by the written law. And society has changed in ways that aren't explicitly accounted for by the ...
5
Yes and No
There were some spiritually aware individuals among the Jews who were expecting the Messiah: Simeon and Anna. However, most Jews were almost certainly anticipating what Christians call the second coming: what is mentioned in Isaiah 2:1-4,
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and
Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in ...
5
As David has pointed out, but without detail, the division was with Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. There was nothing that could be called Christianity before Jesus.
During the last three years of His life Jesus gained many followers, however, he never made any deliberate attempt to divide the Jewish faith, nor change it.
17 “Do not think that I ...
4
Actually, without Jesus, Judaism is incomplete. The Old Testament, even as far back as Genesis 3, speaks of a Deliverer, a Messiah, a Savior. This Deliverer would come through the line of Abraham and be the blessing to all people that God promised Abraham.
I want to point out that I am distinguishing Biblical Judaism from rabbinical Judaism. I'm defining ...
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