 Welcome everyone to our annual program. I want to thank you for coming and I want to introduce at this time our special guest who came in from the United States to be with us Rabbi Yisrael Chaim Blumenthal who actually grew up here in Toronto as a youngster now living in Lakewood, New Jersey. Rabbi Blumenthal studied at some of the leading Ishibas in the world and he writes a weekly column if you get the Atena Eman, a wonderful weekly column on the weekly Torah portion and he's the author of a very important blog called One Thousand Verses. It's an organization that's called Judaism Resources. It's an incredibly wonderful resource to people interested in the interface of Judaism and Christianity. So that's a blog called One Thousand Verses. It's highly recommended. We met Rabbi Blumenthal back in 1994 and I want to thank him for his continued support, encouragement, help, friendship. He's been a mentor to us and an inspiration and it's with great pleasure and honor that I introduce Rabbi Yisrael Chaim Blumenthal. Thank you Rabbi Skoback. Thank you Julius. Thank you the staff of Jews for Judaism for bringing me here today for giving me the opportunity to share and thank you all for coming here this afternoon. We have gathered here to discuss the phenomena of Christian missionaries quoting rabbinic literature to advance their campaign for the soul of the Jew. I want to give you an outline of what I plan to do this afternoon. First, I want to explain and illustrate how the missionary quotation of rabbinical literature has affected the dynamic, how it has affected the encounter between the missionary and the Jew, how it changes that dynamic, how it changes that encounter and what it does to it. In the second segment I hope to give an overview of the history, the authority and the structure of rabbinical literature. And in the third segment we'll get to the fun. The Jewish responds to the missionary quotation of rabbinical literature. Now before I begin we have to give at least a small identification. What do we mean when we say rabbinical literature? What does that mean? On simple terms again in the second segment we'll focus on this in more detail but at this point I will just say as follows. When I use the term rabbinical literature what I mean is any literature that the Jewish community respects as valid and authentic religious literature that post-states the Bible, that comes after the sealing of the canon of Jewish Scripture. That's what I call rabbinical literature and that's what I'm talking about over here when I say missionary Christians quoting rabbinical literature to advance the cause of their campaign. This leads us to an immediate question, a very obvious question. When the missionary quotes the prophets or he quotes the Jewish Bible we understand what he is doing. We don't agree with what he's doing but we understand what he is trying to do. What his argument is? You see all the prophets predated they came before the advent of Christianity. They were here before Jesus. Christians look at the prophets as men of God. They're authentic prophets. God truly spoke to Isaiah. He spoke to Jeremiah. The book of Esther is divinely inspired. Christians accept that. So they accept the authority of the prophets. They respect the prophets and their argument is that had the prophets been there when Jesus came on the scene they would have accepted him and if you read the words of Isaiah, if you read this passage in the book of Daniel you'll realize that Daniel really would have believed in Jesus and the only way we could argue with them is let's read the passage and discuss the words of Daniel because by the time Jesus came around Daniel was no longer alive to tell us what he would say about Jesus. But when we're talking about missionaries quoting rabbinic literature and almost all of it post dates Jesus comes after Jesus has been ungone so they knew about Jesus and they rejected him and they didn't accept his claims. They didn't accept the claims of the church. So what are they doing quoting rabbinic literature in order to advance their campaign in order to advance their arguments to get us to give our devotion to Jesus. The rabbis rejected Jesus. How could you quote the words of these men in support of a campaign that these men opposed heart and soul? Now the truth is when the missionaries quote rabbinic literature we can basically categorize it into three categories. I'm going to be mainly focusing on the third category but I'll speak a little bit about the first two categories as well. The first example, the first type of missionary quotation of rabbinic literature is antagonistic. It's a situation where a missionary would quote rabbinic literature not in support of Christianity but rather to act as a foil to be a contrast to Christianity. They would quote a rabbi who says such and such and I'll give you an example in a minute and the point is look how foolish, look how wrong, how obviously wrong it is what this rabbi is saying and now let's contrast that with the teaching of Christianity which is so obviously true in light and contrast to the teaching of this rabbi. I'll give you an example for this category, this type of missionary quotation. Perhaps it's the most popular, at least currently one of the most popular ones. Christians believe in the Trinity. The Trinity in short is a concept where God is not absolutely one but rather a composite unity composed of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and those three are somehow one. Now we all know that the Rambam codified, he put down 13 principles of faith and one of them is as it's printed in the Siddhar. The Rambam speaks about God being Yahid, alone, unique and Christians say wait, the Rambam is using a very interesting Hebrew word. He's using the word Yahid to express the Jewish concept of absolute unity. God is absolutely one. But when Moses talks about it, he doesn't use the word Yahid, he uses the word echad. Oh, so here what they're doing is, by quoting the Rambam, by quoting Maimonides, what the missionaries are doing, they're providing a contrast. The Bible says echad, the Rambam says Yahid. Maimonides says a different Hebrew word. So the Jewish people who are following Maimonides are not in line with the biblical truth, rather they would argue that the word echad represents a composite unity and they would quote where the Bible speaks about Adam and Eve getting together or man and woman getting together and there will be one and that's obviously a composite unity, a household is made up of man and a woman. It's two that are somehow one. So the word echad means a composite unity and that's the biblical truth. In contrast, the Jews are following the Rambam who is not in line with the biblical truth. So this is an example of Christians quoting rabbinic literature to provide a contrast, not to support their doctrine directly but rather to provide a contrast to what they are trying to teach. Once I put this Christian argument on the table, I will take the time to respond to it. First of all, it's based on ignorance to begin with because anyone who knows a little bit about the history of the thirteen principles of faith and the way the Rambam wrote them down, the brief statements of faith that are found in the Siddharth and the back of the Siddharth were not written by the Rambam. The Rambam wrote an essay in Arabic which is printed in the back of the Mishnah in Sanhedrin. He wrote in the Yadah Chazaka in Hebrew about it and when he writes in Hebrew about it, he uses both the word echad and yachid and to accuse the Rambam of not fully understanding Hebrew is a bit ridiculous. He was probably one of the greatest scholars of the Hebrew language that we ever had. So it's based on a mistake because it's not the word yachid, that little statement of faith that we have in the Siddharth is some anonymous writer who just paraphrased the Rambam's principle in a short sentence. Secondly, if you know Hebrew you'll realize what the word one means in English. It could refer to a composite unity. It could refer to an absolute unity. Just like the word one in English could refer to an absolute unity, a composite unity. The word yachid, alone and unique, could refer to an absolute unity and could refer to a composite unity. When we speak of a person being yachid, every human being is a composite unity. He's made up of right and left, front and back, body and soul. A human being is a composite unity. Yet it's completely appropriate within the Hebrew language to use the word yachid to describe a person. The word yachid doesn't mean an absolute unity anymore than the word echad means an absolute unity. So this contrast between yachid and echad is an artificial contrast. And finally, just let's step back and look at the big picture. What's going on over here? The Christian would have us direct devotion to a man that didn't live in the times of Moses. When Moses spoke the words to the Jewish people, Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Yachad, Hero Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. The Jewish people took this as their declaration of faith. Were they thinking about Jesus when he said that? They didn't know about Jesus when he said that. What were they thinking about? They were thinking about the God that they knew. Here the Christians are coming and asking us on the basis of their interpretation of this verse to direct attention, devotion, heart to a person that Moses and the people he spoke to never heard about. So who's being loyal to the Bible? Is it the Christian or is it my monities who was encouraging the Jewish people to give their hearts and to put their hearts in the same place that Moses was encouraging his people to put their hearts in the same place that Moses' audience understood Moses' words when he was telling them where to put their hearts. That was the example for the antagonistic, for the contrast, for the situation where the missionary is quoting rabbinic literature to provide a contrast. The second category of missionary quotation of rabbinic literature, and I would say that this is perhaps the most honest of the types of quotations when missionaries quote rabbinic literature, and that would be in support of a scriptural interpretation. In other words, the missionary is not quoting the rabbis because he attributes any authority to the rabbis. He's not quoting them because he attributes any respect to the rabbis. All he's doing is as follows. We often have a debate, and in our counter-missionary work we sometimes tend to simplify. It makes things easier when you simplify the argument and you say, this Hebrew word means this, and I'll give an example in a minute, it means this, and when the Christians say it means that, this is wrong, and then the missionary would counter and he will say, look, one of the Jewish commentators who you respect gives an interpretation of the verse which accords with our interpretation. In other words, and I'll give you the example, Psalm 2, the words in Psalm 2 which the Christians focus on are nashkuvar, which could be translated as embrace purity, worship with purity, arm yourselves with purity. Most Jewish commentators go in that direction. Christians insist that the words mean kiss the sun and they understand that to mean worship the sun, give devotion to the sun, and by them, by Christians the word the sun means Jesus. So the typical argument and the simplified argument, and I would say perhaps not entirely accurate argument is that the word bar has to mean purity and it cannot mean sun in this context. One of the preeminent commentators on the Bible and one of the greatest Hebrew scholars that we ever had, someone with a ramba, Maimonides respected greatly, tells us that the word bar in this case does mean sun. So when the Christian is quoting the Ibn Ezra, he doesn't have to respect the Ibn Ezra, but he's telling us that our argument is inaccurate and we have to accept that and we have to realize that we have to explain the verse according to the Ibn Ezra and of course the Ibn Ezra did not believe in a divine Messiah, he did not believe in worshiping the sun, but what he did believe in is that there's a concept of paying homage to the David king, giving loyalty to the king from the line of David, and we'll explain that later on in this presentation, but when the missionaries quote the rabbis in support of a scriptural interpretation, we have to pay attention. I will give another example of a missionary quote of rabbinic literature in support of a scriptural interpretation and this actually is totally mistaken. Perhaps one of the most famous and popular debates between Jews and Christians over Scripture is over the verse in Isaiah 714, behold the virgin shall be with child. Wait, it doesn't say anything about a virgin. The Hebrew word that is used is Alma, which does not mean virgin, it means a young woman. Now, one of the Christian arguments in response to this argument is, well, which word would you want the prophet to use to speak about a virgin? And the immediate response is, of course, the word besula, which means a virgin. And the Christian argument in response is to quote rabbinic literature, which tells us, perhaps or perhaps not, that the word besula does not literally mean a virgin. So let's just put the argument into context. Again, this might be a little bit complicated, but let's try to put it into context. Again, in context, what the Christians are arguing, they're not arguing over here in this case, that the word Alma, the word that the prophet used, means virgin. They acknowledge it does not mean virgin. There is some argument that it might mean that, but it doesn't, and we're not going to get into that argument today. What they are arguing is that there is no alternative word in Hebrew to express the concept of virginity. And they're quoting the Talmud and the tractate Nida, which tells us that the word besula seems to tell us that the word besula does not mean virgin. The tractate Nida discusses the concept of a woman who is young, who is a child, who never experienced a menstrual flow of blood. And it uses the word betulah to describe that situation. And it actually uses the words, e'zaihi besula, what is considered a betulah? kalsha layrasa dammiyamea, she never saw a flow of blood in her life. So the Christians read this as, well, here the Talmud is telling us that the word betulah does not mean a virgin, rather it refers to a young woman who is just too young to, she's not mature enough to experience a period. And that's all the word betulah means, so the word betulah does not mean virgin. That is a terrible mistake, because the word betulah does mean virgin, and it could be proven from the Bible. In fact, when the Bible wants to speak about the concept of virginity, it speaks about, in the book of Deuteronomy, and it speaks about a woman who is supposed to be a virgin and she gets married. And her husband comes to court and says, my wife was not a virgin, and basically the Talmud understands this to mean he brings evidence that she committed adultery during her period of engagement. And the word that the Torah uses to discuss the virginity of the girl is betulim. Not only, it takes the word betulah as a noun and turns into an adjective to describe the girl. To describe the concept of virginity in and of itself is betulim. So the word betulah certainly does mean virgin. And when the Talmud says, what is it betulah? It means a woman who didn't experience the flow of blood. That's just like we use the word virgin in English to refer to earth that wasn't planted. And the Talmud uses the word virgin for that as well. So when the Talmud says, azoe betulah, what is it betulah? Does it mean how do we define the word betulah in the Bible? What is the intrinsic meaning of this word? Well, the Talmud is telling us in this context, in the context of this local discussion about a woman who does or doesn't have a flow of blood, the word betulah means someone who didn't experience the flow of blood. In other words, the word betulah as a borrowed term, intrinsically what it means is a virgin, a woman who never had relations with a man. That's what intrinsically the word means as the book of Deuteronomy tells us. But it's being borrowed and the Talmud is telling us that in this local context, the word betulah is being used for a woman who never experienced a flow of blood. In the tractate, Baba Basra, the Talmud uses the word betulah to refer to earth that hasn't been plowed or trees. They had a system for certain wood producing trees, they would allow them to grow, chop them in a certain way that would make the trees, that would encourage the trees to grow thicker branches and better wood, so a tree before it was chopped would be called a betulah. Again, borrowed term. It means a virgin tree. Of course a tree cannot be a virgin, but we're borrowing the term which applies to a woman and we're associating it with a tree that had never been interacted with. So this is an example of the Christians quoting rabbinic literature in a desperate attempt to support a scriptural interpretation, but it's a misquotation. Now we're going to come to the third category which is the main topic, the main focus of our discussion this afternoon. And that is when Christians quote rabbinic literature in support of one Christian doctrine, one Christian teaching or another. I'll go through a list of various Christian teachings that the missionaries use rabbinic literature to support these teachings, and hopefully in the third section we'll get to examples of the missionary quotation and the Jewish response to these examples. Perhaps the most pervasive is the concept of a divine Messiah. Jews believe that the Messiah will be a human being born from a human father and a human mother from the line of David. And Christians believe that the Messiah will be divine or half divine. He has God for a father. He has no biological human father. And Christians point to various passages, various statements in rabbinic literature which either exalt Messiah to such high level of exaltation which Christians argue would only make sense if we assume he's divine, or they point to passages which speak about God redeeming the Jewish people in the future, various passages which give an understanding of a divine Messiah. Associated with this type of quotation would be where Christians try to quote rabbinic literature which seems to counter the Maimonides model, the Maimonides expression of faith where God is incorporeal, has no body. There seems to be quotations specifically amongst the Kabbalists which associates faces with God, plurality with God, corporeality with God, in other words, body-like attributes. And they use these quotations to present support for the Christian teaching that God isn't absolutely one. He isn't absolutely incorporeal without body, without bodily attributes. Missionaries, another category, another area where missionaries quote rabbinic literature is to support the concept of a suffering Messiah. In a simplistic level, Jews understand that the Messiah will be a glorious king who'll come to reign to rule over a utopian society but there are statements in rabbinic literature which speak about a suffering Messiah and missionaries point to that to show how Jews believe in a suffering Messiah not only in a glorious Messiah. On this one, I would tell you that our view of a glorious Messiah perhaps is too simplistic. In this case, the missionary quotation of rabbinic literature is not so inaccurate and perhaps we'll get to that as well. Missionaries quote rabbinic literature to support the concept of a rejected Messiah. They try to point to passages in rabbinic literature which would have us believe that the Jews will reject the Messiah and the Gentiles will accept him. That's another Christian teaching that the missionaries point to rabbinic literature to find support for. A fifth concept, atonement through blood. One of the major differences between Protestant Christianity and the Jewish people is how does one achieve atonement? How does one get forgiveness for their sins? According to the Jewish Bible, according to the testimony of the Jewish people, we achieve atonement, forgiveness for our sins with sincere repentance, turning back to God, accepting that we did wrong, trying to improve in the future, turning around and bringing our lives back in line with God, apologizing to God, repenting. Christians counter and argue that, no, one can only achieve atonement for his sins with a blood offering. There's a Christian teaching. It has no support in rabbinic literature, no real support in rabbinic literature, but Christians point to various passages, various sentences in rabbinic literature which, at first glance, would seem to agree with the Christian teaching that there is no atonement without a blood offering. We mentioned Christians quote rabbinic literature to support the teaching of a virgin birth, a concept that is completely foreign to Judaism. Christians quote rabbinic literature to present an argument in favor of the timing. When does the Messiah have to come? Christians argue the Messiah had to come 2,000 years ago. Jews argue the Messiah will come when he will come, but the Christians point to various passages in rabbinic literature which would lead one in direction that Messiah did have to come 2,000 years ago, and perhaps we may address some of those. And finally, again, this is not an exhaustive list, but it's on my little list. The last one on the list is Christians quote rabbinic literature in support of their claim that they know the name of the Messiah. There's a prayer in the Rosh Hashanah Maazer which says the word Yeshua in it, and Christians point to that. That proves that the rabbis knew the name of the Messiah, and this is somehow a hint or testimony that Yeshua, which is the Hebrew version of Jesus, according to some, is the real name of the Messiah. So these are basic Christian doctrines, Christian teachings that Christians find support for within the body, the vast body of rabbinic literature. Now here's when we come to our questions. What are they doing? The rabbis were not Christians. The rabbis did not believe in Jesus, so why are they quoting the rabbis in support of their teachings? The rabbis did not believe in a virgin birth. They did not believe in a divine Messiah. So why are they quoting rabbinic literature to support their teachings? There are various approaches that the Christians have used to justify their quotation of rabbinic literature, to answer this question, to explain why it is that they're quoting rabbinic literature in support of a teaching that the rabbis did not believe in. This goes back, the first answer goes back to a debate that took place in Spain 500, 600 years ago in Tortosa where the rabbis presented the Christian debaters with this question. Why are you quoting rabbinic literature in support of your doctrine? Why are you quoting rabbinic literature quotations from rabbis, from men who did not believe as you do in support of what you believe? And the response was is that listen, the Jewish people possessed the truth way back when, in the times of the prophets and some fragments of that truth remained with the Jewish people and the rabbis unknowingly are transmitting those truths without realizing what they're transmitting. And here is an example and it doesn't sound as foolish as it would appear at first glance. One of the quotations that they used was from a medrush called Tana de Veio. And literally it means we learned in the Yeshiva or in the base medrush in the academy of Elijah the prophet. The Talmud relates that there was a rabbi his name was Rav Anan who met regularly with Elijah the prophet and Elijah revealed to him various truths and these truths are recorded in this medrush Tana de Veio and when they quoted this medrush and this is actually the medrush that the medrush says in the name of Elijah the prophet that the history of the world is divided into three periods of 2,000 years the first period of 2,000 years is emptiness the next period of 2,000 years which starts with Abraham is the period of Torah and the last period is the period of the times of the Messiah. So here we see according to say the missionaries that the prophet Elijah is telling us that Messiah is supposed to come and when the rabbis argue well if you don't trust the Talmud the Talmud obviously didn't understand it the way you understand it or else they wouldn't have recorded it and the missionaries response was I don't care how the rabbis understood it but they're recording the words of Elijah the prophet Elijah was a prophet this is a fragment of truth that the rabbis are unknowingly transmitting now the question I would ask the missionary is one second do you believe that Elijah the prophet met with Rav Anan if he didn't meet with Rav Anan you trashed this whole book and if he did meet with him you can assume Rav Anan was a saintly person and you can assume that he was talking Elijah was talking to someone who he assumed understood what he meant and to say that you the missionary who didn't meet Elijah the prophet understands what Elijah was saying to Rav Anan better than Rav Anan himself better than the rabbis of the Talmud themselves is a little bit audacious a little bit chutzplatz we would say the way we do understand this concept of 2000 years of Messiah is the way the Talmud explains it these were 2000 years in which Messiah could potentially appear we understand that the suffering that we are undergoing now in exile is part of God's program to bring the Messiah so the program of bringing the Messiah started 2000 years ago in fact Christians would have to acknowledge that the Messiah didn't come in other words the Messiah that the prophets of Israel spoke of didn't come 2000 years ago when the Christians say the Messiah came 2000 years ago what they mean is the person who eventually is going to accomplish what the Messiah is supposed to accomplish appeared 2000 years ago and he did part of his job and he began the program and the rest of his job will be completed upon the second coming so in other words what they are saying is the program was set in motion we believe the program was set in motion when the Jews went into exile the program of the messianic era was set in motion and these 2000 years are dedicated to the bringing about of the fulfillment and the culmination of that program so this was an example of how Christians use the rabbinic literature to support a Christian doctrine without acknowledging without saying that the rabbis believe in the doctrine just that the rabbis are transmitting a fragment of truth without realizing what they are transmitting a second explanation that the Christians have presented to justify their quotation of rabbinic literature is the argument that Judaism changed at some point in history Judaism was open religion it believed in many of the teachings of Christianity at least it allowed for it was broad enough to allow it was diverse and it allowed for different opposing beliefs including the doctrines including the teachings of Christianity and at some point in history Judaism took a radical turn and went away from those beliefs, those teachings which at some point in time were considered authentically Jewish and our quotation of rabbinic literature is to prove that at some time Judaism did believe in those teachings the question is at what point in time did this change take place at what point in time did Judaism take this violent turn this turn away from Christian beliefs now one theory which won't really help the Christian argument, the Christian quotation of rabbinic literature is a theory which many academics believe and that is that at the time of the destruction of the temple, Judaism underwent a radical change while the temple was standing second temple was standing according to these to this theory Judaism was centered on the service of the temple it was centered on blood offerings and that was the focus of Judaism and that was all of Judaism and when the temple was destroyed the rabbis, the leaders of the Jewish people had to come up with something different, they had to come up with an alternative they had to come up with another focus and that's why they changed Judaism and they moved it from the temple to the synagogue, from the temple to the study hall from the priests to the rabbis and that's the point in time where Judaism underwent this radical change I will first say that this is entirely false simply because if anyone knows anything about the history of the Jewish people during the second temple they will realize that at the same time there was a temple and a community in the land of Israel, a temple in Jerusalem there was an even larger community in Babylon there was a gigantic community of Jews in Babylon, there were many Jews in the diaspora all over and they didn't have a temple of course some of them would come to the temple occasionally they would try to come to the temple but from Babylon to Jerusalem is a long way if you're walking and that's the general mode of transportation most people didn't have cars in those days and so what was their Judaism? what did it consist of? it was synagogue based it was study hall based it was based on what Judaism was always based on Judaism was based on a relationship with God and the temple was one means of national expression indeed the central means of the expression of the nation's relationship with God but it was not the only expression and every individual Jew personally always had the study hall the book of Psalms his own heart as a place where he could relate to God the concept of a synagogue the concept of a study hall actually appears in the book of Ezekiel in chapter 11 when the Jews went into exile in the time of the prophet Ezekiel in the time of the prophet Jeremiah where God says to the Jewish people I will be their miniature sanctuary in all the lands of their exile in other words wherever we go God is with us and we're never without a temple even though we don't have the temple in Jerusalem and we pray three times a day for the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem but we have God with us and no one can take that away from us that's the first thing I would say about this theory the second thing I would say about this theory as it relates to our discussion this afternoon is that it doesn't help the missionary argument simply because most of rabbinic literature is post temple so to quote rabbinic literature in support of the theory that before while the temple was standing Jews believed as Christians rabbinic literature is not going to give you that information because most of rabbinic literature the mission of the Talmud, the Medrashim were all written post temple there are bits and pieces, there are fragments of rabbinic literature as we shall see that existed during the time of the second temple but most of the missionary quotations don't come from those bodies of literature a second theory proposed by the missionaries to explain at what point in history did it happen that the Jewish people took this violent turn away from these Christian beliefs which used to be authentically Jewish used to be part of the mainstream of Jewish thought is the theory that Judaism developed as a negative reaction against Christianity it used to be that Jews believed some Jews believed in a divine messiah some Jews didn't believe in a divine messiah some Jews believed that God had a body others believed he didn't some believed in a suffering messiah others didn't but once the Christians took upon themselves the belief of divine messiah God could have a body a suffering messiah, a rejected messiah that's when the Jewish people rejected those beliefs I'll use the words of a prominent missionary to give expression to this theory the phrase that Dr. Michael Brown coined is these are his words that the Jewish rejection of the Trinity is a it's a result of a gut level negative reaction to anything Christian in other words it's not intellectual it's just we recoil if it's Christian we have to reject it and that's how Judaism went away from its Christian moorings interestingly if you look at the history of Christianity when was it that the church officially adopted the theory, the doctrine, the teaching of the Trinity was at the Council of Nicaea I want to tell you something people the Council of Nicaea was plagued with a gut level negative reaction to anything Jewish this is not something that I am making up the official historian Eusebius tells us that the Council of Nicaea didn't just discuss and vote upon if God is three or one but rather they also voted on many other teachings one of the teachings that they had a discussion about and voted upon was the following when the Christians followers of Jesus observed the holiday of Easter the holiday which commemorates the crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus now many Christians were following the Jewish calendar when they celebrated and when they commemorated the resurrection of Jesus simply because Jesus was a Jew he lived in Israel he was a practicing Jew and he celebrated Passover together with all the other Jewish people so if he was going to be resurrected on Passover it was going to be according to the Jewish calendar it was going to be the Jewish Passover problem in those days the Jewish calendar was not fixed like it is today the Jewish calendar originally was a calendar that the leaders of the Jewish people the central the unified leadership of the Jewish people would decide upon every month if the previous month had 29 or 30 days every year they would come together and decide if the previous year is going to be a leap year if it's going to have 13 months or 12 months Jewish people are last minute people you're not going to be able to plan your Easter party three years in advance you're not even going to be able to do it three weeks in advance you're going to have to wait until the rabbis decide if the previous month has 29 or 30 days if the year is going to have 13 months or 12 months and many Christians around the Roman Empire would wait for the decision of the rabbis and when the rabbis would decide when the new moon is when the new year is that's when they would know the celebration is going to take place so this is I can't read Greek so I can't read Eusebius in the original but this was the reasoning behind they rejected that they said we're not going to follow the Jewish calendar we're not going to follow the decision of the rabbis to determine when we're going to celebrate Easter and this was the reasoning behind it it wasn't some esoterical spiritual reason it wasn't based on hard study of the Bible that's not what it was based on the argument was as follows why should we follow in the footsteps of these people who are scorned by God in other words why should we follow in the footsteps of the Jewish people who are rejected by God to celebrate our holy festival together with them is there any greater impertinence than this to them this was the greatest chutzpah that they could have towards Jesus that these hated Jews should be able to say that we cannot celebrate and observe our festivals unless we follow their calculations this is an English translation of what went on in the Council of Nicaea so this Council of Nicaea which came to the decision of when they should celebrate their holiday basically based on a gut level negative reaction to anything Jewish also voted on the Trinity now I wasn't there so I can't argue for certainty that the vote in favor of the Trinity was associated with a gut level negative reaction to anything Jewish rejection of the Trinity is based on a gut level negative reaction to anything Christian is chutzpah it's audacious it's arrogant and it's wrong a third theory a third timing for when it is that the Jewish people took this radical turn this violent turn away from Christian teachings and the one that actually historically at least would be the most helpful to the Christian usage of rabbinic literature would be to blame mymonities the Rambam mymonities is the bad guy he was the one that studied Greek philosophy and he took the concepts of Greek philosophy and he integrated into Judaism and he came up with the 13 principles of faith and that steered Judaism away from its biblical moorings and most of the quotations of rabbinic literature predate the Rambam and we're following a what the Christians are saying we're following a pre-Rambam view of Judaism and what modern Jews today are following is a post-Rambam a hijacked Judaism a Judaism that was hijacked by mymonities and by those people who respected and followed him that's another theory this is a theory it's not as easy to deal with the previous theories it's not as obviously wrong but one way superficially again in the third segment we'll get to responses to the same quotation of rabbinic literature but in short we would say is that missionaries find the same quotations in pre-Rambam or rabbinic literature they find it in post-Rambam or rabbinic literature in the words of the Rambam himself they find support for their doctrines so this has nothing to do with pre-Rambam post-Rambam this has to do with misreading the text if you want to tell me that was the Rambam who moved Judaism aside why does he have these quotations why does post-Rambam Judaism have these quotations I'm not reading these quotations correctly but these were three segments or three alternative modes for the theory that Judaism changed the final theory is as follows in other words we're answering the question what do Christians mean when they're quoting rabbinic literature didn't the rabbis reject Jesus and here is the insidious one the one which many Christians believe sincerely is that Judaism even today is a diverse religion there are many streams within Judaism there are Hasidim and there are opponents to Hasidim there are people who believe in the Kabbalah and adhere to it and people who oppose the Kabbalah or don't emphasize the Kabbalah and they present their views as a part of Judaism we are more Hasidic Kabbalah inclined and you count missionary activists are rambamists rational Jews misnagdom, anti-Hasidim and we represent a stream in Judaism which is valid and authentic and alive today a slight variant of this is the fantastic theory that the followers of Jesus we know were Jews but we also know that at some point the Gentile church eradicated the Jewish followers of Jesus swallowed them up persecuted them as heretics but this theory goes is that throughout history there have always been Jewish followers of Jesus and these people are following pre-temple Judaism they're following Judaism as it was in the times of Jesus and these people are being bullied into submission and silenced by the establishment the rabbis the leadership of the Jewish people who wants conformity, wants political power and this plays right into the general feeling that we have to go for the underdog versus the establishment to go for the weaker one versus the bully and there's another theory proposed by missionaries to justify their quotation of rabbinic literature a fourth way of presenting this concept about this stream of Judaism that is still alive today is presenting the counter-missionary argument as if it's just simplistic we're just dumbing it down this is counter-missionary Judaism as if there's two Judaism there's counter-missionary Judaism and there's real Judaism there's simplistic Judaism versus sophisticated Judaism if you're a sophisticated Jew and you're a well read Jew if you read Mark Shapiro's book on the limits of Orthodox theology which is a book which speaks about the 13 principles of faith and attempts to show how they were not universally accepted and if you read such books and you read rabbinic literature with an open eye and open mind you'll realize that Judaism is much more diverse and much more open than the rabbis today would have you believe than the establishment rabbis would have you believe than the counter-missionary activists would have you believe and we're just a little bit more sophisticated than those simplistic and dumb counter-missionaries now this set of arguments and particularly the last one is very insidious and represents a real change in the dynamic in what was going on in the encounter between the missionary between the church's campaign for the soul of the Jew for the heart of the Jew over the ages it started out, the campaign started out we'll start with the Gentile church they usurped our prophets they took our prophets, they usurped our promises but they said you guys keep your religion, keep your observances keep anything Jewish, we just want your prophets we want your promises and that's what we're going to take at some point last 50, 60 years they said no, I think we want some of those observances as well we want some of your culture as well and now what they're doing is we want your community as well the possibility of belonging to our community and not all of it is insincere some of the people really believe that they truly belong in the community they really believe the story that they're selling they really believe that this isn't on the basis of their reading of rabbinic literature they believe that yes this is the sophisticated and the real understanding of Judaism and it's just simplistic and narrow-minded to exclude them from the community it affects the dynamic in a very serious way because one of the most powerful arguments that we as counter-missionary activists would use not to persuade the potential convert to leave Christianity but to open his mind to the argument is as follows messianic Jew walks in and he says I'm a Jew I call myself a messianic Jew and I believe in Jesus and I'm very proud of the name Jew so 20 years ago what I would have told him is I would have asked him the following question who gave you the name Jew? you didn't buy it in the store you inherited that name do you realize how much blood how much suffering went into that it wasn't easy for your grandfather to give you that name it wasn't easy for your great grandfather to give you that name you owe it to your great grandfather to find out what that word Jew meant to him and this would be something that appealed to people and it would be something that they understood and they said yes I don't know too much about what my grandfather what my great grandfather what my ancestors believed about being the Jew it behooves me it's right for me to find out more but now that the missionaries have adopted the quotation from rabbinic literature not only the quotation from rabbinic literature but our observances, our culture, our garb and they come and say I look the same like your grandfather you don't know what your grandfather believed he might have been a Hasidic Jew he might have been a Kabbalistic Jew he might have believed in the teachings that I'm trying to sell you so this cuts off the door closes the door it closes the avenue of research the reason why a potential convert would look more deeply into the question there's a double edged sword over here we all know that Christianity has been the source of immense suffering for the Jewish people why? to put it simply Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah predicted by the Greek oracles he never claimed to be the Messiah hoped for by the people of Rome of Italy he was the Messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets he was supposed to be the man that the Jewish people are waiting for the biggest argument against the Christian claim for the Messiahship of Jesus not the Jew saying anything the Jew being the Jew and just ignoring Jesus one second this is the man that prays three times a day for the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom he's the man that prays three times a day for the messianic era to be ushered in he's looking forward to that why does he reject your Jesus why does he ignore your Jesus that is a question that Christians had to deal with and if you read the New Testament you will see that this is what they did what they did was they dehumanized the Jew the question is based on a premise in other words why is the Jew rejecting Jesus is based on the premise well if Jesus is truly the Jewish Messiah then the Jew should accept him that only makes sense if the Jew is a type of person that submits to the truth that bends to the truth when he sees that the truth is here he walks towards it and the truth is that no the Jew is not such a type of person you might be such a type of person but the Jew is not such a type of person the Jew when he sees truth he turns around and walks the other way he hates truth he's the child of the devil you can't ask me the question why is it that the Jew rejects Jesus he knows the truth but he rejects it anyways because he's anti-God now he's canonized in the book of John rather they say the Jews don't really know if they would truly know Jesus they would truly be presented with the real background of Jesus they would accept him but now with the onset of Christian quotation of missionary literature we're going back to the old model we're finding quotations in missionary literature and I'm talking about missionaries that don't call themselves Christians missionaries that call themselves rabbis they're going back to the model the Jews know the truth and they reject it anyways they see Jesus in this verse they see Jesus in this passage and they reject it anyways that's a double-edged sword it's another effect that the missionary quotation of rabbinic literature has on the dynamic of the encounter between the missionary and the Jew