 Back in the early days of cognitive theory, going back quite a while now, days of Plato and Aristotle, so Aristotle proposed what he called the law of contrast, the law of contrast. And he suggested that by contrasting two different things, it becomes a very important tool for understanding. Now this ancient idea was confirmed by recent research, by more modern researchers. Back in 2001, there was a study done by Robert Marzano, Deborah Pickering, and Jane Pollock who found that in using different teaching approaches, engaging students in comparative thinking had the greatest impact on student achievement. They found that when they measured the progress and the improvement of students, the kind of teaching methodology that had the greatest impact on the student's learning and improvement was when the teaching methodology engaged the students in contrasting and comparing. This was further reconfirmed in 2007 in further analysis by Marzano, and he found that asking students to identify similarities and differences through comparative analysis leads to significant gains in academic achievement. Now I remember a long time ago as a kid hearing the following rhyme. Maybe some of you have heard something similar, I found different versions of it, but the one I remember hearing was, roses are reddish, violets are bluish. If it wasn't for Jesus, we'd all be Jewish. In some versions attributed to Benny Hill of all people, they say if it wasn't for Christmas, we'd all be Jewish. Now this little poem is not only cute, but it actually very accurately reflects the conventional wisdom. Although we all know the conventional wisdom is often not technically correct. There's a very famous and well-known Protestant theologian named Harvey Cox, and Harvey Cox remarked that as a child he was taught in Sunday school that the only difference between Jews and Christians is that they don't believe the Messiah has yet come. That's what he was taught. And the truth is that many Jewish people express the same sentiment that I hear from many Jewish people, the idea that Judaism and Christianity are essentially the same, except that they believe Jesus was the Messiah and we don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. And often that becomes the total reduction of all the differences between Christianity and Judaism. Fortunately these formulations drastically oversimplify the true differences between these two faiths and they really fail to identify what are some of the more critical differences between Judaism and Christianity. So before beginning to explore what actually distinguishes our two religions for tonight, I want to just mention one important caveat. You know it's difficult enough to homogenize the various streams within the worldwide Jewish community of 14 million people and present Jewish ideology as a nice neat package. It's hard enough doing it with the Jewish community. But there are over two billion Christians in the world today comprised with hundreds of denominations. Some people estimate, even some estimates go as high as 30,000 denominations. So what are we speaking about tonight when we speak about Christianity? Now I know from experience, from personal experience, that when we post our lectures on YouTube, I always get feedback from people objecting that I am not taking into consideration their particular personal brand of Christianity. People will protest, but Christodelfians don't believe that. Or they'll say things like the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church has a very different view. Okay, that shouldn't be surprising. So I've chosen tonight to focus on the basic beliefs of the people in the Christian world that Jewish people are most likely to encounter. I mean that we have a big world today and not every Christian is likely to engage Jewish people in theological discussions. And so I've chosen to focus tonight's talk on specifically those Christians that Jewish people for various reasons. A, because this particular group in Christianity is very large and growing. Number two, they tend to enjoy interacting with Jews. Number three, they're very present in media. So if you turn on a television and happen to watch a Christian program, it's going to be from this flavor of Christianity. And they're also the most active in trying to engage Jews. They're actually going out and trying to reach Jews. So this is the world of evangelical Protestantism. Now the truth is that even among evangelical Protestants, they don't always agree amongst themselves either. So I'm going to have to generalize a bit tonight. Otherwise, it'll be impossible to keep the lecture under six hours. So let's begin tonight by exploring a general topic of the Messiah. To see how this topic alone is very complex and it generates, this question of the Messiah itself generates numerous differences between Judaism and Christianity. So let's begin with a relatively unusual question. How important is this concept of the Messiah in Christianity and in Judaism? What is the relative importance of the Messianic concept in these two religions? In Christianity, the idea of the Messiah is the entire core and foundation of the religion. In Christianity, the idea of the Messiah is basically it. It is the aorta. Let's take the name of the religion itself. Let's look at the name of the religion, Christianity. So what that basically says is that Christianity is a movement or a faith that is centered on the identity of the Christ and on his nature and on believing in him. That's why this religion is called Christianity because the entire focus of Christianity is on the identity of the Christ. Christ, by the way, is the Greek way of saying Messiah. But Christianity, the entire faith, everything is hinged upon, is focused on the identity of the Messiah, the nature of the Messiah, and specifically the importance of belief in the Messiah. All the major holidays in Christianity center around the personality of their Messiah. Now is the concept of the Messiah and the need to believe in him the central idea of the Jewish Bible and of Judaism? Meaning, if a person were to read through the Jewish Bible, we call it the Tanach, so would you walk away saying, well, obviously in this book, the most important idea is to know who the Messiah is and to believe in him? And that's obviously then the most important concept in Judaism. So the truth of the matter is, that's not the case in Judaism. First of all, the Bible, our Tanach, never explicitly and directly speaks about anyone that's referred to as the Messiah. Now, I would have thought that if the idea of the Messiah were the most important thing in the Bible, the word should at least appear in the Bible. You should open up the Bible and find the word, the Messiah, once at least, and if it was the most important idea, it should be all over the Bible, right? The Messiah is going to do this, and you have to believe in the Messiah, and the word, the Messiah, never even appears in the Jewish Bible, and therefore, we'll see that even though there are a number of passages in the Jewish Bible that speak somewhat indirectly about the Messiah, we'll be examining those in a moment. That's why we have such a concept in Judaism, but none of those passages say a word about believing in the Messiah. So this idea of believing in the Messiah has no mention, it's not discussed at all anywhere in the Jewish Bible. Now let's just reflect for a moment on what is normally considered the most important question, which is why does Judaism not accept the claim that Jesus was the Messiah? So this clearly and obviously has to boil down to one very central question. What is the definition of the Messiah, right? If you want to know anything in life, you have to have good definitions, right? If you want to know anything, you have to have clear and accurate definitions, you have to know what you're talking about. So if we don't even know what the concept of the Messiah is, it's going to be impossible to identify the Messiah. It'll be impossible to know, do you have the right person or not. So what's critical is to be able to say that we've studied the Bible and we have a clear and accurate understanding, a clear and accurate definition of what the Messiah is. Now I mentioned just a few moments ago, you can't go to the back of the Bible and look in the index or the concordance and try and look up the word, the Messiah. It's not there. That would make life a lot easier. So let's just describe briefly how the concept is derived. First of all, what the Bible does have very clearly are hundreds of prophecies that speak about a future utopian world. One thing that everyone throughout history always knew is that the world is not the way it could be and the way it should be. All people throughout history have known that we're living in a broken world. The world needs to get better. So what the Bible predicts in hundreds of passages is that in the future, the world is going to get better. The patient is going to recover. And the Bible has hundreds of passages that speak about this utopian world. And it gives a certain number of characteristics of what we should look forward to. I'm not going to go through all of them, but just briefly, some of the features of what the Bible predicts will be happening is number one, the Jewish people who have been in exile for most of their history, for most of the Jewish history of the Jewish people, we've been exiled from our land. So the Bible speaks about an ingathering of the exiles that someday Jewish people will return to their homeland. It's a nice thing. We're told that we're going to live there in peace. The Bible tells us that when we go back to our land ultimately, it's going to be to live there in peace. The Bible says that we're going to have our temple restored and rebuilt. The Bible says that when this happens, the Jewish people will achieve the role that they were meant to play in the world. Jewish people were not created by God to invent falafel and high technology coming out to bring more computers to the world. That's not the reason that God invented the Jewish people. The Bible says that the Jewish people are supposed to be the spiritual teachers of the world. And so what the Bible predicts is that when we are restored to our land and we have our temple and we're living there in peace, we will be able to serve as the teachers of the world. That's going to happen fully. And then we're told that as a result of being the teachers of the world, the entire world will come to know God. Every human being in the world will come to know the Creator. And because of that, we're told it will lead to universal peace. The whole world is going to be a world of peace. That is in general briefly what the Bible describes through hundreds of passages. Of these passages, there were about 10, approximately 10, that specifically and explicitly mention that they will be a descendant of King David, one of the great kings of Israel. So the Bible says it's going to be a descendant of King David who will rise up during this utopian age and he will serve as the king of Israel. There will be a descendant of David who will be the king of Israel during the unfolding of this utopian age, when this utopian age has become a reality. Now you should know that all students of the Bible, whatever their religion is, will agree and say, yes, Rabbi Skobak, those passages that you're referring to, they are describing the Messiah. The one thing that's clear is that these prophecies have not yet materialized. It hasn't happened yet. We're not living in a world where the Jewish people have returned to live in peace in their homeland. Our temple has not been rebuilt. The whole world doesn't respect the Jewish people and ask us to teach them. The knowledge of God has not spread to the entire world and certainly we're not living in a world of peace. That's a big problem for Christians because the only passages in the Bible where everyone agrees the passages speaking about the Messiah are clearly not describing Jesus. And that's why Christians have to say, well, Jesus will fulfill those prophecies when he comes back in the future. That's the birth of this idea of what the Christians call the doctrine of the Second Coming. We have an idea that necessity is the mother of invention and there's no other thing to say. It's very clear that Jesus simply didn't accomplish what the Bible clearly teaches the Messiah is supposed to do. And so the only thing to say is, okay, he'll do that when he comes back. Now let's dig a little bit deeper into this Messiah topic. First of all, is our real focus, is our real focus supposed to be to put our attention on the Messiah himself? Is that what's really important, the Messiah? Or is what's really important the world transformation that will come about when the Messiah is here? What's really the more important aspect? The person of the Messiah or the world that will take place, the world that will exist when the Messiah is here? Let me give a parallel example. What's more important? Moses or the Exodus? You know, we're about to celebrate Passover. And on Passover Eve, we read a whole book. We spend a whole night reading a book called the Haggadah. Haggadah means the telling. We tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. And you know, in that book that we read on the evening of Passover, you don't even see the name of Moses mentioned. Moses was our leader. But what's important is not so much Moe, he was important, but what's really important is not him as much as what he was there to accomplish. The Talmud says that after a person lives their life in this world and they go upstairs after 120 years, so they'll be asked a number of questions. We're gonna get a final exam at the end of our lives. And one of the questions we're going to be asked will be asked, did you do your business honestly and did you devote time to studying Torah? But one of the questions is going to be, did you expectantly and anxiously await the redemption? When you were going through this world, it's very easy for people to live a comfortable life and to feel like I have a nice house, I have a nice job, I have a nice family, like on vacation once a year, life is great. And not to ever feel, you know what, there's something wrong with the world. The world isn't great, the world's in pain, the world's broken, there are wars, people are suffering. So it's important for all of us, even if we're living beautiful lives, to just be aware of the fact that the world is not what the world should be and what the world could be. So the Talmud says that that's gonna be a question on our final exam. Are you the kind of person that went through your entire life and was oblivious to the fact, because you were so self-absorbed in your own world, usually because your life was nice, that you didn't even think about the fact that the world is broken. The world should be much better than it is now. So the Talmud says that one of the questions is, did you anxiously await the redemption? But we're not gonna be asked, did you anxiously await for the Messiah? They could have expressed the question in those terms. They could have said in the Talmud, see Peter, the Messiah, did you anxiously await for the Messiah? Could have said that. But it says, no, did you anxiously await for the redemption? Because what's important, of course the Messiah is important. He'll be a critical catalyst for all the things that will unfold in the messianic age, but what's important is the redemption. So our focus is more on the redemption than on the redeemer. Now here's a very, very important question. Does Israel, to the people of Israel, play any role in bringing about the messianic redemption? The messianic redemption isn't here yet. But does Israel, the nation of Israel, the people of Israel, do we have a role to play in bringing this redemption about? Now in the Bible, it is very clear that Israel will have to become worthy of being redeemed. What's very clear in the Bible is that Israel, the nation, the people of Israel, are gonna have to become worthy of being redeemed. Let me read to you one passage that speaks about this. You can check me out at home. Deuteronomy chapter 30. I'm gonna read the first few verses. Now all these things will come to pass and the previous chapters have been speaking about the sufferings of the Jewish people in their history. Chapter 30 says, now which I'll come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I've set before you and you call them to mind among the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. So we are in exile. As I said before, most of Jewish history, our people have been in exile. And chapter 30 of Deuteronomy says that we're going to wake up in our exile. We're gonna think about things and you will return to the Lord your God. You're going to return to God. Why are you in exile? Because in the Bible, exile is always the punishment for turning away from God. When Adam and Eve turn away from God in the Garden of Eden, they're sent out of the Garden of Eden. And the Bible says if you, the people of Israel, sin against God, you will be thrown out of the land of Israel. And so here in Deuteronomy 30, it's saying you know what, after your whole long history, a difficult history, a lot of suffering, it says you're gonna wake up one day. You're going to wake up and you're going to turn back to God and obey his voice. According to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all of your heart and with all of your soul. That's an amazing thing. It's saying that it's gonna come a time when all of Israel, what percent of Israel today loves God with all their heart and all their soul and lives to obey all the commandments of the Bible. 10%, 20%, maybe. But it's not 100%, it's not even close to 50%. The Bible says there'll always be a righteous remnant of Jews. But we're not speaking about a remnant, we're speaking about the whole nation waking up. And that's what's predicted here. We're going to return to God. And then what the Bible says is that after we as a people return to God in verse three, then the Lord your God will bring you back from your captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. So what the Bible says very clearly is something is going to have to happen to initiate, to bring about, to kickstart the redemption. And what is necessary for the bringing about of the process of redemption is for Israel to turn back to God. We see a very similar passage in the book of Isaiah, chapter 59, verse 19, 20. This is said by the way in the daily prayers where it says the following. The Redeemer will come to Zion. This is the Redeemer. This is the Messiah. So the Redeemer will come to Zion. Who is the Redeemer going to come to? Isaiah says he's going to come to those who turn from transgression in Jacob says the Lord. The Redeemer is going to come when Jacob, the people of Jacob, the people of Israel turn away from transgression. So what we see in Isaiah here as well is that when will the redemption come? When we have turned away from our sins. This is the theme throughout the Bible. Israel is going to have to undergo a process of national repentance in order to become worthy of being redeemed. However, this idea that we need to become worthy in order to be redeemed is totally far into Christianity. The basic assumption of Christianity is that human beings can never become worthy of being redeemed. That's the basic assumption of Christianity. Human beings can never become worthy of redemption. We can never earn salvation. In the Christian model, the Messiah had to come precisely because humanity could never become worthy of redemption. Not that the Messiah comes after we have become worthy. The Christian model is the Messiah comes specifically because we can never be worthy of redemption. Redemption in the Christian model does not come as a response to human repentance and human transformation. Redemption comes in the Christian model as an act of divine grace and mercy because mankind is seen as helplessly stuck in a fallen state with no possibility, with no ability of lifting themselves out of that fallen state. In Christianity, the Messiah saves the world by taking the sins of the world upon himself. It's the most famous verse in the entire New Testament in the Gospel of John chapter three, verse 16, for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son so that everyone who would believe in him would not perish but would have eternal life. So this became a reworking of the Messianic concept in the wake of Jesus' failure to fulfill the actual Messianic criteria, the actual Messianic concept that we discussed earlier. Again, in the Jewish Bible in the Tanakh, the Messiah comes to be the king of the nation of Israel after we've turned back to God and to lead us during the utopian Messianic age. Jesus did not accomplish that. So in Christian terms, what did Jesus accomplish? In Christian terms, he came to die. He came as a sacrifice to take the sins of the world upon him because in the Christian model, the world is incapable of turning away from their own sins. The Christian model is that the Messiah comes to die as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind because mankind is seen as not capable of turning away from their sins and saving themselves. The Christian belief is that after Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden, humans became infected with a fatal condition. They became spiritually handicapped and incapable. That's how Christians basically see human beings. We are incapable, not capable of living lives that are pleasing to God. Whatever we do, we will never be good enough and we are incapable of repairing our lives when we sin. That's the human condition in Christian terms. We are incapable of being good. We can never live lives that are righteous and we can never repair the mistakes that we make. If we could, there would be a big problem and Paul acknowledges this in his book of Galatians, chapter two, verse 21, where Paul says that if people had the capacity to be righteous by living according to God's instructions in the Bible, Paul says that Jesus died in vain. So Paul says that if we were able to follow the Torah and to live according to the teachings of the Torah, which includes, right, the Torah says that if you make a mistake, you have to repent, which means that you correct your mistakes. So Paul says that if we could do that, then there'd be no need for Jesus to die for us. The Christian model is based upon the assumption that we are not able to follow the Torah. We're not able to live righteous lives. We're not able to clean ourselves up in the wake of our sins and that's why Jesus had to come and die for us. C.S. Lewis, famous Christian author, wrote in his book, Mere Christianity, that the Christian does not think that God will love us because we are good. He says rather that God will make us good by sending his son to die for us because he loves us. Now, according to the teachings of Judaism found in the Jewish Bible, these beliefs deny our moral capacity to change. The Torah believes, the Torah's assumption is that human beings have the ability to change. We have the capacity to live according to God's instructions. And the Christian model denies those capabilities. And this difference, this dispute really is what lies at the heart of why God chose Abraham to be the progenitor of the Jewish people and not the other obvious candidate. If you go back to the beginning of the Bible, Abraham wasn't the first good person. Before Abraham, there was someone called Noah. And the Bible says Noah was not just righteous, he was perfectly righteous. Sadiq Tameem, perfectly righteous. And yet Noah does not get the job. God does not say, Noah, you're gonna become the father of a great nation that's gonna end up being a blessing to the rest of the world. God chooses Abraham for that mission. Why? So if you study the lives of Noah and Abraham, you will see that they each went through essentially the same experience but reacted very differently. Both Abraham and Noah were told the same news by God. God tells Abraham and Noah, I'm going to destroy the world. In the days of Noah, God says there's gonna be a big flood. Everyone is going to be wiped out. But you, you build a boat and you'll put your family on the boat and you'll be saved. And Noah says, okay, you're God, you must know what you're doing. You want me to build a boat? I'll build a boat. You want me to bring on animals two by two, I'll bring on animals two by two? That's what Noah does. And God tells Abraham basically the same thing. God tells Abraham that the cities of Sodom and Amorah and Adma and Sivoyim, which were the major population centers in the time of Abraham, God says that these people are wicked. I'm going to wipe them off the face of the earth. And Abraham goes nuts. Abraham says, how dare you? He starts to fight with God. And he says to God, shall the judge of the whole world not do justice? He's saying to God, that's wicked. God, that's not just, that's not being a just God. That you're gonna wipe out everyone. And Abraham says, will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? That's what Abraham challenges him. He says, what are you talking about? You're gonna kill everyone. Abraham says, you're gonna kill all the bad people with all the good people? And Abraham refuses to accept that. And he starts to bargain with God. Abraham says, what if there are 50 righteous people in those cities? What if they're, okay, not 50, what about 45? Okay, no 40, 30, 20, gets God down to 10. And the idea is that if there are 10 righteous people in those cities, what you would think that Abraham would say next is, okay, if there are 10 righteous people, don't kill them, take them out, kill everybody else, kill all the bad people, but at least spare the righteous ones. That's what it sounds like Abraham is going. That's where it sounds like he's going in that direction because he says, you can't kill the righteous with the wicked, that's not right. So he starts to talk about the possibility of there being righteous people. You would think that what he's gonna say is, okay, take those guys out, save them. Like you saved Noah. And then kill all the wicked people. Abraham doesn't say that. Abraham says, if there are these righteous people, Patoha'ir within the city, you have to save everyone. What do you mean save everyone? What is Abraham getting at? So Abraham's thesis, Abraham's idea is that if there are these righteous people living within the city, specifically, it's not living in the city, the Hebrew is very precise, living within the city. They're not in some little cloistered monastery where no one knows who they are. They're living among all the people. Abraham says, if there are such people, you have to save the whole city. Why? Because they are living and as an example, and they have the potential of influencing the rest of the people and changing the rest of the people. So what is the real debate between Abraham and Noah? What are they really arguing about? At the end of the day, what they're arguing about is can people change? Noah was the of the opinion that, you know what, there are people that can become so wicked that they're hopeless and they're helpless and you can't do a thing for them. So if God says, kill them all, Noah's like, fine, you know what you're doing, God, and you want me to save myself and my family, fine. I'm very obedient, God, you say jump, I say how high. That's what Noah was like. But Abraham was different because Abraham believed in the power of human free will. Abraham never gave up on the fact that the Bible says that humanity, human beings were created in the image of God. It doesn't mean that we look like God. It means that we are similar to God. We partake of some of God's characteristics. One of them being that we have free will. We're free moral agents. We can choose what to do. And Noah, understandably, sort of gave up on that. Noah saw people that were so wicked he couldn't imagine they would ever change. Couldn't imagine that what's gonna do, what are they gonna change, those people? They're set in their ways, they'll never change. And Abraham never lost touch with this critical idea that every human being is created in the image of God and therefore every person has free will and every person can change. And what is Abraham's concept? That if there are living witnesses, living examples of righteousness, those people have the capacity of acting as models for righteousness that can set an example for others to follow, and ultimately they can change and ultimately they will change. And therefore he says you have to save everyone. And I believe that's why Abraham was chosen to be the first Jew because Judaism is built upon the proposition that people can change. That if we've done wrong in our lives we can improve. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, Sheva ye polt sadik vakam, that seven times the righteous person will fall down but they will get up. People have the ability to transform themselves, to learn from their mistakes and to grow from their mistakes and to pick themselves up. And that's the model, that's the idea of why God chose Abraham's family. For what purpose? So the Bible says in Exodus chapter 19, you are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. That's what God says to the people of Abraham's children. Right before they received the Torah and Mount Sinai, you're to be a kingdom of priests. Among the people of Israel, the tribe of Levi, the Levites are the teachers of the rest of the Israelites. So God says that just like among the 12 tribes of Israel, one of the tribes had the job, the task of being the teachers, God says you Jews are the teachers of the rest of the world. And that's why God says to the prophet Isaiah, twice in the book of Isaiah, that Israel is to be a light to the nations of the world. And that's why God says to Abraham, Abraham through your people, all of the nations of the world will ultimately be blessed. And incredibly, the Bible predicts exactly that. When you read further on in the book of Isaiah, you go to chapter 60. This is after Isaiah was told that Israel is gonna be a light to the nations. Isaiah 60 begins, arise and shine for your light has come and the glory of God has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the people but the Lord will rise over you and his glory will be seen upon you. And the Gentiles will come to your light. That's what the Bible predicts that one day, the nations of the world, God says will come to the light of Israel and kings to the brightness of your rising. The prophet Zachariah, Zacharia chapter eight says that in those days, 10 people from every nation of the world are gonna grab hold of a Jew and say we want to follow you, we've heard God is with you. Deuteronomy chapter four says that one day all the nations of the world are going to acknowledge the wisdom, the beauty, the brilliance, the profundity of the Torah that God gave to Israel. And there are a number of related differences that flow from what we've discussed and I'll touch on them very briefly before we end for this evening. Number one is the relative importance between Christianity and Judaism placed on the observance of the Torah. That God gave Israel a Torah, Torah means teachings. So our Torah has hundreds of commandments, hundreds of instructions that God gave us. Traditionally the number is 613 instructions. So in Judaism, because the Bible says this, observing these commandments, observing the Torah is critically important. The Bible says that these commandments are eternal. They don't have an expiration date. The Torah never says that you have to keep the commandments until the Messiah comes and then you don't have to do it anymore. But in fact, when you read the commandments, when you read the prophecies about the Messiah, it says the exact opposite. It's when the Messiah is here that all of Israel will be keeping all of the commandments. Until that time it's gonna be some of Israel. But the Bible never gives an expiration date for the commandments. The Bible says repeatedly the commandments are eternal, forever. The Bible speaks about the commandments as vitally important. The commandments are said to be sweeter than honey, more precious than gold. They restore the heart, they transform us. The longest chapter in the entire Bible, Psalm 119, has 176 verses, a beautiful poem expressing how beautiful and delicious and precious and wonderful and great the Torah and its commandments are. Psalm 19 speaks about the Torah as being perfect. You don't get better than perfect. The Bible says, contrary to what Christians teach, is that it's possible for people to keep the commandments. One of the things that Christians insist is, well, you can't do it, it's impossible. Because again, as Paul says, if you could do it, you don't need Jesus to die for you. So Christianity's built upon the premise that you cannot do it. And yet the Jewish Bible says, God says, you can do it. Right after the story of Garden of Eden, right after the story of Adam being thrown out of the garden where Christians insist, you see from that story, Christians say humans became infected with original sin and that that rendered us incapable of being loyal to God. Right after that story, God says to Cain, chapter four, verse seven of Genesis, you will always be tempted by sin, God says to Cain. But you can rule over it. God tells him at the beginning of the Bible, human beings have a veto power over the temptation to sin. You're not helpless. And then in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, that chapter we read earlier, it's an incredible chapter that very chapter discusses the question, are the commandments too difficult to keep? Are they too difficult to keep? And right there in that chapter, God says they are not too difficult. They're not too hard. They're not up in the heavens you have to climb up to the heavens to keep them. They're not across the seas that you have to travel across the world. It says in that chapter, they are near to you in your mouth and in your heart that you can do them. The commandments, the Torah that God gave us are the foundation of our covenant with God. They're the foundation of our relationship with God. Because we love God, we seek to be obedient to God. A person that loves his wife wants to do what his wife would like him to do. They don't challenge everything the wife asks for. Sure, honey, it'd be my pleasure. That's what we say to God. We say to God, my greatest desire is to serve you. My greatest desire is to obey you. We know that all the commandments were not for God's benefit. God doesn't need it. Everything that God gave us is for our benefit, for us to grow, for us to learn, for us to develop, for us to become holy, for us to become spiritual. God gave it to us for our benefit. So we're not just doing it to please him. We're doing it because it's good for us. But also because we love God, we appreciate everything God does for us. He redeemed us from Egypt. He's preserved us for over 3,000 years. He gives me breath every morning. I want to obey God. So the commandments are the foundation of the Torah, the foundation of all of Judaism. And yet, within Christianity, the commandments are not seen as very important. They're not seen as eternally binding. They're not seen as the foundation of our relationship with God. They basically all become replaced with faith in Jesus. Another issue, what is the embryonic moment? What's the embryonic moment of Christianity and Judaism? The embryonic moment of Judaism is the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai. That is ground zero of Judaism. When God revealed the Torah to us publicly, three million people who came out of Egypt and stood at Mount Sinai heard God speak to Moses. It wasn't a private affair. Moses didn't convince us with his charisma that he heard from God. You read Exodus chapter 19, verse nine. God says, Moses, I'm going to speak to you so everyone can hear. And that's why they're going to believe in your credibility forever. But that moment where God revealed himself to all the Jewish people at Mount Sinai was the embryonic moment in Judaism. And because it's so important, you read about in Exodus chapter 20, when you get to the book of Deuteronomy, it reiterates, it recapitulates the whole story and says, don't forget this ever in your lives. Remember that day when you stood at Mount Sinai. Read carefully Deuteronomy's chapter four and five. In Christianity, what is the embryonic moment in Christianity? Is what Christians insist is when Jesus was resurrected from the dead. That is the most important moment in Christianity. Paul says in the book of Corinthians that if Jesus did not come back from the dead, your faith is in vain. Interestingly, there was not one person who saw Jesus rise from the dead. There were claims that were written later on that he appeared to people, but it's very clear that the appearance of Jesus was not like someone walking to the room now and seeing them, right? Let's say you went to a funeral last week and then a week later, the person that was buried comes walking into the room. That's not what it seems to happen even in the stories of the New Testament. It seems as if people had a vision. They had some kind of a vision where they see Jesus in the vision. But in the New Testament itself, no one sees him getting up out of the cave and rising. But that's the embryonic moment in Christianity. All centered on one person and not any witnesses whatsoever. A huge topic, which I was just gonna touch in passing is that the Christian concept of the Messiah, ultimately, the Christian concept of the Messiah ultimately deified him. In the Jewish Bible, it's very clear the Messiah is a human being. Isaiah says in chapter 11, the Messiah will be a human being who fears God. Isaiah doesn't say that the Messiah is going to be God. Isaiah says very clearly, he will fear God. The Bible always distinguishes between God and God's Messiah. Never equates them. Distinguishes between God and the Messiah. In Christianity, Jesus became, at some point, understood. I would maintain it was not the original belief. Traditional Christians will insist that it was always the belief. They insist that Jesus claimed to be God and that his followers believed he was God and they worshiped him. If I would not agree with that, I would say that that belief that came to deify Jesus took place a bit later, probably by the end of the first century into the early second century. But not only did the concept of the Messiah change to become God's divine son, ultimately what changes in the process is how we see God himself. In Judaism, God is seen as an absolute unity. The Bible repeatedly says God is one, one, unique. There's nothing like God. There's nothing else but God. And in Christianity, God became understood as a trinity. That God is seen as having three persons within this concept of God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The idea became one of incarnation where God took on human form and came down into our world. So Jesus is not just seen as the Son of God, meaning that he's not God but just the Son of God. In Christian theology, Jesus is God in the flesh and Jesus is worshiped as God. Jesus is seen as born to a virgin. That becomes in Christian terms critical in terms of understanding anything about the Messiah. Partially because if he's going to take the sins of mankind upon him, he can't have any connection to sin. So in the Catholic Church, that led to the doctrine of the immaculate conception where even his mother Mary was seen to be born without sin and he didn't have an earthly father. So he has no connection to the sin of Adam and Eve but this is a concept that's totally foreign to Judaism. The idea that the Messiah had to be born of a virgin, the Christian and Jewish views of Satan are radically different. Judaism Satan is simply an angel of God. Satan is a messenger and angel of God that's on God's team, totally under the control of God, serving a very important purpose. It is God's purpose to have us tempted and tested and to have opposition to our spiritual progress. If we lived lives where there was no opposition, no resistance to spiritual growth, there'd be no chance for growing. You only grow by overcoming resistance. You go to a gym and you pick up a piece of paper saying, Gwinnish, Gwinnish, health in me saying this, it's not gonna grow any muscles. To grow your muscles, you have to overcome resistance. To grow spiritually, you need spiritual resistance. So that force that opposes us spiritually is the Satan and in Jewish thought, the Satan is primarily internal. It's our internal adversary. It's what we call in Hebrew our Yetzahara, our evil inclination, which basically is not pushing us to do the right thing. It often opposes our impulses to do the right thing. In Christian theology, Satan is not on God's team. In Christian theology, Satan is the leader of an opposing team against God. Satan is seen as an angel that fell from heaven because he revolted against God. He took millions of angels with him that are now his demons. But you basically have a dualistic system in Christianity. The New Testament calls Satan the God of this world because in Christian terms, human beings are under the control of Satan. That's why in Christian terms, we cannot be good because Satan infects us and Satan controls us and the whole purpose of Jesus coming was to destroy the works of Satan. How is hell seen in Judaism and Christianity? In Christianity, hell is a place where people who do not believe in Jesus will burn and be tormented forever. In Christian terms, hell is a place of eternal damnation and eternal punishment. Eternal is a long time, by the way. In Judaism, there's no concept of hell in that sense. The concept in Judaism is it's a temporary experience we go through after our death. It's actually a great blessing. It's an opportunity to get cleansed of our impurities. It's like going to a hospital. No one likes going to a hospital, but thank God they are there. So the concept in Hebrew is called gehenom. It's not forever, it's maximum as a year and it's during that time where people have the chance to get cleaned up and purified so their purified soul can then spend an eternity with God without having any schmutz, any dirt on them, without being blocked, without being clouded. But that's not the Christian concept of hell. Christianity, hell is forever and forever. The Jewish view is that it's not a punishment. Going to the hospital is not a punishment. It's a blessing, it's an opportunity. Another concept is exclusivity. In Christian terms, as we say, it's either turn or burn. Either you believe in Jesus or you will burn in hell forever. Anyone who's not a born again Christian will roast forever in hell. And that leads Christians to work very hard at converting everyone else in the world. In Judaism, there is no belief that you have to be Jewish in order to have a relationship with God. You don't need to be a Jew to have a relationship with God. Throughout the entire book of Genesis, long before there even was a Judaism. Human beings existed who knew God, who walked with God, who lived righteous lives, who had relationships with God. And when Naomi was going back to Israel from Moab, Naomi had two daughter-in-laws from Moabites. And Naomi was going back to Israel after her husband and her sons died. Ruth wanted to go back with her and go to Israel. And Naomi doesn't say to her, that's very good because if you stay here in Moab and you remain a Moabite, you're gonna burn in hell forever. She says, you better come with me to Israel and become a Jew. No, Naomi says to Ruth, stay here in Moab with your own people. You don't need to walk according to my spiritual path. Ruth ends up saying, I know, but I wanna convert anyway. But Judaism never had a agenda to convert the entire world because the world does not need to become Jewish in order to have a relationship with God. Another question, what is the scripture? What is the Bible? The Jewish Bible or the Hebrew scriptures? Christianity has a different Bible. It's important to appreciate that. In the same way that Mormons have a different Bible than regular Christians, the Mormon Bible includes the entire New Testament, Old Testament, plus the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants is a different Bible. So the Christian Bible is different than the Jewish Bible. The Jewish Bible ends with Chronicles, with Debre HaYamim. It doesn't say to be continued, but wait, there's more. The Christian Bible has the four gospels, the Book of Acts, the letters of Paul. We have different Bibles in Judaism and Christianity. By the way, the Christian Bible, when it quotes from the Hebrew scriptures doesn't usually quote from the Hebrew Bible. It quotes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was called the Septuagint. It's a serious problem because God didn't reveal the Septuagint to the Jewish people. God revealed the Hebrew scriptures. In the New Testament, when it quotes from the Jewish Bible, frequently doesn't even quote from the Jewish Bible. It's quoting from a very inaccurate, often, Greek translation that has no authority within the Jewish world. In Judaism, we understand that God's revelation was not completed, was not encompassed, only Bible was written down in the Torah. In Jewish thought, God gave us the explanations of what is written in the Torah. In Jewish thought, the Bible, or the Torah really, Torah means instructions. We have what we would call a stereoscopic Torah. We see the Torah through two eyes, not just one eye. We don't just look at what is written. We look at what God revealed orally as well. As an example, if you read the text of the Bible, the Bible says an eye for an eye. An eye for an eye, which means very clearly, if someone pokes out your eye, then they have to be taken to court and the court takes out their eye. Or an arm for an arm. If someone rips off your arm with their power mower, whatever you call those things, power tool, the court's gonna take off their arm. That's what the Bible says. There's no two ways around it. There's no if, ands, and buts. Jews never did that because God told us, after writing down in the text of the Bible an eye for an eye, God revealed to us orally, you don't actually do that. You have to pay monetary compensation. You've gotta pay for the doctor bills. You have to pay for their unemployment. You have to pay for the pain they went through. You have to pay for their embarrassment. You have to pay for the value of the limb. You have to pay for five different monetary forms of compensation. Why? So there are three reasons, at least three. Number one, to take out someone's eye would be barbaric. Barbaric that you're gonna take out someone's eye because they took out someone else's eye. Number two, poking out someone's eye does not help the victim at all. If you come to court and someone poked out your eye, what good is it to you for the court to poke out that person's eye? And number three, if it did poke out someone's eye and eye for an eye, it would not be fair. Why wouldn't it be fair? Because let's say the attacker only had one eye to begin with. So here you have a one-eyed attacker and he goes out and pokes out someone's eye and the court's now gonna poke out the one remaining eye of the attacker. The person that was wounded has one eye. You can see plenty with one eye. If you poke out the one remaining eye of the attacker, he's got no eyes left. Or let's imagine that the attacker was a pilot or a pianist or a surgeon and the victim was an opera singer. The opera singer can still sing with one eye. The person is not gonna be able to do surgery or fly a plane with only one eye. So eye for an eye is not fair. It doesn't help the victim, it's barbaric. So the question's very obvious. So if God's intention all along was that the court imposes a financial penalty on someone that hurt someone else, why didn't the Bible just say that? Why didn't the Torah itself just say? If you poke out someone's eye, you gotta pay money. A check for an eye. You know why the Bible didn't say that? Because that would be crass. It would be crass to say, sure, if you rip up someone's arm, just write a check. Even Stephen. The truth is that if you do something as heinous, as disgusting, as evil, as taking out someone's eye, the Bible's trying to say to you, you know what, you deserve really a lot worse in having just to write a check. On some cosmic level, you have to realize that what you did is so evil, you deserve to have your eye taken out. So the Bible says an eye for an eye. However, it would be barbaric. It would not be fair. It wouldn't help the victim. So the oral Torah says you pay money. So we have the two sources of our information. The written Torah and eye for an eye is telling us that you have to understand how wicked your behavior was. The oral Torah mediates that by saying, but the practical thing that we're gonna do is make you pay money. Christianity totally disregards the entire oral Torah. Finally, between Judaism and Christianity, each religion believes that the other does not comprehend the true meaning of the Bible. It's a very easy to pick out difference. Christians insist that Jews read the Bible and don't see what it actually teaches. We don't see Jesus in the Bible. We don't see the basic doctrines of Christianity in the Bible. That's what they say. They're right. And Jews would say to the Christians, you are seeing a lot of things in the Bible that are not there. Judaism would say that what you're doing is you're reading the Jewish Bible with Jesus colored glasses. You're reading the Bible with an agenda. You're approaching the Jewish Bible with a preconceived idea. All the ideas that they receive from the New Testament, they go back and that becomes the filter through which they read the Jewish Bible. And what they end up doing, unfortunately, is either mistranslating the Jewish Bible, distorting it, taking passages out of context, but misreading the Jewish Bible where they end up seeing things that are not there. And I would say that this can be resolved very easily. There are many Christian scholars who even though they're Christians, try very hard to read the Bible without those Jesus glasses on. They try to read the Bible for what it just simply says. And when you read the commentaries of many of these Christian scholars, they tend to say that the Jewish interpretation is correct. That Isaiah was not speaking about a virgin birth Messiah in chapter seven. And all of the things in which Jews and Christians fight about, the reality is that the majority of Christian scholars that are not reading the Bible through Jesus glasses, but are trying to simply deal with what the text says, end up usually agreeing with the Jewish point of view.