 I would like to share some of the thoughts that I had while I was reading Dr. Brown's first volume of answering Jewish objections. On page XX-20 of the introduction, Dr. Brown tells us his follows, and I will read, Sadly enough, the more religious a Jewish person is and the more time that person spent learning in the Yeshiva, which he explains as a school for traditional Jewish studies, the more biased and distorted that person's views will be concerning who Jesus is, what he taught, and how he and his followers lived. So in other words, Dr. Brown is concerned that if we study in Yeshiva, we will, in a Jewish school which teaches Jewish religion, Judaism, we will get a biased view about Jesus. I have been studying in Yeshiva for many years. All the years that I studied in Yeshiva, I never heard one formal lecture about Jesus or about Christianity. Open a New Testament and see how much there is in that book about Judaism. How much the authors of the New Testament of the Christian scriptures found the need to describe Jews and Judaism to their audience, to their readers. Until today, the distorted view of Jews and Judaism espoused, taught by the authors of the Christian scriptures, distort the view of Western civilization about Jews and Judaism. Let me just put this in a little bit of perspective. The early community of the followers of Jesus, they faced a problem. Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah proclaimed by the prophets of Judaism, and the vast majority of Jews didn't accept that claim, didn't accept the claim that Jesus was that Messiah. Now, there are technically three ways that they could have responded to that issue, to the fact that the Jewish community did not accept their claims. A, they could have tried to articulate their arguments, understanding why it is that the Jewish community does not accept the claims, interacted with the Jewish community respectfully and spoken to them, well, is it because you don't accept this interpretation of Scripture? Well, let's read it. Maybe this is the correct interpretation of Scripture, etc. They could have, in other words, engaged in respectful dialogue. Option number one. Option number two. Ignore. Well, if the Jews don't accept Jesus, that's their problem. Let me go on with my life and let them take care of their own life. That would have been option number two. But history tells us that they did not choose option number one and they did not choose option number two. They chose option number three. And you don't have to trust me. Just open the books of the Christian Scripture. Open the book of John. The book of John tells us that Jesus, the author of John puts these arguments into Jesus's mouth, and Jesus tells us that the reason people don't accept them is because they're children of darkness, because they're children of the devil. This is presented as the epitome of virtue. And if you don't accept them, that means you are a liar. You're different than another person. In other words, what the authors of the Christian Scriptures do is they tell their following, you don't have to consider the Jewish argument which rejects Jesus because it's emanating from a heart that hates the truth. It's emanating from a heart that loves lies. So in other words, you're not interacting with a serious argument. You're not interacting with an argument that deserves a response. And that is the teaching of the Christian Scriptures concerning the rejection of Jesus. So when Dr. Brown tells us that he's worried about getting a biased view of Jesus from the Yeshiva, I would ask him to worry a little bit more about the biased view of Judaism and Yeshivas that is coming out of the Christian Scriptures. Let me move to another point in Dr. Brown's first volume. In 1.8, if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, why don't more Jews believe in him? So Dr. Brown, at this point he's not going through the major Jewish objections, he's just trying to give us, assuming that Jesus is the Messiah, why wouldn't Jews believe in him? So he gives us various reasons why he believes that Jews wouldn't believe in Jesus. Throughout history, why Jews don't believe in Jesus? Now again, I'm not expecting him in this objection to give us all the real reasons why Jews don't believe in Jesus because that's what he's going to be addressing throughout his book. But there's one point which the fact that it's absent from this discussion is so conspicuous and it warps the discussion to such a heavy degree. And let me illustrate this with a parable. Imagine you have two schools, two universities, great universities, each one of them has many, many students. Let's call one of them school X, one of them school Y. Both of these schools teach medicine, these are schools of medicine. They have two completely different theories on the subject of medicine. The adherents, the followers, the students of school X believe that the adherents, the followers, the students of school Y are practicing murder and not medicine. And that's exactly what the students in school Y believe about the students in school X. And this argument between school X and school Y is going on for years and years. And they argue with each other every once in a while, they yell at each other, they write articles disparaging and trying to disprove the theories and the practices of the other school. One day, one day the professors in school X come into the lecture hall and they say, our students, dear students, we made a terrible mistake. You know, that organ, that heart that's in the middle of a person's body, like in the middle of his chest, that's pumping blood, we always used to think it was useless, it wasn't an important part of the human anatomy. And now we realize that it was foundational and critical and it's a very important part of the human anatomy. And we made this mistake. But from now on, we're going to be going forward, recognizing that the heart is foundational and critical and important and that's how we're going to go on. By the way, I didn't tell you that school Y for years and years has been preaching that the heart is a very important part of the human anatomy. Now, if someone were to tell you why is it, now we're talking about a few years later after school X already accepted that the heart is a, you know, a serious part of your anatomy. Someone's going to ask you a question. Why is it that the followers of school Y, the students of school Y don't accept the theory of school X? Isn't the theory of school X so obviously real? And they'll give you a list of reasons, whatever the reasons might be. And at no point does he mention that for years school X was preaching a terrible mistake, a mistake which is unimaginable. What do I mean with this parable? Very simple. The most important word in the Jewish Bible after the word God. What is the most important word in the Jewish Bible? The most important word in the Jewish Bible after the word God is the word Israel. For years and years school X, the church has been teaching that the church replaced Israel. Yes, at some point in time, slowly but surely, the church recognized that mistake. But if we're having a discussion, why is it that the followers of school Y, the Jewish people, cannot accept, cannot take the claims of the church seriously, wouldn't it be appropriate to put that in the discussion, to explain to us that the followers of school X, the followers of Jesus made such a terrible mistake about the Bible? And again, Dr. Brown tells us the most important question is, what does the Bible teach? How were the Jews supposed to accept Christianity if accepting Jesus meant rejecting God's firstborn son, Israel? Exodus 422, Israel is God's firstborn son. In Jeremiah chapter 30, Ephraim, the tribe of Joseph, Israel is represented by the tribe of Joseph is God's firstborn son. So accepting Christianity meant rejecting Israel. That was the interpretation. That was basically the only known interpretation of Christianity. And to keep that out of the discussion is warping, is presenting a distorted picture of reality.