Is Jesus Also the Jew's Messiah?

Gary: Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Bend, Oregon, Bulletin, dated December 2, 2000. “Many liberal scholars, the sort who don't feel bound by what the Bible reports, think Jesus never saw Himself as the Jewish Messiah, nor did His original disciples. They think later Christians simply made this up.

“These scholars argue that the gospel’s concept of a Messiah would have been totally alien to Jews in that era. Christianity was far different from Judaism. Rudolph Bultmann, a supremely influential German scholar, defined the split in 1948: ‘The idea of a suffering, dying, and rising Messiah, or Son of Man, was unknown in Judaism.’

“Conservative Christians disagree, contending there’s no reason Jesus couldn’t have been a different Messiah from the one Jews expected. Another tack is taken by the latest entrant into the debate, Israel Noel, who chairs the Bible Department at Israel’s Hebrew University. Presumably, Noel doesn’t believe in Jesus’s Messiahship himself, because he’s Jewish. He treats this as an issue of historical scholarship. Noel’s ‘The Messiah before Jesus,’ University of California Press, contends that Jesus did regard himself as the Messiah. And for that reason, expected to be rejected, killed, and resurrected. Why conclude that? Quoting, ‘This is precisely what was expected to have happen to a Messianic leader who had lived one generation before Jesus.’ This intriguing claim is based on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2000-year-old Jewish manuscripts that were rediscovered in the Judean desert a half-century ago.

“Noel’s work is considered ‘very significant,’ by no less than Emanuel Tov, head of the official Dead Sea Scrolls team. Noel draws his theory from two odd related hymns that appear in partially damaged condition on the ‘Thanksgiving Scroll.’ The first hymn, written in the first person, takes biblical wording the Old Testament applies to God and uses it to glorify the author. The author also views himself in terms of the ‘suffering servant’ in Isaiah 53, just as Christians saw Jesus.

“That was quite unlike the political liberator Messiah anticipated by other Jews. ‘Until that point,’ Noel says, ‘the combination of divine status and suffering in this hymn is unknown in Jewish literature.’”

Tom: Dave, we’ve said on programs before that if you took Isaiah 53 (just to talk about one aspect of this article), and you wrote it out and gave it to a Jewish friend)…

Dave: You have to put it on a piece of paper so they don’t know where it came from.

Tom: Right. And asked them who these verses…who they were talking about, most of them would say, “Oh, this is Jesus.” But this was written by Isaiah.

Dave: Right.

Tom: Their prophet.

Dave: Tom, I get a bit impatient with these scholars, because it’s so absurd. They say this was unknown in Jewish literature? Is the Bible Jewish literature? Is the Bible God’s Word? Who cares about what Jewish scholars, or Jewish philosophers, or whoever, wrote? Let’s go back to the Bible, and the Bible makes it very clear. You can’t deny…in Isaiah:9:6-7 [6] For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. [7] Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
See All..., for example: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. The government will be upon His shoulders. Of His kingdom and peace there will be no end.” That’s the Messiah! “His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, the Everlasting Father…” That’s as clear as you could make it! The Messiah has to be God!

And that the Messiah would be crucified, that He would suffer, that He would die for the sins of the world, that He would be rejected by His own people—it’s stated over and over and over! So what is all this talk about, “Oh, it was unknown,” and “the Jews were looking for a political leader.” Of course, they were! But because…that’s what they were looking for and the corruption of their own hearts.... These are the people…now, this is not anti-Semitism. This is what the Jewish prophets said! This is what Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all of them, said: “You’ve hated those that God has sent to you. You’ve rejected the prophets. You’ve been disobedient, rebellious.” God writes to His people, Psalm 81: “All the day long I held out My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people. I would have fed you with the finest of wheat. With honey out of the rock I would have satisfied you. My people would have none of Me!” Isaiah chapter 1 begins: “I’ve brought forth children. They’ve rebelled against me. The ox knows his owner, the ass knows his master’s crib. My people don’t know. Rebellious people, away with your sacrifice,” and so forth.

I don’t know what the problem is! It’s all laid out in the Bible, and now we’re going to search around the Dead Sea Scrolls. We’re going to find some fragments of some old hymn that somebody wrote, and we’re going to come up with some amazing conclusions from this…. I’m sorry! Tom, I’m just getting angrier and angrier! Because these are the people who have the ear of people out there. We look up to them, they’ve got PhDs, they study, they’re supposedly scholars and so forth…. Let’s get back to the Bible! That’s what this program is all about: Search the Scriptures Daily. I’m sorry, Tom, I blew up a little bit. You can calm us…calm me down now, will ya?

Tom:  No, this is a great concern because we have a…look, some people get rankled when you talk about the Jews being God’s chosen people—chosen to bring into the world His Messiah! For them! For us! And we’re the blessing. We’re the branch grafted in! We have what we have in Christ because of God setting apart these people. So they….

Dave: This whole article was about they wouldn’t know Him. Would Jesus know that He was the Messiah? He clearly said, over and over, and now they’re going to say, “Well, we don’t know what He really said.” Yes, we do! We have eyewitness accounts, and I can prove it. We don’t have time. We’re out of time on this segment, but for these people to make the statements that they make, they have no evidence for they’re saying, but we have all the evidence in the Bible! Let’s get back to the Bible. And I resent that they are the ones that are pushing this out. The media gives them time, and so forth. It’s not right, but it’s part of Satan’s strategy in this world.