MESSIANIC VERSES IN TANACH
| Various Topics | Textual Analyses |
Every third Jew in cyberspace has a counter missionary page, so why add another one? Because the more you explain something, the more people will understand it. This page shows Jews who are wrestling with their spirituality how to look at the Tanach (Hebrew scriptures) on its own terms, instead of trying to force it into a prediction of Jesus or a Christ type of messiah.
Missionaries claim that "Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies from the Old Testament." The claims depend on verses that are either poorly translated, taken out of context, or both. (Actually, most of the claims in the list of 300 are just fanciful.) Looking at the verse in context -- which, more often than not, just means looking at an entire chapter instead of an individual verse -- and examining the translation more carefully is usually enough to show what the verse is actually about. Some of the verses do indeed refer to Messiah, but not to Jesus.
This site discusses details of sixteen of these verses (some of which are still under construction). If your favorite verse is not included, send me e-mail and I'll put it in. The discussions can't be complete because these arguments can go on forever. If you think I have omitted an important point, tell me, and, if I agree, I'll put it in. Also, e-mail me if you find any mistakes in the quotations, translations, or logic.
NOTE: you may think you have found a mistake, but if I don't agree, your conviction doesn't obligate me. This sounds obvious, but at least one pushy missionary got mad that I didn't accept his words as -- ahem -- "gospel".
A personal note: I've been countering Christian missionary claims for almost three decades. I wasn't raised in an orthodox family. While Jewish identity was a matter of pride for us, the religious aspect was not important. After my bar mitzvah, the cultural aspect likewise became for me unimportant.
Twenty years later, my five year old son, influenced by neighbors, decided that he was Christian. That was an eye-opener. About then, a friend introduced me to Jewish spirituality, something Hebrew school had never taught me. I started reading voraciously. It was as if I had spent my whole life on a shabby porch, looking with envy at beautiful buildings all around, without realizing that I had only to walk through a door in the porch to find my own building at least as glorious as any other. For whatever reason, my teachers had never shown me that door.
My reading was also stimulated by a missionary who kept posing problems I couldn't answer from a Jewish viewpoint. From a scientific viewpoint, I could trash him, but, before I started the reading, I couldn't respond to him as a Jew. That bothered me.
With what I learned, I was able to teach my son who he was and also give the missionary Jewish answers. The more I read, the more I realized the extent to which Christian missionaries will go to convert us to Christianity.
Since then, I've been actively combating Christian distortions of the Hebrew Scriptures. This website seems to be effective in that goal. Missionaries complain bitterly about these pages, but can't answer the basic challenge - to show where the Hebrew Scriptures mention Jesus or a Christ-type messiah.
I welcome suggestions for new topics corrections of errors, or anything else. Your input is aways welcome.
This page is NOT intended to convert Christians away from their religion. Though some Jews disagree, I think Christianity is fine for Christians. It is not fine for Jews -- the Bible clearly says that G-d wants different things from different peoples. My hope for missionizing Christians who read this page is for them to understand some of these differences, and to learn that there are more interpretations of the Tanach than they have been taught, so they need not try to convert Jews. E-mail me if I'm wrong about what Christians believe -- but remember that Christians often disagree among themselves. Don't tell me that someone else's belief is not "really Christian" -- instead, tell that someone.
The Christian Bible is only occasionally referred to. Other countermissionary links such as the Jews for Judaism library and Drazin's "Their Hollow Inheritance" discuss the so called "New Testament" and Christianity in more detail. One particularly detailed site is "1001 Errors in the Christian Bible" by Joe Wallacks (which, sadly, does not have an index -- nag Joe to put one in.) Most of these sources are less tolerant of Christianity than I am.
A note on translation: The Romans said that the translator is a traitor. In truth, all translations are compromises -- some better, and some worse. No translation can perfectly reproduce the original. For one, words shift their meanings from one place to another. Also, words have many meanings, but these vary from one language to another. For a graphic example, the word "calba" in Hebrew literally means bitch (female dog), but the Hebrew "calba" rarely has the other bitchy meanings of the English word.
If you disagree with my translations (mostly derived from the A.J. Rosenberg translation), tell me why. If you are unsure about anything on this page, look it up yourself or ask a recognized expert (though if your expert is committed in his or her religious belief, you'll know beforehand what he or she will say.).
For Christian translations, I usually quote the King James Version (KJV) of the Hebrew Scriptures because it is quite popular, and because most missionaries accept it as valid. Bible Gateway has other English translations and versions in other languages. Bible Gateway doesn't have the original Hebrew but this Bilingual Tanach does -- with nikud, and with the 1917 Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation.
I'm going to start a page of really foolish points missionaries make. Here is the first entry: "Yes, I know the word salvation has a "heth" on the end but whether you say yud-shin-vuv-eyin* or yud-shin-vuv-eyin-hay; they sound the same when spoken, Yeshua." (My thanks to Carlos Ray, who gives me permission to use his name.) If you have any other goodies like this, send them. The only rule is that it has to be a direct quote from a missionary and it has to be in reasonable context.
Copyright 2001. This means only that you should give me credit by including my E-mail (fiddlerzvi@att.net) and webpage (http://home.att.net/~fiddlerzvi/) address and this copyright notice if you share this page with anyone. Revised 11/03
* The original post has the Hebrew letters rendered in a uni-code system that is supposed to show the actual letters on all platforms, but which is very bulky.
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