1

To your points I would add David's unspoken assumption (or presupposition) of the standard postmodern view of religious faith; namely, that all religious view are fictitious myths we make up to give our lives meaning, and where they conflict with other faiths they should be compromised or simply revised.

2

Whether you want to call Jesus the Son of God or the Logos of the Living Father, he came to fullfill the prophecy set forth in scripture. According to Jewish scripture, he came for exactly that purpose.

The gospels never put the blame on the Jewish people. I have never read a single gospel, orthodox or gnostic, that blames the Jewish people for anything other than carrying out God's will that Jesus should perform his ministry and then die on the cross for our sins and to give us a new path to God.

IMO it's just part of an attempt by a lot of Jewish people to continue playing the victim card. Most American Jews have no more connection to the Holocaust than the average black in America has any direct connection to slavery. While some blacks are victims of African slavery, and some Jews are Holocaust survivors, the majority of both domestic groups have never been touched by either.

I would highly recommend that anyone who wants a good perspective on the dangerous of this kind of incessant victimhood seeking to watch American History X. It's a very good expose of sorts on how, when two sides feel like they're the victims of each other, that real problems can occur. In AHX it's 95% black versus white in LA, but there is a bit of tension between Jews and Gentiles too.

Besides, if the NT is anti-semetic then what does that make the OT? The Jewish attitude, that Jews are the chosen people of God, if the Gospels are all false could easily be interpretted as a "master race" sentiment.

3

There is nothing in the Gospels that suggest the Jews were saddled with the special requirement that they abandon Judaism.

This is off the top of my head, but maybe the beliefs and practices of Messianic Jews could be used to point out to David Adesnik that he is factually mistaken that Jews must abandon Judaism to become Christian. Unfortunately, I don't know much about Messianic Jews. The first web site that pops up in Google is Jews for Jesus.

Here's a couple of interesting excerpts from one of their frequently asked questions, Why do many Jews for Jesus continue to celebrate the Jewish holidays?

Many Jewish believers in Jesus celebrate scriptural holidays and enjoy certain other Jewish traditions, even enriching them with the added knowledge and symbolism of our Messiah Y'shua. For example, besides enjoying the Jewish holidays, many of us celebrate our young people's passage into maturity with messianic bar or bat mitzvot. In doing these things we are not rejecting God's grace in Christ, nor are we trying to gain merit by observing the Law. Our purpose is to preserve and transmit our cultural heritage to our children.

...

Under the New Covenant, we all have a Holy Spirit-governed liberty and a God-sensitized conscience, whereby one believer might choose to accept more or less of a burden to follow certain holidays or customs than another. Those observances are purely subjective and voluntary, and never to be considered ways of gaining merit with God. The Holy Spirit gives us the liberty to maintain our heritage and culture so long as the traditions and observances do not obscure the gospel and we realize that the only way of salvation is through grace, by faith in the atoning work of Y'shua.

4

Well, what about the two sermons of Peter in Acts 2 and 3 where he specifically condemns the 'men of Israel' for rejecting Jesus and delivering Him to the Romans? Esp. in Acts 2-

22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain...

When they ask what their response should be to this, Peter says "Repent and be baptized." I know Acts isn't one of the Gospels, unless you count it as Luke part 2.

5

Hey Matt,

How does that differ from every other call to "repent and be baptized?"

6

Jesus aks all other faiths to give up their religions and to follow him. In a sense this guy is right. Jesus wants Jews to give up their faith and follow his Gospel. Of course he's also asking the same thing of Muslims, Hindu's, Buddhists, Democrats, etc....

7

Sean,

And if Jesus were alive today.... "For verily I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to do an Irish jib in the nucleus of a hydrogen atom than it is for a Democrat or Republican to enter the Kingdom of God."

8

Matt Powell;

Peter doesn't come close to saying what you say he said. I find it ironic you can quote his very words after so clearly miscontruing them. His audience was 1) composed of men of Israel, and 2) composed of men who bore some guilt in the matter. These are simple facts and he mentioned both of them. Nowhere does he do what you accuse him of doing, which is to attribute the second fact to the first. No, they bore that guilt because of what they, as individuals, did or failed to do. He could have easily addressed a Roman audience equally guilty.

9

Sean,

Of course he's also asking the same thing of Muslims, Hindu's, Buddhists,....

But (as I'm sure you'll agree) there's no special blame for Jews; they don't have to "overcome the burden of guilt that the Jewish people took upon itself by sentencing [Jesus] to death" as David Adesnik said they did.

It occurs to me that to the extent that Judaism was different than other religions (such as, say, Buddhism), it was different in a very good way. Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises to Israel. He was the ultimate confirmation that the faith of their ancestors was true. This must be a key that helps many Jews come to Christ.

How could one remain faithful to the Truth of Judaism without following Jesus? As a Jew wrote,

As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world's interest in me is also long dead. It doesn't make any difference now whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we really have been changed into new and different people. May God's mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God.
Galations 6, NLT (Emphasis added)

10

Anyone who undertsnads the faith will know that the Jews were not responsible for Christs death any more (or any less) than the Romans. I don't recall there being a huge outcry from the Italian community for the involvement of the Romans.

Someone who understands the faith, will know the truth with the old hymn:

Who was the guilty? who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.

11

The guilt for Christ's death lies on Adam and Eve - and on all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. It is on you, regardless of your ethnicity - because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Just recall Isaiah - these are our sins we are talking about here. All of us are involved, and all of us rightly deserve a just penalty. Yet:

Surely our sins He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.

The Gospel of Christ is not "fundamentally anti-Semitic" in any sense of the term. It is rather fundamentally opposed to The World - to all that denies the omnipotence of God and the Godhood of Christ - and all the fleeting things that mankind (in our ignorance) values and cherishes. In Christ, we find the fulfillment of the covenant with the chosen people of God - a covenant that in the wake of the cross extends to both the Jew and the Gentile.

12

My point is, Peter both acknowledges that Jesus was delivered "by the determinate cousel and foreknowledge of God" and yet was "slain by wicked hands". Just because we understand that Jesus died by His own choice, for and because of our sins, doesn't mean the individual guilt for the crime doesn't exist.

The men that Peter was addressing were largely not native Israelites, but proselytes. Many would have been there for the crucifixion, but Peter had no way of knowing that all were. Or that all of them participated or agreed with the crucifixion in any kind of direct way. Yet he assigns guilt to them, specifically, as 'men of Israel' for the crucifixion. See v. 36 too- "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." See also Matthew 23, esp. v 33-39. The focus in that passage is on the 'scribes and Pharisees', but because of their complicity in the death of Christ, the deaths of all the prophets are judged on them. v. 36 says, "Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."

See also Romans 10-11, which teaches that Israel is cut off from God because of their rebellion and blindness, and will only be restored when they repent.

None of this contradicts what all the hymns quoted say- I am guilty of the death of Christ, because of my sins. And yes, the Romans were guilty too. But we can, and must, admit more than one cause for the death of Christ, just as Peter does in Acts 2. Guilt is assigned to the Jewish nation over and over for the death of Christ. Stephen's speech in Acts 7 has the same thrust; Paul's sermon in Antioch in Acts 13; etc. And none of this can be used to justify violence or hatred of Jews particulary. Paul refutes that in Romans 11.

13

Matt,

This was just brought to my attention on a radio program I was listening to. In Acts 4:27-28 Peter says:

27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place

The radio broadcaster pointed out that the phrase "gathered together against" has a conspiratorial flavor in the Greek. So, who were the conspirators - Herod (a Jew), Pilate (a Roman), and Gentiles and Jews.

In this case the "individual guilt for the crime" is assigned indiscriminantly to Jews and Gentiles alike. It seems that when Peter is speaking to Jews he wants to press upon them the fact of their guilt in order to bring them to repentance.

I would see the Acts 2 passage as more situation specific. Peter is speaking to Jews in order to bring them to repentance. Since they were the audience at that particular time, he hammers home their guilt to bring conviction. But this does not mean the guilt is not equally shared. When my two boys get into trouble I will discipline them individually. Even though they are both guilty when I am talking to the one I address his sin and not the sin of the other. This doesn't mean the other is not guilty, it only means that is not the issue when dealing with the one.

The Acts 4 passage seems to me to be more of a global, paradigmatic passage. In this, Peter is not speaking to a particular human audience, he is praying to God. Thus, his prayer reflects the God's eye reality of things. Jews and Gentiles share equally in the blame for the death fo Jesus.

So, I think the case is weak in assigning individual guilt to the Jews when these things are taken into consideration. Also, John 10:17-18 are pretty clear on the matter:

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.

No man took the Jesus' life from Him, He laid it down of His own accord. If Jesus is not charging an individual or a community with the crime, how can we?