5 Rabbis Explain Jesus by Evan Moffic

For every complex question, as H.L. Mencken once put, there is usually an answer that is “clear, simple and wrong.”

His observation rings true when it comes to a question I get at least once a week. What do Jews believe about Jesus?Jews as a group rarely agree on matters of Jewish belief. How could we agree on the essence of another?

Yet, we ignore the question at our own peril.

Learning About Jesus Means Learning About Judaism

What lies behind it is a yearning for a deeper faith and understanding between Christians and Jews. For Christians a better understanding of Judaism leads to a better understanding of Jesus. For Jews it leads to a deeper appreciation of the world’s largest faith.

While scholars and historians can give us a critical and detailed picture of the first-century Jewish life in which Jesus lived and taught, rabbis can give us a better picture of his spirituality. What made his message resonate for Jews of the time and ultimately lead to the birth of a new religion?

Fortunately, over the last 100 years many rabbis have explored this issue, and the number of relevant books keeps growing. Here are five intriguing points of view.

For more from Evan Moffic, visit his blog.

The Penultimate Messiah

Rabbi Byron Sherwin places Jesus in the theological category of a precursor to the ultimate messiah. He serves a similar role as John the Baptist does for Christianity.

As Professor Shaul Magid puts it, “Yitz Greenberg and Byron Sherwin base their writings on Jesus on a more nuanced view of ‘the messiah’ in Judaism that distinguishes between a penultimate and ultimate messianic figure, each serving a crucial role in the messianic process.”

In other words, Jesus emerged out the yearning of first-century Jews for a national and spiritual savior, and his spiritual significance will be fulfilled in the future messianic period.

For Christians this event will be the second coming. For Jews it will be the “first coming,” which had been foreshadowed by Jesus. (This terminology of “first coming” is my language, and is not used by Greenberg or Sherwin. For the sake of brevity, I am summarizing their arguments and leaving out significance nuance that would be appropriate in a scholarly forum. See Zev Garber, ed., The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation, 2011)