Hi, everyone:

Recently, I looked up on the internet (out of curiosity), “Why Jews don’t believe in Jesus”, only to find out that they CLAIM that the NEW TESTAMENT has been FALSELY INTERPRETED. Well, seeing as they speak Hebrew, and since the original texts were ALL in Hebrew, I got to thinking, how can they ALL be wrong??? I mean, none of the Christians I've ever met at school or church speak Hebrew. What IS IT that they’re TALKING ABOUT that is MISINTERPRETED??? I feel have to find this out -- so that I can be VERY secure in my faith in Jesus -- but I don’t know how to get the answers I need! If I GO to a Rabbi, for example, well, he is already 'locked into the faith', so he will defend it and probably confuse me. And if I go to someone else, it’s going to HAVE to be someone very educated who KNOWS what those original Hebrew texts say! Does anybody know??? I’m so confused. Here is the very article that is confusing to me. They also (the Jewish people) claim that Jesus has not/is not fulfilling His prophecies. Now it’s not that I do not believe in Jesus, but WHAT are they talking about, they who can READ the more original texts!?!? I think it’s important to KNOW…and I never even knew this about the Jewish people before...that they are saying the Bible is misinterpreted...I've just learned this and it's confusing to me.

Here is the article I read, explaining WHY the Jewish faith does not accept Jesus as Messiah:

*****I am not allowed to have the link here, so please type in a Google Search the following:
"why don't Jews believe in Jesus", and the article is the VERY FIRST SEARCH RESULT.

Can anyone please explain WHAT they are talking about?--WHAT it is that they CLAIM is misinterpreted in the New Testament? It would be best if whomever answers can meet one of the following 'conditions':

* has had extensive BIBLE STUDY;
* can read HEBREW;
* KNOWS what the ORIGINAL (as original as the Jewish people have access to) TEXTS actually do say;
* knows -- through some means (?) -- what the Jewish people claim is being MISINTERPRETED.

I really need clarification on this, and any insight into why the Jewish people are claiming misinterpretation would be greatly appreciated! This ONLY bothers me because they speak the ORIGINAL language, and I do not, so I want to know what it IS that makes a whole race of people NOT believe in Jesus! If I don't know, it will bother me, and I want my faith in Jesus to remain VERY SECURE (in fact, I need it to grow...and I cannot have doubts!).

Thank you so much!

Best Wishes & God Bless~

I can probably answer some of your questions. I have 3 out of 4 of your qualifications. The one I don't have is the ability to speak Hebrew. However, you really do not have to since the English translation of the bible is pretty accurate.

First of all, a clarification- the old and new testaments are from Greek translations not Hebrew (Septuagint for the old testament). Most Hebrew manuscripts were destroyed. Some parchments like Dead sea scrolls were compared to the translation (from Greek) and overall, the translators did a fine job.

So there is not a problem with the translations (there are some but very minor). God did preserve the Scriptures.

Your assumption is wrong! The Jews did not misinterpret the bible. Remember that the first Christians were mostly Jews. All the epistles and prophecies in the new testament ( revelation) were written to the Church (better translation: Messianic Jews) who were mostly Jews. The Jews rejected Yeshua (Jesus) because of sin. ( the same way a non believer rejects Christ). Israel as a nation, sinned against God and God hardened their hearts.

But even in this times, there are Jews who are saved. There are at least 15,000 messianic Jews ( and the number is growing rapidly) out there. These are Jews who have accepted Yeshua as their personal Lord. I attend a Messianic Jewish congregation ( I am a Gentile) and I see a great movement ...a great awakening about to take place to fulfill Isaiah's prophecy that "ALL ISRAEL shall be saved"!

There was always a Jewish remnant. I am looking forward to the great awakening....it is starting to happen just as prophesied.

Shalom...I hope this was helpful...

There are two classes of issues as to why Jews do not and cannot (if they are observant Jews) convert to Christianity. I am aware that Peter had a large following of christian Jews that numbered in the thousands, but these people were not pauline antinomian gentile christians, and this also explains why peter was successful at garnering jewish followers, while Paul failed utterably with the jews according to his own account. So for the rest of the essay, "christian" will referr to pauline christianity , or what is known as mainstream Christianity today.
The issues are divided into OT (old testament) issues and NT (new testament) issues. To begin, the first and most significant issues are the issues that Christianity has when juxtaposed with what the OT says and teaches, and its motifs. Christianity includes several teachings that contradict the OT. In the OT the Bible warns agains false teachers that will attempt to lead Jews against following God's commandments, and that these false prophets may even perform miracles to convince many. Then later, a man named Paul shows up and tells Jews that they should not follow God's commands anymore (galations) and that he himself has abandoned the Law. In Judaism, such a person is a classic false prophet and is the end of discussion, but for the sake of argument, we will bite and proceed further.
Issues with Jesus godship and messiaship. Observant Jews cannot worship Jesus as God by the fact that he is a human and is thus easillly not God. There is a comical misunderstanding in Christianity that Christ means "God" or something similar. When I left Christianity to Judaism, I was speaking with a member of my old church and in the discussion. Told her "I don't believe Jesus is God" and she replied "you don't believe he is Christ?". Contrary to popular Christian belied, Christ doesn't mean divine, god ar anything remotely similar. christ is simply the Greek word for the Hebrew "messiah", of which there were many and were common. Even now, Christians reading this are probably grumbling at the idea of there being several christs in the bible, but it's true. Of course one would not know this by reading a christian bible. Christian bibles use trickery to hide discrepancies and I can easily demonstrate this right now. A classic example is in the usage of the word christ itself. Notice the word "christ" only appears in reference to Jesus, even though there are several christs in the bible. When other people are called christs, they are translated as "anointed". Let us look at one example, as one is all I need to demonstrate this. In Isaiah 45, we find a verse talking about Cyrus the Great, in which he is called "Christ". A Christian bible will translate this word as " anointed". Now, look in any lexicon, or in the Greek Septuagint, and you will see that the word used in that word is christou, or Christ. This is probably the same reason that "Joshua" is translated as "Joshua" and "Jesus" as "Jesus" even though they are exactly the same name. The Christian translators want to make the name Jesus seem special, and the term christ as special or divine. Aside from the fact that Jews cannot worship Jesus since he is not God, but a human, even if Christianity did not claim Jesus was divine, they would still not acknowledge him as messiah (anointed) or Christ (anointed), especially if we are discussing the final messiah that is prophesied of. Jesus cannot be received as the messiah that brought world peace, established Israel's sovereignty, brought universal knowledge of God to the entire world or ruled as king by the fact that he did neither of these things, and the things he DID do were either not prophecies or were things that anyone can do, such as "ride a donkey" or in Matthew "ride 2 donkeys at once". The prophesies in the OT about the messiah describe the things that will happen during this period. The OT describes world peace, universal knowledge of God, Israel becoming sovereign, lost tribes of Israel being regathered, longevity of lifespan for all inhabitants of earth, and the messiah ruling as king. Jesus fulfilled neither of these and that is why Christians invented the "second coming" where he is claimed to fulfill what he was supposed to from the beginning but didn't. Also, the things he did "fulfill" aren't even prophesies or are easy things that prove nothing, for example the "prophesy" of Jesus living in Egypt in his infancy is not a prophecy at all. Look at what mathew writes and what the OT ACTUALLY says. Mathew 2:15 "He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON." Now let's look at what the verse hat mathew is quoting actually says, Hosea 11:1 " When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son." Notice that the verse is clearly talking about Israel, awakes form the fact that it is not a prophecy at all, but talking about what had already happened. Also, notice that mathew cuts the first part out. This is just one example of many, of Jesus "fulfilling" prophecies that were never prophecies at all, sometimes the quotes used by the NT don't even exist in the OT. This coupled with the fact that Jesus did not fulfill any of the prophesies the bible DOES mention, does not bode well with Jews. It would be like me telling people that my friend is the second coming of Jesus, would Christians here believe me? They will ask things like " then why isn't he doing what the bible says he would be doing?" and I reply " oh, he will do that in his THIRD coming" , it would not fly. The ridiculousness of my claim would only be compounded if I added "oh, and he's also God incarnate", to which, when evidence is cited against the fact, I can just claim as chrsitians do "oh, that? That is just his HUMAN side that is exhibiting that evidence against him being God". Also, according to the OT, when the med swish arrives, the whole world will known and there will be no debate about it. this has obviously not happened yet and neither have the other prophecies. Also, the cool things he did like "resurrect" are never even mentioned in the OT.
The NT has also sabotaged Jesus' chance at being messiah. In trying to make Jesus sound so cool, the NT accidentally made him TOO cool and made him over-qualified to be the messiah. For example, when trying to show what a cool and kingly lineage Jesus had, they made a lineage (or two actually, that don't even match up even though they both end with his "father" Joseph) that disqualified him from being messiah. The linages, just like every other prooftext of Jesus godship or messiahship, bring with them several more issues and problems. First, neither lineage is good. One lineage fails to go through Solomon (a requirement for the messiah) and goes through Nathan for some reason. The other lineage goes through Jeconiah, who God had sworn would never have any defendant if his serve as king. Here is the genealogy that correctly goes through Solomon but incorrectly through Jeconiah. Matthew 1 "      David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah. 7Solomon was the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa. 8Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah. 9Uzziah was the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. 10Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, and Amon the father of Josiah. 11Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon."

      12After the deportation to Babylon: Jeconiah became the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. 13Zerubbabel was the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor. 14Azor was the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud. 15Eliud was the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob. 16Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.", and now, let's look at what God said about Jeconiah in the OT.
" 28Is this man Jeconiah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not?

29O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD.

30Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah." Jer 22.

This would actually explain why Jesus did not act as king, nor try to become king. Since the messiah will be king, Jesus is also disqualified form being messiah, by being disqualified form being king.
The worst part, is that this is just a small portion of reasons why observant Jews cannot become Christian. I can literally write for hours and hours on the topic. All these only deal with the issue of messiaship. I can go for months on all the other issues with Christianity, mainly dealing with Paul.

*please excuse the typos and bad auto-corrects, I typed on an iPad.

The New Testament was written in Greek, not Hebrew. All the early church fathers wrote in Greek. Jesus, His Apostles, and the authors of the New Testament all quoted from a Greek (the LXX) version of the Old Testament. The First Century church was solidly Greek in its language. Only a couple of times in the Bible did Jesus speak something other than Greek.

Why do you not know this? Why do you resist believing it (as I'm sure you do)?

Jews don't claim the New Testament is misinterpreted. They simply claim the the New Testament is false. They also don't believe the Old Testament. They neither accept the Christ foretold by the Old Testament nor do they follow the pre-Christ teachings of the Old Testament. Many of them will tell you that they don't even believe in God. Maybe you meant to say Jews claim Christians misinterpret the Old Testament?



Around the end of the first millennium, the Jews made a concerted effort to destroy all earlier Hebrew copies of the Old Testament. So, other than a few fragments that the Jews couldn't find (the Dead Sea Scrolls), we have no copies of the original Hebrew Old Testament. The Church didn't use the Hebrew text so the Church didn't have any copies to protect from the Jews. Modern English translators use a Hebrew text was produced by Jews near the end of the first millennium, and the Jews changed every word by selecting vowels, as well as other changes. Christians should rely heavily on Greek and even Latin translations of the Hebrew texts that predate the changes Jews made. The Church, from the time of Christ to just before the KJV was produced, didn't use a Hebrew version Old Testament.

Why do you not know this? Why do you resist believing it (as I'm sure you do)? Because the Church, out of fear of the ungodly, has failed you.

Don't be confused by the Jews. Just disregard their claims. "Don't listen to Jewish myths and the commands of people who have turned away from the truth." - Titus 1:14

Frostbite is right. Don't listen to Jews. However don't listen to Christians either. Don't listen to any stories of magical sky men. The only religion that I think actually has any possible claim to peace and love would be Buddhism.

A Christian by definition is someone who follows the teachings of Jesus. You don't think Jesus taught peace and love?

"Blessed are the peacemakers."
"Love your enemies."

Jews believe that Christians use paganism to worship Jesus which is true. All the customs of Xmas and Easter are taken directly from paganism. They also laugh at the fact that Christians become mathematically challenged when they insist that from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning equals 3 days and 3 nights. Here is what Jesus says about the issue:
Matthew 12:40
New King James Version (NKJV)
40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The Jews know of a certainty that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday and resurrected about sundown on Saturday making 3 days and 3 nights. There were 2 Sabbaths that week, a high sabbath on Thursday and the regular sabbath on Saturday. They laugh at all the pagan practices used by Christians to celebrate "Easter" as well.