Jewish Voices on Jesus - Discovery Website

Jewish Voices on Jesus

This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, but he will be a joy to many others. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him.    As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.

Simeon of Jerusalem (1st century BC)
Remark to Mary and Joseph at Jesus’ dedication in the Temple (Luke 2.34-35 NLT)


I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John the Baptist (c. 4 BC - c. 31 AD)
Luke 3.16 NLT


You are the children of those prophets, and you are included in the covenant God promised to your ancestors. For God said to Abraham, ‘Through your descendants all the families on earth will be blessed.’   When God raised up his servant, Jesus, he sent him first to you people of Israel, to bless you by turning each of you back from your sinful ways.

Simon Peter (died c. 67)
Acts 3.25-26 NLT


We all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.

Nicodemus (ben Gurion?) (1 st century AD)
Remark made in a secret visit to Jesus at night (John 3.2 NLT). A wealthy 1 st century Jew named Nicodemus is mentioned in the Talmud.


It’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed .

Caiaphas  (1 st century AD) High Priest in Jerusalem 18-36 AD
John 11.50 NLT


I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.  I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.  I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.  Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Saul of Tarsus (c. AD 5-c. 67) Leading exponent of Christianity
Letter to the Philippians 3.5-8 NLT (c. AD 62)


Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37- c.100) Jewish military leader and historian
Antiquities. xviii.33 (original version as reconstructed by James Dunn in Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans 2003), p. 141.


Domitian Caesar ... was as afraid of the advent of Christ as Herod had been. Domitian asked [Jesus’ nephews] whether they were descended from David, and they admitted it. … When asked about Christ and His Kingdom - what it was like, and where and when it would appear - they explained that it was not of this world or anywhere on earth but angelic and in heaven, and would be established at the end of the world, when He would come in glory to judge the quick and the dead.

Hegesippus (c.110-180) Jewish Christian historian
As recorded by Eusebius in History of the Church, translated G.A. Williamson (London: Penguin 1989) 3.20.


What is the meaning of (Deut. xxi. 23), For a curse of God is he that is hung? [It is like the case of] two brothers, twins, who resembled each other. One ruled over the whole world, the other took to robbery. After a time the one who took to robbery was caught, and they crucified him on a cross. And every one who passed to and fro said, ' It seems that the king is crucified.' Therefore it is said, A curse of God is he that is hung.

Rabbi Meir (2 nd century AD) Jewish sage and contributor to the Mishnah
t. Sanh. 9. 7.
https://archive.org/stream/christianityinta00herfuoft/christianityinta00herfuoft_djvu.txt


[God] beheld that there was a man, son of a woman, who should rise up and seek to make himself God, and to cause the whole world to go astray. Therefore . . . he spoke: Give heed that you go not astray after that man, for it is written, ‘God is not man that he should lie’ (Numbers 23.19), and if he says that he is God he is a liar; and he will deceive and say that he departs and comes again in the end, he says and he shall not perform.

Rabbi Eleazar ha-Kappar (fl. c. 200) Jewish sage and teacher
Yalqut 766 on Numbers 23.7 https://archive.org/stream/christianityinta00herfuoft/christianityinta00herfuoft_djvu.txt


If a man says to you, "I am God," he is a liar; if [he says, "I am] the son of man," in the end people will laugh at him; if [he says], "I will go up to heaven," he says, but he shall not perform it.

Rabbi Abbahu of Caesarea (fl. c. 300) Jewish scholar
j. Ta’an 65b. https://archive.org/stream/christianityinta00herfuoft/christianityinta00herfuoft_djvu.tx t


But the doctrine in which you believe, and which is the foundation of your faith, cannot be accepted by the reason, and nature affords no ground for it, nor have the prophets ever expressed it. Nor can even the miraculous stretch as far as this, as I shall explain with full proofs in the right time and place, that the Creator of Heaven and earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewess and grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards, as you say, he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, cannot tolerate this; and you speak your words entirely in vain, for this is the root of our controversy.

Moses Nachmanides (1194-1207) Jewish scholar and philosopher
Debate with  Pablo Christiani in Barcelona, Spain, 1263 in Vikuach, Maccoby trans., 119-120; based on the Vikuach of Nachmanides edited by Steinschneider.
lt http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2509/inot_ieveryone_loves_raymond.aspx#.Ux5Z5hfitdg


All the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth and that Ishmaelite [Mohammed] who arose after him will only serve to pave the way for the coming of Mashiach and for the improvement of the entire world, [motivating the nations] to serve G-d together, as it is written [Zephaniah 3:9], "I will make the peoples pure of speech so that they will all call upon the Name of G-d and serve Him with one purpose.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) Jewish scholar and philosopher
Laws of Kings (11,4)
lt http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/rambam-messiah.txt


I believe not that any man ever came to that singular height of perfection but Christ, to whom the ordinances of God that lead men to salvation were revealed, not in words or visions, but immediately: so that God manifested himself to the apostles by the mind of Christ, as formerly to Moses by means of a voice in the air. And therefore the voice of Christ may be called, like that which Moses heard, the voice of God. In this sense we may likewise say that the wisdom of God, that is, a wisdom above man’s, took man’s nature in Christ, and that Christ is the way of salvation.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher
Cited in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, (Boston: Adamant Media Corporation 2000), p. 352. See http://nobelists.net.


The Nazarene brought about a double kindness in the world. On the one hand, he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically, as mentioned earlier, and not one of our Sages spoke out more emphatically concerning the immutability of the Torah. And on the other hand, he did much good for the Gentiles … by doing away with idolatry and removing the images from their midst. He obligated them with the Seven Commandments so that they should not be as the beasts of the field. He also bestowed upon them ethical ways, and in this respect he was much more stringent with them than the Torah of Moses, as is well-known.

Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697-1776) German Rabbi and Talmudist
Letter to Polish council 1757 From R. Emden’s letter Seder Olam Rabbah Vezuta.
http://roshpinaproject.com/2011/03/24/rabbi-jacob-emden-on-jewish-believers-in-yeshua/


Nor is it indeed historically true that the small section of the Jewish race which dwelt in Palestine rejected Christ. The reverse is the truth. Had it not been for the Jews of Palestine the good tidings of our Lord would have been unknown for ever to the northern and western races. The first preachers of the gospel were Jews, and none else; the historians of the gospel were Jews, and none else. No one has ever been permitted to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit except a Jew. For nearly a century no one believed in the good tidings except Jews. They nursed the sacred flame of which they were the consecrated and hereditary depositories. … ... Christians may continue to persecute Jews and Jews still persist in disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race?

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) British Prime Minister
Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (London: Colburn & Co. Ltd., 1852), p. 485, 507.
https://archive.org/stream/lordgeorgebenti00disrgoog/lordgeorgebenti00disrgoog_djvu.txt


(Jesus is) the only mortal of whom one can say without exaggeration that his death was more effective than his life. Golgotha, the place of skulls, became to the civilised world a new Sinai.

Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891) Polish Jewish historian
Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956), Vol. 2,, p. 165-66.


In union with Christ, therefore, we turn above all our loving eyes to God, feel the most ardent thankfulness towards Him, sink joyfully on our knees before Him. Then, when by union with Christ a more beautiful sun has risen for us, when we feel all our iniquity but at the same time rejoice over our redemption, we can for the first time love God, who previously appeared to us as an offended ruler but now appears as a forgiving father, as a kindly teacher.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) German philosopher and socialist
‘The Union of Believers With Christ According to John 15: 1-14, Showing its Basis and Essence, its Absolute Necessity, and its Effects’ written between August 10 and 16, 1835 and published in Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, 1925.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/marx/1835chris.htm


I revere him for having brought home by his own life and teachings, to the innermost hearts and souls of mankind, of all times, in every station, the eternal truths as first embodied in the Mosaic code and proclaimed in undying words by the prophets. I recognise in him the blending of the divine and human, the lofty and lowly, showing the path for the dual nature of man, by divine aspirations to gain the victory over the earthly life.

James Hoffmann (1833-1900) Founder of the Hebrew Technical Institute, New York
Letter, October 6th 1899, quoted by  George L. Berlin in Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writing on Christianity and Jesus (Albany, NY:: SUNY Press, 1989), p.170.


[God] revealed to me that the synagogue and contemporary Judaism our unable to help our Jewish people and that the only means of salvation for us as a people and as individuals is believing in Jesus, the Messiah of whom the prophets had spoken, the Redeemer of the world.

Joseph Rabinovitz (1837-1899) Founder of modern Messianic Judaism
From The Christian movement among the Jews of Kishineff, quoted by John Fieldsend in Messianic Jews: Challenging Church and Synagogue (Tunbridge Wells: MARC 1993), p. 24.


He was one of the best and truest sons of the synagogue. … None can read these parables and verdicts of the Nazarene and not be thrilled with the joy of a truth unspelled before. There is wonderful music in the voice which stays an angry crowd, saying, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone!" that speaks the words , "Be like children, and you are not far from the kingdom of God!".

Kaufmann Kohler (1843-1926) American Reform rabbi
Statement, August 23 rd 1899, quoted by  George L. Berlin in Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writing on Christianity and Jesus (Albany, NY:: SUNY Press, 1989), p.166-7.


His wisdom and gentleness, his unselfishness of spirit and his love for humanity, his desire to live in the spirit of the early Jewish prophets, and to practise in his daily life the ethics of Judaism, are becoming better understood, so that the modern Jew looks upon Jesus as one of the greatest gifts that Israel has given to the world, and he is, therefore, proud to call Jesus his very own: blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh.

Harris Weinstock (1854-1922) American businessman, synagogue president, and author
Jesus the Jew and Other Addresses (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1902).


The Mosaic religion had been a Father religion; Christianity became a Son religion. The old God, the Father, took second place;  Christ , the Son, stood in His stead, just as in those dark times every son had longed to do.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis
Moses and Monotheism (1938), trans. Katherine Jones (Letchworth: Garden City Press 1939), p.141. https://archive.org/stream/mosesandmonothei032233mbp/mosesandmonothei032233mbp_djvu.txt


To me one of the saddest and most tragic facts in history is this, that Jesus, the gentlest and noblest rabbi of them all, should have become lost to his own people by reason of the conduct of those who called themselves his followers. In Jesus there is the very flowering of Judaism. What pathos, then, in the fact that his own people have been made to shun his very name, that even to-day they speak it with bated breath, because it has been made to them a symbol of all that is unjewish, unchristian - irreligious.

Henry Berkowitz (1857-1924) American Reform rabbi
Letter, November 1st 1899, quoted by  George L. Berlin in Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writing on Christianity and Jesus (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989), p.169.


He was a Jew among Jews; from no other people could a man like him have come forth, and in no other people could a man like him work; in no other people could he have found the apostles who believed in him.

Leo Baeck (1873-1956) Rabbi and theologian
Quoted by Shalom Ben-Chorin in "The Image of Jesus in Modern Judaism," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 11, no. 3 (Summer 1974), p. 408.
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


Jesus is the most Jewish of Jews, more Jewish than Simeon ben Shetah, more Jewish even than Hillel. … From the standpoint of general humanity, he is, indeed, "a light to the Gentiles." His disciples have raised the lighted torch of the Law of Israel ... among the heathen of the four quarters of the world. No Jew can, therefore, overlook the value of Jesus and his teaching from the point of view of universal history.

Joseph Klausner (1874-1956) Jewish scholar and historian

Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth; His Life, Times, and Teaching. trans. Herbert Danby (London: Allen and Unwin 1925), p. 374ff.
http://www.jnjr.div.ed.ac.uk/Primary%20Sources/modern/langton_josephklausnersjesus.html


Neither Christian protest nor Jewish lamentation can annul the fact that Jesus was a Jew, an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Surely it is not wholly unfit that Jesus be reclaimed by those who have never unitedly nor organizedly denied him … the place in Jewish life and Jewish history which is rightfully his own. Jesus was not only a Jew but he was the Jew, the Jew of Jews.... In that day when history shall be written in the light of truth, the people of Israel will be known not as Christ-killers, but as Christ-bearers; not as God-slayers, but as the God-bringers to the world.

Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949) Reform rabbi and founder of the Jewish Institute of Religion
Wise, ‘The Life and Teaching of Jesus the Jew’, The Outlook, June 7, 1913.
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses: Christ, Spinoza and myself.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American writer
Quoted by James Mellow in Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company (New York: Praeger 1974)


Jesus has become the most popular, the most studied, the most influential figure in the religious history of mankind .… No sensible Jew can be indifferent to the fact that a Jew should have had such a tremendous part in the religious education and direction of the human race .… Who can compute all that Jesus has meant to humanity? The love he has inspired, the solace he has given, the good he has engendered, the hope and joy he has kindled—all that is unequalled in human history.… The Jew cannot help glorying in what Jesus has meant to the world.

Hyman Enelow (1877-1933) President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis 1927-1929
A Jewish View of Jesus (New York: MacMillan, 1920), p. 4-5.


From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand . . . I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.

Martin Buber (1878-1965) Jewish writer, thinker, philosopher, and theologian
Two Types of Faith (New York: Macmillan 1951), p. 13.


As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene . . . Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot . . . No one can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-born physicist
What Life Means to Einstein in The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929


I can’t help writing about Jesus. Since I first met encountered him in a personal way, he has held my mind and heart. … Jesus Christ is to me the outstanding personality of all time, all history, both as Son of God and as Son of Man. Everything he ever said or did has value for us today and that is something you can say of no other man, dead or alive. There is no easy middle ground to stroll upon. You either accept Jesus or reject him.

Sholem Asch (1880-1957)
Interview with Frank S. Mead of The Christian Herald (1944), cited by Ben Siegel in The Controversial Sholem Asch : An Introduction to his Fiction (Bowling Green, Ohio: BGUPP 1976), p. 148.
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


Jesus was a Jew -- the best of Jews. Jesus was not only a Jew. He was the apex and the acme of Jewish teaching, which began with Moses and ran the entire evolving gamut of kings, teachers, prophets, and rabbis -- David and Isaiah and Daniel and Hillel -- until their pith and essence, was crystallized in this greatest of all Jews. For a Jew, therefore, to forget that Jesus was a Jew, and to deny him, is to forget and to deny all the Jewish teaching that was before Jesus: it is to reject the Jewish heritage, to betray what was best in Israel.

John Cournos (1881-1966) Russian-Jewish writer
Cournos An Open Letter to Jews and Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938)
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


All this vast diversity of opinion has not lessened the vividness of the personality of Jesus. … The years have not diminished the urgency of the question: "What do you think of Jesus?" … Poetry still sings his praise. He is still the living comrade of countless lives. No Moslem ever sings, "Mohammed, lover of my soul," nor does any Jew say of Moses, the teacher, "I need thee every hour."

Solomon B. Freehof (1892-1990) President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1955)
Freehof, Stormers of Heaven (New York: Harper and Row, 1931).
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


The effect of this practice [of reciting the Lord's prayer] is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition.

At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence.

Sometimes, also, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/07/02/the-spiritual-autobiography-of-simone-weil/


There is every reason for Judaism to lose its reluctance toward Jesus. His own towering spiritual presence is a projection of Judaism, not a repudiation of it. … He was proud to be a Jew, yet he did not confine himself to Judaism. He did not believe in spiritual exclusivity for either Jew or Gentile. He asserted the Jewish heritage and sought to preserve and exalt its values, but he did it within a universal context. No other figure -- spiritual, philosophical, political or intellectual -- has had a greater impact on human history. To belong to a people that produced Jesus is to share in a distinction of vast dimension and meaning.

Norman Cousins (1915-1990) Editor of the New York Saturday Review
Cousins, ‘The Jewishness of Jesus’, in American Judaism 10:1 (1960), p. 36.
http://www.jewsforjesus.org.uk/index.php/is-jesus-the-jewish-messiah/106-jewish-views-of-jesus.html


I do not think that many Jews would object if the Messiah when he came again was the Jew Jesus. … Judaism has never rejected Jesus.

David Flusser (1917-2000) Jewish professor of religious history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Flusser, ‘To What Extent is Jesus a Question for the Jews?’ in Christians and Jews, ed. Hans Küng and Walter Kasper (New York: Seabury Press 1974), p. 71.


I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event. If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on that Easter Sunday were a public event which had been made known…not only to the 530 Jewish witnesses but to the entire population, all Jews would have become followers of Jesus.

Pinchas Lapide (1922-1997) Israeli scholar and historian
Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian Doctrine: A Dialogueby Pinchas Lapide and Jargen Moltmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 68.


No objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the incomparable superiority of Jesus. Second to none in profundity of insight and grandeur of character, he is in particular an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth and of bringing every issue back to the essence of religion, the existential relationship of man and man, and man and God.

Geza Vermes (1924-) Scholar and writer
Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), p. 224.


Jesus  tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I'm not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I've never thought about that before! He said, When you're not following me, you're resisting me.

Bob Dylan (1941-) American singer
Said on stage at Syracuse, New York, May 1980 and quoted in Q Magazine (London, Jan. 1990).


When I prayed, "Jesus, help!" the presence of God flooded my room and I had a revelation that Jesus was my Messiah! God instantly delivered me. Then he restored my mind, marriage and family.

Sid Roth (1942-) Founder, Messianic Vision
In ‘Twevle Sones of Remebreance’ Mishpochah, Anniversary Edition 2012, p. 2.


I started to think about this Jesus constantly. I couldn't get Him out of my mind. Finally, I lay awake one night and felt that I had nothing to lose. I whispered, "Jesus…?" I didn't know if I was going to be struck by lightning. "Are you really there? Are you really the Messiah? If you are, I want to know.
Please show me." ......By the time I had read all four Gospels, I knew that Jesus was the fulfilment of
all the Messianic prophecies. Jesus was and is the Messiah! This was the most wonderful realisation! .... The very reason that God created the Jewish nation was to point to the Messiah. This is the purpose of every Jew. I, along with many others, are fulfilling that very purpose by receiving Jesus as Messiah, Lord and Saviour.

Helen Shapiro (1946 -) English singer and actress
Shapiro, 'Walking back to happiness' posted online at http://www.mannamusic.co.uk/walkingback/walkingback.htm


(Jesus) frequently visited Jerusalem - the only founder of the three Abrahamic religions to have walked her streets. The city and the Temple were central to his vision of himself … His sublimely poetical message to the son of the king who had built the temple is steeped in Jesus' love for the doomed city: 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!   Behold, your house is left unto you desolate’.

Simon Sebag Montefiore (1965-) English journalist and writer
Jerusalem the biography: Phoenix London 2011, p.116, 118.


I have written many articles arguing that it is time for the world Jewish community to reclaim the Jewish Jesus by understanding his original mission and his great love for his people.

Shmuley Boteach (1966-) American Orthodox rabbi and broadcaster
Jerusalem Post (December 7, 2005).
http://jewishisrael.ning.com/profiles/blogs/jesus-gets-smicha-and-a-hechsher-from-rabbi-shmuley-boteach