Post Script to Responding to Distractions

Posted on September 18, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

V. 62. Objection 6.12

Brown presents one of the fundamental Jewish Objections to Christianity: “Judaism is a unique religion. Of all the religions of the world, only Judaism began with a public revelation witnesses by the entire nation. No one and nothing can alter that fact or change the substance of that revelation.”

 

Brown responds on behalf of Christianity with three arguments: “1) Followers of Jesus also accept the revelation of God at Sinai, recognizing it as the foundation of everything else that follows…” Further on (Page 236) Brown elaborates: “…the revelation at Sinai is NOT the exclusive property of traditional Judaism. Rather, it is the heritage of all who embrace the Tanakh, and that includes hundreds of millions of Christians as well.”

 

Brown’s second argument: “2) In and of itself, the revelation of Sinai argues against a binding oral tradition – which is the foundation of traditional Judaism – rather than for it.”

 

Brown presents his third argument: “3) God did not stop speaking at Sinai, and therefore I embrace the words of the prophets and the words of the Messiah, which build on the foundation of Sinai. I should also point out that many liberal Jewish scholars do not even believe that this revelation at Sinai ever occurred…”

 

Before refuting Brown’s arguments, a question is begging to be asked. Why bring up the liberal scholars? What is the point of reminding his audience that there are people who do not believe in the Sinai revelation? Could there be any other motivation other than to minimize the power of Sinai in the eyes of his audience? If this conclusion is correct (and I do not insist that it is, it simply the only logical answer I can see for my question) than another question presents itself. Why? Why is it important for someone – who claims to believe in Sinai, and who claims a share in the heritage of Sinai – to attempt to minimize the impact of Sinai? The fact that Brown found the need to include the opinion of these liberal scholars in his response to the Jewish argument based on Sinai, leaves me with a strong impression, that Sinai does not sit all that well with Brown. For all of his declarations to the effect that he affirms the revelation of Sinai, something is seriously wrong.

 

Since Sinai is so foundational to Judaism, and since the Scriptures put Sinai and the exodus at the very center of the faith-structure of Scripture, I will beg the reader’s indulgence, and I will take the time to elaborate.

 

Before I begin, I will quote some Scripture.

 

“When you are in distress and all these things have befallen you, at the end of days, you will return to the Lord your God, and hearken to His voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God, He will not abandon you nor destroy you, and He will not forget the covenant of your forefathers that He swore to them. For inquire now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day that God created man on the earth, and from on end of the heaven to the other end of the heaven: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people heard the voice of God speaking to them from the midst of the fire as you have, and survived? Or has any god ever miraculously come to take for himself a nation from the midst of a nation, with challenges, with signs, and with wonders, and with war, and with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with greatly awesome deeds, such as everything that the Lord your God, did for you in Egypt before your eyes? You have been shown in order to know that the Lord, He is the God, there is none beside Him. From heaven He caused you to hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire.” (Deuteronomy 4:30-36).

 

The point of this passage is: That the fact that Israel is the only nation that claims to have heard God’s voice from the midst of the fire, and the fact that Israel is the only nation that claims to have experienced anything like the exodus from Egypt, is supposed to encourage the Jew at the end of time that God will not forget the covenant that He made with our forefathers.

 

Why? How do the unique claims of Judaism reassure us that God’s covenant with us still stands? What is the covenant that we share with God?

 

The thrust of the covenant that Israel shares with God is that we are called to be His nation and He declares Himself to be our God (Exodus 6:7, Deuteronomy 29:12, 1Chronicles 17:22). This means that God tied up His own identity with that of Israel. The covenant that Israel shares with God denotes that God will be called: “The God of Israel”, and that Israel will be called: “The people of God”. In other words; a covenant is like a marriage. No longer can we look at the two parties of the covenant as separate entities; the destiny of these two parties is bound up with one another and the very identity of these two parties is bound up with one another. The exodus and Sinai sealed the connection between God and Israel. From that point onward, Israel is God’s bride, and God is Israel’s husband and lover.

 

Israel’s intimacy with God that was displayed by the exodus and the familiarity with God that Israel gained through the Sinai revelation remains unmatched by any other national entity.

 

In these verses in Deuteronomy, God is reassuring Israel that no nation will ever match Israel’s claim of being married to God.

 

The perception of God that Israel acquired at the Sinai revelation is not a peripheral aspect of our covenant with God. Neither is this perception something that fades away with the passage of time. God points to this knowledge of God that we acquired at Sinai as the very heart of our relationship with Him, and God speaks to the last generation and points to this knowledge as a unique possession that sets us apart from every other national entity. This knowledge was not acquired through the handing over of a book, nor was it accomplished through the recital of words. God points to a fiery encounter, collectively experienced as the means through which He imparted this knowledge to us (Deuteronomy 4:35). God also tells us how it is that this knowledge will be preserved throughout the generations. Again, it is not through the recital of words or through the reading of a book; but through the channel of love and trust that exists between children and their parents (Deuteronomy 4:9, Psalm 78:5).

Sinai and exodus were fiery experiences that seared the perception of God into the minds and the hearts of the people who experienced it. They were commanded by God to keep this awareness and intimacy with God alive and to pass it on to their children. Each generation of Jews is enjoined by God to absorb the testimony of exodus and Sinai from their parents, to come to know and love the God of their ancestors and to stand together with their parents in a covenantal relationship with God (Deuteronomy 29:13). The power, the reality and the truth of God embodied in the testimony of exodus and Sinai is so weighty that the last generation of Jews can put their full trust in the God of Sinai on the basis of this testimony (Psalm 78:7). A trust in God that will encourage them to give their lives for Him (Psalm 44:17-23). A trust in God and a love for Him that will carry them through the darkest times (Isaiah 26:13, Micha 7:7,8). A trust and a yearning for God so that when God arises to judge the earth, the children of the exodus and Sinai will cry out with joy: “Behold! This is our God! The God that we hoped for! (Isaiah 25:9). And the connection between God and Israel that was forged at exodus and Sinai runs so deep and is so steadfast, that when God alone is exalted on that day (Isaiah 2:17), His bride, Israel, will be vindicated to the eyes of all the nations (Isaiah 49:23, 62:2. Micha 7:10, Psalm 98:2,3).

 

Now here we have Brown, declaring that hundreds of millions of Christians share in the heritage of Sinai! Brown seems to be under the impression that Sinai is completely restricted to a book, it has nothing to do with living people, so that according to Brown, anyone who grabs hold of the book can claim a share in the inheritance of Sinai.

 

Brown has missed the point of Sinai, which is actually the central point of the entire Scripture. Its not about a book, it is about a covenant between two living parties; between the living God, and between His bride, Israel. Just because you are holding a copy of a description of the wedding ceremony doesn’t make you the bride. And if you make it your life’s mission to declare to one and all that the witnesses that God commissioned at Sinai are liars, then how can you turn around and claim the heritage of Sinai for yourself? (Just to remind the readers; in Volume 2, Brown contended that Israel’s rejection of the trinity is not based on what they learned at Sinai, as Israel claims, but is rather: “a gut-level negative reaction to anything Christian” (Page 7).)

 

Brown’s argument that: “the Sinai revelation does not give a hint of the Oral law. Not a hint!” – is equally fallacious. The whole point of the exodus and Sinai is that words alone, neither written or spoken can effectively communicate a perception of God; it can only be done through a living experience. The whole point of exodus and Sinai is that through a series of living experiences, God forged a nation for Himself that will walk through the corridors of history with His truth in their hearts (Isaiah 51:7) – a living nation, not a series of books.

 

V. 63. Page 235

“3) God did not stop speaking at Sinai, and therefore I embrace the words of the prophets and the words of the Messiah, which build on the foundation of Sinai.”

 

There is another foundational aspect of Sinai that Brown has missed and together with Sinai he has missed the mainstay of the faith structure of the Jewish Scriptures.

 

Through the exodus and Sinai, God established a perception of Himself in the minds and in the hearts of Israel (Deuteronomy 4:35, 39). At Sinai God also established the authenticity of Moses’ claim to prophecy (Exodus 19:9). The truth of these two concepts (Israel’s perception of God, and the validity of Moses’ prophecy) were so firmly established, that every subsequent generation of Jews is enjoined to evaluate prophetic claims in light of these two perceptions. No matter how many miracles and no matter how spectacular those miracles are; if the claimant to prophecy contradicts Israel’s perception of God or if he contradicts Moses; he should be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:6).

 

Brown’s acceptance of Jesus’ claims for deity, is a direct contradiction to Sinai. Brown’s acceptance of the claim that Jesus is somehow greater than Moses is likewise contradicted by Sinai. It is only because Brown rejects Sinai, that he is able to accept the claims of Christianity.

 

V. 64. Pages 237-238

Brown goes back to the Jewish objection (6.12) and reiterates it in different words: “You might say, “but God DID give the Ten Commandments and much of the Written Torah to Israel, in a public, definite way, before the whole nation, whereas you claim that Jesus just showed up on the scene and drew a few disciples about him and then changed everything. Why should we believe this?’”

 

Before we approach Brown’s response to the Jewish objection, it is important to point out that his presentation of the objection is misleading. First and foremost, a key concept that is missing, is the concept of credibility. The claims of Judaism are more credible then are the claims of Christianity. And second, it was not “much of the Written Torah” that we received in a public definite way, but rather it was a perception of God (Deuteronomy 4:35), and the knowledge that Moses is His prophet (Exodus 19:9) that we received at Sinai. To approach these concepts from a different angle; if I were to ask a Christian: How do you know your god? On what basis do accept the claim that Jesus was god incarnate? Did anyone SEE that he is god incarnate? – If we turn to volume 2, we find a series of arguments (incidentally; no mention of Sinai) arguing for the alleged divinity of Jesus. That is still not seeing. The Jew on the other hand can say: “We encountered God face to face” (Deuteronomy 5:4). If you ask the Christian: How do you know that Jesus was a prophet? – Brown will point to signs and wonders that Jesus performed before those who already believed in him – but that is still not KNOWING that God spoke to him. If we ask a Jew, how it is that he knows that Moses is a prophet – he could respond – “we heard God talking to him” (Exodus 19:9).

 

Now for Brown’s response to the Jewish objection. Brown points to various phenomena that accompanied the career of Jesus. He points to the prophetic prediction which, according to Brown, predict that the Messiah must come before the destruction of the Second Temple (- we addressed these in Contra Brown), he points to signs in the heaven and an angelic announcement that preceded the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2 and Luke 2), the preaching of John the Baptist that preceded Jesus’ ministry, the faith healings of Jesus that Brown refers to as “unprecedented signs, wonders and miracles”, the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on donkey-back, the supernatural events that coincided with Jesus’ death; namely an eclipse, and earthquake and the rending of the Temple veil, Jesus’ resurrection, the “outpouring of the spirit” that took place on the Pentecost, the miracles the Peter performed, and Jesus’ prediction of the destruction.

 

Brown appeals to his readers: “When you think of it, with Israel scattered throughout the world, what could have been more public than the Messiah’s triumphal entry and death at the time of the Passover – with Jerusalem thronged with Jews from around the world – and then Jews from every nation hearing and seeing the events at Shavuot?”

 

(As an aside, before we respond to Brown’s argument – I find it noteworthy that Brown did not mention the many dead saints that Matthew claims were resurrected at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. I would have thought that this most incredible miracle should be at the forefront of the list of miracles that are supposed to confirm Jesus’ claims.)

 

To respond to Brown’s question: “what could have been more public?” – I say; God could have spoken to Jesus from the thick of the cloud like He spoke to Moses, that would at least place him on an equal footing with Moses. God could have turned the Jordan river into blood for seven days, He could have stopped the sun in the sky as He did for Joshua, He could have done any number of miracles that would impact the nation on a practical level – but He didn’t. Brown has failed to understand the unique nature of the exodus miracles. The exodus impacted Israel and Egypt on a practical level. To put things in a modern American perspective; could you compare the Mississippi turning to blood for a full week, to a faith healing that may take place in front of those who already have faith in the healer? (Note: Matthew and Mark inform us that Jesus could not perform mighty miracles in places where people did not have faith in him – Mark 6:5, Matthew 13:58). Would you compare the impact of the bulk of America’s military forces drowning in the sea to a dead person reappearing to a select few devotees, who had already committed themselves in devotion to this person?  

 

Furthermore, the alleged miracles of Jesus can only be found in the pages of a book written and edited by a limited group of individuals that have dedicated themselves to promulgate the glory of Jesus. There is no one on earth today who claims that he or she is a direct descendant of one who experienced one of Jesus’ miracles. Contrast this with the exodus, where you have an entire nation of living people testifying to the truth of the exodus – telling their children that they heard from their parents that they were personally impacted by the miracles of the exodus. In fact, the descendants of the people amongst whom Jesus lived namely the Jewish people, remember Jesus and his followers in a negative way.

 

The bottom line is and remains; Both Judaism and Christianity make claims about the realm of the unseen and unknown: Judaism claims that all of our devotion belongs to our Creator and to no one else, while Christianity claims that our devotion ought to be directed towards a man who lived and walked this earth. The assertions of these two belief systems cannot be verified through the five senses; each of these belief systems claims to have received their respective beliefs through a revelation from that realm of the unknown. In the case of Judaism, that revelation came to the entirety of the nation – all of them encountered the living God at Sinai; in the case of Christianity, the Christian points to Jesus as the channel through whom this information came from the realm of the unknown to this world. In the case of Judaism, we believe the testimony of a nation, in the case of Christianity, it all stands on the words of an individual.

 

V. 65. Page 238

Here Brown devotes one paragraph to one of the major Jewish objections against Christianity (- note: one paragraph out of a five volume series that spans almost 1500 pages! And this paragraph is not even placed in the section that purportedly deals with the Jewish objections of this category (- theological objections; idolatry)).

 

“I am aware, of-course, that traditional Jews point to God’s revelation at Sinai, as recounted by Moses in Deuteronomy 4:14-34, emphasizing that the people of Israel saw no form on Sinai – including that of a man or woman – and that they should not make an idol in any shape or form. Therefore, it is argued, we are violating the Sinai covenant by worshiping Yeshua as god, as if we were making a man into a god (or vice versa).”

 

Again, before getting to Brown’s response; a question is in order: Why when quoting Deuteronomy 4 does Brown stop at verse 34? Does he not realize the critical nature of verse 35 and its central place in this discussion? Verse 35 reads: “Unto you it was SHOWN in order that you know, that the Lord is God, THERE IS NONE ELSE BESIDE HIM.” In other words: whatever it si that we are to worship was shown to us at Sinai, and we are to worship NOTHING ELSE.

 

Now to Brown’s response. “But that is a crass misunderstanding of our faith. We do not worship a human form. The New Testament plainly states that “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18a) describing Him as the One “who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (I Tim. 6:16). In Yeshua, however, we recognize the fullness of God revealed, not in physical form or shape – how absurd! – but in spiritual reality, clothed in human flesh.”

 

A crass misunderstanding of Sinai and a mockery too. As if a nifty word-game can get around the prohibition against idolatry. This is actually the third lesson of Sinai that seems to have completely escaped Brown. Brown missed the idea that Sinai sealed a covenant between two living parties, Brown missed the idea theme that Sinai is the yardstick against which subsequent claims for prophecy are judged, and here Brown misses the idea that Sinai serves as the definitive teaching on the subject of idolatry (Exodus 20:19, Deuteronomy 4:15). Brown also has completely missed the concept of the Oral Law because it is here that the Scripture most explicitly testifies to the concept of the Oral Law.

 

Allow me to reiterate what we mean when we say Oral Law. When we say that we believe in the Oral Law we are saying that there is more to the commandments than what is written in the Five Books of Moses. The concept of the Oral Law maintains that the full scope of the commandment can only be grasped through the living testimony of Israel. Those, such as Brown, who dispute the authenticity of the Oral Law contend that everything that Israel needs to know about the Law is completely contained in the Five books of Moses.

 

When it comes to the Law that prohibits idolatry, the Torah clearly and unequivocally authenticates the position of the believers in the Oral Law. God chose to teach the prohibition against idolatry to the nation of Israel in a direct fashion. As opposed to the other commandments, where God taught them to Moses who then went and taught them to Israel, God Himself taught the nation of Israel the injunction against worshiping idols.

 

Now, according to Brown and his fellow deniers of the validity of the Oral Law, God should have recited some words or handed Israel a book – and nothing more. After all, if there is no Oral Law then everything must be contained in written words. But that is not what God did. He certainly did recite words and He also gave Israel a written record of those words in the form of the two tablets, but He did not stop there. In order to teach Israel who it is that they are to worship and who it is that they are not to worship God put Israel through a fiery experience which goes far beyond words. And the written words itself point to this fiery experience as the touchstone for the prohibition against idolatry (Exodus 20:19, Deuteronomy 4:15). Subsequent passages identify idols with the simple term: “that which I have not commanded” (Deuteronomy 17:3), or: “that which your fathers did not know” (Deuteronomy 13:7); implying that if we did not hear about it from our ancestors from Sinai, then it is an idol that is not deserving of our worship. If there is anywhere in scripture that we are taught that words alone do not adequately convey the underlying message of a commandment; it is here. And it is precisely here, in the realm of idolatry, that Christianity most emphatically rejects the living testimony of Israel.

 

How does the living testimony of Israel negate the claims of Christianity concerning the alleged divinity of Jesus? Simple! At Sinai we were shown towards whom it is that we are to direct our devotion. Anyone or anything that was not revealed to our ancestors at Sinai, is not deserving of our worship. No one ever claimed that our ancestors saw Jesus at Sinai. If God wanted us to direct our devotion to Jesus, He would have shown Jesus to us at Sinai. Since Jesus was not there at Sinai, worship of him is idolatry.

 

But what about those nifty word-games? What about the claim that Jesus is somehow one and the same as the God we encountered at Sinai?

 

The basic response is that if “a” is not equal to “b” then “b” cannot be equal to “a”. In other words, if worship of the God who revealed Himself to our ancestors at Sinai is not worship of Jesus, then worship of Jesus is not worship of the God who revealed Himself at Sinai. Its as simple as that.

 

To illuminate the matter from a different angle let us focus on the sin of idolatry. The sin of idolatry is not a philosophical abstract, it is a sin of the heart. The sin of idolatry is not committed when you use the wrong phrase – for example, according to Brown; the phrase: “the fullness of God revealed in physical form” would be “absurd” and presumably idolatrous, while the phrase: “the fullness of God revealed in spiritual reality clothed in human flesh” is perfectly fine. These word games have nothing to do with the sin of idolatry.

 

The sin of idolatry is perpetrated when one’s heart is committed in devotion to an entity other than the God of Israel. In order for one to commit their heart in devotion to someone or to something, there has to be a basis for that devotion, a motivation and a stimulus for that devotion. In the case of the God of Israel, the stimulus for the devotion is the awe one feels in the presence of the Master of all creation, who holds the existence of every being in His hand. Devotion to God is rooted in the understanding that every fiber of our existence belongs to Him because it was He who brought us into existence to begin with. Worship of God is inspired by the sense of gratitude that we feel for all of the kindness that He is constantly pouring upon us with love and mercy. Israel’s devotion to her God is rooted in the very fact that God is God. It is impossible to separate between Israel’s devotion and the concept of Creator, Master, and Sustainer of all existence – because Israel’s devotion is rooted in those very truths.

 

The Christian’s devotion to Jesus on the other hand is rooted in the admiration of a human character portrayed in the pages of the Gospels. It is rooted in an awe for his alleged righteousness, in a reverence towards his teachings, and in an appreciation for his sacrifice and suffering – all of which took place in a human body. All of this devotion has nothing to do with the claim that he is somehow divine. All of the feelings that a Christian bears in his or her heart towards Jesus are entirely possible without believing that Jesus is divine. The argument that Jesus is somehow one and the same as the God of Israel is not the root or the stimulus for the Christian’s devotion – rather it is the result of the Christian’s devotion. The words: “Jesus is the same as the God of Israel”, are simply a set of words that is appended to the Christian’s devotion to Jesus as a justification for the devotion, but in no way is this set of words an intrinsic and inseparable part of the devotion itself.

 

The awe that one experiences when contemplating the reality of the Master of all existence, the gratitude that one feels for the kindness of existence, and the submission that we feel towards the One who created us out of nothing – has nothing to do with the admiration that Christians feel towards the human character portrayed in the four Gospels. These are two different devotions rooted in two different sets of human emotions. One is the service of God and the other is idolatry.

 

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

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Responding to Dr. Michael Brown’s Distractions

Posted on September 15, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

Responding to Dr. Michael Brown’s Distractions

In my video response to Dr. Michael Brown’s presentation entitled “Dr. Brown ANSWERS Rabbi Blumenthal” (   https://youtu.be/IUIdgyhUfUE  ) I focus on the subject at hand. I demonstrate how Dr. Brown did not answer the questions that I had raised (

). In this article I will respond to the various arguments that he brought up or to comments that he made that were unrelated to the questions that I had raised.

  1. Dr. Brown asks, if as I say, that his 5 volumes are so incredibly empty and inadequate, so why do I bother responding to them?

The answer is simple. Dr. Brown gives the impression that in his 5 volumes he fairly presents the Jewish position. Innocent readers, who are unfamiliar with the real Jewish position, can walk away from his books with the impression that Christianity is the world-view that is closer to the Biblical text than Judaism.

But his presentation of the Jewish position is completely off the mark. What I have done in my rebuttals is that I have attempted to accurately present the Jewish position. If I were assured that people would actually read through his 5 volumes and read my rebuttals, I would stop right there. I put all the issues on the table and I am satisfied to let these things stand.

So why don’t I ignore his writings? Because most people don’t read. And this fact allows Dr. Brown to use his writings deceptively. He is telling his audience, who will never read 1500 pages, that all the answers are there. They are not.

 

  1. Dr. Brown claims that in his 1500 pages he answered all of the objections that he was made aware of up until that point in time.

It is obvious to the Jewish reader that he missed some of the major objections. Whether this is his fault or not is irrelevant. His book doesn’t talk to the heart or to the intellect of a Jew who knows his or her heritage.

Furthermore, if he has to contradict himself in order to make his presentation, shouldn’t he realize that something is wrong? If he wrote with intellectual integrity then he shouldn’t be contradicting himself and if he did contradict himself he should appreciate that there are serious problems with his work.

But I have my own problems with his assertion. Back in 2001 I challenged Dr. Brown to include 3 objections in his then upcoming third volume (eventually that volume became volume 5). In 2008 I reminded him of this challenge and I sent it to him again. Here is the original challenge:

I will present you with a challenge. You are presently preparing the third volume of your book for publication. I did not see it, but I can tell you what it does not contain. I will list three objections to the Christian belief system which you were not planning to mention. Two of these objections lie at the heart of the Jewish resistance to any belief system aside from their own. Here they are.

1) The medium through which we learned that scripture is authentic is the testimony of our parents. These same people testified to us that there is a body of unwritten Mosaic law which is crucial in understanding how God wants us to live. If they lied about these unwritten traditions then why should we believe their testimony about scripture. (The Ibn Ezra articulates this argument in several places)

2) The one item which the Torah itself is most explicit and clear that we are to follow the testimony of our fathers, is the issue of “who are we to worship”. Scripture tells the witnesses of Sinai, “you should make it known to your children and children’s children”. It is obvious that God considered this a valid medium of transmitting information, that is the chain of parent to child. Once God explicitly designated a medium of transmitting information, we can be sure that He will ensure its preservation. Until today jews testify that God revealed Himself at Sinai as an absolute unity. All those who deviated from this tradition never claimed that with their worship they follow a tradition which goes back to Sinai. (This is the main point of the Jewish insistence on clinging to their belief system)

3) An honest reading of the NT will reveal that Jesus and his followers believed in, and observed the unwritten traditions which the Jews accepted as God given. (I hope to substantiate this at length later in this letter)   

At the time, Dr. Brown responded by accepting my challenge and assuring me that he will address these arguments in his upcoming volume. But he did not. He devotes one paragraph, in an end-note (#131) to the first objection (- see our response in Supplement to Contra Brown, V16). He touches upon one limited aspect of the third of the three Jewish objections in the main body of the book (6.15 – see Supplement to Contra Brown, V69), but he completely ignored the second objection.

He subsequently told me that he couldn’t change the objections because they had already been prepared a decade before. Let us accept this answer. But this still leaves us with a question, when he does address the third objection, why does he skip so much of the evidence that I presented to substantiate that argument? Is he really addressing all the objections that were raised to him?

  1. Dr. Brown tells his audience that he sent me “responses” to my question. He then turns to the audience and tells them that I “know” that he has answers to my questions.

It is very interesting to note that he asked me not to share those “responses” with anyone. His response consists of about 14 pages in response to one question that I raised in Contra Brown. So to speak of this paper as if it contains “responses” in the plural is misleading and false.

Furthermore, the argument contained in this paper that he shared with me completely ignores the other arguments that I put forth in Contra Brown but instead focused on the words that I wrote to explain that one question as if that was all I wrote.

So I have no hesitation to say that I believe that Dr. Brown has no answers to my questions and the paper that he sent me only confirms my belief. If I would have written that paper I would also be embarrassed to share it with the public.

 

  1. Dr. Brown tells his audience about a written debate that he was about to have with 4 counter-missionary activists. He complains that I shut that debate down. He wants to know why I did that, what do I have to hide?

This debate was going to take place after Dr. Brown reneged on his agreement to engage in a written debate with me. It was obvious to one and all that Dr. Brown is willing to have a written debate with these well-meaning, but amateur activists only because of their inexperience. My challenge to engage him in a written debate still stands. It is 15 years old. What does he have to hide?

 

  1. Dr. Brown claims that he responds to the Jewish objection based on Deuteronomy 4. He tells his audience that although Deuteronomy 4 emphasizes that the Jewish people saw no from but Numbers 12 and Exodus 24 teach us that God does have a form.

This is no response to the objection based on Deuteronomy 4. In Supplement to Contra Brown points V 62 thru 65 I demonstrate how Dr. Brown has completely missed the Jewish objection. For the sake of brevity I will share one paragraph from that section of my work:

Brown has missed the point of Sinai, which is actually the central point of the entire Scripture. It’s not about a book, it is about a covenant between two living parties; between the living God, and between His bride, Israel. Just because you are holding a copy of a description of the wedding ceremony doesn’t make you the bride. And if you make it your life’s mission to declare to one and all that the witnesses that God commissioned at Sinai are liars, then how can you turn around and claim the heritage of Sinai for yourself? (Just to remind the readers; in Volume 2, Brown contended that Israel’s rejection of the trinity is not based on what they learned at Sinai, as Israel claims, but is rather: “a gut-level negative reaction to anything Christian” (Page 7).)

I will make the full segment of my writing available in a separate article entitled Post Script to Responding to Distractions – https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/post-script-for-responding-to-distractions/  .

  1. Dr. Brown tells the audience that he addressed the Jewish objection based on Deuteronomy 30 in volume 5 objection 6.10

Deuteronomy 30 poses several challenges to the Christian position. The point I was making in my video presentation is that Deuteronomy 30 is a foundational text as it relates to Israel repairing her national relationship with God. It clearly precludes the Christian theology that asserts that there is no remission for sin without a blood offering. Dr. Brown does NOT address this challenge to his position in objection 6.10 or anywhere else in his 5 volumes.

He does address the challenge that Deuteronomy 30 poses to his position as it relates to the centrality of Torah observance. I share with you here what I wrote in “The Elephant and the Suit” in response to Dr. Brown’s treatment of Deuteronomy 30 in objection 6.10.

Let us leave no stone unturned. Let us examine the one paragraph that Dr. Brown did devote to this Scriptural passage in 6.10 of vol. 5 (page 223). In this paragraph Dr. Brown tells us that there is a divergence of views amongst followers of Jesus. Some understand that the obedience to the Torah that this passage speaks of is a reference to obedience and faith in Jesus. In endnote # 343 Dr. Brown informs us that other followers of Jesus believe that this Scriptural prophecy will never be fulfilled because of Israel’s failures.

Both of these positions are openly refuted by the text. Moses told the people that they will return to obey God, “according to all that I (Moses) command you (Eternal Israel) today”. These words were spoken by Moses more than 1000 years before Jesus was born. Moses made it clear that he expected the last generation of Jews to look back to him (Moses) as their ultimate teacher, and that he expected them to follow his commandments as they were understood on the day he presented them to Israel. These words of Moses clearly preclude the Christian belief that Jesus is the ultimate teacher, and that the teachings of Jesus are somehow superior to the teachings of Moses.      

The second position that Dr. Brown attributes to followers of Jesus is also invalidated by the Biblical text. The passage opens with words: “And it shall be that all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse…” The curse that Moses is referring to is the curse that God warned would befall Israel should they fail to obey His voice. How then can one make the claim that on account of Israel’s failure to obey God, this Scriptural prophecy will never be fulfilled? This same prophecy clearly predicts Israel’s failure to obey and tells us how, after our failure, we will ultimately return to God. It is clear that God took our failures into consideration when He encouraged us with these words, and God’s promises are irrevocable.

The two Christian explanations that Dr. Brown offers his readers are clearly refuted by the words of this passage. Dr. Brown does not even begin to provide a textual justification for the Christian interpretation of Deuteronomy 30.  

According to Dr. Brown’s own standard, the real question is: What do the Hebrew Scriptures teach? This passage in Deuteronomy clearly teaches that Israel’s repentance is the precursor of the Messianic age, this passage teaches that repentance is efficacious while Israel is still in exile, and this passage clearly teaches that the Law of Moses, as Moses taught it, is going to be observed in the Messianic era. Each of these issues is central to the debate between Judaism and Christianity. Why then does Dr. Brown fail to address this key passage in his comprehensive work?

  1. Dr. Brown takes issue with my assertion that he deals with Ezekiel 33 in a backhanded way. He claims that he deals with this passage “head on.”

I will take the liberty to explain what I meant when I said that he deals with this Scriptural passage in a backhanded way and I will again do this by quoting what I have written on this subject in Supplement to Contra Brown:

Brown tries to repudiate the message of Ezekiel 18, and 33. The prophet clearly speaks of atonement for sin through repentance and repentance alone. The first technique that Brown uses to nullify God’s word is that he puts the Jewish argument into a straightjacket. He has the Jews arguing that Ezekiel was only referring to a situation where the Temple is destroyed.

Once the Jewish argument is safely locked up, Brown launches his counter-attack. He argues that once the Temple was rebuilt the prophet’s words would be meaningless. He makes the point that Ezekiel’s contemporaries looked forward to the restoration of the sacrificial system. He also informs us that Ezekiel himself prophetically predicted a restoration of the sacrificial system. Brown argues that according to the Jewish reading of Ezekiel, which posits that all one needs is repentance then all of the other commandments such as Sabbath and Passover would be of no importance.

Finally, Brown argues, that the interpretation of Ezekiel 18 and 33 which teaches that repentance is all that is necessary for atonement from sin was unknown to the Talmudic and medieval Jewish Rabbis. It is only an argument created under polemical pressure from Christianity. He “proves” this preposterous premise by pointing out that this text was not used in the Jewish-Christian debate for the last 1900 years.

Every one of Brown’s arguments is fallacious. The prophet clearly says that with repentance all sins are forgiven. Repentance means a change of attitude. Repentance means returning to obedience from rebellion. Someone who repents, by definition, accepts upon himself or herself all that God has commanded. This includes the Sabbath as well as the blood offerings spoken of by Moses. As long as one has sincerely accepted all that God has commanded, he has repented. If for whatever reason, it was impossible for the person to fulfill the Law practically, the repentance still stands. A long as the person accepted upon himself or herself to be obedient to God he or she has repented and is forgiven. For example; a man repents on Sunday. The Sabbath is still 6 days away. He has not fulfilled the Sabbath yet. Will God forgive? Similarly, if one accepts the validity of every word in the Torah, including the commandments about the sacrifices, he has repented. The fact that he cannot practically fulfill the sacrificial offerings does not nullify his repentance and he will be forgiven. On the other hand if one refuses to accept the validity of Moses’ words, and claims that the sacrifices were replaced, then he or she has not repented. God’s words through Ezekiel retain their eternal meaning. Repentance alone effects atonement. The fact that the people were looking forward to the Temple does not mean that repentance does not work. Repentance means yearning to fulfill every one of God’s commandments, even those commandments which we cannot practically fulfill.

The fact that the Rabbis did not use these passages in the polemical debates of the middle ages is because the Catholics who they debated did not bring up the issue of atonement. But in non-polemical settings the Rabbis certainly did quote Ezekiel 18 and 33 to prove that repentance works. These include the Talmud (Yoma 82b, Kiddushin 40b), the Midrash (Tanchuma Vayeitzei 22) and the Yom Kippur liturgy.

Does Dr. Brown’s response to Ezekiel 33 deserve the title “backhanded”? You be the judge.

 

  1. Dr. Brown argues that I contradict myself. At times I say that a working knowledge of the Bible will help a person see through the arguments of the Christian missionary. Dr. Brown sees this as a contradiction to what I state in my video presentation where I tell the audience that one does not need to be educated to see through the missionary arguments, you just need to love God.

This is no contradiction. You could be an atheist, but if you have studied the Bible you will see right through the arguments of people like Dr. Brown. And you could be an ignoramus, but if you love God with all your heart, then a Christian missionary who is trying to get you to direct devotion to Jesus cannot begin a conversation with you. It would be like trying to propose a prospective mate to a person who is happily married. It is not either intellect or love. You could use both to refute the arguments of the missionary. Each one of them standing on its own is more than enough negate the claims of the Church.

  1. Dr. Brown claims that at the end of volume 3 he sets forth a logical and systematic way of identifying Messianic prophecies.

Really? Let me again share my critique of his appendix to volume 3 (from Supplement to Contra Brown). The first statement that Dr. Brown makes in this “logical and systematic” study guide is that; “Messianic prophecies are not clearly identified as such.”

This is amazing. Brown believes that the main purpose of the Jewish Bible is to predict the advent of the Messiah, yet the prophecies are not clearly identified?! And on what basis can he make such a preposterous statement? The prophets gave us a clear hope for Israel’s future. There are many prophecies in the Jewish Bible which clearly talk of the Messianic era, and of the Messiah. These include but are not limited to Numbers 24:14-19, Deuteronomy 4:30, 30:1-10, 32:43, Jeremiah 3:14-18, 16:14,15,19, 23:3-5, 30:3,7-11,16-25, 31:1-39, 32:37-44, 33:6-26, 46:27,28,50:4,5,19,20, Ezekiel 11;17-20, 17:22-24, 20:40-44, 28:24-26, 34:9-16,22-31, 36:6-16,22-38,37:1-28,38:1-48:35, Isaiah 1:26, 2:2-4, 4:2-6, 10:33-12:6, 24:21-25:9, 30:26, 34:1, 40:1-11,41:10-20, 43:5-10, 44:1-5 49:8-26, 51:11,22-52:12, 54:1-55:5, 56:7, 60:1-63:9, 65:17-25, 66:10-24, Hosea 2:1-3,16-25, Joel 3;1-5, 4:1-21, Amos 9:11-15, Obadiah 1;17-21, Micah 4:1-7, 5:1-13, 7:8-20, Zephaniah 3;9-20, Zechariah 2:9, 8:2-8, 14:3-21, Malachi 3:4,16-24, Psalms 51:20,21, 69:36,37, 98:1-3, 102:14-23, 126:1-6, Daniel 2;44, 7:18,22,27, 12:2,3, 

Can anyone question the fact that these prophecies are the hope and promise of Israel’s glorious future? How can Brown say that messianic prophecies are not clearly identified? More important is the question; Why does Brown say that the messianic prophecies are not clearly identified? The obvious answer to this question is that Brown never seems to have approached scripture with an open mind. It seems that he never asked himself; What would a Jew before Jesus’ times have believed about the Messianic era? What would scripture have taught him about the Messiah? Who and what does God encourage us to hope for? Had Brown asked himself these basic questions, he would have realized that the scriptures are very clear on these issues. The problem is that Brown started the other way. He first came to believe in Jesus. He then looked back into the Jewish scriptures and tried to understand Jesus’ claim that the prophets predicted his coming. Things tend to get quite murky if you read the book that way. When Brown tells us that Messianic prophecies are not clearly identified as such, he is admitting that the preconceived notions of Christianity cannot be readily seen in the Bible.

  1. Dr. Brown ends his video with an invitation to debate me. He says that this will put “the issues on the table.

This is a distraction. If my critique of his book is valid, let him address it. If it is not, let him ignore it. To tell us that my critique is valid but he won’t share his answers with the public unless I engage him in a public debate for the sake of “putting issues on the table” is simply ridiculous.

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

Posted in General, Response to Dr. Brown Line of Fire | 10 Comments

The Great Debate

Posted on September 15, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

Posted in Response to Dr. Brown Line of Fire, Videos | 1 Comment

This is my Beloved

Posted on September 13, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

yourphariseefriend's avatar1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources

This is my Beloved

 

“I shall take you to Me for a nation and I shall be to you for a God.” (Exodus 6:7)

 

Entering into a covenantal relationship with God changes you. You become a different nation. What is beautiful to other nations is not beautiful to you and what is happiness for other nations is not happiness for you. Not only does your outlook change but your heart and soul need to change.

 

Other nations exert themselves in a never ending effort to achieve security and prosperity. You are different. You learn to disregard that which others fear and feel secure in God’s embrace. You find joy and happiness in bringing God’s commandments to fruition and that is your entire focus.

 

As a nation that is bound to God in a covenantal relationship you have a different responsibility than do other nations. You are…

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Questions for a Christian – a letter to “D”

Posted on September 8, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

Dear D…..

As a Jew – I am in a covenantal relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth. He calls Himself the “God of Israel” and he calls us “My nation”. The most foundational element of my relationship with God demands that I do not submit myself to anyone in the way I submit myself to Him. When God sealed this covenant with us, He made it very clear to us that such an act of submission/worship of any other entity aside from Himself would be the deepest violation of our covenant with Him. He also made it clear to us – how we are to identify Him in worship – and how we are not to identify Him in worship. He did all this before He gave us the first page of Scripture.

Let us stop right there for a minute – after Sinai, and before we read the first page of Scripture.

How would we look at a claim such as the one you present about Yeshua? There is no question we would identify the worship/submission that you are encouraging as the very act that God defined as the deepest violation of our covenantal relationship. There would be no way that we could look at it any differently.

Now let us take the book. But before we open it – let us remember that it was given to us in the context of the covenantal relationship that already tied us to God. It was given to us AFTER God already made clear to us who and how He wants us to worship. Let us now jump ahead to the “ancient of days” mentioned in Daniel 7. Let us note that this passage is not being presented as a teaching on the nature of God (as is Isaiah 40:18) and it is not being presented as a teaching on how we are to direct our worship (as was the revelation at Sinai). This being the case – we understand that the physical description of God is being used as a metaphor to help us understand God’s interaction with mankind that is being presented there. The Scriptures use such metaphors for entities other than God. In Psalm 98:8 – the rivers are described as “clapping their hands”. Am I to assume that the rivers have hands? As clearly as I know that the rivers don’t have literal hands – I know just as clearly that the God that I am bound to in a covenantal relationship has no form.

There is no way I can read Daniel 7 (or Genesis 18, Exodus 24, Isaiah 9) as a directive to go and do what God Himself explicitly and directly taught me not to do.

Let me take this one step further. I am advocating that you read the Jewish Bible in the covenantal context that God placed it. If you would read the book in its proper context – you would never dream of justifying the worship you are advocating. But even if we put the Sinai covenant aside (for argument’s sake) – you still would not see your worship in this book unless you approached it with an affinity for Jesus.

Before Jesus came to the world – no one ever claimed that the Jewish Scriptures advocate worship of a divine Messiah. Even the apostles who lived with Jesus and heard him teach for three years didn’t see this concept in the Jewish Scriptures. They saw Jesus’ death as a contradiction to the belief that he was the Jewish Messiah – not as a confirmation.

So let’s recap – God made it clear who it is that we are to worship. Everyone who read the Scriptures before Jesus came along – had no questions about this matter. So are we to overturn the understanding that God made abundantly clear – on the basis of an interpretation that no-one saw in the text until 1) they had already committed their hearts to Jesus, 2) the facts of Jesus’ suffering and death left them with no choice but to reinterpret the Scriptures in a way that they could still maintain their devotion.

Why is it that of all the texts that you use to justify the worship that you are advocating – not one of them has God put His finger on it and say – here – look here in order to learn how to direct your devotion – not one! Yet when we focus on those texts where the Divine Author clearly pointed and said – here is where I present a teaching on worship – the perception that we were taught at Sinai is only confirmed and reconfirmed?

One more question. Again – the perception we were taught at Sinai would have us identify the worship you are advocating as idolatry. You are arguing that we modify our perception of reality that God taught us at Sinai – on the basis of your interpretation of Scripture. Now there are certain passages in Scripture that are very clear and direct. They teach us to keep the Sabbath, to observe the festivals, and to abstain from certain foods. I don’t see you (and I don’t mean you personally – I am talking about the general attitude of followers of Jesus towards God’s holy Law) taking any of these clear and open commandments seriously. So how can I believe that it is your loyalty and submission to this book that has you advocating the worship that you advocate? How do you expect me to take your argument seriously? It should be obvious to you as it is obvious to me that it is your devotion to Jesus that is producing your interpretation of Scripture and that it is not your interpretation of Scripture that is producing your devotion to Jesus.

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

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Goldberg vs. Brown

Posted on September 1, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

yourphariseefriend's avatar1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources

My article entitled ‘Response to the Line of Fire 9″ ended with the following appeal to Dr. Michael L. Brown:

I would like to end this critique with an appeal to Dr. Brown.

The myth of the “blindness of the Jew” is an ugly stain in the history of mankind. Dr. Brown, instead of working to perpetuate this myth, I appeal to you to educate Christians of the fallacies of this myth. Explain to your audience that as long as the Jew sees the teachings of Christianity as a contradiction to the Scriptures with which we were entrusted by God – it is the moral duty of the Jew to REJECT those teachings. Encourage your audience to try to read the Jewish Scriptures as a Jew would have read them before the advent of Jesus. Encourage your listeners to attempt to acquire a complete world-view on the basis of the Jewish Scriptures alone –…

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Persuasion vs Education IV – by Jim

Posted on August 30, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

yourphariseefriend's avatar1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources

A brief note on missionary tactics:

The missionary is not out to educate. He does not attempt to persuade with reasoned arguments. And he is not interested in an exchange of ideas. He has his viewpoint, and he does not care about yours. Generally speaking, he is not listening to you, while he demands that his own voice be heeded. In this regard, Christian missionaries and atheist missionaries are quite similar.

Both groups of missionaries like to put undue pressure upon their target. The Christian missionary has two main tricks up his sleeve in this regard, guilt and fear. The Christian missionary argues that disbelief in Jesus will place one in eternal torment. It is more reasonable to accept his propositions, however dubious, than to risk eternal punishment. He uses this fear to coerce belief.

Similarly he plays on one’s sense of guilt. Because of your wrongdoing, Jesus had to…

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Video – Unanswered

Posted on August 25, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/unanswered/

https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/?s=study+notes

Posted in Response to Dr. Brown Line of Fire, Videos | 6 Comments

“Conversation” – a note from Jim

Posted on August 21, 2016 by yourphariseefriend

Dina,

I know you are right that June comments here only infrequently. I hope that you are incorrect regarding her response. I do hope that she was not just venting her spleen, pronouncing her judgments without reason, accusing without evidence. Hopefully she has just been too busy to respond to my inquiry, and she will explain to us why what I wrote is “disgraceful” and “non biblical”. When she has a chance, perhaps she will explain why she does not merely disagree with my reasoning but why it is “disgraceful”.

Sadly, too often the Christian refuses to make honest arguments. Too often he levels accusations at his opponents. It is much easier to make pronouncements than bring proofs. Even a Christian that begins by bringing evidence, quickly retreats to mere declarations of his special insight. The holy spirit has shown him the truth, but the Jew is ‘blind’.

Familiarity makes it no less distressing when a Christian portrays devotion to God as rejection of Jesus and, therefore, rejection of God. If one seeks to fulfill the law of God, he is portrayed as faithless. Obedience is termed “legalism”. It is assumed that if one practices the law, he only keeps the letter of the law. Somehow the Christian knows the heart of every Jew and ben Noach. Being so qualified, they make it their business to sit in judgment, abandoning fair discussion of the issues in favor of issuing pronouncements.

While the Jew must bear up under every kind of accusation, the Christian will brook not so much as illustrating an imperfection in Jesus. The Christian is to be heard; the Jew is to be silent. When a Christian pronounces the Jew to be blind, this is love. When the Jew shows from Torah that a man is not God (nor is God a man), then this is anti-Biblical. When Jesus rails at his opponents as vipers, sons of the devil, murderers at heart, and the like, this is love. When the Jew points out that Jesus broke the law, this is unreasoning hatred, inherited from their fathers. The conversation is one-sided, with the Jew being made the villain at every turn, while every distortion of the Christian is treated as holy writ.

And yet the problem goes beyond the disrespect the Christian gives to the Jewish people (and the hatred that sometimes follows). The pronouncements of the Christian obscure the truth. By writing off one side of the debate, it is impossible to give fair analysis to the arguments. The Christian does himself a grave disservice. By assuming from the start the blindness of the Jew, the Christian cuts himself off from expert testimony. In effect, the Christian blinds himself by refusing to look at the opposing evidence. Having thus blinded himself, he then goes about attempting to blind others by maligning the Jewish people, so that their response will never be considered honestly.

All this said, I do hope that June was doing more than just making a pronouncement. I am more than willing to discuss wherein I may have made an error. She may have only typed the first comment in a rush, hoping to return to it later. I certainly understand how the business of life can limit our typing time. However, if she is unwilling to back up her accusations, then it would have been better for her not to type at all. It adds nothing to the conversation than vitriol.

Jim

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Yisroel C. Blumenthal

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Unanswered

Posted on August 18, 2016 by yourphariseefriend
Unanswered; Questions that Dr. Brown Has Failed to Address
Introduction

Who is Dr. Brown? And why is it important to know that he has failed to address certain questions? Who cares and why should it make a difference? Why am I taking up your time to tell you about it?

You see, Dr. Brown has written a 5 volume series entitled “Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus.” In this series he lays out the argument that the Jewish Bible points to the alleged Messiah-ship of Jesus. Dr. Brown knows that in order to convince a Jew to join him in devotion to Jesus, it won’t be enough to tell him about the vast number of people that believe in Jesus. Dr. Brown knows that he won’t convince a Jew to give his heart to Jesus by telling the Jew about miracles performed in Jesus’ name. And Dr. Brown won’t persuade a Jew to turn to Jesus on the basis of the spiritual experience of Jesus’ followers.

The Jew has the word of God, the Jewish Bible, which was here before Jesus walked this earth. This book is God’s guidance to the Jewish people and if this book tells the Jew to reject Jesus then the Jew is morally obligated to ignore the numbers, ignore the miracles and ignore the spiritual experiences and reject Jesus. The word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8) and no miracle, experience or any number of “believers” can overturn one word of Scripture.

Fact of the matter is that Jews read the Bible and hear God directing them to reject the claims of the Church. Dr. Brown recognizes this and that is why he wrote his massive work attempting to make a case for Jesus on the basis of the Jewish Bible. Because Dr. Brown knows that if the Bible is not on Jesus’ side, then Jesus is not the Messiah.

I have read Dr. Brown’s work and I have found to be incredibly empty. He fails to address some of the foundational Jewish objections, his reasoning is flawed and his arguments are riddled with self-contradiction. I don’t expect you to take my word for this. I have laid out all of my arguments in writing. My articles have been brought to the attention of Dr. Brown and he has failed to respond.

So now you know why this is important. If my questions are indeed valid then the Church has no case for Jesus on the basis of the Jewish Bible. You see, Dr. Brown is certainly motivated to convince the Jewish people that Jesus is who the Church claims he is. I have done him the service of articulating why a Jew who has a working knowledge of the Jewish Bible sees right through all of his arguments. Why would he fail to respond? I don’t believe that Dr. Brown has the answers to my questions and he is withholding them from the public. It makes no sense.

I am not here to persuade you or to convince you. I don’t want you to believe me. I want to empower you. I encourage you to study, analyze and educate yourself. Don’t rely on the Christian to give you the Jewish position. I have provided you with a written articulation of the Jewish perspective, take advantage of it.

But perhaps all this reading is too much for you. It is for this reason that I am talking to you now. I want to share 3 of the many questions that I have posed to Dr. Brown. These are but a fraction of my critique of his work, but I trust that they will whet your appetite. I hope that when you consider these questions you will be encouraged to study the matter with greater depth and more fully.

Reader’s Guide to the Bible; Dr. Brown vs. God

In my own life I find that the more I study the Bible the more I am able to articulate why it is that Jesus is not who the Church claims he is. The Bible gives me the clarity and the strength to see right through the arguments of the missionary.

Dr. Brown points to the same Jewish Bible and he arrives at the opposite conclusion. How does he do this? How does he get a book which so clearly directs the Jew to reject the claims of the Church to be seen as supportive of those very claims?

If you read Dr. Brown’s work you will see that he simply omits some of the foundational Scriptural passages when he presents “Scripture’s position” on a given subject. He misinterprets other passages in his effort to support the claims of the Church but these are not his main tools. The main tool that Dr. Brown uses to get the Bible to point to Jesus is that he invents his own reader’s guide to the Bible. What do I mean when I say “reader’s guide to the Bible”?

You see, in order to build a world-view on the basis of the Jewish Bible you need some guidance. The Jewish Bible is a big book, about 30,000 verses. It is very easy to get lost out there. Someone has to tell you where to find a teaching on a given subject and someone has to tell you what is central and foundational and what is peripheral. It is only if you have this information that you can see the Bible as a cohesive whole.

Thankfully, the Author of the Bible provided us with a reader’s guide to His book. God used various literary devices to accentuate and to emphasize certain passages and concepts. Certain ideas are repeated again and again. Sometimes the narrative builds to a climax demonstrating what the Author sees as the pinnacle of a given event. The Author uses strong and commanding language to show that a given teaching is central and important.

If you follow the Author’s cues you will realize that the prohibition against worshiping idols is central. The practice of justice and mercy is foundational. The election of Israel, observance of the Law of Moses, the power of repentance and the Temple in Jerusalem are all pillars of the Scriptural worldview.

The Scriptures introduce Deuteronomy 4 as the definitive teaching on the subject of idolatry and Ezekiel 33 is presented as a teaching on the subject of dealing with guilt and sin. This is the guidance that the Divine Writer of Scripture provided for the readers of His book.

When I follow the guidance of God I see the theology of Judaism in the pages of Scripture. I find all of the foundational teachings of Judaism spelled out clearly and explicitly in the pages of the Jewish Bible.

I now turn to the books of Dr. Brown. Dr. Brown is encouraging his readers to find the theological underpinnings of Christianity in the same Jewish Bible. How is he going to do this?

He takes various passages and misinterprets them so that they support the theology of Christianity. But before he does this he discards the reader’s guide provided by God and he puts forth his own “reader’s guide” to the Bible. Instead of pointing his readers to Deuteronomy 4 for a teaching on devotion he tells his audience that Genesis 18 is the central teaching on worship and devotion. God, the Author of Scripture doesn’t place this passage at the center of this discussion, but Dr. Brown does.

When it comes to the subject of sin and guilt, Dr. Brown also ignores the Author’s guidance. The Author points to Deuteronomy 30 as a teaching on how the nation can repair its relationship with God and to Ezekiel 33 as a teaching on how an individual deals with the burden of sin. The Ezekiel passage is introduced with the question; “our sins and our transgressions are upon us and we melt away in them, how then shall we live?” Deuteronomy 30 did not make it into Dr. Brown’s discussion of this subject and Ezekiel 33 is relegated to the back pages of the discussion and is not given the weight that God gives it.

Instead Dr. Brown points to Leviticus 17:11 as the focal point on dealing with guilt and sin. But God doesn’t put His finger on this passage as a teaching on this subject. Leviticus 17:11 is introduced by the Author as a teaching against drinking blood.

So here we have it. Dr. Brown puts aside God’s reader’s guide to the Bible and presents us with his own. Are we to take this seriously? In case you answered yes to this question then please consider the following. Dr. Brown doesn’t take his own reader’s guide to the Bible seriously.

On page 199 of “The Real Case for Jesus” Dr. Brown excitedly declares that Zechariah 6 is the “most overt passage in the Jewish Bible where a human being is identified with a Messianic figure.” He tells us this to highlight the point which he incorrectly gathered from between the lines of the narrative that the Messiah is some sort of priest. So when it comes to a point that the prophet only refers to in a backhanded way (according to Dr. Brown’s faulty interpretation) this prophecy in Zechariah is prominent and significant. But when the prophet tells us explicitly that this Messianic figure is to build the Temple, Dr. Brown tells us that this prophecy only appears once and in only one book of the Bible and is therefore of little significance (page 172 of Volume 3 “Answering Jewish Objections”).

How then can I abandon God’s guidance concerning the centrality of various Scriptural passages and accept the guidance of a man who doesn’t take his own words seriously?

Here is the first of the three questions that I will be sharing with you. God gives us clear direction concerning His book. He highlights certain points and He tells us that certain passages are teachings on particular subjects. How can I be expected to abandon the guidance provided by God and accept the guidance of a man who doesn’t take his own words seriously? How could I follow the direction of the Church when the Author of Scripture is pointing the other way?

Do you understand my question? Do you not recognize that this is an important question? Is this something I am not supposed to notice? If Dr. Brown would have a good answer for this question, would he withhold it from you?

The Church had 2000 years to work on this question and they have failed to address it. Can you understand why a Jew has the moral responsibility to disregard the claims of the Church if they cannot address this foundational question?

That was a question about the Bible which is the book upon which Dr. Brown attempts to build his case. Let us move on to a question related to idolatry, which from a Jewish perspective is the most important issue in this conflict.

Idolatry, the Violation of a Relationship

What is the real reason that Jews don’t accept Jesus? And please don’t take this question lightly. Jews have submitted themselves to tremendous suffering for centuries upon centuries in order to maintain their distance from Jesus. They were locked in ghettoes, barred from interaction with the citizenry of their host countries, subject to ridicule, pain and suffering. On various occasions throughout history Jews have been given the grim choice of accepting Jesus or dying and they chose to die. Tens of thousands of Jews were willing to die gruesome deaths rather than accept Jesus. Why?

The reason that the Jews chose to suffer rather than to accept Jesus is because they considered the worship of Jesus that is encouraged by the Church to be idolatrous.

In light of this serious charge against Christianity, Dr. Brown devotes many pages in his book to defend the Christian worship of Jesus. Dr. Brown gives us arguments from Scripture, philosophical arguments and theological arguments. The gist of Dr. Brown’s reasoning is that in some mysterious way, Jesus is one and the same with God.

Dr. Brown fails to address some of the foundational Scriptural challenges to his position and his reasoning is seriously flawed. I encourage you to read what I have written on this subject. But that is not what I am going to talk about here and now. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Dr. Brown never addresses the issue on the level of a relationship. You see, those Jews who chose death over Jesus were not scholars, philosophers or theologians. Some of them may have been learned but the vast majority of them were simple people. Carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, shoemakers and tailors. Housewives and their children, teenagers and seniors all chose suffering rather than bend their hearts to Jesus.

This is not about philosophy or theology. This is about a relationship. Idolatry is a sin of the heart, it is a violation of the worshiper’s relationship with God. Idolatry is not something that you believe, it is something that you do. You don’t necessarily do it with your hands, you do it with your heart. If you are talking philosophy or theology, you can point to the mysterious realms and present an argument that may confuse some people. But idolatry takes place in the very familiar realm of the human heart and it is something that anyone can understand.

In order to have devotion towards someone, there needs to be an attraction, a magnetism. Something has to draw my heart toward that entity that I worship and there needs to be an experience of satisfaction, a thirst that is quenched in that relationship. If you are not talking about an attraction and a joy then you are not talking about a relationship.

So what is the magnetism that exists in the human heart towards God? What is the joy and satisfaction that is inherent in a relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth? Read the Psalms of David and you will discover that yearning, that joy, that security and that satisfaction. And when our martyrs went to die they did so with this love in their hearts.

These men and women didn’t understand philosophy and they were not sophisticated theologians but they knew their own hearts. They knew that the God that they loved was everything. They found every satisfaction and joy in their love for God. They were lacking nothing in this relationship.

The Christian missionary is not satisfied with a heart that finds joy and satisfaction in a relationship with the One Creator of heaven and earth. The missionary is not satisfied with a heart that is flooded with a yearning and a love for God as articulated by David in the Psalms. The missionary finds it necessary to move such a heart toward Jesus.

So here is the second question that Dr. Brown fails to address and it is not my question, it is God’s question. In Jeremiah’s days there were Jews who strayed after idols and God asked them; “what flaw did you find in Me?” (Jeremiah 2:5). God asks Israel; what were you missing in your worship of Me? What joy did you not find in your relationship with Me? And this is the question that the Jew asks the Church. Why do we need Jesus? What does Jesus have to offer to us that God didn’t already give us? What will we find in Jesus that we don’t have in God? What are we missing when we love God as David did before us? What can we be missing? Can you add anything on to God?

Dr. Brown does not address this question in his five volumes. From the standpoint of a Jew who loves God he wrote nothing.

Idolatry is the important question for a Jew. For a Christian the central issue is the claim that Jesus is somehow the Messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets.

Messianic Prophecies, Dr. Brown vs. Dr. Brown

The Messianic prophecies of the Jewish Bible ought to be the heart and soul of Dr. Brown’s presentation. After all, he encouraged his audience to read the Jewish Bible and he hopes that on the basis of this reading they come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah. It would then follow that the prophecies that allegedly speak of Jesus are the centerpiece of Dr. Brown’s 5 volume work.

On page 153 of volume 3 Dr. Brown provides a list of the “main” Messianic prophecies that Jesus supposedly fulfilled. A few pages later (pg. 159) Dr. Brown narrows this list and he presents those prophecies that Jesus “provably” fulfilled. This final list contains those prophecies that Dr. Brown believes Jesus fulfilled in a way that can be proven to the impartial bystander. So this list is the crux of his argument. In a certain sense, the rest of his 5 volume series is just filler.

I encourage you to examine this list of prophecies and I have provided the resources for this study on my blog, but before we do so it is important to ask another question. Is this all that the prophets had to say about the Messiah and his times? No! Not at all! There are many prophecies that Jesus did not and will not fulfill. These include peace on earth, a Temple in Jerusalem, the restoration of the sacrificial system, universal knowledge of God, the vindication of the people of Israel, the restoration of the people of Israel to the land of Israel, the destruction of Israel’s enemies, and national observance of the Law of Moses. But in order for us to focus on his little list of prophecies Dr. Brown needs to downplay these prophecies which do not conform to the picture he is trying to paint. Dr. Brown employs a three step strategy in his attempt to direct your attention away from the Messianic vision of the Jewish prophets.

The first step in Dr. Brown’s strategy is evasion. He simply does not speak of the universal knowledge of God, the vindication of the people of Israel, the destruction of Israel’s enemies, Israel’s restoration to their ancestral homeland or of the observance of the Law of Moses that the prophets foretold as important aspects of the Messianic hope. These features of the Messianic hope did not merit any serious discussion in the 1500 pages that Dr. Brown devoted to educating his audience about the same Messianic hope.

Dr. Brown is willing to speak about three of the Messianic prophecies that Jesus did not fulfill. These are peace, Temple, and restoration of the sacrificial system. At this point we come to the second step in Dr. Brown’s strategy, separation. Dr. Brown separates these prophecies from one another. Instead of seeing them as one panoramic whole, Dr. Brown would have us judge each of these concepts as if they stood apart from one another. The fact that these various aspects of the redemption are woven together by the prophets in one Scriptural passage after another is ignored by Dr. Brown.

The third and final step in Dr. Brown’s strategy is that he creates an artificial dichotomy. According to Dr. Brown, some prophecies are “significant” while the others are “fringe at best” (February 7 2013 Line of Fire). The “significant” prophecies will be fulfilled literally and practically while the “fringe” prophecies are to be interpreted on a symbolic level and we should not expect them to be fulfilled in a literal practical way.

On what basis does Dr. Brown minimize the significance of these prophecies that stand at the heart of the Jewish Messianic hope? He tells us that they appear too few times in the Bible, they appear in too few books of the Bible, some of these prophecies fail to mention a Messianic figure and some of them seem to be associated with a different time-frame than the one allowed for by the Jewish understanding.

Let us put aside the fact that in order to arrive at his count of the prophecies that he is attempting to minimize, he conveniently forgot a number of prophecies. Let us also put aside the fact that some of the very same prophecies that Dr. Brown claims are significant, because he believes Jesus fulfills one aspect of those prophecies, also speak of these concepts that Dr. Brown is trying to marginalize. Instead we will ask a more obvious question. What happens to Dr. Brown’s list of prophecies when we analyze them according to his own standards? How many times do they appear in the Bible? In how many books of Scripture do these prophecies appear? Do they all mention a Messianic figure? Are some of them tied in to a time-frame other than the one that Christian eschatology allows for?

They all fail miserably. They appear less times in the Jewish Bible and they are mentioned in fewer books than are the prophecies that Dr. Brown is trying to minimize. Some of the prophecies that Dr. Brown is attempting to highlight do not mention a Messianic figure and many of them are tied into a time-frame that does not allow for the Christian Jesus. Dr. Brown never bothered to apply his own standards to his own little list of prophecies. By Dr. Brown’s own standard of Scriptural interpretation his list of prophecies ought not to be considered significant and they could be interpreted on a symbolic level.

So the heart of Dr. Brown’s argument is an exercise in hypocrisy and self-contradiction. He creates this false contrast between significant and insignificant prophecies. He goes on to tell you how he defines “insignificant” prophecies. But he never tells you why the prophecies he favors are any more significant than the ones he dismissed. This contradiction has been brought to Dr. Brown’s attention and he has not provided any explanation.

Should a Jew just ignore this? You need to realize that the Messianic prophecies of Scripture gave the Jew the strength and the fortitude to survive the darkest hell. When the Jews were locked in ghettoes and were ridiculed by the world around them they needed strength, they needed comfort and they needed a rock to stand on. And the rock they stood on was God’s word through His prophets, this was their strength and this was their comfort.

And this is what the Church is asking us to throw out, the very rock that carried our nation through this painful exile. And on what basis? On the basis of arguments that don’t add up! Can you expect the Jew to “overlook” this problem with the Christian argument? Is this an argument that deserves no answer?

Conclusion

I gave you three questions to think about. I will remind you that these questions are only a fraction of what Dr. Brown has not responded to, but these questions should encourage you to study and to learn. Why does the Author of the Bible lead you in a different direction than the direction that Dr. Brown and the Church would have you march? What are the Jewish people missing in their relationship with God? What could they be missing in that relationship? And why does Dr. Brown contradict his own presentation of the Messianic prophecies?

Are these questions so irrelevant? You see, Dr. Brown had 1500 blank pieces of paper upon which to make his case. He had 10 years of time. And it is not just Dr. Brown, in this digital age he had 2000 years of Church writings open before him. And he couldn’t find the space or the time to answer these foundational questions. Since he wrote his 5 volumes, he has been made aware of these questions and he hasn’t answered them. Why should the Jew take his arguments seriously?

And this is not only about the Jew. The way that I see it is that this proves that Jesus is not the Messiah for anyone. Millions of man-hours were invested in the effort to make the case for Jesus and this is the pathetic result. An argument tied in the knot of self-contradiction and one which avoids the foundational challenges. What more could the Church do to tell you that Jesus is not the Messiah? If 1500 pages could not do the trick, 15 million won’t do it either.

That’s how I see it, but this video is not about me, it’s about you. Please consider the questions that I have presented, think about them and study. I encourage you to read the articles that I wrote on this subject. I provided some study notes which I hope you find helpful. But again, this is not about me, it is not about Dr. Brown. It is between you and God. Please study and learn. You decide, but let your decision be an educated one.

https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/study-notes/

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Thank You

Yisroel C. Blumenthal

Posted in Critique, General, Response to Dr. Brown Line of Fire | 1 Comment