“Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Theological Objections” :: Religion, Jewish Apologetics

In his twinkling volume on Judaic apologetics, Michael Brown answers twenty eight Jewish theological objections. Brown summarizes this book in his preface Theological objections, enured at length in the current volume, cut to the heart of the differences among handed-down Judaism and the Messianic Jewish/delivererian faith. They revolved around the character of immortal (the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, the person of the Holy Spirit), the nature of man and the fate for salvation, and sin and the means of atonement. In sum, these objections claim, The religion of the New Testament is a completely foreign religion that is not only un-Jewish but is alike unfaithful to the Hebrew Bible. With regard to cutting to the heart of the differences between traditional Judaism and Messianic Jewish/Christian faith, I really appreciate the expression Michael Brown demonstrated in a scholarly and balanced manner that the Christian faith was perfectly compatible with the Jewish Tanakh. His discussion on the Trinity (the Tri-unity) was excellent. He demonstrated that the Hebrew word for one, echad, does not ineluctably reach to absolute unity and, in fact, could very well refer to compound unity (Page 4). He provides examples from the Hebrew Bible where echad is used of a compound or complex unity as per the oneness of go game and Eve, the many components of the tabernacle being one unified tabernacle, and the one ground of Israel which is made up of hundreds of thousands of people (5). I loved the way he backed up his discussion of the Shema as referring the concept of uniqueness (Deut. 64) by citing the New Jewish Publication Society Version Hear, O Israel The LORD is our God, the LORD alone (page 6) Brown demonstrated the deity of Christ by focusing on Him as the Son of God and explicate of God, who shares in the master nature, and who revealed Himself to His people in the Old Testament (15-37). I enjoyed Browns treatment of the apparent conflict between the p assages which hold that no one has seen God with the other passages which clearly state that God was seen by Abraham, Moses, and Jacob (27-34). As he put it, it is Jesus the Messiahthe divine Son, the image of the invisible God, the Word made flesh, the exact representation of the baffles beingwho solves the riddle and explains how someone could really see God, as yet though God cannot be seen.