(March 8, 2014 at 12:11 am)Minimalist Wrote: No, they are full of shit, too. Judaism reformed itself when the Romans burned the temple to the ground and all of a sudden they needed a whole new modus operandi. Rabbinic judaism was born...sans temple.
But they did not embrace any of this jesus stuff. Oh, a few desultory lines were written into the talmud but, as you have said, Y'shua was such a common name it is tough to know who they are talking about. Certainly, there is no recognizable jesus as claimed in the so-called gospels.
The DSS give us a window into jewish thinking from the second century BC to the first century AD. So what? Throughout the whole time that the Romans were kicking their asses there were large jewish communities in Alexandria and Babylon. The jews in Alexandria did fairly well for centuries and the jewish community in Iraq lasted until 1947 when the shit hit the fan. The Masoretic texts they produced are reasonably similar to the DSS - although not letter for letter perfect as xtians love to claim.
Nonetheless, when jewish scholars point to their books and say "this is what they mean" it has to count for a bit more than these asinine xtian interpretations which turn the "suffering servant" ( meant to be Israel ) into friggin' jesus. Xtians pick a line out of the text and say "Yup... THERE'S JESUS" and the jews say "Bullshit." I've got to go with the jews.
According to the Babylonian Talmud the Jews accused Jesus of all sorts of despicable acts. They also claim to have killed him using five different methods. They don't seem to be Jesus fans.
