Rabbi talks about Isaiah 7:14

[Fake Messiah]

Kind of entertaining video in which Rabbi talks how Christians distort and pervert Hebrew language and Jewish scriptures to validate this "ridiculous notion" that Jesus is the son of JHWH.
Especially after minute 58 when he really gets worked up even thinking that Christians will unsubscribe from their churches and start going to synagogues.

[Minimalist]

Yes, rabbi.  Bullshit comes in different flavors but it remains bullshit.

[vorlon13]

still, making the christers confront the blatant hijacking of Jesus' religion apostle Paul foisted on them . . .

[Foxaèr]

Still, there is always something to be said for a religion that does not attempt to proselytize or convert others.

[Caligvla XXI]

"The most famous verse that was . . . molested by the church. Molested--is that a strong word? It's not strong enough."

How about "fucked with"? Rabbi Singer's dissection of Isaiah 7:14 was spot on. I always get a kick out of listening to this guy.

[vorlon13]

pointing out Christian's are "doing it wrong" with biblical backing is a fun thing to do

And it sets useful precedents, like, how sincerely held are their beliefs when they are demonstrably contrary to the very Scriptures they supposedly hold dear ??

[Minimalist]

still, making the christers confront the blatant hijacking of Jesus' religion apostle Paul foisted on them . . .

As you know, I have my doubts about this whole 'paul' shit.  As Carrier notes:

Element 31: Incarnate sons (or daughters) of a god who died and then rose from their deaths to become living gods granting salvation to their worshiperswere a common and peculiar feature of pagan religion when Christianity arose, so much so that i nfluence from paganism is the only plausible explanation for how a Jewish sect such as Christianity came to adopt the idea (again, Element 1 1). For example, you won't find this trend in ancient China. No such gods are found there. If Christianity had begun in China, its claims would indeed have been unique and astonishing. Yet in its actual Greco-Roman context it was neither unique nor astonishing. Thus it cannot be a coincidence that Christianity arose with an idea matching a ubiquitous pagan type unique to the very time and place it was born. Any theory of historicity, to be plausible, must take this into account.31

In the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr wrote the following:

When we say that the Logos, who is the firstborn of God, Jesus Christ
our teacher, was produced w ithout sexual union, and was crucified and
died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new
or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of
God. [In fact] . . . if anybody objects that [our god] was crucified, this is
i n common with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as prev
iously listed. Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar
but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse-
indeed I will show, as I have undertaken, and as the argument proceeds,

that he was better; for Jesus is thus shown to be better by his actions.n
1 69
Thus even Christians acknowledged the ubiquity of the dying-and-rising son-of-god theme in their surrounding pagan culture, and recognized it as a common theme even when every story differed in details from every other (on that being how syncretism works, see again Element 1


Pgs 168-69  On the Historicity of Jesus

Nothing new or original in jesusism.  Merely syncretism of the exisitng concepts which had been floating around for centuries.

[Rev. Rye]

Nice to hear a rabbi explain why the Christian interpretation of such verses doesn't hold water, but it's strange that he expects Gentiles to convert, since, if memory serves, Judaism doesn't really encourage converts, and apparently, rabbis have to turn away potential converts three times before they consider having them join.

[vorlon13]

Apostle Paul is quite the conundrum.

If non-existent and just made up conveniently for council of Nicea purposes, doesn't reflect well on history of the church.

If an actual Apostle Paul existed and used Jesus stuff as feed stock for his burgeoning ministry and he picked and chose and retconned his way around the middle east 'test marketing' various bits of dogma and creed and revising according to his 'marketing study' for maximum crowd draw (kaching!!) regardless of the violence he had to do to his 'feedstock' to come up with a message digestible to the masses and profitable for him to peddle, then we have the prototype for all the shyster TV preaches and traveling evangelists Christianity seems congested with even unto our era.

Current era 'Pauls' can cherry pick whatever scripture and verse their accountants deem best for the bottom line, and if need be, (like divorce and remarriage) even matters strictly forbidden can be 'retconned' into acceptability.

I kinda like that 'Adam Smith' version of Paul (for obvious reasons) but of the 2 versions of Paul in this post, neither seems like much of anything modern era 'sincere' Christians would want to acknowledge or embrace.

[Minimalist]

If non-existent and just made up conveniently for council of Nicea purposes, doesn't reflect well on history of the church.

Not really possible, V.  Sometime between 185 and 202 when he died, Irenaeus wrote:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103127.htm

Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judæa in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Cæsar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judæa, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world

Irenaeus and the slightly later writer, Tertullian wrote 125 years prior to Nicaea and neither could have possibly known that the bullshit story they were then pushing would grow to attain political power by backing the right horse in one of Rome's innumerable civil wars. 

Marcion is one of the keys.