If your messiah comes, will you recognize him?
The way that the Jews have defined their Messiah and what he must be, means that no person could possibly fulfill that role. When a true messiah comes, he/she upends much or some of the previous theological dogma and revivifies it. He fulfills the spirit of the religion and not every letter of the law. But this is a very old and often repeated story, that a people’s messiah and savior comes, but they do not recognize him or accept him because he is not what they expect and he threatens their security and beliefs and structures of authority…..
The Jewish view that Christians are wrong for worshipping the person of Jesus is correct.
“building the Third Temple, a Messianic Age of peace, and the ingathering of Jews to their homeland” - these are inner metaphorical happenings, not to be looked for outside in the world. Also, these things are yet to come, as Yeshua’s life and teachings bear their full fruit….
Adherents of Judaism do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah or Prophet, nor do they believe he was the Son of God. In the Jewish perspective, it is believed that the way Christians see Jesus goes against monotheism, a belief in the absolute unity and singularity of God, which is central to Judaism;[1] Judaism sees the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, which is forbidden.[2] Therefore, considering Jesus divine, as “God the Son”, is forbidden.
Judaism's rejection of Jesus as the Messiah is based on Jewish eschatology, which holds that the coming of the true Messiah will be associated with events that have not yet occurred, such as building the Third Temple, a Messianic Age of peace, and the ingathering of Jews to their homeland.[3][4]
Judaism does not accept any of the claimed fulfilments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus.
Most of Jesus's teachings were intelligible and acceptable in terms of Second Temple Judaism; what set early Christians apart from Jews was their belief that Jesus was the Messiah.[21] While Christianity acknowledges only one ultimate Messiah, Judaism can be said to hold to a concept of multiple messiahs. The two most frequently mentioned are the Messiah ben Joseph and the Messiah ben David. Some scholars have argued that the idea of two messiahs—one "suffering" and the other fulfilling the traditionally conceived messianic role—was normative to ancient Judaism, predating Jesus, as can be seen from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many would have viewed Jesus as one or both.
Jewish messianism has its root in the apocalyptic literature of the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD, promising a future "anointed" leader or Messiah to resurrect the Israelite "Kingdom of God", in place of the foreign rulers of the time. According to Shaye J.D. Cohen, the fact that Jesus did not establish an independent Israel, combined with his death at the hands of the Romans, caused many Jews to reject him as the Messiah.[26][note 3] Jews at that time were expecting a military leader as a Messiah, such as Bar Kokhba.
The first followers of Jesus were essentially all ethnically Jewish or Jewish proselytes. Jesus was Jewish, preached to the Jewish people, and called from them his first followers. According to McGrath, Jewish Christians, as faithful religious Jews, "regarded their movement as an affirmation of every aspect of contemporary Judaism, with the addition of one extra belief – that Jesus was the Messiah."[30]
Judaism's idea of the messiah differs substantially from the Christian idea of the Messiah. In orthodox Rabbinic Judaism the messiah's task is to bring in the Messianic Age, a one-time event, and a presumed messiah who is killed before completing the task (i.e. compelling all of Israel to walk in the way of Torah, repairing the breaches in observance, fighting the wars of God, building the Temple in its place, gathering in the dispersed exiles of Israel) is not the messiah. Maimonides states,
But if he did not succeed in all this or was killed, he is definitely not the Mashiach promised in the Torah... and God only appointed him in order to test the masses.
Jews believe that the messiah will fulfill the messianic prophecies of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.[18][19][20][21] Judaism interprets Isaiah 11:1 ("And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow forth out of his roots.") to mean that the messiah will be a patrilineal bloodline descendant of King David.[22] He is expected to return the Jews to their homeland and rebuild the Temple, reign as king, and usher in an era of peace[3] and understanding where "the knowledge of God" fills the earth,[4] leading the nations to "end up recognizing the wrongs they did Israel".[23] Ezekiel states the messiah will redeem the Jews.[24]
The Jewish view of Jesus is influenced by the fact that Jesus lived while the Second Temple was standing, and not during an exile. Being conceived via the Holy Spirit (as espoused by orthodox Christian doctrine), it would be impossible for Jesus to be a patrilineal bloodline descendant of King David. He never reigned as king, and there was no subsequent era of peace or great knowledge. Jesus died without completing or even accomplishing part of any of the messianic tasks, which Christians say will occur at a Second Coming. Rather than being redeemed, the Jews were subsequently exiled from Judaea, and the Temple destroyed (as of yet it has not been rebuilt). These discrepancies were noted by Jewish scholars who were contemporaries of Jesus, as later pointed out by Nachmanides, who in 1263 observed that Jesus was rejected as the messiah by the rabbis of his time.[25]
Moreover, Judaism sees Christian claims that Jesus is the textual messiah of the Hebrew Bible as being based on mistranslations,[26][27] given that Jesus did not fulfill any of the Jewish Messiah qualifications.
According to the Torah (Deuteronomy 13:1–5 and 18:18–22), the criteria for a person to be considered a prophet or speak for God in Judaism are that he must follow the God of Israel (and no other god); he must not describe God differently from how he is known to be from Scripture; he must not advocate change to God's word or state that God has changed his mind and wishes things that contradict his already-stated eternal word.[29] There is no concept of the Messiah "fulfilling the law" to free the Israelites from their duty to maintain the mitzvot in Judaism, as is understood in much of Christianity or some Messianic Judaism.
Deuteronomy 13:1 says, "Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you; neither add to it nor take away from it."
Even if someone who appears to be a prophet can perform supernatural acts or signs, no prophet or dreamer can contradict the laws already stated in the Tanakh.[33][34] Thus, any divergence espoused by Jesus from the tenets of scriptural Judaism would disqualify him from being considered a prophet in Judaism. This was the view adopted by Jesus' contemporaries, as according to rabbinical tradition as stated in the Talmud (Sotah 48b) "when Malachi died the Prophecy departed from Israel." As Malachi lived centuries before Jesus it is clear that the rabbis of Talmudic times did not view Jesus as a divinely inspired prophet. Furthermore, the Bible itself includes an example of a prophet who could speak directly with God and could work miracles but was "evil",[35] in the form of Balaam.