23entries

Jewish Arguments and Defeaters

Christian engagement with rabbinic and counter-missionary Jewish objections to Christianity. Because both sides already accept the Tanakh, every page argues from material the Jewish interlocutor owns: Hebrew grammar, the Masoretic text and its variants, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pre-Christian Jewish Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, and the Talmud and midrash, with the New Testament stating the Christian position rather than carrying the proof. Four defeater clusters: messianic identification (Isaiah 53, the Maimonidean criteria, Daniel 9, Zechariah 12:10, Psalm 22, almah, the genealogies); the doctrine of God (the Shema and echad, "God is not a man," the idolatry charge); atonement and anthropology (blood atonement, substitution, the curse of the cross, original sin); and covenant and authority (the Oral Torah, dual-covenant theology, Jeremiah 31). A fifth group argues positively from Jewish sources for a suffering Messiah, the Temple signs of Yoma 39b, two powers in heaven, and the Talmud on the execution of Jesus. Master frame: The Jewish Defense, which holds the five-rule house style and the deployment guidance.