The Jewish View of Jesus – Part 2

[This article is part of the series "Various Views of Jesus"]

Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Scripture are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version^® NIV^® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblical Inc.^® Used by permission of Biblica, Inc.^® All rights reserved worldwide.

In Part 1 we presented the Jewish view of Jesus. In Parts 2 and 3 we will present a Christian response to that view.

The Christian Response: Understanding the Messianic Pattern

Christians affirm the Deuteronomy 13 principle: no miracle, however spectacular, can authorize Israel to abandon the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The resurrection is not offered as a miracle that overrides the Hebrew Scriptures, but as God’s public vindication of the One who fulfilled them in their deepest messianic pattern. The question is not whether the Messiah must complete the public work of restoration — Christians agree that He must — but whether the Tanakh teaches that the Messiah’s visible reign comes first, or that sin, atonement, and covenant renewal must come first. The Christian answer is that the Tanakh gives not only the destination of messianic hope but the path: suffering before glory, atonement before restoration, death before vindication, and then the kingdom in its fullness.

The Messiah Had to Suffer Before Reigning

The traditional objection assumes the messianic mission had to be completed in one stage. But the Tanakh presents a messianic sequence, not merely a messianic endpoint: rejection, suffering, piercing, death, and atonement precede vindication and glory.^[1] On the road to Emmaus, Jesus rebuked His disciples for missing what Moses and the Prophets had already taught: “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” Then, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:26–27).

Prophetic Sequences in Daniel and Isaiah

Daniel 9 sharpens the sequence. The prophecy begins not with political triumph but with the need “to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness” (Daniel 9:24). Then: “After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One [Mashiach] will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Daniel 9:26). Sin must be dealt with, the Messiah is put to death, and, after this, the city and sanctuary will fall. Rather than prophesying immediate political restoration, Daniel specifies a time of political ruin following the Messiah’s death.^[2]

Isaiah 53 presses the same movement: the Servant is “pierced for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5); He is “cut off from the land of the living” and assigned a grave (Isaiah 53:8–9), yet afterward “will see the light of life” and “prolong his days” (Isaiah 53:10–11).

This sequence makes covenantal sense. Restoration cannot be merely political if Israel’s sin remains. The cross is the covenantal foundation of the kingdom—and two comings is the natural shape of a prophetic pattern in which atonement precedes restoration and suffering precedes glory. Jewish tradition registered this tension by speaking of two messiahs—Mashiach ben Yosef who suffers and Mashiach ben David who reigns.^[3] In Jesus, Christians find one Messiah whose mission unfolds in two stages.

Jesus Is the Son of David — and More

The New Testament does not retreat from the Davidic requirement. Matthew opens by declaring Jesus “the son of David” (Matthew 1:1). Christians respond to the patrilineal objection on two levels. First, Joseph’s legal fatherhood placed Jesus publicly within the Davidic house. Betrothal carried full legal weight, and Joseph’s legal fatherhood stands unopposed.^[4] Second, Christians have long argued that Jesus was also biologically related to David through Mary.^[5]

The dual profile suggested—an earthly king with heavenly origins—is embedded in the Hebrew Scriptures. Micah declared that the ruler emerging from Bethlehem would have origins “from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).^[6] Jesus pressed the paradox directly: if the Messiah were merely David’s biological descendant, why does David call Him “my Lord” (Psalm 110:1)? The silence of the religious leaders is telling.^[7]

Jesus Was the Prophet Like Moses

Deuteronomy promises a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). The question is whether Jesus led Israel away from Yahweh or revealed Yahweh’s purposes in their promised fullness. Jesus named the Shema the greatest commandment (Mark 12:29). He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The Christian claim is that Jesus fulfilled the Torah by bringing it to its appointed goal. The priesthood, sacrifices, and festivals were divine shadows pointing forward to cleansing and atonement.^[9]

Jesus and the Identity of the One God

Christians do not believe Jesus is a second god; they affirm the Shema. The disagreement lies in the nature of the One God. The Shema is primarily a covenantal declaration of exclusive allegiance: Israel must worship Yahweh alone.^[10] Even the word echad is used in the Tanakh where distinct parts are spoken of as one (Genesis 2:24; Exodus 26:6). This shows that Deuteronomy 6:4 does not exclude complexity within the divine identity.^[11]

The prophets place the Messiah within this complex divine identity. Daniel 7 presents one like a son of man “coming with the clouds of heaven”—imagery the Tanakh reserves for Yahweh Himself—receiving worship from all nations (Daniel 7:13–14). Psalm 45 addresses the Davidic king as Elohim (“God”), and Isaiah 9 announces a royal child who bears the title “Mighty God.”^[13] The earliest Christian claim was not that the Shema had been abandoned, but that the crucified and risen Messiah had been revealed within the identity of the one God of Israel.^[14]

God Dwelling Among His People

The charge that the Incarnation is a pagan corruption misreads the Hebrew pattern of God’s presence. Just as the glory of the LORD filled the Temple (2 Chronicles 7:1–2) without emptying the rest of the universe, the claim that “the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” in Christ (Colossians 2:9) does not mean God abandoned His throne.^[15] Furthermore, the Tanakh records Yahweh appearing in visible, human form in Genesis 18. John’s announcement that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) is not a departure into pagan myth but the climactic expression of a biblical pattern.^[17]

The Christian Response will conclude in Part 3.

Endnotes

1. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996); Daniel I. Block, Deuteronomy, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 697–98.↑
2. Gleason L. Archer Jr., “Daniel,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 113.↑
3. b. Sukkah 52a, Sefaria, https://www.sefaria.org/Sukkah.52a; David Baron, The Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1972), 442.↑
4. Michael L. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 4, New Testament Objections (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 83–97.↑
5. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), 13–14; Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 38–40; Brown, Answering Jewish Objections, vol. 4, 83–97.↑
6. Rashi on Micah 5:1–2, in Mikra’ot Gedolot: Trei Asar, trans. A. J. Rosenberg (New York: Judaica Press); Brown, Answering Jewish Objections, 3:30–40.↑
7. Franz Delitzsch, Psalms, cited in Brown, Answering Jewish Objections, 3:141–43; Midrash Tehillim 2:9, Sefaria, https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tehillim.2.9.↑
8. John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 79–80, 91, 128–29; Michael L. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3, Messianic Prophecy Objections (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 9–11↑
9. Daniel I. Block, The Triumph of Grace: Literary and Theological Studies in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Themes (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 83; David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: Brill, 2011).↑
10. Daniel I. Block, “How Many Is God? An Investigation into the Meaning of Deuteronomy 6:4–5,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 2 (2004): 193, 211–12.↑
11. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אֶחָד (Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000).↑
12. Martin McNamara, Targum and Testament Revisited: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 101–17; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 89–147; Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 33–74.↑
13. Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015), 249–60; Brown, Answering Jewish Objections, 3:30–40, 131–33; John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 299–324.↑
14. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–59; Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism and the Final Examination of Jesus, WUNT 2/106 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998)↑
15. Daniel I. Block, Deuteronomy, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 311.↑
16. b. Bava Metzia 86b, Sefaria, https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.86b; Brown, Answering Jewish Objections, 2:31–35.↑
17. Martin McNamara, Targum and Testament Revisited: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 101–17; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 89–147.↑