Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Yonah Mishael wrote:


HH: I see I missed a key thought of yours.

> Anyway, I think we will have to agree to disagree on this point. 
> Anytime someone says "Christ," they do so to the exclusion of the 
> Jewishview of Messiah. The two have very different connotations in 
> modernEnglish, despite what they meant to native Greek speakers 2000 
> yearsago. Modern connotation is really what we are accustomed to 
> dealingwith, and it is from here that we draw meaning.


HH: But what is the modern Jewish view of Messiah? There are multiplied 
thousands of Jewish Christians who understand Mashiach just the way I've 
been describing. And don't say that Jewish Christians are no longer 
Jews. Jewish-Christians can claim that that non-Christian Jews have left 
authentic Judaism, which revolves around God's revelation of Himself in 
history and includes Jesus, the Messiah. But of course Jewishness is an 
ethno-religious term, and if people remain Jews who have no faith at 
all, which is a great number of them. then Jews who believe everything 
in the Tanakh and more besides certainly deserve the name of Jews if 
they want it, and they do. The term Mashiach also has a meaning to 
Gentile Christians. So this narrowing of the meaning of the term to the 
ideas held by non-Christian Jews is insufficient.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard