Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 30/08/2006 21:48, Harold Holmyard wrote:
> Yonah Mishael wrote:
>
>   
> > ...
> > 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: It's not a matter of disagreeing. You flatly don't believe me.  I'm 
> giving you facts. If you want to ignore and contradict them, that's 
> fine. I'm even giving you the modern connotation. You may know some 
> people who don't think that way, but our understanding is to be derived 
> entirely from God's word, not human opinion. There are millions of 
> people who think the way I do. I can't give you a number of how many 
> millions.  Dispensaltionalism is considered to be the majority viewpoint 
> in America about prophetic realities, and that viewpoint sees things 
> just the way I described.
>
>   
Harold, I think you are overreacting here. Yes, one prominent trend of 
Christian thought holds that Jesus Christ will literally rule the world 
from Jerusalem, and this is in partial agreement with Jewish thought. 
But the Christian doctrine of Christ undoubtedly includes many central 
and vital concepts, such as his atoning death and resurrection, which 
are almost entirely foreign to Jewish thought about the Messiah and 
Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, Jewish 
ideas of the Messiah have a nationalistic basis, which is largely 
foreign to Christianity in which Christ's ministry is to Gentiles as 
much as to Jews. So there are some very major differences between the 
two doctrines. And in the light of 2000 years of disagreement it is 
unlikely that they will be resolved on this list, and before the 
moderators rightly complain that we are going off topic. So perhaps we 
should restrict our discussions to what words like Mashiach and concepts 
like anointing mean in the Hebrew Bible as originally intended by its 
authors, and keep well away from discussing Christian and Rabbinic 
interpretations.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/